Radio Script #173
Little Talks On Common Things
February 1, 1953
After submitting you to eight weeks of recorded programs, it seems good to me to be back here in the WTVL studio on Sunday eveni ng, speaki ng to you aqai n in a live broadcast. It probably makes little difference to you, but it matters a lot to me. When , know that my words aregoi ng out on the air direct Iy to you. without the med i ati on of any recorded ins trument 1 I fee I much closer to you, and I am ceda in Iy much freer to take advantage of recent events than I am when I have to record a program ei ght weeks before hand. Doubtless we shall have to make much use of recordi ngs in days to come, but 1 assure you that whenever possible I shall talk to you directly. as I am doing tonight.
Some ten thousand miles of travel and a lot of interesting sights are now but a memory since we leftWatervi lie on December fT rst. Have I learned any– thing? Well, I certainly hope so, but! tell you right now that I am not turning this program into a travelog, Many of you listeners know other parts of the Un i ted States much better than I sha II ever know them. But one cannot trave I across our great continent without getting certain impressions, and some of them are perti nent to the . common themes of th i s program. So. from time to time, as I refer to something on our two months I trip, I shall not be trying to show off as the great American traveler, but shall merely seek to share with you some Western experience that has to do with our usual program.
Do you reca II our talks some time ago about the diary of Watervi lie’s Forty- Niner. Solyman Heath? When I gave those talks, I tried hard to work out Solvman’s exact route from Independence, Missouri to the gold fields of California, I di d pretty we II unt; I I got Solyman to what is now the northeast border of the state of Ca I i forni a; then the tra i I became somewhat b leary because So lyman used no names of p I aces. He re fe rred me re I y to ‘lthe d j gg i ns” and “the city “‘. From his remarks it was clear that the city must have been Sacramento, but where were the diggins? could find no conclusive evidence. They might have been anyone or more of a dozen places within twenty mi les of Sacramento.
There the matte r has res ted for more than two years. I t took a tr i p to California to bring a definite answer. Strangely enough I found that answer not in northern Cal j forn i a, in San Franci sco or j n Sacramento, but far to the south in the much newer city of Los Ange les • One day I vi s j ted the magn if j cent h j storical museum in Los Angeles’ Exposition Park. In an exhibit devoted to the old gold-rush days I found a model of old-time Placervi I Ie, The descriptive card on the case read: lIThis place was originally called Dry Diggins, and was the first place reached by immigrants coming through the Carson Pass.”
Solyman Heath had fooled me by his reference to “the diggins” with a small “d\!. He surely meant the place everyone was then calling Dry Diggins or simply llthe ll Diggins, because he certainly got there through the Carson Pass~ and it Was his introduction to the gold fields.
Modern Placerville is some 45 mi les due east of Sacramento, on Route 50 from Sacramento to Carson City 1 Nevada. Th i rty mi les to the north is Route 40 , the main highway from San Francisco to Salt Lake City. The 1950 census gives 3,749 people in Placervi lie. It probably had nearly as many as that when Soly-man Heath arrived there in 1849. Unl ike many of the old mining towns of the West, however, j t is not a ghost town, not mere Iy a wide p lace i nthe road! It is a quiet I ittle trading vi Ilage in what was a hundred years ago the scene of some of the wi rdest and wool ies t vi 0 lence of thegol d rush.
Speaking of the wi Id days of the gold rush reminds me of the wi Id times which used to accompany the perfectly legal lotteries of a hundred years ago. You may recal I that once I told you how the only sizable canal ever bui It in Maine was financed by a state lottery. That staunch friend of this program, Jo.than Hobbs of Fairfield, has shown me how common lotteries were a hundred years ago by sending me a circular of lotteries operating in the state of Maryland in 1853.
The circular was a publication of E. N. Carr & Son, state Lottery Brokers .• 138 Pratt street, Baltimore. The firm declared itself the oldest lottery agency in the Union~ and doing the largest business of any such agency. because, as they put it, “of our far-famed reputation as the special agents of Dame Fort-une.!: What follows in the Carr statement seems exceedingly bold in these days when the rna i Is are closed to a II such schemes. 11We court your acqua intance through the medium of the mails, and will be most happy to receive an order from you, which might tend, as it has in hundreds of other cases, to make you independent for life. All orders are answered by return rna i I .• and names of custe-mers are kept inviolable. Correspondents can safely mail any amount to our address. We have never had a vatuable letter miscarry. Give us an opportunity to prove our ce lebr i ty as pri ze se Ilers.!’
Carr’s major offering was The GrandConsol idated lottery of Mary/and, to be drawn in Ba It i more on May 28, 1853. The first pri ze was $80,000. There we re four prizes of $20,000 each, four of $10,000, seven of $3.963, 800 of $500, and so on, graduated down to 10,620 prl zes of $16 each. I n all there were 41,856 prizes aggregating $1,825,824. Th is was no two-b it pol icy racket. The price of tickets was substant i a’. A whole ticket cost $32; a half-ticket $16, a quarter $8, and an eighth $4. But, if you had been around in 1853, you wouldn’t have had to risk as much as $4 to get a minimum chance In an authorized lottery, Besides the Grand Con~ so I i dated, th iss I ng Ie Carr ci rcu I ar announces 32 other lotteries.
In one called Class 130, to be drawn on May 2, 1853, a whole ticket cost only $3, but there were only 44 prizes, with the top one of $9,000. Class 22, with a first prize of $25,000 and 126 prizes in all, offered tickets at $8, with haf”ti-, and quarters respectively for $4 and $2. If you couldntt scare up two dollars~ there was one Carr offering you could enter for only one dollar. It was cal led Class 131., and offered only ele~ ven prizes, a grand first prize of $4,400 and ten prizes of $400 each. Carr even made a bid for people with less than a dollar to risk. He offered quarter shares in Class 146 for 62t cents; and he hit his final low by offering a quarte r share inC I ass 141 for 25 cents.
The customers Carr was most anxi ous to get were those who bought lottery tickets by what was called the package. A package wasabundle of 25 tickets of wholes, halves, quarters or eighths. These were sold at considerable discount and if this customer could resell them at single ticket price, he could make a rather handsome profit. For instance 25 whole tickets in the Grand Lottery for May 27th bought at thei r I isted price of $4 apiece would cost $100. But bought asa package of 25 they cost only $53.
for some reason the packages for the Grand Consol idated, with its huge $80,000 first prize, contained 26 rather than 25 tickets. Now 26 of those whole tickets at $32 apiece would come to $832. The price for a package was only $488. If the purchaser of a package could find 16 buyers, he would get back his $488 and $24 profit, and st! II have left ten tickets he could hold to take chances on the p ri zes.
I suppose that was the scheme and the bait for those lotteries. for every person who won a prize there were thousands who never won a penny. And, just as happens in the illicit gambling of todaY1 the managers and lottery brokers flourished at the expense of many an American fam; Iy. It is bad enough to have illegal gambl ing with us today but, as Senator Kefauver showed, in his exposure of conditions in Nevada, legal gambl ing is worse. We can at least be glad that the state of Maine is not in the lottery business today.
Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs have supplied me with another historic item besides the Maryland lottery circular. It is a school catalog published exactly one hundred years ago by a school not far from my boyhood home In Western Maine. The school was the Oxford Normal Institute at South Paris. Among its trustees in 1853 was Sldney Perham, later Governor of Maine, and Zadoc Long of Buckfield, father of John D. Long, Governor of Massachusetts and President McKlniey’s secretary of the Navy. The school boasted ten teachers, of whom only fl ve wereacadem i c • Th ree were teachers of mus i c, one of penmansh i p, and one of drawing. Two of the teachers had imposing names: Ebenezer Pierce Hinds and Beza leel Freeman Kendall.
The names of the,?tudents could have been dupJi cated in many a county in Old England. There’wer~:cno Irish, no French, noltalian, and those splendid citizens of Paris, the”Finns,,’:had not yets~’tfled if’! the community. The Allens.7 Andrews, Blakes ~ . ‘Morses,f:’1or :t()ns, Browns,.CI~rkSt Cummi ngs, Drakes, Herseys, Hutchi nsons, Knights, Newha;ii$~$¥~~tlsand Walkers domlnate the I ist; and i {you ft,ndan occasiona I striilngename 0 keHenrietta Tue IlorWat~rman Hewett), you can be pretty sure itt606Hgin~ted in OJd Engtand.
The oJdcarr-alogte.Jlsus Just “,hat kind of school the Oxford Normal Institute was designed tolJe •.. 1flt”, says the. book, “is located in South Paris .. a large and flourishing village 10 the shire !ownof Oxford County, .in the midst of a mora I and i ndustrJous GOf!llTlunity ab9yt.Qne-fourth of a mi Ie from a depot of the At1antlc and Lawrence Rai Iroad. For young gentlemen and ladies who wish to qualify themselves Jorteachlng it affords opportunity to become thoroughly fami liar with the various subjects taught in public or high schools, Its Instructors direct the student to the elements of each particular study~ to incite his mind to healthful energy and encourage him to think, Thoroughness is re .. quired in the preparation of every exercise of the school, The school year was di vi ded into four sess ions. I n the year 1853-54 the fall sessJon began on August 30 for 12 weeks, The winter session opened on November 29 for 11 weeks; the spring session on February 28 for 12 weeks; and the summer session on May 31 for ten weeks. The sessions were quite independent.
Very few students attended all four; some attended only one in any given SChool year. This is proved by the statistics that the 1853 catalog gives for the preceding school year of 1852-53. Although a total of 229 students were enrolled during the year~ the average attendance for each of the four sessions was only 85, and the largest session — the fall one — had only 160. To raise an average of 85 to a tota I of 229, a lot of those 229 must have attended for only one term.
On one page of the catalog are listed the text books then in use. About the only one a student today would recognize is Webster’s Dictionary. But a modern student’s grandfather would recognize Greenleaf’s Arithmetic. In fact the Institute was strong of! mathematics. Besides Greenleaf’s book, it !ls.~d e ‘;>,”
Smyth’s Algebra and Tri.gonometry~ Davles’ Geometry and Surveying,Bondifch~’s Navigator, Davies’ Analytical.Geometry and Calculus. forsc1ence it had Par..;> ‘. , ‘ ‘ <‘;ke.r’s Natural Phi losophy~ Sf ‘JJman’s Chemistry~ Cutter’s Physiology, Peterson’s’ Faml Jiar Science, Wood’s Hotany, Loomi s’ Geology .. Dana’s fl.1i nera logy , Brockfeby ‘s Meteorology, Ohnsted’s Astronomy .. and Buritt’sGeography of the Heavens. Believe it or not, the Oxford Normal Institute a hundred years ago taught six foreign languages: Latin, Greek, French)’ Spanish, German and Italian, To know their own country every Oxford student had to read Goodrich’s History of the United States.
What did it cost to attend that fine old school in South Paris a century ago? The catalog tells us the tuition was 20,25,30 or 35 cents per week, according to the studies pursued. Instruction on the piano, including use of the school’s instrument was $7 a session. Pencil, Monochromatic or Polychromatic Drawing, ranged from $1 to $3 a session, and instruction in penmanship, including The necessary stationary, was $1. Board could be obtained in South Paris fami lies at $1.50 a week for boys and $1.25 for girls. Did boys really eat that much more proportionally than girls a hundred years ago?
The catalog says, f1800ks may be obtained at the village bookstore at Portland prices.!!
Let us close the program ton i ght with a few items about ~’I ins low. No more than half a century ago a lot of sheep were raised in the town of Winslow. In 1898, the year of the Spanish-American War, the town paid a total of $32.50 to farmers as compensation for sheep ki lied by dogs 1 and every year from 1890 to 1900 shows two or more such items. Furthermore the town frequently took action against the marauding dogs. In 1894, for instance l the !’!i ns low town records show a payment of $19.00 to J. R. Pollard for his services notifying dog owners and ki II i ng eleven dogs.
The Winslow town books contain several unusual items in that last decade of the nineteenth century. Here are a few of those items, picked at random:
$11.40.
Painting and repairing the hearse, $17 .50.
i~atervi lie Granite Co., for inscribing names on Soldier’s Monument”
I nterpreter on Sand Hill, $4.00.
Sulphur for the Board of Health, $2.75.
Perambu I at i ng the town line I $9.25.
Expense incurred in consequence of Thomas Brown running away from the poor house, $5.28.
Among the expenditures for the Winslow town farm in 1896 were six cents for starch. 92 cents for coa I, 25 cents for butter paper, 37 cents for an under” shi rt, 40 cents for fly paper. and $1.25 for a screen door.
Here are a few articles selected from the Winslow town meeting warrants in the 1890’s:
To see if the town will vote to ra ise a sum of noney to purchase and hang a fi re be II. To see if the town will give any special instructions to the school commi ttee in rega rd to run n j ng the s tilDal s • To see what action the town wi II take in relation to the care and use of the hearse.
What was the tax rate in Winslow 50 to 60 years ago? In 1893 the rate was 12 mills on a total tax commitment of $14,059. The next year it jumped to l6t mills because the appropriations :went up to $19,900. Evidently that was too much for the voters because In 1895 appropri ations dropped to $18,319 ~ and the rate went down to 15 mills. The next town meeting cut appropriations again, down to $17,822″, and it went down to 14t mills. But there the ecomony wave subsided, and both appropriations and tax rate went up, unti I at the turn of the century in 1900 the rate was again 16t mills.
Even at that suspect a lot of present Winslow citizens would like to get back to that 1900 tax rate — only $16.50 on every thousand dollars of valuation.
Year: 1953