Date: August 26, 1930
Location: Northampton, MA
Summary: Coolidge examines the economic situation, arguing that innovation is the best financial remedy.
(Original document available here)
A study of the economic development of this country, of its capacity to produce and consume, of its manufactures and its markets, reveals that general business never has found any saturation point.
We have been considering the present as a time of depression. Yet it is now reported that within the last few months $125,000,000 worth of miniature golf outfits have been put into operation. During the worst period of 1921 it was the newly perfected radio that caught the public fancy, with sales soon reaching hundreds of millions of dollars. Before that came the motion picture, which now sells over 100,000,000 admission tickets each week. Meantime the automobile and aircraft industries have been created.
Twenty-five years ago only a few people were engaged in these enterprises. The number now runs into the millions. We can see in these new occupations the natural remedy for labor temporarily displaced by machinery. What course our great financial and scientific resources will take in the next era of development we do not know. But all past experience teaches that it will be an important advance in the economic welfare of the nation.
Citation: Calvin Coolidge Says: Dispatches Written by Former-President Coolidge and Syndicated to Newspapers in 1930-1931 (Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation)
The Coolidge Foundation gratefully acknowledges the volunteer efforts of John Sullivan III who prepared this document for digital publication.