The Business of America is Business.

Often misattributed to Calvin Coolidge. He did say something remarkably close, "After all, the chief business of the American people is business." Tempered in the same speech with, "Of course the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence." The speech concludes: "We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation of idealists. That is the only motive to which they ever give any strong and lasting reaction." Thank goodness he qualified his remarks.

Still there seems to be some debate about Silent Cal's philosophy of business and higher ends.

"To quote Tom Silver (Coolidge and the Historians, 1982), "Coolidge's attitude toward money-making and wealth is the commonsensical one, namely, that wealth is justified only as a means to higher ends. Wealth does provide, in its turn, the leisure and the wherewithal to pursue, for instance, a liberal education, which is among the noblest ends of man."
However, Professor Arthur Schlesinger in Crisis of the Old Order wrote, "(Coolidge's) speeches offered his social philosophy in dry pellets of aphorism. "The chief business of the American people," he said, "is business." But, for Coolidge, business was more than business; it was a religion; and to it he committed all the passion of his arid nature. "The man who builds a factory," he wrote, "builds a temple. The man who works there worships there." He (Coolidge) felt these things with a fierce intensity.

Source:http://www.calvin-coolidge.org/pages/history/research/ccmf/bitt02.html