Date: September 20, 1927
Location: Washington, D.C.
(Original document available here)
THE PRESIDENT: I suppose you are all members of the Press Club the same as I am. I want to say that I enjoyed the opening of the theatre very much last evening. We have a very beautiful building on that corner. Perhaps I appreciate it all the more because for two years I lived on the opposite corner in the Willard Hotel. I can see the very marked difference in appearance this building makes in that part of the city. It is a very fine theatre and I am sure it will add to the comfort of theatre-goers in the town, and to the pleasure of the many people who enjoy attending the theatre.
I am not able to find the time to go to Baltimore to attend the exposition of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. I am expecting to go to Pittsburgh to their celebration — Founders’ Day of the Carnegie Institute. That is of course more or less tentative, but it is my expectation that I shall be able to go.
QUERY: What is the date?
THE PRESIDENT: The thirteenth.
(Continuing): I doubt very much if I can get away as far as Chattanooga for the National Association of Manufacturers that are having a convention there. I would like to attend that convention and I would like to visit Chattanooga. I doubt very much if I can do it at this time.
I do not think any decision has been made as to the appointment of a successor to the Collector of Internal Revenue – I think his name was Charles Dean – at Cincinnati who has resigned.
I have appointed – I haven’t put the appointment on paper, but have made arrangements to appoint and have secured the approbation of the Government of Mexico to the appointment of Dwight W. Morrow, of New Jersey, to be Ambassador to Mexico. (One or more of the correspondents left the room hurriedly at this point). I hope that is not going to cause any considerable exodus from the room. I can well understand how any one would like to go out to congratulate the country. I am very much pleased that Mr. Morrow is going to make the sacrifice that is entailed by accepting an appointment of this kind. He of course is retiring from his firm, of which he has been a member for thirteen years. He is a lawyer by profession; is very much interested in public affairs and has made a study of them. He is wonderfully well-equipped I think to take a mission of that kind. It is one of our most important foreign missions although perhaps not one that would be so much sought after as an appointment at St. James or at Paris.
QUERY: Is he going at once?
THE PRESIDENT: I do not know just how soon he will go. I suppose in a very few days.
As far as I can see there won’t be any occasion for a special session of Congress. Arrangements have been made, as I indicated at the last conference, and the money paid over, to take care of all the relief that is necessary up to the first of January, and the information won’t he collected by the Board of Engineers for the drafting of a bill to provide for flood relief until the middle of November, perhaps it will be a little later than that. I am advised by members of the Senate that they can take up distinctly Senatorial matters between the time the Senate comes in and the holidays, and before the bills begin to come over there from the House.
The Department of State has sent or is about to send a note to France relative to the new French tariff schedules. It is not our practice to give out notes of that kind without the consent of the Government to which they are sent. I think the French Government gave out some resume of the note that was sent to us. I do not know whether the State Department contemplates giving out any resume of the note that is to be sent to France.
Citation: Calvin Coolidge: Remarks by the President to Newspaper Correspondents
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