Date: January 11, 1927
Location: Washington, D.C.
(Original document available here)
I haven’t any information about Mexico other than what has already appeared in the press. I have put into my Message to the Congress yesterday everything that I have to say at the present time about the Nicaraguan situation. There isn’t any further comment that I can now make about that.
I haven’t yet selected a house to live in after we vacate the White House. We have several in mind that will apparently be agreeable. I am undertaking to see if I can’t get one near at hand. I suppose if I have to go so far away that I might naturally travel back and forth by automobile it doesn’t make much difference whether it takes 5, 10 or 15 minutes to go and come, but the convenience of my household, the servants that come in during the day and do not stay there during the night, would probably be much better served if I could secure a location that is close to the White House.
I haven’t taken any action on the report of the Tariff Commission on hosiery schedules. It is my recollection that they have sent me a report which shows that the cost of production of some of our hosiery is such compared with the cost of production abroad that it would warrant some reduction in the tariff, and in other kinds of hosiery the production cost here compared with that abroad is such that it would warrant some increase in the tariff. I am having the report considered by the Department of Commerce in the Treasury Department – I don’t know which one has it now – to get their advice to the effect on our commerce and effect on our revenue.
I have had invitations to go to the Northwest – Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana – for a visit during the coming summer. I have those under consideration. I think it is very doubtful if I will be able to go so far away.
Press: Do you mean for your vacation?
President: No, I didn’t understand that that was an invitation to come and abide with them, but an invitation to make a visit.
Press: Have you given any consideration to the question of a summer White House somewhere in the wide open spaces?
President: well, I think I have read some newspaper statements that you (Mr. Wile) have written about it.
Mr. Wile: I was only reporting what I understood to be the facts.
President: I have come to the general conclusion that a summer White House could be established if they would establish one in every Congressional District. That of course is an interesting question. But my general view about that is that while it will be a great convenience to have a place that the President could go in the summer and have it already for him and suited for his use, that there are other considerations that are also quite important, and that is that the President has tastes that he might want to defer to as to the locality to which he would like to go to spend the summer. And then I think it is an advantage to the President to go to one locality at one time and another locality at another time. Neither of those conditions would be served if you had a permanent summer White House. Of course, there is an opportunity for travel, which the President might avail himself of, but you gentlemen who have been on trips with me know of the difficulties that the President encounters as soon as he goes away from his permanent location, and any extended trip of course means a very great strain on the President. I have to keep in mind that there is only one ex-President living.
All I would want to say about protection of property and live in any part of the world would be, of course, that the government will do the best it can. Wherever it is threatened it will use such forces as it has at its command to afford protection.
Citation: Calvin Coolidge: Remarks by the President to Newspaper Correspondents
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