Radio Script #62
Little Talks On Common Things
April 2, 1950
I suspect that, hidden away in the attics of many Central Maine homes, are numerous old-time school books. For instance, I have an arithmetic printed by the well known firm of Smith and Sale at Portland in 1811. It is old enough to have a usage that appears very strange to every person now living.
That is the use of the connna instead of the dot as a decimal point, to show the division especially between dollars and cents.
Mr. C. E. Glover, retired superintendent of the Waterville schools, has shown me a school book that is even older than myoId arithmetic. It is a reader owned by Samuel Bancroft of Pepperill, Massachusetts, and the owner has written on the fly-leaf the following words: “Samuel Bancroft’s book and property. Price 2/6. Pepperill, January 8, 1811.”
The book was eight years old when it came into Samuel’s possession, for it was published in Worcester in 1803 by one of the most noted distributors of books in the early days of our Republic — Isaiah Thomas, Jr.. The. title page anno~nced “PUbLished aceerc1ing ·to act of,C<::mgress by Isaiah ThoIiias:, Jr. proprietor of the copyright. Sold’wnolesaleand retail by him in Worcester, and by all the princi.pal booksellers in the united States.”
More easily recognized by the modern generation is the name of the printer, E. Merriam and Company, Brookfield. That is the original plant of the famous Merriam family whose business continues to this day as G. & C. Merriam and Company, Springfi.eld, Mass. Every modern schoolboy knows them as the publishers of all authentic editions of the Webster dictionaries.
The author of this old reader, now owned by Mr. Glover, was Daniel Adams, who it seems wrote such other texts as “The Scholar’s Arithmetic” and “The Thorough Scholar”. To this 1803 book he gave the title, “The understanding Reader, or Knowledge Before Oratory; .. being a new selection of lessons suited to the understanding and capacities of youth, and designed for their improvement in reading, in the def~nition of words, and in spelling.”
This book is no primer, no first introduction to reading. Yet the modern educational psychologist would hardly call it “suited to the understanding and capacities of youth”. Just note this passage on “Storms” which young Sam Bancroft evidently had to tackle:
“Seeing in the carpet of variegated vegetables which cover the earth approximate cause in the warmth of the sun and the moisture from the clouds, man went from these to an acquaintance with that perpetual circulation subsisting between the ocean and the mountains through the instrumentality of the atmosphere, and by the medicine of the rivers to the ocean again. But the philosophy of this vivifying phenomenon is spoken of as inscrutable.”
That is tough reading for anybody, to say nothing of a boy in the old-time common schools.
The selected readings in this old book are indeed of wide variety. Animals are given due recognition; there are selections on the beaver, the camel, the lion, the tiger, the fox and the elephant. There are five essays on “The Hostilities of Animals”, which come’ to the conclusion that man is the most rapacious of all animals — a conclusion that the second World War has tragically borne out.
From the Bible is taken the entire book of Esther, Paul’s defense before Agrippa, and the story of the Resurrection. Some of the sketches are very practical, like “On the Boiling of Potatoes” and “A Surprising CUre for the Gout”.
But by far the largest number of selections are the moral essays for which all the old readers, even through the time of the mid-century McGuffie’s, were famous. Some of the titles are “Life is a Flower”, “Rules for Moderating our Anger”, “Frailty of Life” and “Neighbor Winrow’s Advice to Haymakers on Drinking”.
Users of school books a century ago commonly inscribed some appropriate rhyme within the covers. Sam Bancroft was no exception. On the back fly-leaf he has written: “Steel not this book for fear of shame, for in it is the owner’s name”. And here in the book, one of whose three major claims was to teach spelling, Sam Bancroft has spelled steal “s tee 1”.
How many of you have ever seen a three dollar bill? Mr. Glover has one.
It is a bank note issued by the Phoenix Bank of Hartford, Connecticut in 1818.
It is one of those old plain paper bank notes, printed on one side only, with the number of the note and the signatures of officials written in ink. The denomination -~ three dollars — is a part of the original printing, showing clearly that such three dollar notes were regular currency.
Quite by coincidence, soon after we had seen Mr. Glover:’ s specimen, we encountered evidence that three dollar bills were still in regular circulation as late as 1855.
Editor Drew of the Rural Intelligencer — the Augusta newspaper Where, you will recall, we found the editorial against stoves — well, Editor Drew cautioned his subscribers about how to send him the money for their subscriptions.
His rates were $1.50 a year if paid in advance, $1.75 on six month’s credit, and $2.00 on a year’s credit. The editor said: “Let us understand the terms; then there will be no partiality and no cause for complaint. The great discount is made for the sake of encouraging payments in advance, which are best for all concerned.”
So on February 27, 1855 the Rural Intelligencer carried the following notice:
“Some of our subscribers r in forwarding us their nine shillings for a year’s subscription, have enclosed in their letter a single dollar bill and fifty cents in silver, paying the postage in advance of 3 cents. But in every such case our faithful P. M. has noticed that the weight of the coin subjects the letter to double postage, and therefore has obliged us to pay five cents more. When one subscriber cannot unite with another so as to send us three dollars in one bill, they should send fifty cents in P. o. stamps.”
There indeed is evidence of the customary circulation of three dollar bills as late as 1855. Does anyone know when they finally went out of existence?
Now let’s spend a minute or two with that topic of federal government spending, to which we have referred before. When. the present fiscal year ends on June 30, 1950 our government will have spent $46 billion in these twelve months. The biggest business in the world today is the govermnent of the united states.
Where does this money go? $17 billion goes for pensions, subsidies, and other benefits paid directly to individual citizens. $10 billion goes for government ,salaries, $4 billion for interest, and $2 billion for loans.
A factor too often overlooked is that the govermnent today is the nation’s biggest business customer. This year it will spend $10 billion for goods.
That is business pump priming on a gigantic scale.
Now to people who get from the government more than they put back in taxes, this is all to the good. But to millions, like many of you who are listening to this program, govermnent spending is only a drain. There are nly two ways to meet these huge government expenses; higher taxes or bigger deficits. Somewhere there is a limit even to a government’s ability to keep borrowing and to keep piling up deficits. Hence the threat of higher taxes will linger on for many years unless expenditures are cut.
But that is not all of the story. The more things govermnent does, the more goods it buys, the more surely is every increase a step toward the socialistic state. The piper always calls the tune, and it is getting to be alarmingly true, in widening areas of life, that the govermnent in Washington plays the pipe for all of us.
By this time our listeners know that I am quite a railroad fan. My friend Gene Winslow of the Maine Central will also tell you that I have a high regard for railroad labor — for the engineers and firemen, the conductors and trainmen, the· section hands and shop crews, and by no means least for the employees in the ticket offices, including my friend of long standing, Mr. McCrillis, and the courteous young lady who assists him in the Waterville office.
Tonight I want to tell you why I have a high regard for the labor organizations of the railroad men. Coercion, whether by labor or by management and both have sometimes used it — is not the American way. Volition, free bargaining, and the spirit of compromise must be our guiding principle if we are to escape eventual government seizure of properties and the socialization~ of industry.
As David Lawrence has shrewdly pointed out, the Railroad Labor Act, whatever may be its faults, and it doubtless has some, is still the best piece of labor legislation ever written in America. In substance it calls for impartial investigation and fact-finding. It provides that work cannot be stopped while these procedures are being carried on.
Why not extend these provisions to all major industries whose shut-down imperils national health and safety? If any labor union or any employer rejects what public opinion considers a fair settlement proposed by a truly impartial fact-finding board, then and only then is seizure or compulsory arbitration justified as a measure of last resort. Railroad labor and management have set a pattern Which the whole nation may well. follow.
In recent weeks we have said a lot about old-time doings in Kennebec County and in mentioning the old stores, the old city reports, and other items we have given attention to a lot of things that are now no more. Some of those things deserve special mention all by themselves. For instance, there is the fringed-top surrey so lovingly revived in the musical comedy “Oklaho~”.
As late in our history as my own boyhood days, the use of a fringed-top surrey was a mark of distinction. Of course anyone who owned a horse and buggy was one notch in the social scale above the mere pedestrian, but the limit of most families was the two-seated democrat wagon, from which both seats were removable, converting it into a cart.
The surrey, however, was limousine deluxe, a two-seated pleasure carriage, whose body was not a plain box, but had stylish cutouts before each seat. In place of the plain wooden sides to the seats, there was open grillwork. The dashboard was low and curved with a gay, jaunty air. The fringed top, supported by four steel rods, afforded protection from the sun, but not from the rain. A man didn’t use his surrey if it looked like rain. Even if he had rain curtains to put on the sides, he knew they were scanty protection from Maine showers. Yes, fifty years ago, the surrey was an important symbol of the amenities of life.
Then there were the old fashioned woven hammocks ~ Advertisements of them used to fill several pages of the Sears Roebuck catalog. Here is the actual wording of one of those ads: “Woven as close as the finest tapestry, with all the beauty and color in design of an oriental rug. Spreader at head and foot. Fine heavy fringe. 40 x 80 inches. Upholstered and enameled button tufted throwback tassel bar. Price $ 2 • 50.”
A lot of people are glad that rocking chairs have not entirely disappeared, though they are getting more and more scarce in the furniture stores.
We think of rocking chairs as the peculiar perquisite of women, especially those travelling rockers which work their way clear across a room while the occupant knits and rocks. Let me remind you that a lot of men also like rocking chairs. One of them recently wrote to a country newspaper in Maine: “There are so many uncontrolled alarms and diversions in the world today that a man needs the gentle, soporific movement of a favorite rocking chair to keep his balance.”
Did you ever hear of the Staper Society S tap e r? Well,’ Staper is one of those telescope words, made up of the first letters of a long name. In this case it is the society to Advance Pie Eating Right. The Stapers want to bring back the old custom of the way the real, old-time New Englanders used to eat pie. Say the Stapers, “Most people have the point of the wedge toward them when they eat a piece of pie. That is not right. You should have the point directly away from you. Start with the outside crust first. Then you finish off with a good big mouthful of the best part of the pie.”
Year: 1950