Date: June 26, 1928
Location: Superior, WI
(Original document available here)
I see there are a number of your reporters here that haven’t attended Presidential press conferences before. Now, these conferences are held in order to give the members of the press a sort of background and enable them to get the facts to use in their own way and on their own responsibility. The President is never quoted and it is a fundamental rule of the conferences that no quotation is to be made of anything that the President says.
It is my recollection that Secretary Kellogg mentioned to me before I left Washington that he would probably be up this way. His home is in St. Paul about 150 miles away, and I think he is expecting to visit me as he goes up there.
Secretary Work already has an engagement to come up here, I think next week. I have no information about Mr. Hoover coming out. I have seen some of the reports about it in the press, but whether he is coming up or not I do not know. I have no direct information from him. I haven’t given any thought to what I might do to participate in the coming campaign. If there is anything to be done about that it will develop later.
I expect that my son John will be up here next Saturday or Sunday. I don’t know of any comment that I can make on the note that Secretary Kellogg has sent to 14 powers relative to a treaty renouncing war. The note would seem to speak for itself. I don’t know of anything that I could say that would add anything to it.
I haven’t any plans about the 4th of July. That is my birthday and we usually have a cake to eat. Nor have I given much of any thought about any engagements up here. I should like to go about some up here, different places. I should like to see the country and meet the people. I am not expecting to undertake to make any speeches.
I am thoroughly enjoying my vacation. The estate where we are is very convenient and accessible and beautiful. The fishing around it is very good. There are several lakes about there that have a great many fish in them. I have fished there a little. I rather prefer fishing in the river, which has a little more of the flavor of catching wild fish. It is very wonderful place out there. My wife and I found it very beneficial to both of us.
I noticed that the press said something about mosquitoes. There aren’t any mosquitoes out there that bother us any. Of course, you can’t go into the woods without finding some, but they are not much more thick at Cedar Island Lodge than they would be on the south Portico of the White House. They don’t give us any trouble at all.
I haven’t been listening over the radio to the convention at Houston. I was out this morning up and down the river and forgot that the convention started today. I recall now that it does, and I think Mrs. Coolidge has had the radio on. But the radio there is over in the Lodge and I have scarcely been there this morning since I got up. Our dining room is across the bridge in another building, so when I came back from being out on the water I went into the dining room and haven’t had a chance to listen to the radio.
I noticed that the press quite universally complimented me on wearing a new straw hat when I got up here. I had worn that for about a month, but on account of it being cooler up here I suppose every one thought it was a new hat. I would like to say that the weather hasn’t disturbed me at all up here. There has been some rain, but not enough to bother us at all out at the Lodge. I did think at one time out there that I would like to trade that straw hat for a coonskin cap. I can see now why the people thought that that must be a new hat.
Citation: Calvin Coolidge: Remarks by the President to Newspaper Correspondents
The Coolidge Foundation gratefully acknowledges the volunteer efforts of J Mitchell Rushing who prepared this document for digital publication.