Radio Script #120
Little Talks On Common Things
October 28, 1951
When I talked recently about my old time visits to the North Waterford Fair, had no idea it was still called the “World’s Fair”. Mr. J. E. Shields, RFO NO.3, Waterville, assures me that it is. He sends me a newspaper ad of this year 1951 which reads: “Now hear this! At North Waterford — World’s Fair.Friday and Saturday, September 28 and 29. Farmer’s Day Friday, Horse Pulling at 1:00 P.M. Midway — Shows — Freddie’s Beano. Dance both nites to Judkins’ Orchestra.”
Mr. Shields tells me that he too often attended the North Waterford Fair, but like me he has not attended it since it was moved off Main Street.
A good friend has taken me to task for talking in too general terms about government spending. ‘~hy don’t you get down to brass tacks and be specific about it?” he asks. Alright, here goes. I suggest we can get a long very well without government loans for snake farms and fur ranches. I question the value of American tax-payers providing ski-lifts in Austria, Cadillac cars for officials in Athens, and lavish entertainment of visiting delegations of all sorts from foreign lands, with hundreds of our own officials getting in free on the food, the wine, and the shows.
We are getting so accustomed to the Santa Claus state that we cannot see the harm it is doing to the very people it seeks to help. Not long ago the London Economist, by no means a Tory paper, made a study In England of the Income and outgo of low income families — those receiving less than $1,400 a year. That careful investigation revealed whi Ie the handout benefits of Britain’s welfare state amount to 57 shillings a week, on an average, for each of these low income fami lies, the taxes required to pay for those benefits cost the very same, families 67 shillings a week. In other words they could ha’ye bought for themse I ves the very same handouts for ten shillings a week less than they were paying in taxes to get the handouts.
We are Indeed a very rich country, undeniably richer than Britain, but ordinary conmen sense tells us that there Is a saturation point somewhere. Even to come anywhere near ba lanei ng the present national budget, the Treasury needs ten billion dollars of additional revenue. Now suppose the Congress decided on the inconeel vab Iy drastic measure of confiscating all income above $10,000. Even that unheard-of measure would yield only 3! billions. To get the needed ten billions would mean confiscation of every dollar of everybody’s income above $4,000 a year.
I cannot be too emphatic about this. Reckless government spending with its consequent burden of taxation Is drying up the sourees of new investment, is giving to self-perpetuating government agencies more and more power, is taking away from the peop Ie the chance to provide for their 0ld age. Every year the government is claiming a larger and larger share of the national Income for Its own governmenta I purposes. If there is any truth in the maxim that the best government is that which governs least, we have a government that grows steadily worse and worse. Free Institutions died in Nazi Germany because the state became all powerful. That must not happen In America. It will not happen If the conmon people, the ordinary voters of America, will resist the somethlng-fornothing fallacies of the Santa Claus state.
A long time ago on this program I said something about big trees. I have recently learned that a new claimant has appeared fonthe title of Biggest Tree In the World. It is the Tule cypress of Santa Maria del Tule, six miles from Oaxaca in Southern Mexico. It is so large that 28 persons, touching fingertips on outstretched arms, can barely encircle it. Five feet above the ground its girth Is 113 feet? and its diameter is 36 feet.
The Tule cypress makes no claim to being the tallest tree, because it is actually broader than it is tall. Its height is 140 feet, but its branches spread for 150 feet. Many experts believe the Tule cypress to be the world’s oldest living tree, perhaps as much as 6,000 years old. It has outlived conquests, revolutions, natural cataclysms, even civilizations. There in southern Mexico may today exist the 0ldest living thing on earth.
Through the courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Vose of Waterville I have seen some very old papers from the town of Swanville. That pretty little town near Belfast was Mrs. Vose’s ancestraI home, and 134 years ago her great-grandfather Jacob Earres was the Swanville tax collector. The fact is that in 1817 there was no Swanville. It was Swan Plantation, not an incorporated town, and as a plantation had no local taxes, but under the laws of that time its Inhabitants did have to pay state and county taxes. So In the spri ng of 1817 the assessors, James Leach and Joseph Smart issued the following warrant to Jacob Eames, Collector of Taxes of Swan Plantation:
“In the name of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, you are required to levy and collect of the several persons named in the list herewith committed unto you, each one his respective proportion of the tax or assessment of $21 .23 granted and agreed upon by the General Court at Boston on the 16th day of February, 1817, for defraying the necessary charges of securing, protecting and defending the same.”
Jacob Eanes collected the whole amount, and among other papers I was shown the receipt for $21.23 issued to him by the treasurer of the Commonwealth, Daniel Sargent, on December 12, 1817.
The lists committed with the warrant are two, both in the same little black book. One list is the state tax, the other the county tax. I am sure you will be interested to know how much individual taxpayers had to pay. The basis of both state and county tax consisted of three factors: polls, real estate and personal property. The poll tax was five cents for the county and three cents for the state. The man who paid the biggest tax in Swan Plantation in 1817 was John Brown 3rd, whose county tax was 51 cents and his state tax 34 cents, a total tax of 85 cents. Most of the taxpayers paid less than 50 cents, a few of them only the combined poll tax of eight cents.
Collector Eames seemed to have made a bit on the county tax. He collected $32.38 and turned over to the county treasurer $30.68, apparently receiving a conmlssi on of $1.70 for rounding up that tax collection from more than a hundred different taxpayers. I think somebody overcharged Jacob Eames for his rum, for a receipt dated in 1804, the very year when the account books of an Augusta merchant show that rum was selling for a dollar a gallon, reveals that Jacob paid $5.25 for 3 gallons of West Indies rum. There ought not to have been fifty cents a gallon difference in the price between Augusta and Belfast. Somebody got cheated.
Most interesting of all the Swanville papers which Mrs. Vose showed me was a letter written in 1803 by a son of Jacob Eames from Providence College -not the present college of that name, but the much older Rhode Island Institution that is now Brown University. The subject of the lettar Is the same as that received even today by hundreds of fathers with boys In college, but the language would startle a modern youth quite as much as it would his father. Suppose everyone knows that, early in the nineteenth century, boys and girls, young men and young women, writing letters to their parents, followed carefully the Emily Post rules of that day, which required a very formal and dignified style even in the most intimate letters. Young Eames’ letter is worth your hearing just as he wrote it; so here it is:
“Honored Sir: In a mixture of prosperity and very distressing adversity, seize this opportunity to Inform you that I enjoy a tolerable measure of bodily health, though very far from being so In my mind, and I entertain the pleasing hope that this letter will find you In the same enjoyment. I have been very happy, as after much trouble and pains, I found myself at last In college. But alas! Money is wanting, and I am afraid the want for a little will ruin rrPf future happiness and prosperity. When I set out “to go to college, I laid out “to fit myself and maintain myself in college for one year. I should have done “this if I could only get my Just dues. But my uncle has not been in a capacity to pay me but a very little. Consequently I am behind two quarters, amounting with other things to not less than $70. The first quarter I paid with money got by keeping school. At college a year is divided into three parts called quarters, and it is the law of the college that each scholar shall square off at the end of each quarter. But they had so much pity on me as to wait until the exploration of this Quarter, and there is no probability that they will give way any longer. What can I do? I am without friends to afford me any assistance. A kind and affectionate parent you have always been to me. I think you did in some measure approbate my going to college. Indeed I did not expect the need of ass I stance so soon, but if you ever planned to give me any assistance, It could never be more seasonable than now. You yourself must see that I stand in indispensable need of help immediately. A part would be better than none, though I believe the college will demand the whole or expel me. I have briefly stated my circumstances, and I presume you will find them as I have represented them. The time my payment will be out is the latter part of September. I hope, sir, you will not fail me at that time. My most sincere regards to mamma and brothers and sisters. Yours affectionately, J. Eames.”
As I have mentioned before, letters at that time had no envelopes. en what would have been “the open face of the folded letter Is written the address: To Jacob Eames, Belfast, Maine. Then down in the left hand corner are these words: “To be forwarded with dispatch.”
Now comes the Ironical touch to this different kind of touch. Postage in those days was paid by the receiver, not the sender. The postage on this letter is clearly given as twenty cents. So the 0ld man actually had to pay twenty cents for the privilege of being hit up by his son for $70. Old Jacob send the money? We wish we could say that he did, for we think the boy wrote a very appealing letter. But 148 passing years since 1803 have dimmed the record. We do not know what response young Eames received in his very distressing circumstances that made him not so well in mind.
Sixty years after that letter from a college boy, S. M. Miller, Jacob Cunningham and Miles Stackpole issued a warrant for a special town meeting in Swanville on November 21, 1863. The purpose, as stated In the warrant, was to see what sum of money the town wou Id vote to raise to pay bounty to vol unteers that should enlist to make up the town’s quota of ten under President Lincoln’s call for vol unteers. The tatn voted to pay each Volunteer $200.
Now remember that the Civil War had then been going on for two and a half years. Gettysburg had been fought, the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued, and of course more than one Swanville youth had already joined the Union forces. Yet, just before Thanksgiving In 1863 that tiny Hancock community had to furnish ten more men for the army. The evil War, judged by its impersonal statistics, was a mere skirmish compared with today’s titanic combats. But it was blood and tears to communities like Swanville. Those ten who made up that November quota were just as precious to mothers and wives and sweethearts as are our own boys today.
Year: 1951