average height. Morrow was decisively short; one of his arms bent oddly, the result of a fall from an apple tree when he was twelve. Another student, Mortimer Schiff, handed down shirts to Morrow, but the shirts bore Schiff’s monogram, “MLS.” Morrow’s mother asked what the letters stood for. “Morrow’s Little Shirts,” her son told her blithely. Morrow had a way of turning disadvantage to advantage, of pushing on, so that people admired his humor and pluck. Even in politics, Morrow seemed to move ahead fast. It was Morrow, not Coolidge, who went onto the board of the new Republican Club.
His sophomore year, Coolidge took Greek, rhetoric, German, and analytic geometry. He had not yet conquered the undergraduate challenge of managing time and sleep. William Tyler, his Greek teacher, was famous; that was the last year he would teach “Demosthenes on the Crown.” Coolidge wrote home drily that if Demosthenes’ speeches were the best to be found, the world had not made much progress in rhetoric in the two millennia since he had spoken. He sometimes could not stay awake in the class. An anonymous classmate published a rhyme in The Olio , the yearbook:
The class in Greek was going on
Old Ty a lecture read.
And in the row in front there shone
Fair Coolidge’s golden head.
His pate was bent upon the seat
in front of him; his hair
Old Tyler’s feeble gaze did meet
With fierce and ruddy glare
O’ercome by mystic sense of dread
Old Ty his talk did lull—
“Coolidge, I wish you’d raise your head
I can’t talk through your skull!”
Though he may have slept, Coolidge was coming to value his teacher’s lectures and discovered a new blessing; these courses, heavy in logic, focused him. He was beginning to plan instead of merely to react: he posted a paper on the wall to remind himself when homework was due. Perhaps too the subject matter compelled him. Like Coolidge, Demosthenes had started out sickly. He had even spoken with a lisp. He had become a great orator notwithstanding. Demosthenes’ rebellion against the kings paralleled the rebellion of Calvin’s own forefathers against England.
In the fall of 1892, politics were also heating up, and that cheered him on. He knew his father supported Benjamin Harrison, who had endorsed a strong tariff that included protection for wool. This time he was able to take in the national questions, along with the Vermont ones. After a boom, prices for steel were coming down. Carnegie Steel in Pennsylvania had cut wages significantly, by 20 to 40 percent. The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers struck at Carnegie Steel’s Homestead Plant over wages; then the strike broadened. This wage issue was a new one: before such big factories had been established, workers hadn’t been able to compare salaries easily. The companies, led by Henry Clay Frick, the chairman of Carnegie Steel, saw the outcome at Homestead as crucial: if they could not cut wages when they needed to, they believed, they would not survive, especially if the 1890 tariff was repealed. By the summer of 1892, eighty thousand men west of the Allegheny had laid down their tools. With the aid of the state militia, the steel company broke the strike, but only after Alexander Berkman, an anarchist, found his way into Frick’s office, shot him three times, and stabbed him for good measure. Frick survived, but the horrifying event shocked all. Coolidge doubtless followed the story, even from Plymouth Notch. After the Homestead strike was settled—the company won a bitter victory—the papers carried stories of Berkman’s trial and conviction, as well as his association with a flamboyant woman anarchist, Emma Goldman. Depending on whom you talked to, that was the problem of either Harrison’s predecessor, Grover Cleveland, or Harrison himself.
Harrison was a big spender; under him, the federal budget had reached a million dollars for the first time. Harrison also supported tariffs. Cleveland
His sophomore year, Coolidge took Greek, rhetoric, German, and analytic geometry. He had not yet conquered the undergraduate challenge of managing time and sleep. William Tyler, his Greek teacher, was famous; that was the last year he would teach “Demosthenes on the Crown.” Coolidge wrote home drily that if Demosthenes’ speeches were the best to be found, the world had not made much progress in rhetoric in the two millennia since he had spoken. He sometimes could not stay awake in the class. An anonymous classmate published a rhyme in The Olio , the yearbook:
The class in Greek was going on
Old Ty a lecture read.
And in the row in front there shone
Fair Coolidge’s golden head.
His pate was bent upon the seat
in front of him; his hair
Old Tyler’s feeble gaze did meet
With fierce and ruddy glare
O’ercome by mystic sense of dread
Old Ty his talk did lull—
“Coolidge, I wish you’d raise your head
I can’t talk through your skull!”
Though he may have slept, Coolidge was coming to value his teacher’s lectures and discovered a new blessing; these courses, heavy in logic, focused him. He was beginning to plan instead of merely to react: he posted a paper on the wall to remind himself when homework was due. Perhaps too the subject matter compelled him. Like Coolidge, Demosthenes had started out sickly. He had even spoken with a lisp. He had become a great orator notwithstanding. Demosthenes’ rebellion against the kings paralleled the rebellion of Calvin’s own forefathers against England.
In the fall of 1892, politics were also heating up, and that cheered him on. He knew his father supported Benjamin Harrison, who had endorsed a strong tariff that included protection for wool. This time he was able to take in the national questions, along with the Vermont ones. After a boom, prices for steel were coming down. Carnegie Steel in Pennsylvania had cut wages significantly, by 20 to 40 percent. The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers struck at Carnegie Steel’s Homestead Plant over wages; then the strike broadened. This wage issue was a new one: before such big factories had been established, workers hadn’t been able to compare salaries easily. The companies, led by Henry Clay Frick, the chairman of Carnegie Steel, saw the outcome at Homestead as crucial: if they could not cut wages when they needed to, they believed, they would not survive, especially if the 1890 tariff was repealed. By the summer of 1892, eighty thousand men west of the Allegheny had laid down their tools. With the aid of the state militia, the steel company broke the strike, but only after Alexander Berkman, an anarchist, found his way into Frick’s office, shot him three times, and stabbed him for good measure. Frick survived, but the horrifying event shocked all. Coolidge doubtless followed the story, even from Plymouth Notch. After the Homestead strike was settled—the company won a bitter victory—the papers carried stories of Berkman’s trial and conviction, as well as his association with a flamboyant woman anarchist, Emma Goldman. Depending on whom you talked to, that was the problem of either Harrison’s predecessor, Grover Cleveland, or Harrison himself.
Harrison was a big spender; under him, the federal budget had reached a million dollars for the first time. Harrison also supported tariffs. Cleveland
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