Radio Script #122
Little Talks On Common Things
November 11, 1951
I s there no way to stop, or at least di mi ni sh, the waste and extravagance of our government? LIsten to this glaring example. The War Assets Administra~ tion had some storage space going to was1e In an Army carq> In the Middle West. The Commodity Credit Corporation was, at the same time, looking for space to store fl va to ei ght mil Ii on bushe Is of gral n. FI va men, who knew of the sf tua … tlon and who also knew how slow and stupid the officials of different government agencies are in dealing with each other — those five men got busy. They first leased the ArTttf camp space from the War Assets Administration. Then they tum … ed around and sub leased it to the CommodltyCredi t Corporati on, at a profit of $382,000. The whole proceeding took them less than a week. A right smart prof I t for a week’s wC!>rk.
Now don’t miss the main point of this story. That space didn’t belong to the War Assets Administration; it belonged to the United States of America, and what is the Uni ted States? It Is you and I, the peep Ie who pay the taxes to buy the space originally. That army camp surplus storage space belonged to you and me. The inefficiency, the callous Indifference, of the men who operate our government agencies, mi Iked you -and me and the other taxpayers of America of $382,000 for property that we already owned.
It is Impossible to keep up with the numerous alphabetic agencies that now Infest Washington. How we used to laugh about them back in the 1930’s, the WPA, the NYA, the NRA and a few others. The cartoonists had a field day with !hem. Humorous verses and witty stories about them went the rounds. NOt these expand .. ing and overlapping agencies are so many and so costly they aren’t funny any longer.
Recently U. S. News and Worl d Report pub II shed a two page spread under the heading ”Washington Alphabet”. The magazine makes no attempt to gIve a co~lete list, for in the Pentagon alone there are more than 1,500 approved abbreviations. 50 U. S. News Ii sts only those abbrevi at Ions wh I ch the average ci tl zen ought to know in order to understand dally newspaper accounts. The I ist contains only 113 of the thousands of alphabetical agencies which infest our government. Many of them are of course faml liar to a II of us. We a II know the Wacs, the Waves and the Wafs. We have heard a lot about the RFC (the Reconstruction Finance .Corporation) and the NLRl (National Labor Relations Board), Right here In Water … vi lie we have a unit of the ROTC, and this radlo.station is subject to control by the FCC (the Federal Comnunl cat I ons Convni 55 Ion).
But how many of you ever heard of the FNMA (Federa I Natl ona I Mortgage Association), entirely separate from the HLBB (Home Loan Bank Board), which is In turn quite separate from the HHFA (Housing and Home Finance Agency), which again has nothing to do with the PHA (Public Housing Administration)? This alphabet soup’has become so thoroughly stirred that sometimes exactly the same set of letters refers to two different agencies. For instance, DMA may mean Defense Manpower Admi n I strati on or Defense MI nerals Adml n Istrati on. OSC may refer to the Office of Secretary of Commerce or the Office of 5011 Conservation. When GPO Isn’t the General Post Office It is the Government Printing Office.
But why go on? U. 5. News po I nts out that these agencl es I many of wh I ch we have never even heard of, will spend 69 billion of our dollars between July 1, 1951 and June 30,1952. The s<:,d truth is simply this: our government is trying o do so many things which private enterprise once did and might stl II do, and is creating so many conflicting and overlapping agencies to do them, that it is Impossible for the right hand to know what the left hand is doing.
You will recall that last winter I devoted several broadcasts to the entrancing diary of William Bryant, Fairfield pioneer. I became curious to know where Wi I II am Bryant is buried. No one of the living relatives seemed to be sure. So I made the rounds of the rural burying grounds in Fairfield. thought pe rhaps t”h i s grand 0 I d pi onee r of the town lay in the Ii tt Ie cemete ry at the Junction of the Skowhegan and Fairfield Center roads, not far from his home between there and Pishon’s Ferry. But I could not find the marked grave of any Bryant there. The same proved true of the little cemeteries In the northern and western parts of the town.
M:lanwhi Ie I thought I would take a look at the grave of Wi IIlam’s son Cyrus Bryant, who himself lived to the age of 85 and whom older people stili living in Fa i rfle I d remember very we II. Severa I persons tol d me they were sure Cyrus Bryant” is buried in the village cemetery at Fairfield. So one day this summer I found the graves of Cyrus Bryant and his wi fe Olive, in the older part of the Fairfield Village Cemetery. Cyrus outlived the Vassalboro girl who became his wife by more than eleven years. She had died in 1892, whi Ie h~ lived untl I 1903. It must have been a great blow to Cyrus and Olive when they lost their only son. For beside them In the cemetery lot lies Fred L., son of C. F. and O. P. Bryant, died November 24,1886, aged 25 years.
What” was my surprise and delight when, a few lots away from that of Cyrus, encountered two other headstones, marking graves I had been seeking allover Fairfield. One of those stones reads: “William Bryant, died June 15, 1867, aged 86 years, 5 months.” The other stone has this Inscription: IILydia, wife of Wi 1- laim Bryant, died May 22, 1858, aged 77 years, 3 months, 22 days”.
So quite fittingly, right there at Kendal Is Mills lies Wi IIlam Bryant, not far from the old town hall whose records he knew so we II, and even nearer to the bridge where his wife took toll on a long-ago Thanksgiving Day, and nearer still to the highway over which he drove the youngest son Haley down to Water- vi lie, to start him on the long voyage to Australia from which Haley would never return. And beside him lies lydia, who had a system of predicting the corn ha,….. vest, who shed Tears as she darned Cyrus’ socks for his draft ca II to the Aroostook War, and who died clutching a tintype of wandering son Haley in her hand.
They have lain in the Fairfield Cemetery a long time now — she for 93 years, he for 84. They were never wealthy, never prominent, scarcely known olftside their own community. But they were the sTaunch, honest, religious folk which has made Maine character a mark of distinction allover the world.
It is easy for us to consider the present Time as a very special time of troubles. With The long-drawn-out, fruitless struggle In Korea, with the vastly mounting national debt, with the great burden of increaSing taxes, we do Indeed have plenty of Troub Ie. am not re lenti ng one iota on what I haw sal d and shall keep on saying about the senseless, almost criminal waste In federal expenditures. BUT I will admit that for myself, as well as for all ofyol:J, It may help us feel a liTtle beTter to take a brief, backward look.
Thl ngs do seem preTty tough for us here I n Waterville in 1951. But just consider for a moment what was happening here seventeen years ago In 1934. That was when I i vi ng was so cheap — porter house steaks 29 cents a pound, a suit of clothes $20, a good rent $25 a month. Yes, 1934 was at the height of the great depressi on. Mr. lewis Whipple, who was treasurer of the City of Watervi lie In that year, has shown me a page of the Watervf lie Senti ne I for September 5, 1934. On that single page are revealed that the city was nearly bankrupt, that the mayor had just died, that the previous winter had ki lied thousands of central Maine’s app Ie trees, and 1″hat the workers at the lockwood MI lis were on strl ke.
The city’s Total apor:’oP<tiatlon for that year was $708,498, co~ared with the 1951 appropriation of $1,200,000. Ninety thousand dollars, or nearly one eighth of the whole appropriation for 1934 was assigned to the relief of the poor and the unemployed. In addition to the relatively huge figure of $50,000 for the support of the poor, the city made a speclal,unclassifled appropriation of $40,000 labeled Welfare and Unemployment Relief. To make the situation worse, on September 1,1934, with five months of the fiscal year still to go, the appropriation for Welfare and Unemployment Relief had been overdrawn by more than $5,000. I n seven months of the fl sca I year the cI ty had spent, to assist the poor and unemployed, a total of $117,000 against a twelve month appropriation of $90,000 plus three thousand In sundry credits. The depression had really hit Watervi lie hard.
Which condition is preferable, 1934 or 1951, Is not easy to say. Perhaps someday we shall fl nd the wisdom I n both our politi ca I and our I ndustrl a I ‘i fe so that we shall not have to choose either a depression resulting from a deflated artl flclal balloon, or a time of Inflation caused by lavish government spending.
When one passes any of Waterville’s public schools these days, he realizes that the bicycle Is by no means an obsolete and defunct vehicle. There are hundreds of the two-wheel speeders In the possession of Watervi lie kids. Time was, however, when the bicycle was the fashionable mode of travel for young and old al ike. On September 1, 1896 the Waterville Mal I announced: “The Bangor and Aroostook R.R. has adopted a new schedule of prices for carrying bicycles. The charges range from 10 cents to a dollar, according to the distance the wheel is transported. ”
On September 7 the Mall recorded: “Bicycles were numerous at the Repub … I ican Rally In Benton Falls last night. Although it was a very dark night, the bike riders were out in large numbers.” I n one I ssue of the Mall , I n the autumn of 1896, a rura I correspondent waxed eloquent on the subject of bicycles. He wrote: “On the main road In the summer bicycles are almost as numerous as teams. Every few minutes a scorcher from town whizzes past with a suddenness to make one’s heart leap In his throat.
Where do the old wheels go? They go to the farmers’ boys and girls. The farther out of town one gets the more antiquated the bicycles he encounters. Rickety old frames, some of them wi th sol I drubber, . rather than pneumatic, tl res -wheels In the height of style ten years ago, but no tOtnsman would be seen riding one today.” How the times change! Out on the farms today you wi II see the latest m0- tor cars, and only In a big city are you likely to see a Model T Ford or Jack Benny’s Maxwe I I •
It Is a long time since I said anything about the old narrow guage rat Iroads. was rem’inded of them recently when a friend of mine showed me his rather costly memento of one of the old two-foot I ines. His not so fondly remelYbered item is a thousand doll ar bond of the Wi scasset, Watervi lie and Farmi ngton Rat I road Company of Maine. It is a first mortgage five per cent gold bond, issued on July 1,1901 and failing due In thirty years on July 1, 1931. The issue was handled by the Real Estate Trust Company of Philadelphia, at whose office the Interest was payable on July 1 and January 1 of each year.
This bond originally carried 60 numbered coupons of $25 each. FI fty-four of those coupons are stili attached to It, for on Iy six of them were ever honored for payment. The road stopped at the east bank of the Kennebec I n Wi ns low, never went on its I ntended way to Farml ngton, and before January, 1905 the company had to stop payment on Its 1901 bonds. As tl me went by that part of the railroad which operated between Wiscasset and Albion became less and less profitable. As a result the 1901 investor lost whatewr he had paid for the bond, less the one hundred fi fty dollars he had received for the first six coupons.
And In expected Interest return he lost all the other 54 coupons or $1,350. As a matter of fact that WI scasset, Watervt lie and Farmi ngton bond, wi th its beautifully embossed borders and picture of a WW&F train, all steamed up and ready to go, was part of a mi I I i on dollar issue. Fi ve hundred of the bonds were of the thousand dollar denomination, 800 were for $500 and 1,000 of them were for $100. There are probab Iy a lot of folks In Central Maine who have reason to reca II the 0 I d narrow guage ra I I roads with someth i ng othe r than senti menta I memories.
Year: 1951