Date: July 17, 1928
Location: Superior, WI
(Original document available here)
I have had a very pleasant visit with Secretary and Mrs. Hoover. The press was out there yesterday morning and after they came away we had lunch and the Secretary and I went fishing for a short time in the afternoon. He is a more expert fisherman than I am. I can’t tell just when I shall accept Mr. Hoover’s resignation. I expect to do so very shortly. There are some things in relation to his Department that have to do with the Pacific Coast that I want him to look into a little, so it will be some time after he gets out there before I shall accept his resignation.
I am not going to make any extended address, as I have already indicated, at Cannon Falls, and I don’t know just when it will be ready to give out – sometime early next week.
I have had quite a good many invitations to go to other places and a committee is coming in this morning to invite me to some dedication of the game refuge that we have established up and down the Mississippi for the wild life of the Mississippi River and a fish refuge. I suppose it is a good thing to have a fish refuge, but the fish with which I have been acquainted have always been able to take pretty good care of themselves. But of course for propagation purposes and the preservation of our wild life is why we are having this game refuge and I think it is a very desirable enterprise. Then I am invited this morning to go down to Wausau at the State Meeting of the American Legion, which comes between the 10th and 15th, as I recall it, of August. I don’t know whether I can get down there or not.
The members of the press have been out to the Lodge a couple of times and I think now probably from their own observation they will be able to report that the mosquitoes are not very deadly. Did any of you get bitten by mosquitoes yesterday?
(No answer)
Then there must have been some error in the reports that have been sent all over the United States that mosquitoes eat every one up, and it might be a graceful thing if the press would report that as a result of personal investigation the mosquitoes have entirely disappeared. That is an old story that always goes the rounds when I go into the country. The newspaper men have nothing to write about for the first two or three days, so they alaborate on the mosquito stories. I don’t care anything about it particularly, but when people have been kind enough to put at my disposal a very beautiful and enjoyable place, as I have had the advantage of having for the past two or three years, to have reports sent all over the country that it is a very bad place and uncomfortable for any one to live in, it can hardly be very pleasing to the people that own the place, and if the press could report that which is the fact, that the mosquitoes have entirely disappeared and that the place is very beautiful and very enjoyable, I think it would be a courtesy that perhaps is due to the owners of the property.
Mr. Sanders has suggested to me that while I have been a candidate for office in a great many previous campaigns for a good many years, with the exception of the fall of 1908, and have been constantly elected to something, that this time the only thing I was a candidate for was retirement and apparently I am going to be successful in that. That seems to cover the requirements of the morning.
Oh, I got a wire from Secretary Kellogg that he is in such almost daily communication with other countries relative to his treaties that it will probably be impossible for him to come up here in the near future. Secretary Wilbur is expected to come and it is possible that Secretary Jardine may stop here on his way west. He is coming out this way about the 29th of July and expects to land in Minneapolis on that day, and I am suggesting to him that possibly he may join my train that day at the same time we are going through St. Paul and Minneapolis to reach Cannon Falls.
The Attorney General expects to come some time during the summer, but I am not sure just when.
Question: Have we authority to quote your remark about Mr. Hoover’s being a more expert fisherman?
President: No, – no.
Citation: Calvin Coolidge: Remarks by the President to Newspaper Correspondents
The Coolidge Foundation gratefully acknowledges the volunteer efforts of Frank Harder who prepared this document for digital publication.