Former President William Howard Taft writing Calvin Coolidge: February 25, 1914.

On February 23, Taft and Coolidge attended exercises at Smith College commemorating the 182nd birthday of George Washington. Taft spoke at the event, and Coolidge subsequently told his father, “What he said was so much like what I had said that I sent him a copy of my address.” Coolidge’s address was the one he gave on the opening of the Massachusetts State Senate on January 7, it will later be called “Have Faith in Massachusetts.”

In his Autobiography Coolidge says of his address, “I argued that the government could not relieve us from toil, that large concerns are necessary for the progress in which capital and labor all have in common interest, and I defended representative government and the integrity of the courts.” Taft tells Coolidge in this letter that his address “strikes a chord in my heart that responds to every word.”