The Coolidge Buncombe

H. L. Mencken
I One of the chief arguments made for Dr. Coolidge is that the majority of business men are for him. If this were true, then it would be fair to conclude, not only that business men put their private profits above the public good which they probably do in fact, precisely like the rest of us but also that they are singularly lacking in sense and prudence. For if anything is plain today, it must be that another Coolidge administration, if it is inflicted upon us, will end inevitably in scandal and disaster. The day good Cal is elected every thieving scoundrel in the Republican party will burst into hosannas, and the day he is inaugurated there will be song and praise services wherever injunctions are tight and profits run to go percent. There will follow, for a year or two, a reign of mirth in Washington, wilder and merrier, even, than that of Harding's time. And then there will come an explosion. How all this will benefit legitimate business I can't make out. The only business men who will gain anything by it will be the one who manages to steal enough while the going is good to last him all the rest of his life. All the others will get burnt in the explosion, and they always do when political dynamite is set off. Do they quake today before the menace of LaFollette.. If so, let them consider how LaFollette came to be so formidable. Three years ago he was apparently as dead as Gog and Magog. The Farmer Labor party snored beside him in the political morgue; Socialism was already in the dissecting room. Then came, in quick succession, the oil scandal, the Veterans' bureau scandal, and the intolerable stench of Daugherty. In six months LaFollettism was on its legs again, and now it is so strong that only a miracle can keep the election out of the House. II When so-called radicalism is denounced this sequence of cause and effect is only too often overlooked. It is assumed that men become radicals because they are naturally criminal, or because they have been bribed by Russian gold, or because they have not been properly Americanized. But the thing that actually moves them, nine times out of ten, is simply the conviction that the Government they suffer under is unbearably and incurably corrupt. The Doheny-Denby oil arrangement made thousands of them. The wholesale burglary of the Veterans' Bureau made thousands more. And the exposure of the Department of Justice under Daugherty and Burns lifted the number to millions. The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is nave and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who loves his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair. Where the government is honestly and competently administered radicalism is unheard of. Why is it that we have no radical party of any importance in Maryland? Because the State government is in the hands of reasonably decent men above all, because the State courts are honest and everyone knows it. And why is radicalism so strong in California? Because the State is run by a dreadful combination of crooked politicians and grasping Babbitts

because the fundamental rights of man are worth nothing there, and anyone who protests against the carnival of graft and oppression is railroaded to jail above all, because the State courts are so servile, stupid and lawless that they almost equal the Federal courts under the Anti-Saloon League. No honest man in California is safe. There are laws especially designed to silence him, and they are enforced by kept judges with merciless severity. The result is that California is on fire with radicalism that radicals pop up twice as fast as the Babbitts and their judicial valets can pursue and scotch them. III What I contend is that the Coolidge Administration, if it is inflicted on us is bound to be quite as bad as the Harding Administration, and that the chances are that it will be a great deal ahorse. In other words, I contend that it is bound to manufacture radicalism in a wholesale manner, and that this radicalism will be far more dangerous to legitimate business than the mild stuff that Dr. LaFollette now has on tap. I believe that the Coolidge Administration will be worse than that of Harding for the plain reason that Coolidge himself is worse than Harding. Harding was an ignoramus, but there were unquestionably good impulses in him. He had a great desire to be liked and respected; he was susceptible to good as well as to bad suggestions; his very vanity, in the long run, might have saved him from the rogues who exploited him. Behind Harding the politician there was always Harding the business man a man of successful and honorable career, jealous of his good name. Coolidge is simply a professional politician, and a very petty, sordid and dull one. He has lived by job-seeking and job-holding all his life; his every thought is that of his miserable trade. When it comes to a conflict between politicians and reputable folk, his instinctive sympathy always goes to the politicians. He showed this sympathy plainly in the Denby and Daugherty cases. To say that he was not strongly in favor of both men is to utter nonsense. He not only kept them in office as long as he could, despite the massive proofs of their unfitness; he also worked for them behind the door, stealthily and ignominiously. To this day he has not said a single word against either of them; all his objurgations have been leveled at those who exposed them and drove them out. He kept the asinine Teddy Roosevelt, Jr., in office until a week or so ago, and then gave him a parting salute of twenty-one guns. He is even now trying to promote Captain Robison, the man who arranged the Doheny oil grab. Who has forgotten that he wanted to appoint Daugherty to "investigate" that colossal steal? Or that he was in close and constant communication with Ned McLean, Daugherty's and Fall's friend, during the whole of the inquiry? IV No amount of campaign blather will suffice to wipe out this discreditable record. Coolidge pulled against the oil investigation from the start; he pulled against the Daugherty investigation from the start; he let Daugherty and Denby go at last only under pressure, and after trying to hit their opponents below the belt. His sympathy has been with such oppressed patriots all his life, and it is with them today. If he is elected for four years every professional politician in the republican party will rejoice, and with sound reason. There will be good times for the boys and Fall, Daugherty and company will be safe. But will the country be safe? It is not so certain. Those business men who think only of easy

profits tomorrow might do well to give a thought or two to the day after. They have seen a very formidable radical movement roll up under their noses. If they have any sense, they will not be deceived by the argument that it has been set in motion by "agitators." What agitators? Who and where are they? I can find no such persons. LaFollette stumped the country for years and got nowhere. Only his own State heeded him. But last winter he began to get a response, and soon it was immense and vociferous. That response came from men and women who had become convinced at last, and with good logic, that government by professional politicians was intolerably and hopelessly rotten that the only remedy was to turn them out, and then make laws to prevent them coming back. Personally I doubt that such laws, if made, will work. In other words, I am not a radical. I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time. But that is certainly not the common American view; the majority of Americans are far more hopeful. When they see an evil they try to remedy it by peaceful means if possible, and if not, then by force. In the present case millions of them tire of the degrading Coolidge farce, with its puerile evasion of issues, its cloaking of Denby and Daugherty, its exaltation of such political jugglers as Slemp and Butler, its snide conspiracy to rob LaFollette of honest votes in California. They tire of it and want to end it. What now, if they are forced to stand four years more of it? What if they must see it grow ever ahorse and worse? To timorous business men, in this year 1924, LaFollette may look dangerous. But let them ask themselves what sort of radicalism will probably be afoot in 1928, after four more years of Coolidge. (The Baltimore Evening San, October 6, 1924)