Radio Script #157
Little Talks On Common Things
October 12, 1952
Out Street Commissioner, Payson Witham, has called attention to an error I n one of our broadcasts last spring. Perhaps you recal I that one Sunday eve … ning we quoted from a pamphlet telling an amusing story of how a man said he cou I dn’ t afford to five in a $40,000 house, because that was what h Is 1940 house, bui It for $15 ,OOO~5’Would cost h 1m to rep lace”, One statement In that pamphtet sai d, “And now the un ion will. only a Ilow the masons to Jay about twothirds as many bricks a day” •
Mr. Wi tham contends that the masons un I on has never p I aced any restrl cti ons on the number of bricks a mason shall lay. t find that Mr. Witham Is right. He is confirmed by the superintendent of anational.ly prominent contracting firm. The superintendentsays~ “If a mason doesn’t lay as many bricks as I thlnk the Job reasonably cal Is f~t, t can fire him, and the union wi II notinterfere. ft How do these stories get started? .. How do they get into print in reputable magaz ines r and copyri ghted pampa.lets? We I ” anyh.ow, we want th is program TO have no part . . in such misrepresentation. We are glad to correct the statement.
The left wing economists and politicians have tried their best to make the word profit an unsavory and uni’E>pular word. They would have lJ,s believe there is something·sinlsfer and sinful about profits. Some of us think it is about time, nOT to defend profits, but aggressively to proclaim their worth in modern eeon,… omy.
It Is not enough to keep repeating the 0 I d truth that free enterprise !;jives incentive to profit and that the profit motive creates jobs and prosperity. Free enterprise is much more important than that, important in terms of human values. Wor I dpeacedepends ‘n great measure upon the e.conom i c stab’ 11 ty of the Un i ted States • I f that stabl Ilty i s serious Iy I mpa ired, we cou Id not he Ipthe free world canbat the Canmunist aggression. And nothing can so seriously shat .. ter American stability as the destruction of the free enterprise system.
Free enterprise 15 the fulfi liment of the creative power of free men In a free society. If we forget that, we forget the vital connection of economic vfreedom with all the other freedoms man allover the world yearn to enjoy.
Back in the 1820’s, when Maine had first become a state, our Maine towns had no common road comrni ss Toner i ncharge of a I I the roads” Each town was divided into districts with a hJghway supervisor in charge of each district. have had opportunity to examine the accounts kept by one of those district sur ..veyors in 1823. He was Daniel Soule of Watervi lie, to whose district was com~ mitted $258 of the town’s total highway appropriation of $1,800 for that year. It was clear that SOU./e not only had to see to the expenditure of that. $258 on his district’s roads, but that he also had to col ‘ect the assessment himself.
The warrant issued to Soule and signed by the five assessors of Watervi /Ie, reads as follows:
“Herein we commlt to you a list of assessments amdlunting to $258, which sum you are to collect and cause to be expended in labor and materials on the pub Ii croadsw I th in your ‘i mi ts agreeab I y to law. If Most of you have heard the exp ress i on “work I ng out my taxes”. A I though by the ti me I was’bornl~~1sfrtaxe~::weref’paid’Ut :casfi’;;~’ffrl~r-e’:Ja~?’:~tntJ:inQi:igh,riworkIng out of taxes” forme to be fami liar with the practice. The usual method by which a man worked out blstaxes was by labor on the roads. Sometimes he could furnish material. Hence the phrase in the assessors’ commitment to Daniel Soule, “to be expended In labor and materials”.
It is interesting to note that in 1823 there was no single tax collector, who gathered in the tax, then handed the money over to the town treasurer, for it to be pa i d out on wa rrants • Each highway surveyor had to co I I ect the tax for his disTrict. That was a sensible practice, srJnce very I ittle money changed hands. Most of Daniel Soule’s $258 was probably collected in the form of labor and mater ia I s. The highway tax was ent ire I y separate from the other town taxes.
Daniel Soule had only one big taxpayer in his district — Asa Redington, who w~s responsible for $44.64 of the whole $258. Probably most of Asa’s tax was paid in cash, though That is by no means certain. There were a lot of people in debt TO AsaRedington, and a common way of getting such a debt cleared a hundred years ago was to have the debtor work out part of the creditor’s tax by labor on the roads •. The only other men of sUbstantial means in Soule 1s district in 1823 were Reuel:;WlHi;ams;’and0Darlli\fj1 Moor, WhO:;:Togetherheld considerable property. The total number of taxpayers in Soule’s district, responsible for the whole $258, was only 34. The smallest Tax was assessed to Thomas fedington, $1.27, but four other men — Henry Moor, Abel Tozier, Joseph Moor anc Daniel Soule himself — were down for only $1 :28 aplece. Three fami lies — the RedingTons, Moors and Soules — paid $115.50, or 43% of the whole tax.
find That we teachers are not the olJly persons interested in what are called boners — the amusing mistakes made in Jetters, diaries, and especially on exam i nat I on pape rs • Let me te II you a few of those boners that have come to my attent Ion ove r the years.
Perhaps one youngster had a point when he wrote, I1Anatomy is The study of heavenly bodies”. Perhaps he wasn’t so wrong, either, when he wrote, “Burlesque Is a kind of take-off”. In fact most boners can be explained in terms of simi larit-y. Why shouldn’t a child think a buttress is a female butler, or that an ep ist Ie I s the wi fe of an apost Ie, or even that a geyser is a rna Ie goose? We wou I d P I ace a good bet Gn the future success of the ch i I d who de f I ned a hamlet as a little pig, and there’s something to be said for the student who de~ fined psychology as the science of diseases that don’t exist.
We have heard a lot of explanations of the di fference between an optimist and a pessimist, but few that equal this one: An optimist Is a man who looks after your eyes; a peSSimist looks after your feet. After we have been through a sesquicentennial ce lebration here in Watervii Ie, weare pleased to learn that a ml Ilenium is something like a centennial, on I Y it has more legs.
To one student, sinister meant a woman who hadn’t married, whi Ie another youngster defined spinster as a bachelor’s wife. Another fellow thought trigo. nometry was when a lady married three men at the same time. A poJ;ygon, by the way, is a man with more than one wife, preferably living. Even matrimony occas ·1 onall y gets I n for confus Ion. A def i nl tf on once seen in schoo I wr I ti ng sal d: “Matrimony Is a place where atl soul$.’ suffer for a time on account of their sins.”
You may be interested to know that a grass widow is the wife of a vegetar.f.~ ian; that in gardening anherbacecf)us border is one who borders all the week and goes home on Saturdays and Sundays; and that heredity means if your grandfather didn’t have any children, then your father wouldn’t have any, and neither would you, probably. It was of course a modern chi Id who wrote, “A hosp ita1 is where you go to be born”; and an uJtra-mod~rn one who said an inhibition is I ike an exhibition, only Indoors.
You may be amazed to learn some th ings about Amerl can geography and history. Georgia was founded by peop Ie who had been executed. Nearly at the bottom of Lake Michigan is Chicago. New York is behind Greenwich time because America was not discovered unt I I much later. Col umbus made four voyages to Ameri ca; he died on the third one. General Braddock had three horses shot under him, and a’ fourth went through his clothes.
tJlaine school children always know something about Maine’s most famous poet, Henry W. Longfe II ow. One youngster exp ressed hi mse If th i sway: “Hen ry W. Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, while his parents were traveling on the cont inent. He made many fast friends; among the fastest we re A lice and Phoebe Cary.
Finally, I’m sure aJ I youJ isteners who are parents wi II appreciate what one youngster wrote about one of the fami I iar Bible stories. Here are his words:
HThe greatest miracle ;n the Bible is when Joshua told his son to stand sti II, and the son obeyed him.”
We like to keep reminding our listeners about facts concerning our entire State of Maine. When Maine was a part of Massachusetts, it was called the District of Maine. Do you know why? Why district instead of province or some other designation? Here is the answer. In 1778 the Continental Congress divided the whole country Into admiralty districts, each with its own court of adm! ra I ty. Massachusetts had three of these di stri cts: northern 1 mi dd Ie and southern. The northern district consisted of the three Maine counties and was commonly called the DIstrict of Maine. Yes in 1778 Maine had only three coun”‘: ties — York, Cumberland and lincoln.
Did you ever hear about Maine’s part in ratifying the Constitution of the United States? The General Court of Massachusetts voted for the constitution in 1788 by a vote of 197 to 158. Of that total of 355 votes, 46 were cast by representatives from the District of Maine. Their vote was very close — 25 for the constitution, 21 against it. York County went nearly two to one against the constitution, her representatives voting 6 for and 11 against. The biggest, but least populous, Maine county of Lincoln, which then included everything east of the Androscoggin, voted 9 to 7. in favor. It was Cumberland, with its comparatively large towns of Falmouth (now Portland) 1 Scarboro, Yarmouth, and Cape Elizabeth that saved the reputation of the District, for Cumberland favored the new constJtuti~n 10 to 3. The great supporter of the constitution In our· part of the country was Captain Snow of Harpswell, while the bitterest opponent was a soldier of the Revo I uti on, Genera I Thompson of Saco.
Who of our listeners wi II be the first to te II me the name of Maine’s third largest lake? You are all expected to know that Moosehead Is our largest and Sebago is second. But which one of our thousand Jakes is third in size? (Chesuncook) Ohemore question. Which of Maine’s rivers is fed by the largest number of streams,p~nds and lakes? WhenHarrv Coewas secretary ·of the Maine Publ Jcity Bureau, I heard him once say that, of all .thenumerous mountains in Mahle, only five have Indian names. Everybody can name two — Katahdin and Kineo. What are the other three? (Kennebago, Megunticook and Wassatequ Ick) By the way, Maine’s second highest mountain is not Kineo. What is it? (Sadd leback)
Year: 1952