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From A NEW LOOK AT CALVIN COOLIDGE-Remarks by Peter Hannaford

Shortly after he was inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan ordered a portrait of Calvin Coolidge hung in the Cabinet Room of the White House.

The news of this startled the Washington press corps. Why, they wondered, would Reagan want to hang the picture of a man who had nothing to say and little to do when he occupied the White House? They reminded us that biographers described Coolidge as cold, aloof, unfeeling, materialistic, in the pocket of big business and, otherwise, a cipher.

Ronald Reagan knew differently. His action came as no surprise to me. I was closely associated with him for a number of years and knew that Coolidge was one of his favorite predecessors and that he considered Coolidge to have been greatly underrated.

One dramatic action in Reagan’s first year as President can be traced directly to an action that Coolidge took many years earlier.

In August 1981, the air traffic controllers’ union called a strike. President Reagan said that, as public employees, they could not do that and any who weren’t back on the job within 48 hours would be fired. Those who went back to work kept their jobs; those who didn’t were fired. Today, no one remembers the name of the man who ran that union, but he’d probably be around still if he had bothered to read what Reagan had said many times as Governor of California. That is, that public employees dealing with public safety did not have the right to strike and should be terminated if they did strike.

Ronald Reagan’s view was inspired by the stand that Governor Calvin Coolidge had taken in 1919, when the Boston police went on strike. On the verge of the strike, the police commissioner had assured him everything was under control, but once the police went out, looting and rioting ensued. Coolidge stepped in, took charge, brought out the state militia and fired the strikers. Samuel Gompers, the head of the AFofL, wired him, asking him to take back the striking policemen, Coolidge’s answer was right to the point, this famous statement:

“There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.”

http://www.calvin-coolidge.org/html/a_new_look_at_calvin__coolidge.html