Radio Script #27
Little Talks On Common Things
May 15, 1949
‘By this time every listener to this program knows that I favor federal aid to education. It is the only way we can secure reasonable equality of opportunity to all the children of our nation. It does not follow, however, that every proposed method to secure this desired end is equally good. Few right-minded citizens can favor any method that sets up a political grab-bag, whereby the states that have never done their financial best for their own schools keep on doing less and less, depending upon the Santa Claus in Washington to do more and more. By the phrase “economical best” I mean expenditures for education in relation to state income; that is, in relation to ability to pay.
There is also another difficulty about federal aid proposals. The formulas devised to determine how aid shall be apportioned among the states are often ill advised and unsound. Probably few persons realize that the federal aid bill now receiving most attention in the Congress will be of net financial benefit to very few states. Too seldom, in looking for help from Uncle Sam’s treasury, do we stop to ask where the good uncle himself gets the money. The present Senate Bill 246 is based on the federal income tax payments in the various states.
Senator Lodge of Massachusetts rendered valuable service when, last week in the Senate, he showed in plain dollars and cents what each state would receive under the federal aid plan and what it would cost each state to support the plan. In its first year of operation the plan would cost $208,083,·000. Where would the federal government get this money? From tax sources in the states themselves.
Now we certainly do not regard Maine as one of the wealthier states, and we are not at all proud of our low standing among the 48 states with respect to our support of education. Yet, under this .particular federal aid plan, Maine would receive $945,000, while it would cost the taxpayers of Maine $1,206,000. In other words we would payout $261,000 more than we would get. Of course that amount is mere chicken feed compared to what the plan would cost the truly wealthy states. It would cost Illinois $’13,635,000; California $13,869,000; and New York $29,574,000. Only seventeen states would receive more than they paid out; 31 states would lose. The gainers would be Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, utah, Virginia and west Virginia.
By what possible stretch of the imagination can Texas be classed as a poor state? How can Virginia be called a poor state and Vermont a rich state? How can the oil state of Oklahoma be called poor and Maine called rich? In short, Senator Lodge points out that the formula devised to determine rich states from poor states, in respect to the need for federal aid to support their schools, is all wrong. For Texas to receive $41,000 more than it pays out, while Maine pays out $261,000 more than it receives, simply does not make sense.
Many well meaning people, especially.professional educators, are so eager to see a program of federal aid to education get under way that they will support any bill without the caution of careful· examination. I too want to see a program of federal aid, to equalize opportunity for all the children of all the people, but one doesn’t get a structure of equality by trying to build it on the sands of inequality. That is what Senate Bill 256 tries to do. In my opinion it is not a good bill.
To Daniel Webster — not the great orator of long ago, who once beat the Devil in a court of law, but the present town.manager of Fairfield — we owe the first suggestion that has come to us concerning the origin of that picturesque old Maine saying, “leaning toward Sawyer’s”. For those of you who never heard that expression — and I suspect there may be many such — let me repeat that it refers to some material object that is tipping or badly askew, and in its most common use refers to a tumble-down barn or set of buildings.
Mr. Webster suggests that, just as in the case of “not worth a Hannah Cook”, the saying did not originate in a proper name at all but in a common word. Perhaps it first referred to a tree which, as it was being cut down, perversely and obstinately kept leaning the wrong way; namely, toward the sawyer, the man or one of the men who was sawing it. Because there were plenty of people named Sawyer, the term became confused with the family name, and when the expression once got into writing, it came to be spelled with a capital S. Whether or not it is the correct explanation, Mr. Webster’s is at least both plausible and ingenious.
We’ll see what the Dialect Society has to say about it.
There recently came to my attention a little pamphlet, yellowed with age during the past 97 years. It is entitled “By-Laws of the Town of Waterville, 1852”. That was more than thirty years before Waterville became a city; indeed it was back before the Civil War in the real horse and buggy days. In fact I suspect there was more horse-back riding than buggy riding when this little book was printed by Maxham and Wing at the office of the old Waterville Mail.
I believe, long before the recent State Legislature got interested in fireworks, the old ordinance prohibiting their use within fifty rods of any street or highway was still on the books, as it was in 1852, but it certainly was not enforced. What is not so well known is the exception provided by the old by-law of 1852. It reads: “The selectmen may, for military parades and musters, and for such other occasions as they may deem proper, from time to time, for one day at anyone time, grant a dispensation from the operation of this section and may then grant permission to any discreet person to superintend the firing and discharge of cannon, guns, or fire crackers in a specified place.” The penalties for offenses were not excessive in 1852. Listen to this one.
“If any person shall, within said village, wantonly or unnecessarily fire or explode any squib, cracker, serpent, fulminating powder or preparation of gunpowder in any store, shop, barn, street, or public place, he shall for each offense forfeit a penalty of 25 cents.”
Here is a by-law that reveals marked change in our common ways of living: “Whoever shall presume to carry any fire from any building or place to another building or place, except in a safe and covered pan or other vessel, so as to secure the fire from the wind and from being scattered by the way, shall forfeit 50 cents.” A common means of conveying articles from one place to another is revealed by this by-law: “No person shall pass with any wheel-barrow upon any sidewalk in said village, except for the purpose of passing directly across the sidewalk from the street to some adjoining land, on penalty of 25 cents for each offense.”
There were speed laws in Waterville a hundred years ago. “No person shall drive or ride any horse in any street of said village on the run, or at an immoderate pace, except in case of urgent necessity, under penalty of one dollar.”
I suppose it was urgent necessity which permitted Hod Nelson to run his horse down College Avenue and Main Street that day when he hurried downtown after a new baseball to replace the one ball available when the Colby-Bowdoin game ~an the ball lost in the grass and bushes north of Shannon Hall.
Curiously enough it is a by-law concerning smoking which contains the one reference in this volume to a necessary convenience of the old days which preceded the modern bathroom. “No person shall smoke or carry a lighted pipe or cigar”” — note there is no mention of cigarettes; they had not yet been invented “No person shall smoke or carry a lighted pipe or cigar within or upon any street, sidewalk, stable yard or outhouse within the village, on a penalty of 50 cents.”
On three old-time things our listeners have responded splendidly. They have helped us get a complete and accurate list of Maine’s narrow guage railroads~ they have rounded up the old cattle pounds~ they have given us a respectable list of covered bridges that still stand in Maine. Now let us try again. Our new subject is the old-time canals. Other states had bigger and more numerous canals. Maine had nothing to match the big Erie, properly called the Barge Canal. But we certainly had a few that were important channels of commerce before the days of the railroads.
Now on this subject I am more ignorant than I was of the narrow gauge railroads. I suppose I ought to be ashamed to admit it, but tonight I know of just one canal ever used in Maine for relatively long-distance commerce. This excludes the short connection canals inside some of our larger towns or cities, like Lewiston and Bangor. The canal I know was abandoned about the time I was born. It was not my birth, however, that put it out of existence, but rather the building of the B & SR railroad. It was the old Presumpscot Canal which skirted the unnavigable parts of the Presumpscot River so that boats could pass between Sebago Lake and the wharves at Portland.
When my father took over the old Dixie Stone general store in the upper village at Bridgton in the middle 1880’s, every pound of freight that came into that store was either brought over the road or, during the months from May to October, by boat from Portland through the Presumpscot Canal into Sebago Lake, up the length of that big lake, through the Songo, then called the Crooked River, through the locks at Songo Locks, out into the widening Bay of Naples, through the draw-bridge into Long Lake to Bridgton Landing, two miles from the center of the village. Next week I shall tell you the most interesting incident I ever learned about that old canal. I think you will agree it is a choice bit of Maine history.
Now where else in Maine were there once commercial canals? Let us see if the radio audience can come through with a good list.
It is almost time for the run of alewives at Damariscotta Mills. This is one of the memorable and unique sights in Maine. If there is any listener who has never seen it, don’t let another year go by without taking it in. There for more than countless centuries generation after generation of herring have laboriously climbed the steep falls from the salt water to the little inland lake, following nature’s mysterious but unavoidable urge to spawn in the fresh inland waters. Along those falls more than a hundred years ago man began to assist the tiring fish, so that more young fish would come down the way to the sea, to return in greater numbers of big herring the following spring.
So from the middle of May to the end of June one of the grandest sights in Maine is to see those struggling fish try again and again, with defeat after defeat, to leap from one man-made pool to the next, up the long ladder of pools to the little pond at the top. Some of them never make it; some of them take days to get out of a single pool; but by one super-effort, one gigantic leap, most of them finally make it.
It is a great lesson for us humans. Most of us are not persistent fighters. We give up rather easily. But not so these fish. Fatigue, even to complete exhaustion, cannot make them give up. Only death can make them stop. And the finest part of the lesson is that most of them do win through to the goal.
Year: 1949