Date: October 23, 1919
Location: Boston, MA
Context: Coolidge speaks to the responsibility of industry in America
This great Association has an opportunity to be of great service to our Commonwealth in these trying times. You represent business and commercial activities that have made Massachusetts great industrially. In that you have been successful. Never before was there a like prosperity. But we are coming to see that prosperity is not enough. We are coming to see that we must have ideals, that we must be ready to make sacrifices to maintain them. Real sacrifice, real effort, real service. Of them and them only is real industry born. In this spirit Massachusetts leads.
The world has passed through the greatest convulsion of all time. It has emerged from the greatest effort of history. During the years of war, now happily ended, there was terror and torture, there was passion and pain. But there was also tenderness, self sacrifice, sublime courage and loyalty. The cruelest instincts of man were aroused, but the divinest qualities of humanity were also revealed.
We could not have gone through those days of fiery trial, of heart searching and of anguish had we not stood shoulder to shoulder in unfaltering loyalty to national ideals and aspirations. The men who gave their lives on the battlefields of France made the supreme sacrifice, not for a companion merely but for a cause; not for their commander only but for their country. The glory of their service and sacrifice lay in the fact that they offered life and limb not for self but for country. The glory of their service and sacrifice lay in the fact that they offered life and limb not for self but for country. Like Nathan Hale their only regret was that they had only one life to give for their country.
This is the spirit that has made America. This is the spirit that conquered a continent and transformed a wilderness into a land of plenty. This is the spirit that won the war.
The men who founded this country were lovers of peace and believers in order. They were not sabre-rattlers nor fire-eaters. It was their hope and aim to establish a country where man could worship God in freedom, and serve his fellow man in peace and security, and where honest labor would be respected and receive a fair reward. They were men of peace, but they were not afraid of war. They preferred the ploughshare, but they did not shrink from the sword.
Benjamin Franklin, one of their guides and mentors, exaggerated somewhat their love for peace when he said “there never was a good war or a bad peace”; and yet it was Franklin himself who helped to raise supplies for the British army when it marched against the French and who was later a signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of the patriots of the Revolution. Through long years our people submitted to the extension of slavery and to threats of disunion. They delayed and evaded and compromised; but when Fort Sumter was fired on they sprang to arms and fought through four bitter years for union, freedom and victory.
The American people are a patient and long suffering people. At times it seems as though their patience were exhaustless and that they would continue to condone and endure wrong. But the time comes when they will condone and compromise no longer; when they realize that it is “perdition to be safe, when for the truth he ought to die.”
What stirs an American from his lethargy, what rouses him in invincible might is when the Fort Sumters of his national ideals are attacked. Then the time for indifference ends and the time for action comes. It is dangerous to trifle with the spirit of America when it is aroused to action. It is a rash man who would stand in the pathway when the spirit of America unsheaths the sword.
Massachusetts exemplifies in full measure the American trait of tolerance and patience. Our people are not bellicose nor belligerent. They are kindly, warm hearted and fraternal. They prefer peace to dissension; stability to strife. But when the people of Massachusetts are stirred by injustice and aroused by threats they rise in their might and they reveal their power.
It is significant that the shield of the Commonwealth bears this motto: “By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty.” Massachusetts has been true to that motto throughout all the crises in our history. To that motto we are true today and will be throughout the years to come, if Massachusetts, as we know it and love it, is to endure. Here we take our stand. We cannot retreat. We cannot surrender. Massachusetts cannot be intimidated. Massachusetts cannot be coerced.
We revere the fathers who founded our Commonwealth, but we honor them only as we are true to their ideals. They believed in liberty. They believed in law and order. We dishonor them if we suffer our liberties to be impaired; if we permit law and order to be overthrown. We honor them only as we uphold the institutions that they founded and maintain the orderly government that they established.
During the great war we upheld, as a united people, the ideals of liberty and of civilization. It devolves upon us now to uphold just as unitedly and as effectively the ideals, the institutions and the government of Massachusetts. To the accomplishment of this purpose the efforts of patriotic citizens should be devoted; to this high endeavor should be consecrated the will, the purpose and the determination of our people.
In the great war we gave the world a manifestation of the spirit of America. We must now make manifest to the world the spirit of Massachusetts, a spirit that is tolerant and patient but a spirit that has always been triumphant and unafraid. When Massachusetts calls to its citizens there should be no faltering; no dispute, and no dissension. There should be only united and loyal service, for Massachusetts is worthy of the best that each and all of us can give.
It is only on this foundation that we can have any industries. Our prosperity now is the direct result of our loyalty, our determination to support the government. When that determination fails industry will go down. We read that we are to add to faith, works. But we must have the faith first. You must be the first to maintain the faith, the ideals, the stability of Massachusetts that the industries you represent may continue to extend the blessings of prosperity to our people.
Citation: Vermont Historical Society
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The Coolidge Foundation gratefully acknowledges the efforts of Isaac Oberman, who prepared this document for digital publication.