Radio Script #1029

Little Talks on Common Things
December 8, 1974

Most Maine people assume that the Vahlsing fiasco was the first instance of sugar beets in our state. But that is not the case. More than 90 years before Fred Vahlsing wheedled several million dollars out of the state treasury to pay his defaulted loans, and before Aroostook farmers raised for him beets for which they were not paid, Maine had become excited about the possibility of raising sugar beets on our farms.

In 1880 a company was formed with an office in Portland. There is no evidence that it planned to build a refinery, but rather that it would contract with farmers to raise sugar beets, then ship the beets to refineries out of the state. The company was called the Maine Sugar Beet Co., 129 Commercial Street, Portland. Its president was George S. Hunt and its treasurer Henry B. Blackwell.

On April 20, 1880, the company mailed a form letter to a long list of Maine farmers. The letter reveals that the company had been in business for at least a year, and that in 1879 it had paid a number of farmers as much as $175 an acre for sugar beets. Here is what the letter said: “Please try the sugar beets once more. If we can make the business pay, we will give you a higher price next year. We are ready now to pay a higher price than last year on early deliveries, and have worded the new contract so that you may deliver the beets as soon as you harvest them. By cutting off the leaf-crowns we mean only enough of the top to hold the leaves together. We will pay you cash on receipt of the railroad agents’ certificate of delivery. We paid 150 farmers last year from $100 to $175 for beets raised on one acre. With last year’s experience you can do better next time. Try to get some of your neighbors to make contracts also.”

That letter to Maine farmers reveals that the company was perhaps as much interested in selling fertilizer, seed and implements as it was in buying beets. Anyhow this is what the company said in that same letter:

“We can send you fresh beet seed of the finest variety for 25 cents a pound; also Dirigo Seed Sower and Cultivator for $7.50, or the Gentline Seed Sower alone for $2; also special manure for the beets, 200 pounds for $5; also Winn’s Scuffle Hoe for $1.25. Any or all of these items delivered free of freight at your railroad station. Included will be a note for you to sign, payable next fall when you harvest your beets. For each acre of beets you may also order a carload of beet pulp, ten tons, at one dollar per ton plus freight, bringing the total cost to $1.50 to $1.80 per ton at your station. The pulp is considered better cattle feed than the same weight in beets, and will cost you one-third of the price we pay you for the beets. Three head of cattle will eat one carload during the winter. It will save you all your grain and half your hay.”

The letter’s conclusion admits that the attempt in 1879 had not been fully successful. It said: “Now don’t give up on one year’s trial. Let us hear from you and oblige your true friends, the Maine Sugar Beet Co.”

It was all in vain. The Maine Sugar Beet Co. soon folded, because in the 1880’s sugar beets were no more successful in Maine than they were in the 1960’s.

All this information about Maine sugar beets nearly a century ago came to me through the courtesy of Mrs. S. M. Thomas of Benton Station. With it she enclosed several of the Sugar Beet Company’s ads for implements. One was the Dirigo Seed Sower and Cultivator Of course 1880 was long before the time of motor tractors on the farms, but there were plenty of horse-drawn plows, harrows, and cultivators. However, none of these Sugar Beet advertised implements were horse-drawn; all were small and hand-propelled, such as the small sower and the little cultivator. The ad for the seeder said: “The seeder makes the furrow, drops the seed, covers it, and marks the next row, all at one time. The operator can see into the bottom of the seed box, giving him the same assurance as if he were dropping the seed with thumb and finger. By simply taking off two nuts, the seeder is detached and the cultivator can be put on. Any smart farm boy can make the change. For destroying weeds and pulverizing the soil the machine has no equal. No more work to run it than to use a common hoe.”

Another ad offered the hand sower alone for two dollars. It was a new item, patented only the year before in 1879 by a Maine man, B. T. Genther of Foxcroft. The ad said: “Anyone can use this machine and plant with accuracy. The iron wheel makes a groove to receive the seed.”

Still another ad advised the farmers to use Popplain’s Silicated Phosphate. That ad carried the testimonial of Edward Porter, Prof. of Agriculture at Delaware State College. Porter especially recommended the phosphate for sugar beets.

From sugar beets we now turn to a Waterville bank’s monthly letter 60 years ago. Banks were well aware of public relations long before their frantic, competitive advertising of today. In 1914, the Ticonic Bank of Waterville issued a monthly letter of four pages. On the front page was a statement of the bank’s services. The other three pages, for several issues, were devoted to the opening of the Panama Canal.

The first issue, in January, 1914, heralded the Canal as dividing the land and uniting the world. “This canal”, said the article; “has moved the Strait of Magellan 3,500 miles north, and by that vast distance has shortened the route between the two great oceans. It has made Japan 8,000 miles closer to New Orleans, and San Francisco 4,000 miles nearer to New York.”

The second installment in February, pointed out that, as early as 1502, Columbus had explored the Isthmus of Panama, but 380 years elapsed before Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, started work on a canal at Panama. After spending $233 million on the project, the company went bankrupt and further work was abandoned. Then came the Spanish-American War in 1898. When the Battleship Oregon was ordered from San Francisco to Florida, she had to go down the whole west coast from San Francisco to Cape Horn, up the whole length of the east coast of South America and across the Caribbean to Florida – a voyage of nearly 6,500 miles. No wonder that, before she arrived, the war was over.

That episode aroused the American people to the need for an isthmian canal. After Theodore Roosevelt concluded a treaty with the Republic of Panama in 1904, construction was begun. It was decided to build a lock canal across the relatively narrow isthmus rather than a sea level canal across a wider stretch of Nicaragua. In 1907 the project was taken out of civilian hands and placed under the U. S. Army Engineers. The article told readers that the canal was 40 miles long, with a minimum depth of 41 feet, and it took ten hours for a ship to go through from Colon on the Atlantic side to Balboa on the Pacific. In the construction there had been used five million cubic yards of cement, 45,000 workmen had been employed, and the cost was $375 million.

Those letters issued by the Ticonic Bank extended through all twelve months of 1914. Besides the informative text, there were many pictures. One photo is of special interest. It showed a machine spraying out to kill mosquitos. One side-line benefit of the Panama Canal had been the discovery by Col. Gorgas and his medical research associates, that the virus of yellow fever was carried by mosquitoes. In our time yellow fever has been obliterated from most of the civilized world because Col. Gorgas put those spraying machines at work in Panama.

The first issue of the Ticonic Bank circular, in December, 1914, announced completion of the canal and told about the enormous task of perfecting the approaches at each end. The article said: “To safeguard the approach and private docking facilities for the world’s fleets was a task of tremendous magnitude. Limon Bay, the Atlantic approach, was exposed to violent windstorms. There the government has built a vast breakwater extending into the sea from Toro Point across the bay from Colon. That breakwater is two miles long and fifteen feet wide at the top. The Pacific entrance is never troubled by violent storms, but the shallow water sees a continuous movement of silt. To prevent this, a great dike has been built from the Mainland to Naso Island. Thus is fronted a deep-sea anchorage at Balboa. At both Colon and Balboa have been built huge wharves 1,000 feet long, and dry docks large enough for the biggest ships that can pass through the canal.”

The final section in that long series of 1914 articles tells how a ship goes through the canal. It said: “A vessel crosses Limon Bay and enters a short channel that passes low meadows until the ship comes to Gatun Locks. Here no ship is permitted to use its own power. Large electric mules, three on each side of the lock, are attached to the ship, and pull it through. Each of these machines is 1,000 feet long. In less than half an hour the vessel has been raised 85 feet above sea level, and it now enters Gatun Lake, a sheet of water covering 164 square miles. This lake is formed by the mighty Gatun Dam. Out of the lake the ship enters Culebra Cut, where repeated landslides delayed construction and increased its cost. There the ship passes the Continental Divide, where in 1513 Balboa first sighted the Pacific. Then, in Pedro Miguel Lock, the ship is lowered toward sea level again, but only for 55 of its raised 85 feet. Passing through Miraflores Lake it then enters the Miraflores Lock where it is dropped the remaining 30 feet. Finally, through a narrow channel, the ship reaches the busy docks of Balboa on the Pacific.”

And with that account of how the Ticonic Bank of Waterville publicized the opening of the Panama Canal 60 years ago, we must say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1974