"Mere Member"

Calvin Coolidge, U. S. President, will become U. S. Senator from Massachusetts on the expiration of his present term, last week sur- mised one James Morgan, political informer to readers of the Boston Globe. This surmise was refuted by Clinton Gilbert, able Washington correspondent of the New York Evening Post, who pointed out that as seats become vacant only in 1929 and in 1931, President Coolidge would either have to run for office while in the White House, or else wait for two years. Said Mr. Gilbert: "John Quincy Adams, by retiring from the Presidency to become a member of the House of Representatives, established a precedent which the public has always wished to see followed. So whenever a President retires at a suitable age there is always talk of his entering Congress. The House of Representatives is not as attractive to public-men today as it was in the younger Adams's day, so it is the Senate where gossip places ex-Presi-dents. The difficulty is that there never is a vacancy at the right time. Some one is up for reelection. Or if a member dies or retires, others have made plans years ahead to succeed the retiring member. Thus it will rarely happen that an ex-President can enter the Senate without an undignified and unseemly contest. Then, too it is probable that most ex-Presi-dents would shrink from membership in the. Senate. An ex-Presi-dent would enter the Senate a tyro, like any other new member unfamiliar with Senate rules, without an important committee chairmanship, less ready in debate probably than the practiced old members. From being the most important figure in Washington he would become a mere member of the Senate, of whom there are 96, and almost surely for several years one of the less important members."