Radio Script #57
Little Talks On Common Things
February 26, 1950
Always the old gives way before the new. Modern progress erases one l¥ one the ancient landmarks. How saddened, perhaps even angered, some of the people who lived in Waterville a century ago would now be if they could hear the humorous and satirical remarks about what has been called the old barnory on Front street. Yes, the old Armory is coming down. It has served its day long and well. In fact it was forced to labor long past its usefulness, and now it doesn’t even get a period of pensioned rest. Down it must come to make way for the speedy vehicles of a faster century. It is well for us to recall the eventful history of that old building, for what has been disparagingly called the old barnory was originally a church, and, to the everlasting credit of Waterville, be it recorded that it was an interdenominational church.
When the town of Winslow, including what is now Waterville, was incorporated in 1771 it became subject to the laws of Massachusetts governing all incorporated towns. Those laws required that every town support preaching and schooling. This new town was so poor, however, that several times it failed to raise the necessary money in town meeting to pay even an itinerant preacher, and twice legal action against the town had been taken. Early preaching by traveling ministers was held in the homes or, in warm weather, out in a field. In 1794 the town voted to build a meeting house on the east side of the river. Then controversy began. The people on the west side couldn’t see the justice of paying for a meeting house that they would have to cross an unbridged river to attend. But the eastsiders would have just as good grounds for complaint if the church were built on the west side. Meanwhile, with no church yet erected on either side, Rev. Joshua Cushman was called to the town as its first settled minister. His ordination took place under a large evergreen booth on the Plains. Where was Mr. Cushman to have his meeting house?
Harmony finally reigned when in March, 1796 the town voted to build a meeting house on the hill near or in Ticonic Village, and to carry out the previous vote to build one also on the east side. Then one of Waterville’s most prominent pioneers, Dr. Obadiah Williams, entered the picture. He offered to give the town the land which is now City Hall Park, or Castonguay Square. On that land Dr. Williams envisioned a school house, a meeting house and a court house. Controversy raged afresh between those who wanted the church up on the heights toward Oakland and those who favored the river-bank site offered by Dr. Williams. While the westsiders fought it out, the eastsiders got their church, so that the first church building in town was that which later became the Winslow Congregational Church on Lithgow Street. Finally a church was built on the land given by Dr. Williams and was ready for use in June, 1798. It stood very nearly Where the present City Hall now stands. At first it had no basement, but for many years stood on wooden blocks. It faced south toward What is now Common Street. That building, erected 152 years ago, is the building that” now must come down. In its earliest days the meeting house was available not only to Mr. Cushman, but also to the various religious societies, whenever one of them could bring a preacher to the community. Congregationalists, Unitarians, Calvinist Baptists, Free Will Baptists and Episcopalians had equal privileges in its use.
The old building was described by Mrs. Chaplin, wife of Colby’s first President, in her 1818 diary: “The people of this village” — it had already been separately incorporated as Waterville sixteen years before “the people of this village do not seem to be such ignorant, uncultivated beings as some have imagined, nor are they destitute of places of worship. We were happy to find here two meeting houses, though neither of them elegantly or completely furnished. The one in the village” — this is the old barnory she is talking about – “is about as large as ours in Danvers. The frame is good and the floor pews are finished, but the gallery is still without pews. On our first Sabbath here Mr. Chaplin was asked to speak in the meeting house, and he did so; preaching on John 3:16.” In the early days town meetings were held in the meeting houses, and here Waterville’s first separate town meeting was held on July 26, 1802. After the present churches were built and the edifice held fewer religious services, it continued to be the town hall, and then the city hall, until the present city building was erected in 1902, when the old building was moved to its present site on Front Street.
What stories the silent walls of the old Armory could tell if those walls could speak. Echoes of stern Puritan, hell-fire sermons, three hours long, the milder preaching of the Unitarians with their belief in the perfectability of man, the harangues of Federalists, Whigs, Know Nothings, Democrats, Republicans, Abolitionists, and Sons of Temperance; the call to arms for 1812, for the Mexican War, for answer to Father Abraham’s plea for troops to put down the rebellion, the laugh of the minstrel, the pathos of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the music of the dance, the tread of marching feet. On both its sites the old Armory has seen the whole history of Waterville for a hundred and fifty years. Now like the old brick and stone block where the post office stands,.like the giant elms that once covered the heater-piece in front of the Elmwood Hotel, like the ancient 18th century house where the Central Fire Station now stands, like the lofty tower of the Unitarian Church, the old armory too must go the ~ way of all things temporal and transient. In its passing let us give it a last fond salute.
How many homes in this vicinity cherish relics from old Fort Halifax? Allen Hackett of :Fairfield writes me: “In the spring of 1938 Anson Brackett, hoeing in his garden, turned up a pear-shaped stone with a knob on the small end, such as was used for a plumb bob in the old days when metal was more precious. The location of Mr. Brackett’s garden must be very close to the northeast blockhouse of the old fort, so there is a very good chance that it was a tool used in trueing up the palisades and block houses.” Mr. Hackett also tells me that there are remains of the old wells of the fort under the piazza of Woodbury’s store. Now who else has information about remains or relics of Fort Halifax?
Two weeks ago we referred to President Truman’s plea for plant and equipment expansion by industry, and we called attention to the fact that the money simply isn’t available for such expansion unless something is done about the tax structure. Last week we emphasized the waste and extravagance with which government agencies spend your money_ Few people appreciate fully the seriousness of this problem. Unless industry can so operate as to provide the means to reproduce itself, our great industrial machine will gradually shrivel up and die. What do we mean by reproducing itself? This is what we mean. Machinery, vehicles, buildings wear out or become obsolete. They have to be replaced just the way you eventually must replace that pre-war automobile of yours. Probably you’re luckier than I and have already bought your new car
Industry must constantly make similar replacements, and when it does that now it faces just the same problem that you face with the new car — greatly increased prices. You remember the answer which Alice got in Wonderland when she asked about running to get somewhere. “Here”, she was told, “we have to run as hard as we can to stay where we are. Modern American industry must do better than that. It must, as President Truman said, not merely replace worn-out plant and equipment; it must also expand with additional plant and equipment. Now where can the money be found for such expansion? It must come out of What the left-wing critics of American free enterprise think is so terrible, in other words from profits. If an industry can earn a profit, it not only can, but invariably does, plough a good part of that profit back into the industry for expansion and new equipment. That creates more jobs, distributes more payrolls to buy more consumer goods. One of the simplest facts of economics is that national prosperity depends upon the people’s ability to buy. It is assured payrolls that stabilize that ability.
Now all this cannot be done if industry has to submit to what is perilously close to confiscatory taxation. Every important industry gets its capital from the sale of stocks and bonds, and investors are getting increasingly vexed at the injustice of seeing dividends taxed twice, first against the corporation, then against the investor himself.
What can the average citizen do about it? How can he make it plain that he realizes the stake he has in the welfare of American industry even if he doesn’t have a dollar invested in its capital? He can register his belief whenever he has a chance to vote. But he says, I am just one person, and a little fellow at that. My vote doesn’t count.
That is not true. Your vote does count. And you never know when it will count decisively. Thomas Jefferson was elected President by a single vote in the electoral college; so was John Quincy Adams. Rutherford B. Hayes was like-wise elected President by one vote; then his election was contested and referred to an electoral commission. In the commission he again won by a single vote.
One solitary vote in the U. S. Congress gave statehood to California, Idaho, Oregon, Texas and Washington. The single vote of William Pitt Fessenden of Maine saved a President from impeachment. The Selective Service bill of World War II passed the House of Representatives by just one vote. In 1944 one additional Democratic vote in each of Ohio’s 8,800 voting precincts would have defeated Senator Taft, and in 1948 one additional Republican vote in each of the same precincts would have carried the Dewey.
Sometimes this significance of a single vote comes home to a little fellow, as it once came home to this little fellow who is speaking to you tonight. In the spring of 1912 I was one of a few seniors at Colby College who ardently supported President Taft for renomination by his party. The Taft organization in my home town knew that and called me home to vote in the caucus which was to elect a delegation to the state convention. I arrived at the voting place just as the vote was being counted. Chagrined that I had arrived too late to vote, I was greatly relieved when the vote was announced as a tie and the chairman declared that another vote would be taken. Then the Roosevelt forces ganged up on me, but it was no use. I knew what I had come for. And, believe it or not, the second ballot elected the Taft delegation by a majority of just one vote. And to make it an even better story, that delegation was just enough to swing the vote in the state convention, instructing the Maine delegation for Taft. Your one, small vote does count.
Year: 1950