ABSTRACT
The premature crisis confirmed the twenties in all its impulses and only filmed the surface with respectability. In the spring of 1924-one president dead, another not yet elected in his own right-the whole of American life seemed to be cracking open. After the death of the President, investigations were begun of an administration that was recognized suddenly to have been corrupt. Calvin Coolidge, as president, was to establish the weak presidency upon an almost rational basis of satisfaction for the whole country. The coming to office of Coolidge assured the continuation of the twenties in the direction and with the momentum it had already assumed. His becoming president also set a seal of respectability upon the time that it had not had under Warren G. Harding. Coolidge put a light hand upon the tiller, seemed to steady it, and steered a smooth way straight toward destruction.
