Calvin Coolidge – Silent Cal or Cheap Cal?

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Calvin Coolidge — Vermont native, Massachusetts governor, president of the United States — may have been misnamed. He was known as a stoic man of few words. Silent Cal, they called him. A better name might have been Frugal Cal.

Son of a farm and store-keeping family, Coolidge grew up working hard for every dollar he had. So maybe that’s why he didn’t like to waste money – whether it was his own or the people’s.

Connecticut Gov. Wilbur Cross described Coolidge as a man “who never let loose a nickel unless he had to.” And on this point, he was indisputably correct. He cut taxes four times as president.

As lieutenant governor in Massachusetts, he stayed at a one-room, dollar-a-day rooming house in Boston, ignoring the Statehouse crowd that urged him to loosen his purse strings. Home was half of a duplex in Northampton, Mass.

Then, when elected vice president, he and his wife and two sons moved into the Willard Hotel. Coolidge tried to eat out as much as possible — as someone’s guest — to save on meal costs.

As president, he had protracted battles with the White House housekeeper over the costs of dinners. Once he famously insisted that six hams for 60 guests were too many. And even pennies were important to the president.

Calvin Coolidge, Lousy Tipper

He did have a sense of humor. Coolidge loved to play practical jokes. One of his favorite pranks was to pretend he found a bug in his food. When the butler turned to investigate, he’d say to his wife, Grace, “Mama, I thought butlers weren’t supposed to eavesdrop.”

In her book, My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House, White House maid and seamstress Lillian Parks Rogers recalled how Coolidge dispatched a servant to pick up newspapers. He then expected his change on the servant’s return.

“If they thought it was a tip, they would soon find out differently, because the President would go around saying, ‘Somebody owes me seven cents.’ And he meant it.”

No one ever defeated Calvin Coolidge in an election. Perhaps this was part of the reason.

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This story was updated in 2025.