first order. He made his reputation in the following manner, indicated by a telegram sent to the late President Harding by Representative Herman Q. Thompson on February 5, 1922:
"Governor Morrow has sent troops to our town, shooting and killing men and women. Please act."
It was indeed fine strategy to have a man who has used tanks and machine guns to mow down striking steel workers, at Newport, Ky., be the one to make the notification speech for a man who rode into power because of his prowess in crushing a strike.
And in the Republican Handbook for the 1920 campaign, describing Coolidge's fitness for the job of Vice-President, we find the following paean of praise sung of him by the President of a railroad:
"If I had a dispute with my men and Coolidge was the arbitrator, I would be glad to have the men be represented by any lawyer that they chose; and I would be willing to leave my side of the case in his hands without making a plea at all."
Coolidge has not changed his stripes since then. Addressing the "Boston Business Men" in November, 1920, he boasted that his election was the best proof of the fact that "Labor" has been laid low in its aspiration to power. He reminded his friends, the Boston Bankers, that in January, 1920, he had, in an address before the Dartmouth Alumni, warned organized labor to keep in mind that it could not live without the law and that the election results bore out his contention one hundred percent.
Finally in the recent anthracite coal miner's strike, President Coolidge pursued the same strategy he followed in the Boston Police 5trike. His first step was to appear impartial. His second step was to have the nearest local authorities exhaust every possibility of avoiding a strike. Then he was prepared to step in as the hero of the hour by a great fanfare and military display and threat to use force and violence he would attempt to cajole the strikers into submission.
Failing in threats, Coolidge would not have hesitated to pit all the military and judicial and financial resources of the most powerful strIkebreaking Government on earth against the workers struggling for improved conditions.
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