Date: May 22, 1928
Location: Washington, D.C.
(Original document available here)
I have every expectation of going to Gettysburg on the 30th of May. Of course, the Congressional situation makes it a little uncertain, but I think the expectation may be considered as highly definite.
I haven’t made any decision about where I shall spend the summer. My views concerning the publicity of income tax returns are, I think, stated in my annual message sent to the Congress in the fall of 1926. No, in the fall of 1925. And I think that in the annual report of the Secretary of the Treasury of that year you will find some comment on that same point, especially along the line that publicity of tax returns tended to diminish national revenue.
I still have the surplus control bill before me. I expect to arrive at some definite conclusions about it very soon and am writing it up as fast as I can, getting reports from the various departments that might be able to give me assistance relative to it. I should be willing to approve a bill that was in accordance with the suggestions I have made in my annual messages.
I haven’t seen the conferees’ report on the Muscle Shoals bill, so I couldn’t express any definite opinion about it.
I think the bill for the retirement of emergency officers has come to me and has been referred to the War Department, and of course the Budget Bureau, as it has to do with finances, for their opinion, and it has not been returned.
Yesterday, there came in the first report that has been made under the present law relative to railroad wages. I appointed an emergency board, the first one that I have appointed, to consider a disagreement about wages and terms of employment in the K.C.M. & O. Ry. system. That report came in yesterday and will be given to the press, if it has not already been done by the present board. It is interesting not only because of the contents of the report, but because it is the first one that has been made under the present law. I shall be very much interested to see whether it works out successfully.
I haven’t made any final decision about my summer plans. There will be plenty of time for the members of the press to prepare themselves for the journey. As soon as I make a decision about it that is final, I will let the press know and it will take me quite as much time to prepare, I am sure, as it would the members of the press, so if they start their preparations as soon as I do mine, I am sure we will all be able to get our vacation together.
Citation: Calvin Coolidge: Remarks by the President to Newspaper Correspondents
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