Radio Script #233
Little Talks On Common Things
September 26, 1954
One criterion of a successful company or institution is its abi lity to hold its employees. Any company that has a continuing record of keeping its employees sufficiently content with wages and working conditions that they do not turn to what appears to be greener pastures, is usually a successful company.
The record of the Keyes Fibre Conpany is so strikinq in this respect that it deserves special attention. I assure you that the Keyes sponsorship of this program has nothing to do with these comments. I would gladly give the same information about any other company whose employment reeord came to my attenti on.
Keyes Fibre employs a total of 1,003 employees in its three plants at Falrfield, Shawmut and Hammond, Indiana. Of that tota 1762 are employed locally; that is, at Fairfield and Shawmut. Almost half of those 762, or 370 men and women to be exact, have been I n the Keyes emp loyment for ten or more years. One in every ten of their workers has been with the company for 25 or more years and one in 30 has been on the job at Keyes for more than 30 years.
In recognition of this extraordinary tenure of service Keyes organized last year, on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary, a Quarter Century Club, which now has nearly one hundred members. Last week the company called that club together for dinner and annual meeting at the Elmwood Hotel and for induction of new members. President Parsons presented diamond studded pins, the insignia of 25 years of service, to 23 men and women who had just completed their quarter of a century with Keyes.
In years of service, the oldest sti II active employee at Keyes Fibre is Joseph McAleer, who has been with the company for 43 years. Second is Joseph Donahue, speci ally honored at last week’s Keyes dinner, who has served for 41 years.
When an employee has been with Keyes for 30 years, he receives a gift of one share of Keyes stock; he gets two more shares at 35 years, and three more at 40 years. So the man or woman who works for Keyes for 40 years then hoi ds six shares of stock presented by the company. At the recent di nner Joseph Donahue and Eugene Overlook each received from Mr. Parsons three shares of Keyes stock; Philip Martin and Howard Suber got two shares each; and one share representing thirty years of service went to Georgianna Robichaud, John Damon and Faye Tracy.
Mention of Keyes Fibre leads us naturally to recognition of the Irreparable loss which our community has suffered during the past week through the pass I ng of Dr. George Averl II. Or. Averl II’s bus i ness gen I us was large Iy responsible for putting Keyes Fibre Company on a firm financial basis and changing it from a local to a national concern.
Dr. Averl II has been so long known as Industrialist, financier, and especially as generous philanthropist, that many people have forgotten that he was once a beloved fami Iy physician, bedside friend as well as doctor of the sick and dying. Forty and more years after Dr. Averill ended his practice of medicine in the Penobscot Valley, I drove with the doctor several times over some of the ground of that rural practice. Pointing to a sma I I bur Iding adjoining a wood products mi II, he would say: ”That’s where I amputated S’s arm. Was that an ordeal!” He referred to a man whom I knew Intimately in my student days In . college, whose arm had been badly mangled In the mi II machfnery, and who owed his life to Dr. Averi II’s ski II. Then as we passed a farm house, he would say:
“My, a woman was terri b Iy si ck there one wi nte r. I sat up wi th her a” of one long night. She pulled through, and she lived to be eighty.”
On one trip, as we were passing through Lincoln, the doctor announced that he must stop at the drug store. It turned out that he was buying needed medicines for old friends in Sullivan and Sorrento. He was meticulous in his professional ethics, -telling these folks’ regular physician just what he was doing.
What was he doi ng1 Simp I y be i ng kind and generous to peop Ie In troub Ie -people whom he knew how best to help.
Up in the Penobscot Va Iley, where I stl II drl ve in reverence past the Ii tt Ie farm house where George Averi II was born, and down on the coast of Penobscot Bay, where he spent so many act! ve summers. there are hundreds of peop Ie who st ill th I nk of Or. George Averi II as the New Testament Chri sti ans thought of Luke the Apostle — the beloved physician.
I promised you last week that we would resume tonight the story about Watervilie and Winslow’s first minister, Joshua Cushman. In 1794 the Winslow town meeting voted to erect a meeting house on the east side of the river on land given by Arthur Li-thgow. The time had come when the community needed and could afford a settled minister. So the town voted to invite Rev. Joshua Cushman to accept the position. His salary was to be 100 pounds a year as long as he should remain their minister.
The church was organized under the independent plan of the established orthodox church of Massachusetts — that is, under the Congregational polity, by which each church is an independent unit, subject to control of no conference, no bishop, no hierarchy. The terms of association by which the members voluntari Iy agreed to organize themselves into Winslow’s fi rst church are said to have been the most liberal ever written for any church organization in New England previous to the 19th century. On June 9, 1795 there was signed by the organized Winslow church what the record calls “a church covenant, or an association for the purpose of promoting Christian knowledge, piety and virtue, The very first article strikes the I iberal note; “It is understood and a~reed that a II the i nhab I tants of the town of Wi ns low are, in genera I acceptati on of the term, Christians, and have an equal right to act in all ministerial or reI i~ I ous afta irs in wh i ch the i r property or conscl ences are concerned. It is agreed that the persons thus associating are not obliged to commune, or partake of the Lord’s supper, but are sti II left to their own vOluntary choice.!:
There was nothing compulsory about joining the association. It was announced at the start that some of the citizens would not accePt the articles of faith, as simple and liberal as they were. In fact their very liberality was too much for stern CalVinist minds to accept. Those articles included acceptance of the Bible as a guide of doctrine, correction, and instruction in righteousness, and an agreement to practice piety and virtue, promote friendship and brotherly love, and “let our conversation be as it becometh the Gospel of Ch r i st. ”
The covenant is remarkable for its complete absence of theological doctrine.
Not a word about the virgin birth, about baptism by immersion or sprinkling, about verbal inspiration of scripture, about open or closed communion, about Nicean creed or Apostle’s creed, or about any other of the theological practices and beliefs which then, as now, divided Christians into argumentative sects. Just a belief that any man’s conscience could guide him to get from the Bible all the religious instruction he might at any time need, while recognizing the wisdom of having a minister to help him get that instruction. Just that, and the determination to live an upright life before God and one’s fellcw man. That is al lone had to avow to join the first church that appeared in the -two vi Ilages at Ticonic Falls.
In 1814 Mr. Cushman did end his leadership of the local church. The reasons given in the record are not theological. liberal as was Cushman’s preaching, it seems not to have been directly the cause of his leaving the Waterville- Winslow pulpit. Apparently for several years before 1814 members had been 51 ipping away to join the denominational groups. It was the Baptists on the one hand and the Unitarians and Uni versa I ists on the other that weaned away the Rev. Joshua’s flock. But it was something else that brought the final crisis.
That was the hard times caused by the War of 1812. There was no money to support a ministry.
As verification of this view, let me read you the official record which Termi nated Rev. Joshua Cushman’s mi ni stry in th is communi ty: “Whereas the town of Winslow, owing to the state of surrounding societies~ to its reduced numbers, and to the general embarrassment of the times, feels itself unable any longer TO support a minister of the Congregational order; and whereas the Rev. Joshua Cushman has served the town for 19 years in this capacity, during the best days of a man’s natural life, it would appear unchristian and contrary to the cornrron principles of equity to discontinue his ministerial services at his age without some remuneration; therefore the town of Winslow agrees to give-him the sum of $1,200 to be paid within four years.”
Very definitely, the payment of $1,200 was not a consideration paid to have the Rev. Joshua preach to them no more. It was payment in simp Ie, Christ i an equity, to a man whom uncontrol lab Ie ci rcumstances co””e lied the commun ity to re lease from his job.
Next week I’ll tell you some more about this interesting preacher, Joshua Cushman.
Year: 1954