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Page:The Autobiography Of Calvin Coolidge.djvu/125

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LAW AND POLITICS

generation the whole state ticket. But my district returned me. When I reached my office the next morning I found President Greenwood had been defeated. Again I was ready. By three o'clock that Wednesday afternoon I was in Boston, and by Monday I had enough written pledges from the Republican Senators to insure my nomination for President of the Senate at the party caucus. It had been a real contest, but all opposition subsided and I was unanimously nominated.

The Senate showed the effects of the division in our party. It had twenty-one Republicans, seventeen Democrats and two Progressives. When the vote was cast for President on the opening day of the General Court, Senator Cox the Progressive had two votes, Senator Morgan the Democrat had seven votes, and I had thirty-one votes. I had not only become an officer of the whole Commonwealth, but I had come into possession of an influence reaching beyond the confines of my own party which I was to retain so long as I remained in public life.

Although I had arrived at the important position of President of the Massachusetts Senate in January

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