Have Faith In Massachusetts Statement To The Press
by Calvin Coolidge
ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1919
My thanks are due to the millions of my fellow citizens of
Massachusetts. I offer them freely, without undertaking to specify, to
all who have supported the great cause of the supremacy of the law. The
heart of the people has proven again sound and true. No
misrepresentation has blinded them, no sophistry has turned them. They
have listened to the truth and followed it. They have again disappointed
those who distrusted them. They have turned away from those who sought
to play upon their selfishness. They have justified those who trusted
them. They have justified America. The attempt to appeal to class
prejudice has failed. The men of Massachusetts are not labor men, or
policemen, or union men, or poor men, or rich men, or any other class
of men first; they are Americans first. The wage-earners have
vindicated themselves. They have shown by their votes that they resent
trying to use them for private interests, or to employ them to resist
the operation of the Government. They are for the Government. They are
against those who are against the Government. American institutions are
safe in their hands. Some of those who have posed as their leaders and
argued that the wage-earners were patriotic because those leaders told
them to be may well now inquire whether the case did not stand the other
way about. It begins to look as if those who attempt to lead the
wage-earners must first show that they themselves are patriotic if they
are to have any following. The patriotism of some alleged leaders was
not the cause but the effect of the patriotism of the wage-earners.
Three words tell the result. Massachusetts is American. The election
will be a welcome demonstration to the Nation and to people everywhere
who believe that liberty can only be secured by obedience to law.
