Radio Script #457

Little Talks on Common Things

April 24, 1960

When I converse with Waterville acquaintances about events of twenty to thirty years ago, there often comes into the conversation the name of a man who was one of our most unselfish and most thoroughly public-spirited citizens. He was the father of the present head of the Kennebec Broadcasting Company of this station WTVL, Harry S. Brown. Many knew him as a member of the merchandising firm, the Emery Brown Company, but a lot of us knew him also as an ardent worker for the public good.

It is about one of Harry Brown’s creations that I want to talk tonight -something that gradually slipped out of existence after his death, and something that ought to be revived today.

In the spring of 1936, in conversation with several other persons, one of whom was Colby’s dynamic professor of history, William J. Wilkinson, Harry Brown noted that while all persons in the group were vitally interested in certain phases of the New Deal, no two of them held exactly the same opinion about it. Yet all were reasonable men, willing to listen to another’s argument.

It occurred to Mr. Brown that such a group, augmented by others, might form a sort of informal club, meeting at intervals to discuss public questions. So, at Harry’s suggestion, each person in that original conversation agreed to invite one other person to a meeting at Mr. Brown’s home. There was formed a discussion club which met at intervals over the next three years, usually in some member’s home, but occasionally at a public eating place.

The club never had a name, a constitution, or a set of officers. Lewis Whipple, who in 1939 wrote a brief historical account of the club, says that because the members never agreed on anything, they couldn’t even agree on a name. It is equally possible that the intent from the beginning was to keep the organization completely informal and deliberately avoid a name.

By general consent Harry Brown acted as a sort of major domo, and, as Mr. Whipple put it. remained in that capacity because the club never agreed to fire him or name his successor. Likewise, because there was no secretary, it was left to Lewis Whipple to record what he could remember about the club’s doings after it had been going for about three years.

In order to give a title to his historical account, Mr. Whipple called it “The Round Table Wranglers”. Wranglers they certainly were, for early in their existence I had the good fortune to be invited into the group. What magnificent verbal battles we used to have. As for the topics of discussion, here is the way Mr. Whipple tells it: “I hesitate to comment upon the deliberations of this group of men”, he wrote. “Those discussions have run all the way from cabbages and kings, genes, chromosomes, and atoms, through the fourth dimension and the starry universe, to the immortal soul. Primarily mankind has been the chief topic.”

Usually a member would introduce the discussion, sometimes with a prepared paper. Occasionally a guest speaker would present the topic. The most memorable of those occasions came one evening when the group held a dinner meeting at the Burleigh home on the Augusta Road, where at that time Miss Nettie Burleigh and Miss Potter were operating a public dining room. The speaker was Dr. Rufus Jones. one of the greatest Americans in the first half of this century. Some of us knew him so well as our South China neighbor, and so appreciated his native humor and his gentle humility, that it was hard for us to realize that he was a man of international fame.

On that evening at the Burleigh home. Rufus Jones told the story that has since appeared in print, in his own writings as well as the biographies about him — the story of how he and three fellow Quakers met with Hitler’s officials, surrounded by the Secret Police, and finally convinced the Nazi leader that their mission in Germany had no political implications, but was solely to feed hungry children. It is one of the high spots in my own recollection of things past that I heard that story from Rufus Jones’ own lips.

A spark plug of controversy in that club of Harry Brown’s was the scientist who invented the electrical surgical knife, Dr. William Bovie. No sooner would Dr. Bovie get his 260 pounds firmly placed in the solidest chair than he would launch his attack on some of the sacred icons of the day.

One evening Rev. John Brush, the Baptist minister, presented a substantiation of man’s immortality, very ably reasoned from a basis of Christian faith. Dr. Bovie insisted there was no scientific support for such superstition. He pointed out that Dr. Brush’s textbook, the Bible, was itself a late comer on the scene of creation, that in comparison with the eons of created time, the Bible had been around only a few minutes. When Harry Brown called attention, quite correctly, to the contribution made by little Palestine to world civilization, Bovie retorted: “What was Palestine? Just a gas station between Egypt and Mesopotamia.” Then someone observed, “To Dr. Bovie an eon of time is but the flit of a feather in a dancer’s fan.”

The club contained several Platonists. Concerning that viewpoint Lewis Whipple observed: “Plato would be amazed to see not his wise men, but 30 million American hoi polloi speeding around in motor cars. Plato conceived the aim of the state to be moral perfection, not power. We are very short on moral perfection, very long on power. Plato would have communism directed by the intellectuals. Russia purges the intellectuals …

About some other members of the club its informal secretary recorded: “Dr. Wilkinson is handicapped because his subject takes him back, not into Bovie’s eons, but only to the dawn of history. He believes, however, that civilization is on the march, but there are times when even he fears the direction of that march may be backward. Bryant Hopkins smears us with statistics, showing how we may gain Utopia if we will only trust the trusts. He seems to be slightly opposed to the New Deal. Joe Colgan tells us what makes us click and why — all about our IQ’s. He has not dared, however, to bring his lie detector into the group, doubtless through fear of what it might show.”

The record doesn’t spare’ the speaker on tonight’s program. It says: “Marriner reads all the books printed before the ink is dry. He speaks with optimism about social trends, but he must agree that there is some similarity between ‘Anthony Adverse’ and ‘Tom Jones’.”

Neither does the record spare my good friend, Professor Webster Chester. It says: “Chester presents the arguments of science, but unlike Bovie he accepts the mystic, though he is apparently hopeful that science may yet lay a soul on the dissecting table and tell us what it really is.”

About one member, who shall go unnamed, the account said: “He is a nuisance. He challenges statements solely to embarrass the speaker. He asks trick questions like ‘Have you stopped beating your wife?’ and he clouds the clear waters of reason with the mud of satire.”

Of another close friend of mine who belonged to that club, the record says: “Lester Weeks keeps us informed of the wonders of chemistry with side doses of the poet Byron. When he asks a question it is penetrating and pertinent.”

In commenting about the club’s founder and obvious leader, one of the members once remarked: “Harry Brown leads us from deliberation to refreshment, and from refreshment to the next meeting. He is hopeful that Lester Weeks may produce a better shoddy that will cost the merchant less and the customer more. He wants a city manager for Waterville, who should be non-partisan provided he is a Republican and a Baptist.”

That was all in fun, of course, for Harry Brown was anything but a money grabber, anything but bigoted either in politics or in religion. He was one of the most broad-minded, public-spirited citizens I ever knew, friendly with all religious faiths and with all political parties. More than once I have heard him rise to the defense of Norman Thomas, although he disapproved heartily of the socialism for which Thomas stood.

But the point of the whole story is this. That give and take of unrestricted discussion was good for everyone in the group: Probably few opinions were changed, but at least everyone had to listen. This little club was witness to the fact that men may differ profoundly in their opinions and their beliefs, but still be able to discuss them in good fellowship and with tolerance.

One finds all sorts of odd items in the newspapers of long ago. We all know how violently rival editors used to attack each other in those old papers. More rare were the occasions when one editor rose in defense of a fellow scribe. Such an occasion happened when the editor of the Skowhegan Clarion was sued for libel by a hotel proprietor. Rising to his fellow editor’s defense, the editor of the Lewiston Falls Touchstone had this to say on May 1, 1855: “Our Skowhegan brother has been sued for libel by the proprietor of the Stanley House in Augusta. Brother Littlefield of the Skowhegan Clarion says he paid 63 cents for a dinner at the Stanley House and got short feed. We know nothing about this particular case, but we do know that many first-class hotels are miserable shams. We like three meals a day, and at many of those highly touted, firstclass taverns we get next to nothing for breakfast, about 144 dishes for dinner, and for supper the remains of breakfast. But we could put in a good word for the public houses situated in small villages where there is not much custom. In many such a small tavern you can get your fill of good food at a fair price. We suggest that Bro. Littlefield’s acquaintance with such bounty in his native Skowhegan made him critical of the service in a high-toned city hotel.”

Arthur Young, who was editor and publisher of that Lewiston paper called the Touchstone a hundred years ago, was a tempery fellow given to caustic comments. It is a wonder he was not constantly in court, himself a defendant in a libel suit. Listen to some of his published comments: “Bangor has a lot of banks and the more she has the more she is cursed. Those banks belong to business men, who use up all the capital and their customers besides. We ought to leave Augusta for some other place of government. The morals of Augusta are too contaminating for a Know-Nothing administration. Since Lewiston has recently lost the county jail to Auburn, why can’t we now have the State House?

“We admit that the prevalence of strong drink is a serious evil, but we don’t like to see wisdom and common sense repudiated by a few brawling politico-reformers. Governor Morrill is a well meaning man, but he listens too readily to Neal Dow, who goes abroad like a roaring lion on his way to political advancement. The fact has just leaked out that one of our most violent, club-swinging reformers, Rev. Philip Weaks of Bangor, has been a jail bird in another state. Now he seeks public office. All prohibitionists are of like nature and should no more be trusted than the Devil.”

That is pretty harsh language and, as any reputable historian of Maine happenings will tell you, eminently unfair to that sincere, courageous man, Neal Dow, whose name is creditably remembered today while that of editor Young of Lewiston has been almost completely forgotten.

Year: 1960