Date: July 13, 1926
Location: White Pine Camp – Paul Smiths, New York
(Original document available here)
I don’t know whether Senator Wadsworth will get an opportunity to come up here this summer. It is ray recollection that I told him I would he pleased to have him come if he was in this section at any time. Very likely he may call on my later.
Do you expect Representative Snell to come up here, Mr. President?
President: Well, only in a general way that I expect those with whom I have been associated in Washington that are in this vicinity to drop in from time to time. I think I made the same suggestion to Representative Snell. I think this is his District?
Press: Yes.
President: I told him I was going to be in his District this summer and hoped he would have a chance to come in, and he said he would try to come. I haven’t any plans for any other visitors that are definite. I should expect that there would be about the same number and class of people come to see me here that came when I was up at Swampscott last year, with the exception that that was a little more accessible. There were located within 20 or 30 miles of me there a couple of million people, a good many of them old friends of mine. Up here the population is not so dense. Perhaps there won’t be so many people come here. Everyone from the West that comes East naturally goes to Boston. Of course this is rather off the beaten path up here. People that may be leaving the West to come to the East go through Utica and they wouldn’t come by here.
I haven’t any definite information about the Geneva Conference. I haven’t had any official reports on that- since I came to White Pine Camp. The last I knew they were making reasonable progress on the problems before them. This is a preliminary conference and for the purpose as I understood it of laying out an agenda for the final conference that will occur sometime later. I understood that they had decided on a form for a great many questions. Some questions there is a difference of opinion about. I assume that such questions as that will be taken up when they come to the plenary conference.
I am not certain when I shall leave for Plymouth. I thought last week I might get away the latter part of this week. I am not sure about that now. Nothing further developed in the Fenning case.
There will likely be a good many surmises and suppositions as to what I am going to do about the Congressional elections. I have no particular objection to those being made if it is understood they are surmises, and that I have no plan about it at the present time, and that the public will understand that such reports as they read from time to time are suppositions.
I think nothing is being done about the negotiation of a treaty relative to the construction of the St. Lawrence waterway. What we have is a joint board of engineers that are working on the problem to find out just what is involved in it, what engineering works will have to be put in, what the cost would be, just where the works would be located, and so on and so forth. When those facts have been developed it would be then that the matter would be ripe for negotiation relative to a treaty, but until those facts are developed of course there would be no action that could be taken relative to the making of a treaty. I haven’t any plan about any visit to the St. Lawrence River power development section. There wouldn’t be anything there that I know of that I could see that it would help in the solution of the problem, it being much more desirable to me to sit down with the maps and plans and reports of the engineers than it would be to try and do original surveying and engineering work itself.
Mr. President, have you any idea when the engineers are expected to report?
No, I don’t. There is a joint board working on it. I had expected that they would probably be able to make some report this Fall. Sometimes those things progress rapidly and sometimes they are matters of long delay. It is difficult to speculate about them and make accurate forecast.
I hope you gentlemen are enjoying the weather and the location up here as much as I am. I find it exceedingly pleasant and everything very much to my satisfaction. Of course I have the usual amount of work to do up here, but am not tied up mornings and afternoons in conference and have more time for outside work. We are all up here as the recipients of hospitality and I hope that the press may be able to point out the good things about this place. I don’t find many drawbacks about it myself. I don’t happen to have many inquiries this morning. The other day I had quite a lot of inquiries about mosquitoes. I didn’t know that that was a subject that required Presidential utterance. But mosquitoes don’t bother me as much up here as they would on the South Portico of the White House. What I was trying to indicate to the press is that they not exaggerate anything unduly that might tend to drive people away from this region, when they are here and in receipt of hospitality.
Press: Can you say anything about fishing, Mr. President?
President: Progressing very well. I have fished some in the lakes. I find fishing very good up here and enjoy it very much. The sun I find is a little warm, but not unbearably so, – not anything that causes me any inconvenience.
Citation: Calvin Coolidge: Remarks by the President to Newspaper Correspondents
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