Radio Script #138
Little Talks On Common Things
March 2, 1952
A fool and his money are soon parted, but doesn’t everybody know what happens to his money? Wei I~ I wonder. Do you know what happens to the money wh i ch the government takes from you in taxes?
Recently one of the poll i ng servi ces took a survey of the country on th is question: How much of the people’s money — your money does the federal government p I an to spend dur i ng the current year end i ng June 30, 1952? Thirty four per cent had no idea at a I I and wou I dn ‘t even venture a guess. Th i rtyeight per cent made guesses of less than five billion dollars. Of that number, more than a hundred persons guessed about a mi II ion dollars. Only 4 per cent came close, with the highest guess 75 bil lion. Actually Congress has appropriated over 91 bi II ions for the present fiscal year.
Right now every wage earner in the U. S. is working two days a week to pay local, state and federal taxes. Anything that has cost you two days wages a week, that has sky rocketed your living expenses, that has made your dollar worth only 47 cent’s, is very definitely your business. It is your money that is being used. You may need it badly one of these days. You have every right to insist that, if you must part with it, it shall be used prudently and wisely. A fool and his money are soon parted!
I want to turn aga in ton ight to one last reference to Dr. Ambrose Howard of Sidney. You have already heard about his wi II and about the long letter from his son in far away New Or leans. Now let us take a look at the ledger in which the doctor kept his accounts with his patients. That ledger covers the years from 1805 to 1815. It reveals much about the common il Is of the countryside, the treatment and the medicines, and most of all the fees charged and how they were collected.
Perhaps you reca II that I to Id you on a former broadcast that Mr. Arthur EI lis of Fairfield Ridge owns the very instrument with which Dr. Howard used to pull teeth. There were no dentists in rural Maine in 1805. In the smaller places, extraction of teeth was divided about equally between the physicians and the blacksmiths. In the larger vii lages, as in Western Europe, the barber was the usual tooth puller.
I was Interested to learn how much Dr. Howard charged for yanking out a tooth with that ugly gadget now in Mr. Ellis’ posseSSion. The ledger tells us, for repeated again and again is the item, “Extracting tooth, 17 cents”. Thanks to my investigation of many of those old account books, kept in the early years of the 19th Century, I can tel I you why that charge was the seemingly peculiar amOunt of 17 cents. Why wasn’t It in even fives, either fifteen or twenty cents, or better sti II, just a quarter of a dollar?
The answer is that it took people, especially in the rural districts, a long time to get used to the new U. S. currency. Ever since the Pi Igrims landed at Plymouth Rock, al I New England had traded everything In terms of pounds, shi I I ings and pence. When the new nation decided in 1787 to go on to a decimal system of currency, the ordinary merchants and dealers adopted a convenient system of evaluating the new money in terms of the old, and it was a system that had no re lat I on to the va I ues In i nternatl ona I exchange. The traders arbltrari Iy established a dollar as equivalent to six shillings. So in many of the old accounts you will find a given item charged at threeshillings, and perhaps even on the same page you will find the same item charged at 50 cents.
Now, one sixth of a dollar is 16 2/3 cents, and its nearest whole figure is 17 cents, Dr. Ambrose Howard charged 17 cents for pulling a tooth, because probab Iy for a hundred years the regular charge for that service had been one shilling. This shilling unit shows up In other services of the doctor. His usual charge for letting blood — one of the commonest treatments in his day — was 34 cents or two sh I II I ngs. The same was h Is charge for a bott Ie of e I Ixl r of paregoric, and his 50 cents for a bottle of Jaundice bitters was of course the customary three shillings. That charge of 17 cents a tooth was subject to a cut rate for a wholesale Job. In 1814 Dr. Howard charged Walter Parkman $1.25 for extracting al I of his upper teeth. That must have been quite an ordeal In those days of no anesthetics.
Dr. Howard brought a lot of chi Idren into the world. In many Sidney families he ushered in one every year for hal f a dozen or more years. He had a regular, flat fee of $3.00 for delivering a chi Id. The item, appearing more than a hundred times in his ten year ledger, Is recorded “Operation obstet. $3.00”. That Item appears In the account of James Thatcher, whose wife Dr. Howard attended every year from 1807 to 1812, and every time for every baby the charge is the same — $3.00. Mixed among the other Items charged to James Thatcher is this one: “Two visits to the school marm boarding at your house, $1 .00”.
The pain which some of those old time patients endured without anesthetics can be imagined when we note in the ledger that Dr. Howard charged John Matthews $2.00 for “examining a wound of the head, extracting the pieces of fractured cranium, and dressing the wound of your wife’s brother”. Samuel Hovey owed the doctor $3.00 for two operations, one extracting a tumor from his wife’s cheek, and the other for removing a tumor from his servant girl’s back. How did Dr. Howard’s patients pay their bi lis? As you would susgect, payment was seldom made in money. Currency — paper money — was deservedly unpopular. It was always at a discount from its printed value, and frequently It proved worth less. Specl e — gol d and sl I ver coins — represented the on I y respected money, and they were scarce. My great-grandmother Blake — of whom you have heard me speak on other occas ions — often to Id me that in her own childhood in the 1830’s the family would often go an entire year without seeing a go I d or s i I ve r co in.
I f Dr. Howard got few of his fees in money, he got them I n a Imost everything else. He credited Samuel Blaisdell with 67 cents for half a bushel of beans, and with $1.33 for pasturing a heifer; James Sturgis met part of his bi I I with $3.67 worth of mi II refuse boards. Ebenezer Morse worked off $3.50 of his bi II by chopping wood for the doctor, and also got credit of 38 cents for half a bushel of beets. For the extraction of those tumors from his wife and his hired girl, Samuel Hovey paid the whole $3.00 in English turnips. Jonas Pe rry owed the doctor $11 .76. He pa i d I t off, mak i n9 hats for the doctor and his boys. Obadiah Longley ran up a four year bill of $20.85. He pa I d I t by hand I ng over to the doctor 11 pounds of bacon, 22 pounds of cheese, a hay cutter, a bushel basket, a half bushel basket, 12 pounds of flax, a bushel of oats and 89 cents in cash. David Daniels apparently had no cash. After giving the doctor two bushels of wheat, three pecks of beets, 3 pair of sheep, and getting credit of 50 cents for driving those sheep to the river, Daniels gave the doctor his note for $4.43, the balance of the bi II. Lev i Moore apparent I y had a big fam i I Y that needed a lot of attent i on.
From 1808 to 1814 his bill totaled $34.26. The articles for which he was cred .. i ted in payment I nc I uded woo I, potatoes, vea I, an ewe sheep, corn, and two days harrowing with his oxen. During those six years he parted with just one dollar in cash, and when the doctor closed the ledger, Levi still owed $4.64. Some of the patients, like Joseph Clark, paid mostly in labor. Clark chopped wood, made fence, picked rocks, planted garden, and reaped oats for Dr. Howard. Evidently he still found time to go fishing, for among his creditson the doctor’s books are two shad, 16 cents and 8 pounds of corned fish, 50 cents. WI II lam Ambrose had an easier way of meeting his bl II than by Joseph Clark’s wood chopping and rock picking. He put out his 12 year old son, Samue I, to work for the doctor for eleven days at 50 cents a day. Amos Ba I ley a Iso sent h is boy to work for the doctor for four ,days at the same rate. Joshua Howard mayor may not have been a relative. Anyhow the doctor charged him fu II fees — a tota I of $16.52, and managed to co Ilect a II of It except ten cents, by getting the use of Joshua’s time harrowing with four oxen, 103 pounds of beef, half a ton of hay, twenty pounds of mutton, and four bush … e I s of potatoes.
By no means did Dr. Howard collect all his bills. Like every other country doctor, and probably every physician of our own day, he had plenty of uncollected and perhaps uncollectible accounts. Henry Nuttredge was a patient from whom the doctor took a lot of blood, but little pay. He bled Henry seven times in the year 1809 at 34 cents a bleeding. Medicines raised the total to $3.68. The doctor got 5 bushels of potatoes, then after three years had e lapsed he wrote in the ledger, “gave him ba lance of $1.85 on account of ci rcumstances”. Jabez Howard owed $3.00 for one of those “operation obstet’s”. He got credit of 60 cents for putting a gutter around the chimney of the roctor’s house, but he never paid the remaining $2.40. So there was at least one youngster in Sidney a hundred and fifty years ago who cOuld claim he was brought Into the world for 60 cents.
The one reference to Waterville In Dr. Howard’s ledger is not comp I imentary. On the debit side are these words: “Capt. Ebenezer Bacon of Watervi lIe, medicines for your wife, $1.00”. The credit side is completely blank. Capt. Ebenezer never did pay. One of the oddest Items of credit Is this one: “Daniel Purinton, for use his hOLlse for vend ue II • That, as most of you know, is the 0 I d Eng I ish term for auction. Apparently the doctor held an auction In Daniel’s house and credited Daniel with a dollar on his bl II. Sometimes, of course, the doctor lost a patient and had to collect his bill from surviving relatives. The honesty and family loyalty of people a century and a half ago is clearly shown by the frequency of such credit references In Dr. Howard’s ledger. In six years Ablal lovejoy ran up a bill of $15.36. It had begun In 1806. In 1813, after Ablal’s death, his sons Stephen and WI II lam paid the bl I I In full, also paying at the same tIme a btl I of $5.83 contracted by Ab i a I ‘s w I dow •
Although Dr. Howard owned considerable property, it evidently was unnecessary for him to part with any cash for his town taxes. He could more than meet them by his attent I on to the town poor. And when he treated the poor of other towns, that was real gravy, for it was about the only services for which he regularly received cash. In 1808, for Instance, he made two vIsits to the poor of Augusta, and received from George Reed, the Augusta Town Treasurer, $3.34 in cash.
I t was Dr. Howard’s usua I practl ce to charge fu II fees to everyone, then grant unusual credits by way of philanthropy. Just once In the whole ledger do we note a deliberately reduced fee, in kindness to a bereaved widow. It was a reduction from that established $3.00 for delivering a child. In 1806 he entered this item In the ledger: ”WIdow Rebecca Davenport, delivering child, $1.00″. The doctor was called two years later to see that child, for in 1808 he recorded, “opening abcess on your chi Id, 17 cents”.
Not al I the accounts in the old ledger deal with medical servlces.and med iclnes. In 1808 he sett led the estate of WI dow Ab I ga II Rob Inson~ His cha rges we re these:
3 days examining claims of your husband’s estate, $3.75
day as commi ss i oner of your husband’s estate 1.25
Journey to the Fort 1.25
2 Journeys to Fort and Hook 2.50
Pay i ng a note 9.44
Paying sundry bil Is 14.00
Order on Esq. Thomas 4.80
Medicines
Total $ 37.50
How did Or. Howard get his money for those expenses? Very simple. He took one of the widow’s horses and credited her with the exact amount of his bill, $37.50.
Year: 1952