Radio Script #1116

Little Talks On Common Things
March 6, 1977

Among the industries that once meant much to Maine, but have now passed from the scene, was granite. Maine quarries at Hallowell, Vinalhaven,· Jonesboro, Waldo County, and other part s of the state furnished stone for hundreds of buildings that still stand in many of the states of our union.

As early as 1815, five years before Maine became a separate state, Hallowell granite furnished the cornices for the Quincy Market in Boston. When the state capitol was moved from Portland to Augusta in 1832, the nearby Hallowell granite was used for construction of the new state house. Getting out the stone for that building saw the first use of blasting powder in Maine. When the Kennebec and Portland Railroad was built in the 1850′ s, Hallowell granite was used for all of the many culverts.

After 1850 the man who was the foremost promoter of Maine’s granite interests was Joseph R. Bodwell. Born in Massachusetts in 1818, Bodwell had come to Maine with a partner, Moses Webster, to expand and develop the already opened granite quarries at Vinalhaven, and those quarries became quite as famous and even larger than the works at Hallowell. Bodwell, however, moved to Hallowell in 1866, to be nearer the markets and the central scene of business and political activity. There he founded the Hallowell Granite Works, which so increased in production that at its heyday, in the early 1900’s, long after Bodwell’s death, it was employing 500 men. The Bodwell interests included not only Vinalhaven and Hallowell, but also quarries at Jonesboro and Waldo. The company owned specially built schooners and persuaded the MCRR to construct extra-length cars to transfer the huge columns made for public buildings in a dozen states.

Perhaps the most notable existing structure that used large quantities of Maine granite is the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The first cargo of foundation stone for that Cathedral was shipped from Vinalhaven in 1895, and it was followed by many other shipments during the next twenty years. In 1899 the Vinalhaven works got out and carefully carved eight huge columns for the Cathedral. Fifty feet long and six feet in diameter, they were the largest pieces of granite ever quarried in the U.S. Shaped by hand within three inches of the line, the columns were then turned on a lathe and polished, a process that took four weeks for each column. One column broke while being turned and had to be replaced. All eight columns that formed an arc about the altar of the cathedral were delivered duringI the summer of 1903. Unloading in New York posed a problem because the two-piece sections weighed each respectively 90 and 93 tons. A rope was wound around the base of each column, and when the rope was unwound, the column rolled from the ship to a huge truck which carried it two miles to the cathedral site.

Besides the State House at Augusta, other buildings of Maine granite in our state are those of the Insane Hospital across the Kennebec from the State House, the Old South Church at Hallowell, and that city’s Hubbard Library. A very early use of Vinalhaven granite was on a Canadian island near the Maine coast. On Petit Manan a lighthouse was built in 1854. Other Maine structures on the list are the Augusta Post Office, the soldiers monument at Camden, and the Kennebec County Court House.

Two of the largest contracts ever made for Maine granite were for government buildings in Washington. The State, War and Navy Buildings in 1877, and the Senate Office Building in 1905. Post Offices for many of our large cities were built of Maine granite. Besides in our own state capitol, they were erected in Cleveland, Ohio; Kansas City, Missouri; Washington, D.C.; Brooklyn, N.Y.; Boston, Mass.; and Houston, Texas.

Private as well as public buildings called for granite from Maine. Among them were the Union Mutual Insurance building in Boston; granite posts for the New York elevated railroad; the Broad Street RR station in Philadelphia; the Masonic Temple, and both the Shawmut and Suffolk Banks in Boston; the Bankers Trust Co. in New York; the Continental Bank and the Marshall Field Building in Chicago.

Maine granite works turned out monuments as well as construction stone. They had the Pullman Monument in Chicago; the General Wool Monument, the tallest obelisk in the US made from a single piece of granite; parts of the Washington Monument ; the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Boston; the General Hancock statue in New York; and the Soldiers’ Monument in the National Cemetery at Salisbury, North Carolina.

A unique contract that came to the Bodwell Company in 1906 was for ten drinking fountains put up in New England cities by the American Humane Society. One of them long graced the square near the Union Station in Portland, near the corner of the old West End Hotel.

In 1886 Joseph Bodwell was elected Governor of Maine. It proved to be the last year of his life for he died on December 15, 1887 at the age of 69. His son succeeded him as head of the company.

A comprehensive account of the quarries at Vinalhaven has just been published by the Maine Historical Society. Written by Heger L. Grindle, it tells the story  of that island’s major industry from the time when a cargo of stone was first quarried at Arey’s Harbor in 1826, through the prosperous years of the Bodwell development, until the final closing of the island’s quarries in 1939.

This Maine industry was kept going largely by the demand for paving stones. Many millions of those stones left the Maine quarries during the years of their operation. In1894 the New York Legislature enacted the Tobin Law which required that all stones used for state and municipal projects within that state must be worked, dressed and curved on the site, not in quarry works in the state where it originated. The avowed purpose of the law was to protect New York workers from cheap labor in Maine. The New York Board of Public Works declared that the law covered paving blocks as well as construction stone. Maine quarries saw disaster ahead and started legal proceedings, though meanwhile the Bodwell Granite Co. laid off all of its paving cutters. Happily the New York law was amended, immediately boosting the paving block industry in Maine.

Dr. Grindle, a member of the faculty of the University of Maine at Fort Kent, has rendered distinct historical service by this publication, not only in telling the story of Vinalhaven granite, but also in recounting an important part of the development of organized labor in Maine. Formation of a union for granite workers came early in the movement in our state. After the national depression of 1873 had caused the layoff of 300 workers at Vinalhaven, the granite cutters were persuaded to form a union when work picked up again. They felt union organization might prevent another such layoff. We can well understand that such a movement was not applauded by industry. In fact the union secretary declared, “Our union is attacked by interested parties and mercenaries, but we will stand the storm.”

Controversy at once ensued over the policy of wages. The union insisted on regular hourly rates, not for piece work for which the company paid by measurement of production. Furthermore the men were paid only once a month, and little of that in cash because there was first deducted what they owed to the company store, and all workers were required to trade at that store.

The union became powerful enough to elect to the Maine Legislature a man who promoted legislation for an 8-hour law. They felt the time had come to get rid of the 60 hour week – six days a week at ten hours a day. The wage scale differed with the company orders. Even an expert piece worker could make no more than $2.50 a day, and the usual wage for non-piece work was $1.25 a day.

In 1877 some 400 cutters at Vinalhaven were able to make what was called ‘fair average wage’, but the next year wages dropped so drastically that one worker cried, “How long will this community permit itself to be doomed to misery, poverty and degradation (sic)?”

In 1878 ,the company ordered the Vinalhaven manager to fire 30 leading members of the union. Dr. Grindle reports:

“An uprising the likes of which had never been seen in Maine followed. Two hundred men went on strike. A relief committee was set up that established its own general store to receive food contributions from sympathetic citizens. Union branches in other parts of the nation made contributions. Remarkably, peace and order were maintained. There were no demonstrations, no scenes of drunkenness. Funds in the union treasury enabled payment of six dollars a week to about 200 men on strike.”

The company hired 30 scabs. Bodwell declared that the day might well come when stone cutters would be glad to work for a dollar a day. Finally on May 1, 1878, the strike came to an end. Bodwell claimed victory since the men returned at the old piece work wages. He said, “We have made no increase and no promises because of the strike.” He added, “An increased wage was ordered on a portion of the work several days. before the. strike.”

That statement was interpreted by the union to mean that the advance had been secured by the strike. Anyhow bad feelings were eased, and by mid-summer 450 cutters were on the job.

In 1884 stone cutters for the Washington Monument laid down their tools and walked out. It was a piece work project, and the workers complained that they could not make a living on the forty cents per square foot they were paid. This time the union won, for the men went back to work for 60 cents a square foot.

In 1887 a Knights of Labor committee met with representatives of the Bodwell Company to arrange [a] new scale of wages. The Kennebec Journal editorially sided with the company, saying:

“A scale of wages is the universally recognized method in adjusting grievances among stone workers, but in this section of the country it is little used, and it is now unreasonable to leave a company bound to an agreement while other companies are under no obligation.”

However, the Journal did pay tribute to the Vinalhaven union. It said,

“The Vinalhaven Knights of Labor are conservative, reasonable and cool-headed men who are fully alive to the welfare of the town.”

A settlement was soon made but not one that eliminated I piece work, as the union wanted. Not until 1889 did the Maine Legislature enact a law for uniform wages for granite workers. With it came an act requiring payments to be made fortnightly instead of once a month. The union did, however, receive a setback by another legislation enactment called the Intimidation Law. It said:

“Whoever by threat, intimidation or force shall prevent any person from entering into, or continuing employment in any firm or corporation, shall be punished by imprisonment of not more than two years, or by a fine not exceeding $500.”

To the union that meant that scab labor would be protected by the State. As time went on the union gained more strength, but the granite industry declined and finally came to its end before union labor in any Maine industry had reached its full strength.

While it lasted, it was a profitable and far reaching part of the Maine economy – that granite from the quarries of Maine.

Year: 1977