March 4, 1925: Inauguration Day

The day began with a parade and ended a fiasco. The new Senate Majority Leader, Charles Curtis, who’d been passed up for the Vice Presidency, rode in a carriage with the President and First Lady.

Inauguration Day Photo
From Left to Right: President Coolidge, First Lady Coolidge, Senate Majority Leader Curtis

The Inauguration’s proceedings were broadcast to the city via speakers, permitting even those outside of earshot to hear. A brand-new thing called a radio announcers booth was present, with many stations represented. Estimates say that well over 20,000,000 people heard the event, including school children who’d been brought to auditoriums outfitted with special equipment.

The nation was in the middle of not a mere recovery from bad economic times, and a global pandemic, but something unlike anything seen before. Good times were not here to visit, but to stay. As the President put it that day, he’d be exercising economy in his work, “not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people,” because it was “the men and women who toil who bear the cost of the government.”

“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people……Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant.”

– President Coolidge, “Inaugural Address,” on March 4, 1925

Wanting to make the most of the occasion, the President gave shout outs to the new Speaker of the House, Nicholas Longworth, and former Congresswomen Mae Nolan and Alice Robertson. Nolan was the first woman elected to the US House from California, the first woman to Chair a committee – the Committee on Postal Expenditures – and the first to fill a seat left vacant by her husband’s passing.

Robertson was the first woman elected to the House after the passage of the 19th Amendment, but her work in public service began as a child due to her parents’ mission work within the Creek Nation. Following her tenure in Congress, President Harding appointed her to a position at a Veterans Hospital to utilize her skills in social work.

Vice President Dawes on the cover of Time magazine in 1925

And then there was Vice President Dawes – the wild card many believed was a sure Ace. Dawes was not a politician. He’d studied law, then became the president of several companies, including Coca-Cola. He’d served as the Comptroller of Currency (1898-1901), then with General John Pershing in France, getting (not attaining, but getting) the rank of Brigadier General. Later, he became the first Director of the Bureau of the Budget (1921-1923). While under scrutiny for war spending he found himself drowning in a stream of questions that would not end. He finally snapped with the reply, “Hell and Maria! We weren’t keeping books; we were winning a war!”

“Hell and Maria, we weren’t trying to keep a set of books over there, we were trying to win a war!”

– Brigadier General Charles Dawes, in response to questions on war expenditures, 1921

The expletive, “Hell and Maria” – humorous for being adorable, weird, surprising, and oh-so-unique – became his nickname, and endeared him to the public.

Among the day’s events as most people know them – with a band playing songs, the leader saying things smart people wrote for him, and other such fanfare – was Charles Dawes’ address to the Senate. Standing before Curtis and 95 other US Senators, as well as a good number of guests, the Vice President (who is also the President of the Senate) engaged in a tradition dating back to 1789 when John Adams first held the post.

Rather than introduce himself as an interim leader among many with more experience, Dawes lambasted the Senate as a bunch of idiots and morons who were driving the country into a hole, and the fault lay in the dumb hands of people like Charles Curtis, who’d put Senate Rules, like cloture, in place. For it was these rules that “place power in the hands of individuals to an extent, at times, subversive of the fundamental principles of free representative government.”

A November, 1925 article by Vice President Dawes, which can be read in full here: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/filibuster-reform.pdf

Charles Curtis, who had been chairing the Rules Committee since 1921, sat chewing on the moment so that he could properly digest and pass it. Dawes, meanwhile, continued to verbally slap the lot of them as some wondered if this had the President’s blessing.

To put it plainly, Dawes appeared to be acting like a teenager at Thanksgiving dinner who finally got the gumption to really give his aunts and uncles a piece of his mind, but he may have been relaying a message. Curtis, who’d once been a racing jockey, may have considered just what kind of riding whip would serve to best beat a Vice President.

When Dawes finished castigating these 96 clowns as his cargo to carry for both not adhering to extremely important rules, and for also keeping ruinous ones, he left in a chauffeured carriage for the White House. This meant that, according to the rules of the Senate, the body was not adjourned, for they had not been dismissed and so could not go home.

The press rushed to Curtis for comment, but he had none. Senate Democrats, on the other hand, had plenty. Among them were from Minority Leader Joseph Robinson, who’d stated that Dawes knew about as much about the Senate rules as he did about good taste. As others got their press clippings going, the Senate Majority Leader was giving the benefit of the doubt to the new Vice President who’d come out with an axe, but opted for dynamite, to the work Curtis had been sculpting with an air brush since entering the Senate in 1907.

Time passed, and it was getting ridiculous, so while Dawes was coming down from the rush of telling the Senate they didn’t do their job, Curtis did Dawes’ job and adjourned the chamber.

And that was Inauguration Day. It began with a charming carriage ride and ended in disarray.

Senate Short Session: The Aftermath

A week later, in the midst of Senate confirmations, the nomination of Ambassador Charles Warren for Attorney General was coming up.

What you should know about Ambassador Warren is this: He was from the Republican stronghold of Michigan, ran a conglomerate called the Michigan Sugar Company, had served as an attorney in the Army, and was a successful Ambassador to Japan (1921-1923), then Mexico (1924). Politically, he was a delegate at the 1924 Republican National Convention, and his wife was a National Committeewoman. Additionally, no past nominee for US Attorney General had ever been rejected, nor had any Cabinet nominee since 1868 (the unpopular administration of Andrew Johnson). On paper, he had a lot going for him.

However, progressive Republicans didn’t like that Warren actively supported large business trusts, nor that he’d been tied to a scandal under President Harding.

March 11, 1925: Dawes’ role as President of the Senate was to ensure things ran smoothly. Functionally, he opened and closed the Senate, and cast any tie-breaking votes. Something he didn’t like was how much Senators talked. After all, why did they have to blather on when the real work in the Senate was legislated? On this day, while speeches were at hand, word went to the Vice President that there wouldn’t be a vote – only speeches. Not wanting to hear the 6 who were on the schedule, he took off.

Leaving the chamber, the Vice President hailed a taxi, went to his suite at the Willard Hotel, and took a nap – not an over-the-covers-resting-my-eyes kind of nap, but an under-the-covers-naked one.

Senate Majority Leader Curtis then called the matter of the nominee for US Attorney General to the floor.

The story in the press went as such: Because of Ambassador Warren’s ties to Big Sugar and a Harding scandal, the debate got hot, and the pot boiled over. Seeing where things were going, Curtis called for a vote after just 1 of the 6 speeches on the schedule.

By this point, Vice President Dawes was entering a REM cycle that would make history under the same roof where General Pershing created the Reserve Officers Association, and Martin Luther King, Jr. would write his “I Have a Dream” speech. The votes came in and the matter was tied at 40-40 with just one Democrat, Lee Overman, a 4-term Senator from North Carolina, voting yea. Lee Overman was a former ranking member of the Rules Committee who’d once used the filibuster rule to talk for 105 minutes until his side got the votes they needed.

Somehow, someway, just 1 week into the new session, only 80 of the 96 Senators cast their vote with half for, and half against; a perfect tie that could be broken with the mere presence of a single member of the 55 Republicans in the majority.

However, no one was focused on that. The big question was has anyone seen Vice President Dawes? What? He’s sleeping?

A telephone call was made to the Willard. Dawes was roused. He hastily dressed (meaning, he’d previously undressed), caught a cab, and in the excruciating 8 minutes it took to get to the Senate Chamber, Majority Leader Curtis stalled by calling to attention any number of things.

Finally! the doors burst open, and with sleep lines fading the Senate President came to enforce the tie-breaking rule, as laid out in Article I, Section 3 of the US Constitution. But then, just as he was about to confirm Ambassador Warren, Senator Lee Overman rose.

“Mr. President,” he said, “I change my vote.”

And it was decided.

The Vice President Creates Bipartisan Harmony

In the aftermath, Republican Senator George Norris prepared a poem in honor of the event. Dawes’ ancestor had been a member of Paul Revere’s Ride, for which William Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a stirring tale still taught in schools today. So inspired he was, that George Norris created “The Midday Ride of Charles Dawes.”

With ample and shameless promotion, including a reading into the Senate record from the floor, Norris may or may not have been 1925’s Poet Laureate of the Halls of Congress. Both sides of the aisle took the greatest of bottom-shelf pleasure in its deliciousness, proving that there is nothing like fine art to bridge the bipartisan divide. Democrats and Republicans laughed like dirty, rotten scoundrels at the man who’d publicly blasted them for being a bunch of filthy rats.

The President, on the other hand, was not amused. He called upon the conservative Curtis and progressive Idaho Senator William Borah. What you should know about both of these men was that they were deemed to be the most qualified to serve as Vice President. Borah said he wouldn’t accept, if offered. Curtis did not attend the Convention due to his wife dying, so a faction of Republicans campaigned for him, but lost. Now, sitting before them as they displayed the kind of power they had, the President was demanding that these 2 whip up Republicans to do their part for the party. And that term “whip” is important to know, for Curtis had served as the Republican Whip in the Senate, getting his party in line when needed.

Another thing to know about these 2 Senators is Curtis had previously battled and beaten Coolidge on a matter of veterans’ bonuses for those who’d served during the World War. Coolidge didn’t think it was right for people to get incentivized for such things, and Curtis rallied to override the President’s veto.

At the meeting’s end, Curtis agreed to help and Borah said he’d pull in the progressives. However, they weren’t going to break their necks over it. Coolidge’s role as President was temporary, and he’d soon be gone. They weren’t going to cash in their capital with the progressives for a corrupt businessman. That would remain up to the President.

The deal was that progressives who’d been demoted had their seniority reinstated. In exchange they’d say yea for Ambassador Warren to be Attorney General.

And it seemed to work. Robert La Follette, the most progressive leader in the Senate, agreed to vote instead of abstain.

Another Debate, Another Vote

Despite there being a list of verbose Senators scheduled to speak, Vice President Dawes was firmly seated on this day. But it was in the bag. The President had gotten Borah and the progressives in line. There would be no problems. That was until 73-year-old Frederick Gillett made his Senate debut. The former US House Speaker said that the only people who’d opposed Warren were “Democrats and radicals.” This was doubly insulting, for it not only placed the progressives as extremists, but in line with the Klan-friendly conservatives they couldn’t stomach.

Senator Borah was enraged as he stepped up to speak. He laid into Senator Gillett’s assertion.

“I am trying to meet my obligations as a Senator,” he’d said, “by adhering to the Constitution,” which, he went on, seemed was the modern day meaning of radicalism.

The Vice President may have been more alert than he’d expected while listening with rapt attention to some long-winded Idaho Silverite. As the man who could have been Vice President chucked one verbal hand grenade, then another, Dawes searched the faces in the crowd for an idea of the weather in the room. But reading the room wouldn’t be hard, for Borah regrouped with a pivot from the insult placed upon him, and shot an uppercut to the matter at hand. He reminded everyone that Ambassador Warren was not just some lawyer, but a man who’d worked to “control the production of sugar” in a “conspiracy” to find his fortune by “peculating from the pockets of the people” by leveraging against them nothing less than the food they fed their families. And Warren hadn’t done this in an oblique fashion, but one that was “open, deliberate, and unmistakable.”

Some reports states that Curtis called for a vote to prevent more progressive calls to action, but that is not what happened, according to the record. One Republican senator from Connecticut called into question if a man who commits crimes can be trusted to prosecute them, for the only trust the people can have in him would relate to the “Sugar Trust,” for which he engaged in both bribery and extortion.

Another Republican from Massachusetts noted the unconstitutionality of the President putting forth a nominee twice in the same session.

The vote was had and it came in at 39-46. Included in the yeas were there Connecticut and Massachusetts Republicans noting their concerns.

However, those who’d previously stayed out as a means of compromise now tipped the majority, including the very sickly Robert La Follette.

Moving on From Ambassador Warren

While this matter provided some delicious drama, the work in the Senate moved on. 2 days later, Senator Borah’s bill regarding a treaty between the US and Cuba was put forth for a vote. Charles Curtis and 74 others voted to pass it, making it veto-proof.

5 days later, the Senate’s short session ended and they went into a 9-month recess, during the course of which, the Vice President wrote the Saturday Evening Post piece about reforming the rules.