Radio Script #54
Little Talks On Common Things
February 5, 1950
Do we Maine people boast enough about our vacationland state? The bragging of Californians and Texans is proverbial. A few weeks ago, when the oleomargarine taxes were being hotly debated in the U. S. Senate, Senator Humphrey of Minnesota said he supposed there ought to be separate oleo factories in every state, because it would be unthinkable for Californians to eat Florida oleo.
As for Texas, during the war a Texas family found itself in one of the war boomed factory towns of the Pacific coast and placed their ten year old son in a school populated by children born in many different states. One day the teacher said, “Now, Children, in what you have just read there is a reference to Waco County, Texas. You boys and girls come from many different parts of the country. Some of you must know Texas. Who can tell me what part of Texas Waco County is in?” The ten year old spoke up at once. “Waco County”, he said loudly and p~<k..al.y, II is in the northeast corner of my grandfather’s ranch”. With our reputation for Yankee taciturnity and close-mouthedness, we just can’t do the job at bragging which the Californians and Texans do. But we ought, without exaggeration or boasting, to tell a lot of folks some of the real facts about Maine.
No wonder we are a well known vacation state, for within our relatively small area of 33, 000 square miles are 2,465 lakes and ponds, more than 5, 000 rivers and streams, a hundred mountains more than 3,000 feet high, and 2,500 miles of ocean front. Maine has in Aroostook the largest county in the United States, with an area larger than Rhode Island and Connecticut combined. It is not true that Maine doesn’t grow in population. It is true that Maine’s best export is its pe0ple, who have found places of prominence all over the world. But it is also true that between 1940 and 1950 Maine increased its population by nearly eight per cent. In the same ten years the number of manufacturing plants in Maine increased 46 per cent, and the number of production workers increased 22 percent.
Many visitors who come to Maine in the summer and ride past our rock~strewn pastures and glacier-bouldered fields — especially if those visitors come from the black soil region of the mid-western prairies — ask the question, “How in the world do Maine people get a living? This kind of land wouldn’t support a gopher in Iowa or Kansas. Well, let’s tell these visitors how Maine people do live. As a state, Maine has five major sources of income: manufacturing, agriculture, commercial fisheries, recreation and public service industries. In Maine are made more than a thousand different articles, from toothpicks to ships. Recreation is by no means Maine’s largest business. It is indeed sizable and significant, bringing $125,000,000 into the state every year. But farm income exceeds it with $200,000,000, and the value of Maine’s manufactured products reaches a total of $850,000,000 a year. Maine is strategically located on the Great Circle Air Route between the United States and Northern Europe, and by nautical mileage Portland is actually closer to the eastern ports of South America than is New York or even New Orleans. As for Maine folks making a living, the next time one of those mid-western visitors asks you in amazement how we keep alive up here in rock-bound, rock-strewn Maine, you tell him that no less an authority than the U. S. Bureau of Labor states that there are more than 10,000 ways of making a living in Maine.
Frank Littlefield was not only an organ pumper; he was also an experienced bell ringer. Most interestingly he tells me something which I venture to say very few of our listeners ever knew. It is how the church bells of waterville used to be rung.
Half a century ago the four Protestant churches whose bells were in sound of each other were the Methodist, First Baptist, unitarian and Congregationalist. The Universalist, the Getchell Street Baptist and the Advent churches were too far from the center of town to be in the interesting, concerted plan for ringing the bells — for Mr. Littlefield assures us there was a plan for the ringing of those four mid-town bells from 9:15 to 10:15 every Sunday morning. The order of ringing the various parts was first the Methodist, then the Baptist, then the Unitarian and finally the Congregationalist.
There were three parts to the plan. First, each bell in turn was rung briefly and then set. It was quite a trick to set a bell, and I wonder how many of our listeners know what that means. It means to turn the bell squarely upside down and hold it there. Secondly, in turn, each bell ringer released his set and gave two strokes three times. Thirdly, all the bells rang out joyously together.
Mr. Littlefield says that the wife of Dr. Knox, who used to sing in the Methodist choir, had a very keen ear for musical tones. She insisted that the four bells did not differ from each other by so much as half a tone.
What about Madrid Station on the Sandy River railroad? That was the question we asked a few weeks ago. Within 24 hours after our broadcast about the lady who asked the conductor to tell her when they got to Madrid, I had four different persons assure me that they had once lived in Franklin County and therefore knew what they were’, talking about. Well, believe it or not, two of them said there was a Madrid Station, and two said there was not.
Now, within a few days, through Mildred W. Russell, I received a statement by Victor Odlin of South Gardiner. Mr. Odlin says that for more than three years, from June, 1896 to December, 1899, he was employed as mill and yard foreman of the Redington Lumber Company. Naturally he travelled the little railroad line’ many times with loads of lumber and logs. He therefore has very vivid recollection of the stations.\
Mr. Odlin says that, from Phillips to Rangeley, the first stop was at Reed’s Mill in the town of Madrid. This was six miles out of Phillips. Four miles farther on was a stop at East Madrid, where a saw mill was located. Eight miles beyond that was the stop at Redington. After eight more miles came the stop at Dead River. Five miles from there was the end of the line at Rangeley. If passengers on the Sandy River wanted to get to Madrid Village, they had to get off at Reed’s Mill or at East Madrid and go into the village ‘by team or by a long hike. As for Redington, Mr. Odlin says, “At that time, fifty years ago, it had about fifteen families and a large boarding house, a regular school, and religious services twice a month.”
So it is that Mr. Odlin, who worked in the vicinity, contends there never was a Madrid station. But he is wrong. The best evidence we know to settle the question is an official time-table of the road. George Beach of the Rollins and Dunham Company has shown me a copy of a weekly newspaper called “Rangeley Lakes”, published at Rangeley in January, 1896. At the top of the right hand column of the first page appear these words: “Phillips and Rangeley Railroad time-table. The only direct and all rail route to the Rangeley Lakes and Dead River region. Friday, November 1, 1895.” Then follows the table, showing Train No. 1 from Phillips to Rangeley, and Train No. 2 from Rangeley to Phillips. And, clear for all to read, the stop between Phillips and Reed’s Mill is Madrid– not East Madrid or any other name, but simply Madrid. The listed stops from Phillips to Rangeley are given as Madrid, Reed’s Mill, Sander’s Mill, Redington Mills and Dead River. The up train left Phillips at 2:15 P.M., reached Madrid at 2:40, made a ten-minute stop at Redington Mills from 3:45 to 3:55, reached Dead River at 4:30, and finally arrived at Rangeley at 4:55 — two hours and forty minutes after leaving Phillips.
Of the many topics mentioned on this program, none has more clearly shown the trickiness of memory and confusion about names and places than this question whether there was or was not a Madrid Station. The confusion seems to have been caused by the fact that Madrid Station was considerable distance from Madrid Village and probably at some time or other went by a different name.
About a mile out of Redington was the top of Sluice Hill, the highest point between Phillips and Rangeley, about 2,000 feet above sea level. Here the grade is steep for such a small line, running for some distance at 600 feet to the mile. In the summer of 1896 the Sandy River ran an excursion train to Farmington for Foxpaugh’s Circus. On the way back the train had trouble on the steep grade at Sluice Hill. Getting near the top, the wheels began to spin and the train stopped. The engineer backed down and tried it again. This went on for three times. Then, on the fourth try, the huskiest of the many excursioners got off as the train slowed near the hilltop, grabbed on to the train wherever they could, and literally pushed it over the summit. Then it was an easy run into Redington. “It was a good thing we had a lot of husky men aboard on that trip”, says Mr. Odlin, ~for by the time the train made its fourth try at the hill we were almost out of both coal and water. n
We hear a great deal of talk about how much better off people were in the old days when a dollar bought so much more than it does today. The truth is that in terms of relative income people are better off today than they have ever been before in our nation’s history. By relative income is meant total dollar income in relation to the cost of living.
Let’s take a look at the evidence furnished by the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average retail price of food, clothing, fuel and light, rent and house furnishings have increased 69% in the past ten years, and 140% since 1913, which was 37 years ago. But accompanying that increase in living costs, the weekly take-home pay of all persons engaged in manufacturing -the great army of American factory workers — has increased even more. In 1913 the factory worker’s average pay was $11.00 for a 50 hour week. In 1929 it was $25.03 for a 44 hour week. In 1939, just as we were emerging out of the depression years, it was down to $23.86 for a 38 hour week. Ten years later, in 1949, it had jumped to $55.26 for a 39 hour week. In short, compared with the price increase of 69% since 1939, the factory wage increase in the same period has been 131%. And over the long haul, since 1913, while the price increase has been 140%, the factory wage increase has been 500%.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses a term familiar to all economists, but needing explanation for the general public. That is the term “real earnings”. By real earnings the Bureau means actual dollar earnings adjusted to the cost of living, what many of us usually speak of as the purchasing power of the dollar. To give a simple example, suppose a worker receives fifty dollars a week and pays ten dollars a week rent. Then, while his wages remain the same, suppose his rent goes up to twelve dollars a week. His dollar, which previously bought one-tenth of a week’s rent, now buys only one-twelfth. His rent dollar, in terms of real earnings, is now worth only 83 cents, because 83 cents was what would buy one-twelfth of a week’s rent before his rent went up. But, on the other hand, suppose, while his rent went up from ten dollars to twelve dollars a week, his pay went up from fifty to sixty dollars a week. In terms of rent alone each of his dollars buys only 83 cents worth of the previous rental, but he now has $1.20 in pay for every dollar that he had before. A little simple arithmetic shows that he is now better off, in spite of the increased rent.
Thus, by this method of figuring adjustment of take-home pay to the cost of living — not alone in rent, but in all other living costs — the Bureau of Labor statistics shows us that in 1913 these adjusted real earnings were $16.10 a week; in 1939 they were $24.00 a week; and in 1949 they had reached $32.80 a week. In short, real earnings have increased 25% since 1939 and have doubled since 1913.
Kennebec County, Maine has long been praised as a fine place to live. Almost sixty years ago, when the huge two-volume history of Kennebec County was published under the general editorship of Henry D. Kingsbury, this central art of Maine was subjected to high praise by Hiram K. Morrell, who wrote the introduction to the whole work. Even modern advertising would forego the kind of ecstatic rhetoric that flowed from Mr. Morrell’s pen. Just listen to his final paragraph in praise of the grand old County of Kennebec:
“Thus nature has in every way made generous provision in the valley of the Kennebec for the welfare and happiness of man. Of course man here does not live forever, but it is a proportionately cheerful and pleasant place to die in. Skillful physicians and careful nurses smooth his pillow and ease his pains, till the grXffi messenger is almost tired of waiting, and when the inevitable has passed, genial and liberal clergymen will do the best that can-be done for him, and elegant undertakers will make his last ride the most expensive he has ever had; and when all is done, a monument of Kennebec granite will rear its lordly head above his peaceful grave, where after life’s fitfull fever he sleeps well.”
Year: 1950