The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-06-09
COOLIDGE TRIES
0UI minnesota
IN new SPEECH
Howled Down by Work
ers and Farmers in 1922
BY LAURENCE TODD,

WASHINGTON, - (FP) - Three
years after he received, at the Mime
sofa state fair grounds, the most hui
initiating rebuff ever given a vice.
president of the United States by a
great gathering of voters, Calvin Cool
idge has gone back to Minnea-
polls to deliver a speech. He hopes
to get reception that will seem to
be an ovation, and thereby put the
stamp of approval-even in Mime
sota-on his achievements as a polite
al agent of super-fnance and feder-
ated big business. incidentally, he
hopes to kill off the insurgent move
ment in the northwest.
How bitter must be his recollection
Of that disastrous day when he ruined
the Old Guards chances of returning
Kellogg to the senate is indicated by
the fact that he has since made KEEL
logg ambassador and secretary Of
state, tho the Minnesota Old Guard
has never forgiven him for their dis
comfiture. Last year they sent a
Lowden delegation to his renomina-
ton convention at Cleveland.
Gets An Awful Jolt
Twenty thousand Minnesotas we're
packed into and in front Of the grand
stand on that afternoon when Calvin
Coolidge, the simple farmer boy"
vice-president of the nation, was in
troduced to the Minnesota farmers.
For 40 minutes they listened silently
to his reading of a speech which in
substanc was the same as the advice
which drove the North Dakota farm
ers to organize the non-partisan lea
que.
He told them that they could solve
all their problems of defiaction and
bankruptcy by going home and going
to work. Then some one Of his har-
sher phrases was met by round of
hand-clapping Coolidge looked pleas
ed. The clapping continued, and
spread out into the crowd. He looked
more pleased. Then it spread farther,
and slowly Coolidge realized that it
was a steady, metholical, disappearing
clap-clap-clap-clap a deadly counting
out process, in which 10000 men and
women had joined as tho by common
inspiration. 1t kept up, five minutes,
ten, twenty, until Coolidge abandoned
his place, trembling with mortifica-
ton, and left the grounds. Next morn
ing the Associated Press and the re-
publican papers tried to psycho-ana-
lyze the crowd, as a preliminary to
breaking the news that the vice-pres-
ident had been driven from the ro-
strum. by tremendous mass-rejection.
Just Like British Prince
The nearest approach to this treat
ment given Coolidge, found in modern
fiction, is probably that description
given, by D. H. Lawrence in "Kanga-
roo" of the terrible "counting-down"
of the British prince by the infuristed
Australian troops at the Palestine
front during the war. Before the final.
ex-communicating "ten" had been
reached by the shouting lines of vete-
rams, the prince rushed forward, plead
ing pardon. Coolidge simply took the
count and disappeared from Mime
sofa.
First principles Of machine politics
require that the Old Guard fill the
presidents audience, this time, with
thousands Of trusty shouters who will
toss hats in air and yell themselves
hoarse after each paragraph, and then
thy to get near enough to shake the
hand that signed the appointments Of
Kellogg and Humphrey and other anti
farmer stalwarts. And since Norwe-
gian settlement of America is being
celebrated, Coolidge will presumably
pay tribute to the late Knute Nelson,
faithful servitor of the steel trust.