Standing in the Massachusetts House chamber, Governor Coolidge faces the joint gathering down the hall from where he had presided as President of the State’s Senate since 1914. Notice the new Governor’s father is conspicuously seated to the right of the podium.

On that occasion, he addressed the General Court,

“Each individual must have the rewards and opportunities worthy of the character of our citizenship, a broader recognition of his worth and a larger liberty, protected by order — and always under the law. In the promotion of human welfare Massachusetts happily may not need much reconstruction, but, like all living organizations, forever needs continuing construction. What are the lessons of the past? How shall they be applied to these days of readjustment? How shall we emerge from the autocratic methods of war to the democratic methods of peace, raising ourselves again to the source of all our strength and all our glory, — sound self-government?”