Editor’s note: This column written by Bob Flaherty, then a Gazette reporter, originally ran in November 2009.

NORTHAMPTON — So he was cool after all. Calvin Coolidge, our 30th president, whose stern gaze is forever fixed on the comings and goings of the King Street theater that bears his name — more specifically on the saloon of the theater that bears his name — was actually cool.

The Gazette said as much. When Coolidge was elected mayor of Northampton 100 years ago next month, the headline said: “CONGRATULATIONS, COOL CALVIN.”

It was never fully explained what he did that was so cool, but the secret may lie with the fact that he was also, in the vernacular of the day, wet.

Well, he was also for minimum wage for women, pensions for widows and workmen’s comp, but wet? You couldn’t buy that kind of coolness.

A question would appear ominously on the ballot that year, a question appearing on ballots all over the country: “Shall licenses be granted for the sale of intoxicating liquors in this city?”

There was no greater issue in 1909 than prohibition. You were either wet — and against prohibition — or dry — and for it. Coolidge’s Democratic opponent, Harry Bicknell of Bicknell’s Shoes, Hats and Furnishings, 158 Main St., was decidedly dry.

On Nov. 30 the No-license dry crowd began its finger-wagging campaign against barflies and their shadowy dives. “Voters of Northampton, the case is now in your hands,” thundered the quarter-page ad paid for by the committee, “Have you been led to believe that the saloon is a blessing to any man in Northampton, even to the man who sells? Do you believe it a blessing to any man, to his wife or to his children?”

Bicknell, a 38-year-old businessman, was firmly with the waggers.

Coolidge, it turned out, had a client who owned a local brewery. Coolidge, like it or not, was “wet” by association. He decided to like it. The wet block was a good one to court, he realized, and openly wooed the wet vote, boldly crossing into longtime Democratic strongholds like the neighborhoods of the Irish and French. Since he was not above “stopping in garden taverns for an occasional beer,” wooing the wet was not all that wearisome.

Northampton, for the record, had 64 dressmakers, 38 grocers, 15 milk dealers, 12 hotels and five newspapers. Can you imagine the bidding war for columnists — why, a fella could name his price. Hamp also had four auto dealers, two horsedealers, 12 blacksmiths, eight restaurants and, blush, 18 saloons.

Aside from the wets, though, Coolidge seemed to relish meeting voters. “It was not my good fortune to be born among you, to grow up with you, but glad to be given the opportunity to meet you now, man by man.”

‘No better candidate’

Coolidge was not without a pretty solid resume. The Vermont native had been Northampton city councilor for Ward 2, city solicitor, chairman of the Republican City Committee, defeated for School Committee, and then a two-term state rep. Three terms in those days were considered pushy and presumptuous, so Coolidge bowed out and contemplated a full-time law practice.

Then the Democratic mayor of Northampton, James O’Brien, announced his retirement. Coolidge was wooed by every Republican in town. Since it was a local office, and part-time at that, Coolidge mulled it over. “I accepted,” he said, “thinking the honor would please my father, advance me in my profession and enable me to be of some public service.”

He had initially run for the Legislature for the same reasons.

The Republican City Committee fairly claimed “that no better candidate for mayor has ever been presented to the city of Northampton.” Not only was Coolidge running against Bicknell, he was running against hyperbole.

Bicknell fought off three rivals to get the Democratic nod, all three named Bill. Coolidge was nominated Nov. 19, but the campaign wouldn’t kick in until about a week before the Dec. 7 vote.

One high-ranking Democrat said, “This beats any election I ever saw.”

Orcutt Wagon Works had a big sale on surreys, buggies and bicycle buggies, meanwhile, and Janitor Daley at Easthampton High invented a way to install drinking water at the school using a copper trough. Wouldn’t cost the town a nickel.

Many accounts of drunkenness showed up in district court news. Mary Shea of South Hadley complained that husband John had beaten her and badly used her — $100 probation.

The Black Hand, meanwhile, blew up 25 buildings in Danville, Ill., with dynamite; four people missing. Anarchists were on folks’ minds, as well.

The high road

The Civic League was calling for additions to schools on Vernon and Williams streets and the hiring of a school nurse. When the district superintendent, on Dec. 3, told of an overdraft of $625.87 on teachers’ salaries, Coolidge said, “In this department, there will always be a call for more room, more teachers and more salary. Any other condition would make us a decadent community.” He also raised the idea of compensating teachers for length of service in a move to keep the good ones from leaving for greener pastures.

But acrimonious accusations directed at his opponent? Tut, tut.

“There’s one thing we like about candidate Coolidge,” wrote a Gazette editorial. “He does not say anything about the other candidate. At Democrat rallies, they keep telling what a poor man Coolidge is, how little he ever did that was good and how much he did that was bad.”

Indeed, Coolidge spoke eloquently of the high road: “It is of great consequence to me that my fellow citizens may say of me, ‘He has conducted a clean, honorable campaign and had borne himself like a man.’ ”

Yes, there were times that the candidate spoke like that statue on King Street. Other times, well ....

On Dec. 1, at a rally in Florence, Bicknell rebutted the scurrilous charge from the Coolidge camp that he was stuck up. “I didn’t think that a boy brought up on a farm and who went barefooted a large part of the year and was obliged to work early or late to help support a family of nine children, was likely to be very stuck up,” he said.

Bicknell then went on high-powered offense, accusing Coolidge of the sin of soliciting, personally, mind you, VOTERS TO VOTE FOR HIM. “That he was soliciting votes from men interested in the liquor business is something that any candidate for public office ought to be ashamed of!”

Furthermore, he said that Coolidge as a legislator had only introduced bills that favored his law buddies.

Sure, he was a lawyer, Coolidge countered, and said “that the city would be declared his client in the highest and truest sense of the word.”

At a Democratic rally, Cal’s claim to be a man of labor was ridiculed with: “His circulars did not bear the stamp of a printers’ union!”

What citywide email scandal could possibly top that?

Then the whole thing was blown sky high with the charge that Bicknell wore a plug hat and gloves. The plug, more bowler than derby, was a bit dandified and outdated as a powdered wig.

“It is not the plug hat but the worth of the man under the plug hat,” said a fellow Dem, leaping to the candidate’s defense, but the image stuck in voters’ head like Dukakis in the tank with helmet would some 80 years later.

Women at the polls

In national news, Gazette readers learned that “WETS WIN IN ALABAMA.” But prohibition was settling in other places, and the writing was on the wall.

On election night in Northampton, four of the wards voted upstairs at City Hall; Ward 1 on the northwest side, 2 on the southwest, 3 on the northeast and 4 on the southeast. Wards 5 and 6 voted at engine houses in Bay State and Florence, and 7 went to Cosmian Hall.

The votes trickled in. Ward 6 was praised for its usual expediency with vote control, weary reporters touting its “counters and experts in speed and accuracy.” Ward 7 was second, then 5, 1, 4, 3 and at long, long, last, 2.

Bicknell won in Ward 1, Ward 5, soundly in Ward 6, and in Ward 7. Coolidge won big in Ward 2, and mashed in Wards 3 and 4, 366-191 and 218-142, respectively. He won 1,506 to 1,409.

Women in record numbers went to Northampton polls that day, using Coolidge’s popularity to prove a point.

“Women came out not alone to vote for School Committee, but to show the world that they would vote if their husbands and brothers would only pass the law to let them do it,” went the election coverage.

Massachusetts women had won the right to vote in School Committee elections way back in 1879, but voting for mayor — good grief, the next thing you know they’ll want to vote for governor. Where will it end? Not until 1920 would women gain the right to vote nationally. And Calvin Coolidge was all for it back in 1909.

The no-licensers published a treatise on election eve that said, of the 15,564 paupers in the state, 45 percent became paupers because of drink, and charged that every saloon in Massachusetts “murdered” two men alone, resulting in $25 million in the waste of productive life per year.

Hard to argue with facts, but the Northampton electorate managed just the same. The question failed and the wet candidate was mayor.

“It is a great honor to be selected for mayor of Northampton, an honor which we cannot all attain,” said Coolidge. “But there is a higher honor yet, the honor of being upright citizens. I want to be a perpetual candidate on that ticket.”

This, it must be noted, was a one-year term. No sooner does the office-holder say “I solemnly swear” than he’s back on the pavement campaigning. That pavement better look good. Ol’ Cal saw to that. He resurfaced 10 miles of sidewalk and repaved Main and all of King in his first term, recommending the use of “tarvia, or some kindred preparation” to seal it. He beat Bicknell again the following year, 1,600 to 1,344.

Bicknell would finally get himself elected mayor in 1923, but Coolidge was in the White House by then, sworn in as president by his father, John, a notary public.

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