Date: January 4, 1927
Location: Washington, D.C.
(Original document available here)
Here is a request for an autographed book that I found on the newspaper questions. I attended to that yesterday. I don’t know whether it was properly left on the questions or not. Mrs. Pearson of Connecticut. I autographed a book for her yesterday.
I haven’t any plan at the present time relative to the report of the St. Lawrence Commission, other than as I stated in my message to submit it to the Congress for their information. Congress is dealing with the question of waterways and their improvement and development, and as this was a material contribution of facts and evidence relative to that situation I submitted that report to them.
Press: Does that mean that you concur in the Hoover report?
President: I don’t mean anything more than what I say. I have submitted it to the Congress for their information. I should assume that the facts that they have set out there are reliable. I haven’t examined the report sufficiently to want to state any opinion as to whether I would concur in all their conclusions, as I do not know exactly what their conclusions are.
The report that I gave any instructions to the Secretary of State, Commerce and Labor, relative to discontinuing their studies regarding the reapportionment of the immigration clause in relation to the national origins provision was not correct. I do not know where that report could have originated. Those three Secretaries are working on a report which I suppose they will be ready to submit to me in the near future. My desire is to carry out the provisions of the law. That is what the three Secretaries are trying to do.
I haven’t any information about denaturing alcohol, as I expressed to the last conference. If you want accurate information about that, of course you can get it from the Treasury Department. The Treasury Department has never discussed it with me.
I don’t know when the memorandum on China will be released for publication. This is a question from Mr. Halgren. Just what did you mean by that? What memorandum did you refer to?
Mr. Halgren: The memorandum that Secretary of State Kellogg has referred to in recent conferences.
President: Well, I imagine that is a memorandum that Mr. Strawn made.
Mr. Halgren: It was to have been in reply to the British —
President: I understand now what it is. I don’t know when that memorandum will be completed or when it will be made public. I have been over some of the details of it with the Secretary and I haven’t been notified as to whether he has finished his studies of it or whether he has sent the memorandum as a reply to the British position. I should assume that whenever he sends it to them and they have received it, why then he will be ready to make it public. That would be the natural course, not to make it public until he knew it had been received by the Government to which it was addressed.
There isn’t any new development relative to either Mexico or Nicaragua that, so far as I know, hasn’t been given to the press already. The policy of this Government has been stated time and time again as that of desiring to protect the lives and property of American citizens. Of course, in Nicaragua the Government itself has interests. We have purchased a right to build a canal, for which we paid $3,000,000. We also have a right to locate a naval base on Fonseca Bay. Those are the main interests of the Government itself in that country. Of course our nationals are there in quite large numbers and have large commercial interests of lumber, coffee, rice I think, sugar, probably bananas, and I think some mining. It is for the protection of all those interests that I am solicitous and desire to take every action that the Government ought to take to secure that purpose.
Citation: Calvin Coolidge: Remarks by the President to Newspaper Correspondents
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