and Mercantile Affairs. During the session I helped draft, and the
Committee reported, a bill to prevent large concerns from selling at a
lower price in one locality than they did in others, for the purpose of
injuring their competitor. This seemed to me an unfair trade practice
that should be abolished. We secured the passage of the bill in the
House, but the Senate rewrote it in such a way that it finally failed.
I also supported a resolution favoring the direct election of United
States Senators and another providing for woman suffrage. These measures
did not have the approbation of the conservative element of my party,
but I had all the assurance of youth and ignorance in supporting them,
and later I saw them all become the law.
The next year I was reelected, but in running against a man who had a
strong hold on some of the Republican Wards, my vote was cut down.
Serving on the Judiciary Committee, which I wanted because I felt it
would assist me in my profession, I became much interested in modifying
the law so that an injunction could not be issued in a labor dispute to
prevent one person seeking by argument to induce another to leave his
employer. This bill failed. While I think it had merit, in later years I
came to see that what was of real importance to the wage earners was not
how they might conduct a quarrel with their employers, but how the
business of the country might be so organized as to insure steady
employment at a fair rate of pay. If that were done there would be no
occasion for a quarrel, and if it were not done a quarrel would do no
one any good.
The work in the General Court was fascinating, both from its nature and
from the companionship with able and interesting men, but it took five
days each week for nearly six months, so that I thought I had secured
about all the benefit I could by serving two terms and declined again to
be a candidate. Another boy had been given into our keeping April 13 who
was named Calvin, so I had all the more reason for staying at home.
My law office took all my attention. I never had a retainer from any
one, so my income always seemed precarious, but a practice which was
general in its nature kept coming to me. In June of 1909 I went to
Phoenix, Arizona, to hold a corporation meeting. It was the first I had
seen of the West. The great possibilities of the region were apparent,
and the enthusiasm of the people was inspiring. It told me that our
country was sure to be a success.
For two years Northampton had elected a Democrat to be Mayor. He was a
very substantial business man, who has since been my landlord for a
long period. He was to retire, and the Republicans were anxious to
elect his successor. At a party conference it was determined to ask me
to run and I accepted the opportunity, thinking the honor would be one
that would please my father, advance me in my profession, and enable me
to be of some public service. It was a local office, not requiring
enough time to interfere seriously with my own work.
Without in any way being conscious of what I was doing I then became
committed to a course that was to make me the President of the Senate of
Massachusetts and of the Senate of the United States, the second officer
of the Commonwealth and the country, and the chief executive of a city,
a state and a nation. I did not plan for it but it came. I tried to
treat people as they treated me, which was much better than my deserts,
in accordance with the precept of the master poet. By my studies and my
course of life I meant to be ready to take advantage of opportunities. I
was ready, from the time the Justices named me the Clerk of the Courts
until my party nominated me for President.
Ever since I was in Amherst College I have remembered how Garman told
his class in philosophy that if they would go along with events and have
the courage and industry to hold to the main stream, without being
washed ashore by the immaterial cross currents, they would some day be
men of power. He meant that we should try to guide ourselves by general
principles and not get lost in particulars. That may sound like
mysticism, but it is only the mysticism that envelopes every great
truth. One of the greatest mysteries in the world is the success that
lies in conscientious work.
My first campaign for Mayor was very intense. My opponent was a popular
merchant, a personal friend of mine who years later was to be Mayor, so
that at the outset he was the favorite. The only issue was our general
qualifications to conduct the business of the city. I called on many of
the voters personally, sent out many letters, spoke at many ward rallies
and kept my poise. In the end most of my old Democratic friends voted
for me, and I won by about one hundred and sixty-five votes.
On the first Monday of January, 1910, I began a public career that was
to continue until the first Monday of March, 1929, when it was to end
by my own volition.
Our city had always been fairly well governed and had no great problems.
Taxes had been increasing. I was able to reduce them some and pay part
of the debt, so that I left the net obligations chargeable to taxes at
about $100,000. The salaries of teachers were increased. My work
commended itself to the people, so that running against the same
opponent for reelection my majority was much increased. I celebrated
this event by taking my family to Montpelier where my father was serving
in the Vermont Senate. Of all the honors that have come to me I still
cherish in a very high place the confidence of my friends and neighbors
in making me their Mayor.
Remaining in one office long did not appeal to me, for I was not seeking
a public career. My heart was in the law. I thought a couple of terms in
the Massachusetts Senate would be helpful to me, so when our Senator
retired I sought his place in the fall of 1911 and was elected.
The winter in Boston I did not find very satisfactory. I was lonesome.
My old friends in the House were gone. The Western Massachusetts Club
that had its headquarters at the Adams House, where most of us lived
that came from beyond the Connecticut, was inactive. The Committees I
had, except the Chairmanship of Agriculture, did not interest me
greatly, and to crown my discontent a Democratic Governor sent in a
veto, which the Senate sustained, to a bill authorizing the New Haven
Railroad to construct a trolley system in Western Massachusetts.
But as chairman of a special committee I had helped settle the Lawrence
strike, secured the appointment of a commission that resulted in the
passage of a mothers’ aid or maternity bill at the next session, and I
was made chairman of a recess committee to secure better transportation
for rural communities in the western part of the Commonwealth.
During the summer we did a large amount of work on that committee and
made a very full and constructive report at the opening of the General
Court in 1913. This was the period that the Republican party was divided
between Taft and Roosevelt, so that Massachusetts easily went for
Wilson. But in the three-cornered contest I was reelected to the
Senate.
It was in my second term in the Senate that I began to be a force in the
Massachusetts Legislature. President Greenwood made me chairman of the
Committee on Railroads, which I very much wanted, because of my desire
better to understand business affairs, and also put me on the important
Committee on Rules. I made progress because I studied subjects
sufficiently to know a little more about them than any one else on the
floor. I did not often speak but talked much with the Senators
personally and came in contact with many of the business men of the
state. The Boston Democrats came to be my friends and were a great help
to me in later times.
My committee reported a bill transforming the Railroad Commission into a
Public Service Commission, with a provision intending to define and
limit the borrowing powers of railroads which we passed after a long
struggle and debate. The Democratic Governor vetoed the bill, but it was
passed over his veto almost unanimously. The bill came out for our
trolley roads in Western Massachusetts and was adopted. He vetoed this,
and his veto was overridden by a large majority. It was altogether the
most enjoyable session I ever spent with any legislative body.
It had been my intention to retire at the end of my second term, but the
President of the Senate was reported as being a candidate for
Lieutenant-Governor, and as it seemed that I could succeed him I
announced that I wished for another election. When it was too late for
me to withdraw gracefully President Greenwood decided to remain in the
Senate. I wanted to be President of the Senate, because it was a chance
to emerge from being a purely local figure to a place of state-wide
distinction and authority. I knew where the votes in the Senate lay from
the hard legislative contests I had conducted, and I had them fairly
well organized when I found the President was not to retire.
In this year of 1913 the division in the Republican party in
Massachusetts was most pronounced. Our candidate for Governor fell to
third place at the election, and another Democrat was made chief
executive, carrying with him for the first time in a generation the
whole state ticket. But my district returned me. When I reached my
office the next morning I found President Greenwood had been defeated.
Again I was ready. By three o’clock that Wednesday afternoon I was in
Boston, and by Monday I had enough written pledges from the Republican
Senators to insure my nomination for President of the Senate at the
party caucus. It had been a real contest, but all opposition subsided
and I was unanimously nominated.
The Senate showed the effects of the division in our party. It had
twenty-one Republicans, seventeen Democrats and two Progressives. When
the vote was cast for President on the opening day of the General Court,
Senator Cox the Progressive had two votes, Senator Horgan the Democrat
had seven votes, and I had thirty-one votes. I had not only become an
officer of the whole Commonwealth, but I had come into possession of an
influence reaching beyond the confines of my own party which I was to
retain so long as I remained in public life.
Although I had arrived at the important position of President of the
Massachusetts Senate in January of 1914, I had not been transported on
a bed of roses. It was the result of many hard struggles in which I had
made many mistakes, was to keep on making them up to the present hour,
and expect to continue to make them as long as I live. We are all
fallible, but experience ought to teach us not to repeat our errors.
My progress had been slow and toilsome, with little about it that was
brilliant, or spectacular, the result of persistent and painstaking
work, which gave it a foundation that was solid. I trust that in making
this record of my own thoughts and feeling in relation to it, which
necessarily bristles with the first personal pronoun, I shall not seem
to be overestimating myself, but simply relating experiences which I
hope may prove to be an encouragement to others in their struggles to
improve their place in the world.
It appeared to me in January, 1914, that a spirit of radicalism
prevailed which unless checked was likely to prove very destructive. It
had been encouraged by the opposition and by a large faction of my own
party.
It consisted of the claim in general that in some way the government was
to be blamed because everybody was not prosperous, because it was
necessary to work for a living, and because our written constitutions,
the legislatures, and the courts protected the rights of private owners
especially in relation to large aggregations of property.
The previous session had been overwhelmed with a record number of bills
introduced, many of them in an attempt to help the employee by impairing
the property of the employer. Though anxious to improve the condition of
our wage earners, I believed this doctrine would soon destroy business
and deprive them of a livelihood. What was needed was a restoration of
confidence in our institutions and in each other, on which economic
progress might rest.
In taking the chair as President of the Senate I therefore made a short
address, which I had carefully prepared, appealing to the conservative
spirit of the people. I argued that the government could not relieve us
from toil, that large concerns are necessary for the progress in which
capital and labor all have a common interest, and I defended
representative government and the integrity of the courts. The address
has since been known as “Have Faith in Massachusetts.” Many people in
the Commonwealth had been waiting for such a word, and the effect was
beyond my expectation. Confusion of thought began to disappear, and
unsound legislative proposals to diminish.
The office of President of the Senate is one of great dignity and power.
All the committees of the Senate are appointed by him. He has the chief
place in directing legislation when the Governor is of the opposite
party, as was the case in 1914. At the inauguration he presides over the
joint convention of the General Court and administers the oaths of
office to the Governor and Council in accordance with a formal ritual
that has come from colonial days, and is much more ceremonious than the
swearing-in of a President at Washington.
It did not seem to me desirable to pursue a course of partisan
opposition to the Governor, and I did not do so, but rather cooperated
with him in securing legislation which appeared to be for the public
interest. The general lack of confidence in the country and the
depression of business caused by the reduction of the tariff rates in
the fall of 1913 made it necessary to grant large appropriations for the
relief of unemployment during the winter. But I could see the steady
decrease of the radical sentiment among the people.
In the midst of the following summer the World War enveloped Europe. It
had a distinctly sobering effect upon the whole people of our country.
It was very apparent in Massachusetts, where they at once began to
abandon their wanderings and seek their old landmarks for guidance. The
division in our party was giving way to reunion. Confidence was
returning.
The Republican State Committee chose me to be chairman of the committee
on resolutions at the state convention which met at Worcester, largely
because of the impression made by my speech at the opening of the
Senate. I drew a conservative platform, pitched in the same key,
pointing out the great mass of legislation our party had placed on the
statute books for the benefit of the wage earners and the welfare of the
people, but declaring for the strict and unimpaired maintenance of our
present social, economic and political institutions. While I did not
deliver it well, in print it made an effective campaign document. After
starting in the contest with little confidence, our strength increased,
so that our candidate, Samuel W. McCall, received 198,627 votes and was
defeated by only 11,815 plurality. All the rest of our state ticket was
victorious. The political complexion of the Senate was completely
changed. From a bare majority of twenty-one the Republican strength rose
to thirty-three, and the opposition was reduced to seven Democrats.
My district returned me for the fourth time and I was again made
President of the Senate by a unanimous vote. My opening address
consisted of forty-two words, thanking the Senators for the honor and
urging them in their conduct of business to be brief.
As a presiding officer it has constantly been my policy to dispatch
business. It always took a long time to get all the Committees of the
General Court to make their reports, but I was able to keep the daily
sessions of the Senate short. I also wanted to cut down the volume of
legislation. In this some progress was made. The Blue Book of Acts and
Resolves for 1913 had 1,763 pages, for 1914 it had 1,423, and for 1915
only 1,230, which was a very wholesome reduction of more than thirty per
cent. People were coming to see that they must depend on themselves
rather than on legislation for success.
Massachusetts was beginning to suffer from a great complication of laws
and restrictive regulations, from a multiplicity of Boards and
Commissions, which had reached about one hundred, and from a large
increase in the number of people on the public pay rolls, all of which
was necessarily accompanied with a much larger cost of state government
that had to be met by collecting more revenue from the taxpayers. The
people began to realize that something was wrong and began to wonder
whether more laws, more regulations, and more taxes, were really any
benefit to them. They were becoming tired of agitation, criticism and
destructive policies and wished to return to constructive methods.
When I went home at the end of the 1915 session it was with the
intention of remaining in private life and giving all my attention to
the law. During the winter the Lieutenant-Governor had announced that
he would seek the nomination for Governor which caused some mention of
me as his successor, but I was President of the Senate and did not
propose to impair my usefulness in that position by involving it in an
effort to secure some other office, so I gave the matter no attention. A
very estimable man who had done much party service and was a brilliant
platform speaker had already become a candidate, but although my record
in the General Court was that of a liberal, the business interests
turned to me. In this they were not alone as the event disclosed. To the
people I seemed, in some way that I cannot explain, to represent
confidence. When the situation became apparent to me I went to Boston
and made the simple statement in the press that I was a candidate for
Lieutenant-Governor, without any reasons or any elaboration.
It was at this time that my intimate acquaintance began with Mr. Frank
W. Stearns. I had met him in a casual way for a year or two but only
occasionally. In the spring he had suggested that he would like to
support me for Lieutenant-Governor. He was a merchant of high character
and very much respected by all who knew him, but entirely without
experience in politics. He came as an entirely fresh force in public
affairs, unhampered by any of the animosities that usually attach to a
veteran politician. It was a great compliment to me to attract the
interest of such a man, and his influence later became of large value to
the party in the Commonwealth and nation. I always felt considerable
pride of accomplishment in getting the active support of men like him.
While Mr. Stearns always overestimated me, he nevertheless was a great
help to me. He never obtruded or sought any favor for himself or any
other person, but his whole effort was always disinterested and entirely
devoted to assisting me when I indicated I wished him to do so. It is
doubtful if any other public man ever had so valuable and unselfish a
friend.
My activities were such that I began to see more of the Honorable W.
Murray Crane. When he came to Boston he was accustomed to have me at
breakfast in his rooms at the hotel. Although he had large interests
about which there was constant legislation he never mentioned the
subject to me or made any suggestion about any of my official actions.
Had I sought his advice he would have told me to consult my own judgment
and vote for what the public interest required, without any thought of
him. He confirmed my opinion as to the value of a silence which avoids
creating a situation where one would otherwise not exist, and the bad
taste and the danger of arousing animosities and advertising an opponent
by making any attack on him. In all political affairs he had a wonderful
wisdom, and in everything he was preeminently a man of judgment, who was
the most disinterested public servant I ever saw and the greatest
influence for good government with which I ever came in contact. What
would I not have given to have had him by my side when I was President!
His end came just before the election of 1920.
These men were additional examples of good influences coming into my
life, to which I referred in relating the experience of some of my
younger days. I cannot see that I sought them but they came. Perhaps it
was because I was ready to receive them.
In the summer of 1915 politics became very active in Massachusetts.
There was a sharp campaign for the nomination for Governor, my own
effort to secure the Lieutenant-Governorship, and many minor contests. I
shall always remember that Augustus P. Gardner, then in Congress,
honored me by becoming one of the committee of five who conducted my
campaign. Many local meetings were held, calling for much speaking. In
the end Samuel W. McCall was renominated for Governor. I was named as
candidate for Lieutenant-Governor by a vote of about 75,000 to 50,000.
The news reached my father on the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth
of his father. My campaign was carried on in careful compliance with the
law, and the expense was within the allowed limit of $1,500, which was
contributed by numerous people. I was thus under no especial obligation
to any one for raising money for me.
In the campaign for election I toured the state with Mr. McCall, making
open-air speeches from automobiles during the day, and finishing with an
indoor rally in the evening. It was the hardest kind of work but most
fascinating. I remember that Warren G. Harding and Nicholas Longworth
came into the state to promote our election and spoke with us at a large
meeting one night at Lowell.
I did not refer to my own candidacy, but spent all my time advocating
the election of Mr. McCall. He was a character that fitted into the
situation most admirably. He was liberal without being visionary and
conservative without being reactionary. The twenty-five years he had
spent in public life gave him a remarkable equipment for discussing the
issues of a campaign. Whatever information was needed concerning the
state government I was in a position to supply. Much emphasis was placed
by me on the urgent necessity of preventing further increases in state
and national expense and of a drastic reduction wherever possible. The
state was ready for that kind of a message.
When the election of 1915 came, Mr. McCall won by 6,313 votes and my
plurality was 52,204. After having been held five years by Democrats,
the Governorship of Massachusetts was restored to the Republican party,
where it was to remain for the next fifteen years and probably much
longer. The extended struggle in which the Republicans had been engaged
to restore the people of Massachusetts to their allegiance to sound
government under a reunited party had at last been successful. With that
prolonged effort I had been intimately associated.
The office of Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts differs from that of
most states. As already disclosed he does not preside over the Senate.
The constitution of our Commonwealth is older than the Federal
Constitution and so followed the old colonial system, while most of the
states have followed the Federal system. I was _ex officio_ a member of
the Governor’s Council and chairman of the Finance and Pardon
committees. As the Council met but one day each week I was pleased with
the renewed opportunity I expected to have to practice law. But it soon
developed that I must be away so much that I asked Ralph W. Hemenway to
become associated with me, and he has since carried on my law office so
successfully that it has become his law office rather than mine.
It has become the custom in our country to expect all Chief Executives,
from the President down, to conduct activities analogous to an
entertainment bureau. No occasion is too trivial for its promoters to
invite them to attend and deliver an address. It appeared to be the
practice of Governor McCall to accept all these invitations and when the
time came, to attend what he could of them, and parcel the rest out
among his subordinates. In this way I became very much engaged. It was
an honor to represent the Governor, and a part of my duties according to
our practice. Some days I went to several meetings for that purpose,
ranging well into the night, so I was obliged to stay in Boston most of
the time.
It was during this period that I wrote nearly all of the speeches
afterwards published in “Have Faith in Massachusetts.” They were short
and mostly committed to memory for delivery. This forced me to be a
constant student of public questions.