Business Organization of the Government

President Coolidge's twice-yearly speeches at the meeting of the Business Organization of the Government marked the efficient operation of the recently established Federal Budget System, legislated into existence during President Harding's tenure in office by the Budget Act of 1921, which for the first time established a comprehensive budget for the federal government. The ticketed audience for these meetings in D.A.R. Memorial Continental Hall consisted of more than 500 of the federal government's top "executives," with their wives. Included were cabinet secretaries and assistant heads of departments; chiefs and assistant chiefs of bureaus, offices and services; budget officers, chief clerks and assistant chief clerks; disbursing officers; and all other officials of the government in an authoritative relationship to government expenditures. In some cases, the meetings were scheduled for a Saturday evening, in the style of a gala event, confirming the importance that President Coolidge attached to them. A number of the meetings were broadcast on national radio.

After President Coolidge had addressed the meeting, reviewing the accomplishments of his administration as they promoted the economic prosperity and general welfare of the nation and exhorting those in attendance to ever greater economy and efficiency in government, he would introduce Brigadier General Herbert M. Lord. Of all the people with whom the president met, his Appointment Books record that he met most frequently, and for the longest periods of time, with General Lord, the second director of the Bureau of the Budget. (DETAIL NOTE Coolidge's Appointment Books)

In his June 30, 1924 Business Organization of the Government address, preserved in the Coolidge Papers case file Accomplishments of Calvin Coolidge Administration, 1924-28, the president maintains that efficiency in the operation of the federal budget shows that "the American Government is not a spendthrift," and that it is disposed to "administer its finances in a scientific way." This conjoining of the concepts of management and science in the context of the federal budget is an instance of the way in which the ideas of Frederick W. Taylor (1856-1915) were recycled in the American economy of the 1920s. (INTRO NOTE Taylorism). Readers can peruse an additional eight Business Organization of the Government speeches, delivered by Coolidge in his second term, in the "reading set" of Coolidge speeches preserved in the papers of one of the president's private secretaries, Everett Sanders. (DIRECTORY NOTE Everett Sanders)

Coolidge believed the operation of the federal government could be enhanced by making it meet the same demands of economy and efficiency that businesses had to meet in order to survive -- hence the name of the group before which the president was making his address, the Business Organization of the Government. In like manner, as General Lord's remarks in Thrift Education: Being the Report of the National Conference on Thrift Education, Held in Washington, D.C., June 27 and 28, 1924 demonstrate, the mentality of the age was to equate the efficient management of the federal budget with consumers' efficient management of their household budgets. (INTRO NOTE Thrift)