When large numbers of men are unable to find work, unemployment results.

The sentence is a tautological definition: it reduces “unemployment” to its most literal condition—many people who want work cannot obtain it. Read this way, it functions less as a policy claim than as a framing device, stripping away moral judgments about the jobless and emphasizing the aggregate, systemic character of the problem. In political rhetoric, such a formulation can be used to pivot toward questions of causation (why jobs are unavailable) and remedy (what institutions or policies might restore employment), while sounding neutral and commonsensical. Without a verified setting, however, it is difficult to say whether Coolidge intended it as an economic observation, a rebuttal to critics, or a preface to a specific program.