Radio Script #419

Little Talks on Common Things

May 3, 1959

Into my hands there recently came an old printed folder, the contents of which seem ironically strange to one who has read the carefully written histories of our national life in the ten years that followed the Civil War. The tragedy of that era lay not only in the supremacy of the northern radicals, who would permanently subjugate the South and dominate it by both rule and ruin, causing what Hodding Carter has called “the angry scar”, not erased even today. The tragedy lay also in the fact that the great man who had led the Union armies to victory should be President at a time when political corruption looted the land. The general verdict nearly a century later is that President Grant was an easy-going and often unsuspecting victim of the looters and not their accomplice. But the fact remains that it was the era of the robber barons who, by grabbing the railroads, grabbed also their vast grants of land; by cornering gold, ruined thousands of people, by unblushingly buying Congressmen and state legislators, ran unmolested over the country.

With that well known history in mind, one finds somewhat amusing this old printed folder of 1870, for that folder contains the speech of James G. Blaine, accepting his first nomination as a candidate for Congress from Maine’s Third District. In the course of his speech, Blaine said: “The Republican Party is in the tenth year of its power in the nation. When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated President in March, 1861, the treason of leading Democrats had well nigh destroyed the government. Howell Cobb had blasted our credit and left a bankrupt treasury. Secretary of War Floyd had so demoralized the army that the strongest fortresses fell into the hands of rebel traitors. At the critical moment the Republicans came into power, and how they have governed the nation, history will tell. The most gigantic of rebellions has been crushed; the national credit has been revived; the two oceans have been connected with iron bonds; new states have been added to the Union and old states have been purified from the taint of treason. Think what evils would result for our country if those who sought to destroy it, the Democratic Party, should now be restored to power.”

Of course we must be fair with Jim Blaine. He was making a campaign speech, and he felt entitled to the blustering exaggerations campaign orators are always inclined to make. To them nothing is ever gray. Their own party, be it Democrat or Republican, is always white; the other party is always black. What is interesting is Blaine’s words that I have already quoted. Let me now repeat them: “How they have governed this nation, history will tell.”

Yes, indeed, that is something of which every politician may be sure.

Give it time, and history will certainly tell. What does history say about those years that Blaine praised so extravagantly? To begin with they were days of Boss Tweed, who plundered New York City of two hundred million dollars by faked leases, padded bills, false vouchers and kickbacks. They were the days of the Credit ~obilier, a construction company organized by promoters of the Union Pacific Railroad to divert to themselves the profits from building that line, a scheme worked out by giving stock in the company to leading national figures, including even the Vice-President of the United States. Then there was the famous Coinage Act, that depreciated silver currency and made gold the sole monetary standard, despite the increase of silver production in the West. Then followed the salary grab, which caused such public indignation that Congress was forced to repeal the law that nearly doubled the pay of Congressmen and other government officers. As one historian puts it, “The unbridled railroad speculation, the ruthless draining of profits, the lavish destruction of natural resources, all led to the ruinous Panic of 1873.”

There was also the notorious Whiskey Ring. A conspiracy of revenue officials, chief among whom was John McDonald, a Grant appointee, in league with a group of distillers, was formed in St. Louis to defraud the government of the internal revenue tax. The ensuing expose led to the indictment of 42 government officials, among them Grant’s private secretary, General Babcock, who was saved from conviction only by the President’s personal intervention.

James G. Blaine himself did not escape unscathed from this mess of corruption. The very reliable Encyclopedia of American History says: “At the Republican National Convention in 1876, up to the final balloting, the leading presidential candidate had been James G. Blaine, who had been discredited in testimony before a house committee by James Mulligan, who charged that Blaine sold Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad bonds to the Union Pacific in a swindling deal, and that Blaine had later borrowed from Mulligan and had refused to return certain letters that clearly incriminated Blaine in the swindle. The House of Representatives, by partisan vote, accepted Blainers explanation, and the Maine leader made such a come-back that he became this party’s presidential candidate against Grover Cleveland in 1884. With victory then in his grasp, Mainers Plumed Knight was ironically defeated because of a well-meaning New York clergyman’s witless blunder when he referred to Cleveland’s party as the party of Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.”

That disastrous election for Blaine was fourteen years in the future when, in 1870, he delivered his speech of acceptance and spoke the words, “history will tell”. As we look back upon it all today, how true indeed were those words. What a story history did tell

Only last week I was talking about the horse and buggy days of the 19th century. It has occurred to me that you might be interested in exactly when some of the new things of that century appeared. The year 1841 saw the first recorded use of petroleum for lighting, 1846 gave us the sewing machine, and 1852 the first steam fire engine. In 1868 came the first typewriter, in 1876 the telephone, and in the following year there was opened in Boston the first telephone exchange. Edison’s incandescent lamp came in 1878, and the first cash register in 1879, the same year that Woolworth opened the first five and ten cent store. Waterman made the first fountain pen in 1884, and in 1893 came the first successful motion pictures. But the days were really horse and buggy. We had to wait until the third year of the twentieth century, 1903, to see the first cross-country trip by automobile. And that trip took 69 days.

I am always on the alert for contemporary references to Waterville’s first murder, when Dr. Valorus Coolidge killed young Edward Mathews on a September night in 1847. Last summer, when going through a trunk of old papers and notebooks at the Waterville Historical Society, I encountered the diary of James Stackpole, Jr., prominent son of Waterville’s pioneer merchant, James Stackpole, Sr. In 1847 James, Jr. was Treasurer’ of Waterville College and held other important offices. His diary contains just a few short sentences concerning those exciting events in Waterville in the fall of 1847:

“Thursday, Sept. 30 — At night Edward Mathews was murdered by some person or persons unknown.

“Friday, Oct. 1 — The body of Mathews was found under O. Doolittle’s store; a jury of inquest was summoned.

“Sunday, Oct. 3 — Mathews was buried. A large cotillion of people at the funeral.

“Monday, Oct. 4 — Dr. Valorus Coolidge arrested for murder of Mathews. Great excitement in town.”

The next spring, when Coolidge was tried and convicted at Augusta, one of the witnesses against him was this same James Stackpole, from whom Coolidge had vainly tried to borrow money.

Did you ever hear about the Oxford Mineral Belt? The 1870’s and early 1880’s were a great time for financial speculation, mixed up with all sorts of political chicanery, and the people of Maine did not escape. Among my souvenirs of the old days in Maine is a stock certificate for 100 shares in the Champion Gold and Silver Mining Company, issued in 1880 to G. O. Avery.

Like so many mining ventures of that day, this stock proved to be completely worthless. The company issued 100,000 shares at a par value of five dollars and arranged to have them as the certificate testifies “forever inaccessible”.

The mine was located in Milton” Plantation in the Oxford Mineral Belt. The Maine Register for the year 1880 tells us that Milton Plantation was located 18 miles northwest of Paris, on the Bryant’s Pond and Rumford stage line. At the time of the mining venture it had a population of 270, a valuation of $40,000, and 60 registered voters. It had two manufacturers: E. A. Farnum, who made spool strips and dealt in short and long lumber; and Lewis Mann, who made clothes pins and pail handles.

Also in the plantation was one of the mineral springs of the Mount Zircon Spring Company, which had gone into business in competition with Poland Springs. Such was the place where someone by the name of G. O. Avery hoped to get rich by investing five hundred of his hard-earned dollars in one hundred shares of the Champion Gold and Silver Mining Company. Milton Plantation yielded no gold and silver, the stock certificate became worthless, and finally as a free gift fell into the hands of one to whom it has only an historical interest. There were a lot of gullible investors in Maine ninety years ago. But don’t think their breed has entirely died out. A lot of their descendants got caught in the crash of 1929, and some of them are picking up the worthless penny ante securities today. As Barnum said, “There is one born every minute.”

On this program I have often mentioned Waterville’s early leader, Squire Timothy Boutelle. I have told you how he became the first treasurer of Waterville College, how he and Nathaniel Gilman guaranteed the public subscription that brought the college to Waterville, and how the two men were partners in literally hundreds of business ventures, at one time owning together more than a million acres of Maine land.

In the Boutelle papers at the Waterville Historical Society I ran across one odd item which reveals the diversity of Timothy Boutelle’s financial interests. The document says: “In consideration of $40 paid to me by Timothy Boutelle, I do sell, assign and convey to the said Timothy Boutelle the full and exclusive right to make and vend Abijah Gorham’s Improved Stamping Machine. October 20, 1832. (Signed) Abijah Gorham.”

When what is now the Pine Grove Cemetery was planned, Timothy Boutelle, then an aged man, showed keen interest. His deed of two lots in the new cemetery is indicated by a statement of sale signed by Town Clerk J. B. Bradbury, and it shows the unbelievably low price paid for those cemetery lots when the new burying ground was laid out. The document reads: “Sold to Timothy Boutelle, in consideration of $12, lots No. 189 and 190, according to A. W. Wilde’s Plan of a Burying Ground on Emerson Plains. May 30, 1851.”

Because I am often asked when the various religious denominations now conducting services in Waterville began their work here and erected their meeting houses, I want to close this broadcast tonight with that information. Waterville’s first denominational church was the Baptist, organized in 1818, and its building was erected in 1826. Second was the Universalist, organized in 1826, with its building dedicated in 1833. Close after it came the Congregationalist, organized in 1828 and finishing its building in 1835. Fourth came the Methodist in 1843, but it was 1868 before its place of worship was erected. Fifth came the Roman Catholic organization of St. Francis Parish in 1857, with eventual erection of the church at Elm and Winter Streets in 1871. The Unitarian organization was effected in 1863 and the Episcopal in 1876. Then for twenty years there was no other new denomination until the coming of the Adventists in 1896, followed five years later in 1901 by the Free Baptists.

All of the other denominations now active in Waterville have come during the twentieth century.

Year: 1959