Radio Scripts #28
Little Talks On Common Things
May 22, 1949
Let’s begin tonight with another reference to railroads. A whole volume could be written subject of rails in fact, many pages have been written — on just the one the steel lines on which the trains travel. In the 1830’s when railroads first came to ~merica the rails were of rolled iron and weighed only 33 pounds. But iron rails had been used for a century before that. Those early rails were of cast iron, very short, three to six feet, and made very bumpy tracks. The first Bessemer rail was rolled in the united States in 1865. It was not the heaviest rail of its time, for it weighed only 50 pounds, whereas the Pennsylvania Railroad already had 67 pound rails. Not until 1900 did we get a hundred pound rail. The newest rails — they call them the 1950 rails 6 3/4 inches weigh 152 pounds, have a height of eight inches and a base of The T-section rail is distinctly an American invention. Its inventor was John Stevens of the old Camden and Amboy Railroad. In fact, Stevens was quite an inventor. He perfected a multi-tubular boiler for marine engines, for which he petitioned Congress to give him a patent in 1790. He succeeded and thus laid the foundation for our present patent system. Stevens was also the first man to apply screw propellers to ships, trying them out only a few days after Robert Fulton made his famous run on the Hudson in the first steamboat. In fact, Stevens bettered Fulton in that he made the engine himself, while Fulton’s boat had a British engine. Stevens sent his boat from New York to Philadelphia, thus making the first ocean voyage for any steamship.
It was while crossing the Atlantic to England — this time in an old sailing vessel — that Stevens designed the T-rail. Securing some blocks of wood from the ship’s carpenter, Stevens set to work with his pocket knife and carved out his conception of what a rail should be. His model bears remarkable resemblance to a modern rail.
We hear a lot of controversial talk about freedom of speech or the lack of it in Russia. Of one thing we may be sure: it isn’t safe to criticize the government in the Soviet Union. Even some of the funny stories going the rounds make that point all too clear.
The story goes that a Russian wolfhound, exiled in London, was lunching with an English bulldog. “Can’t offer you much”, said the bulldog. “Since the food shortage started, Master even keeps the bones. This is a terrible country. How’s things in Russia?” “Wonderful”, said the wolfhound. “Big chunks of meat; juicy bones.” “For heaven’s sakes, my friend”, asked the bulldog, “Why are you here?” “Well”, replied the Russian dog, “a fellow likes to be able to bark once in a while, doesn’t he?”
Not long ago I warned you that some day I would “pull a boner”, make a mistake of fact on this program. Well, it happened last week. My excuse is the same as that of the dictionary maker, Samuel Johnson, who had defined “postern” as the knee of a horse. When a good lady asked him how he came to make such a· mistake, Johnson replied: “Ignorance, Madame, sheer ignorance.” That, too, is my only excuse for saying the old Erie Canal is now called the Barge Canal. My colleague on the Colby faculty, Miss Marion Hockridge, knows New York State well, and she informs me that most of the old Erie Canal is now filled in, that the present Barge Canal is a newer ditch which follows more closely the course of the Mohawk River. Ladies and gentlemen, I stand corrected.
I promised you a story about the old Presumpscot Canal, and here it is. Admittedly it deals with the canal rather indirectly, but except for the canal, there would be no story. When my father took over the old Dixie Store at Bridgton in the middle of the 1880’s many of the old account books were preserved. Some of them went all the way back to the year when the store was first opened, which incidentally was the year of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, 1809.
All through my school days I spent a great deal of time in that store, but it was not until the summer between my sophomore and junior years in college that I became interested in those old account books. One huge, leather backed volume was a stock book, covering the years 1822 to 1847. In it appeared the lists of merchandise received into the store from the outside. The more common, and in volume the more important, items received in barter — the butter, eggs, potatoes, salt pork and cord wood taken in exchange for other goods were not included, only the items that came from wholesalers in Portland.
Idly perusing the pages of that old book, I encountered an interesting and, at the time, an unexplainable, item. Regularly, once a month, from May to October, the book showed receipt of one hogshead of Jamaica rum. Then, sometime in November would appear the item, six hogsheads of Jamaica rum.
The explanation was the Presumpscot Canal. When the lakes and streams were open, from May to October, the boats plied regularly from Portland to Naples, Bridgton and Harrison by way of the old canal. When ice covered the lakes, the only access to the inland towns was by tote team over snow-drifted roads.
The old account book made it obvious that the six hogsheads of Jamaica rum received each November was the winter’s supply_ During the late spring, summer and early fall, one hogshead every month met the demand. Now for the curious item that I encountered. In 1834 I found the routine suddenly broken.
The year 1833 had been just like the others before it — six hogsheads in November, and one hogshead each month from May to October. And the year 1835 was just the same. But in 1834 there came a break. When the first boats came up the lake in May, sure enough one of them brought for the D:btie Store one hogshead of Jamaica rum just as usual. But on June 4, 1834 the old stock book recorded the receipt of four hogsheads of Jamaica rum. Then in July, August, September and October appeared the usual one hogshead each month.
Now it took no exceptional detective to figure out that something unusual must have happened in Bridgton in 1834. Although I was curious I did not pursue any systematic search at that time. But about ten years afterward, in the Colby College Library of all places, I quite accidentally ran across the answer.
In June, 1834 one of the most prominent religious denominations held their state Convention in Bridgton. people from allover the state came for a convention lasting several days in that little Cumberland County town. The three extra hogsheads of Jamaica rum were obviously to quench the thirsts of the ministers and laymen at that convention.
In telling of this incident we are not trying to be humorous. If there is humor in the story, let it shine by its own light. The incident does point clearly, however, to changing times and changing customs. Prohibition did not come to Maine until 1851, and then it was many years ahead of the rest of the country. In 1834 nobody mentioned prohibition, and only a few people were aroused to the menace of alcohol. Stimulants, as they were most frequently called, were expected at every occasion of church or state. House-raisings, barn-raisings, and even church-raisings were incomplete without plenty of rum. When the minister called at a home, the mark of one’s proper training in etiquette was to offer him a glass of rum, or at least of hard cider.
Were there no drunkards, no confirmed alcoholics in the old days? Of course there were. The chief cause of poverty in the early mill towns of Maine and there was plenty of it — was not the low wages, but the demon rum.
Most thoughtful persons agree that one of man’s great unsolved problems is the problem of alcohol. It still wrecks homes and blasts lives; it makes an otherwise careful driver a threat of death and destruction behind an automobile’s steering wheel. It makes nauseating spectacles out of ordinarily decent men and women.
We have decided that prohibition is not the solution, but we have found no substitute. We are making only a beginning in our attempts to educate young people about alcohol. The now famous Yale Institute of Alcohol Studies is one step in that direction; in Maine the school program of the Christian Civic League is another good step. At the desperate end of the run, when the disease of alcoholism has claimed its victim, Alcoholics Anonymous is doing excellent work.
But meanwhile, newspapers, magazines and billboards blaze forth the most alluring liquor advertisements. In the name of commercial greed they call upon us to drink more and more. Taverns and bar rooms multiply; the drunken drivers increase; the national liquor bill continues to soar. Let us not fool ourselves for a minute. Alcohol is still a major unsolved problem of American life.
In the early days of this program we once put in a good word for the farmers. Recently we heard a pretty good story .about the modern farmer’s problem with hired help. An investigator from the Department of Agriculture found a man hoeing corn in a big field. “Do you own this farm?”,he demanded. “Yes.” “How big is it?” “Two hundred acres”. “What do you raise on it?” “Mostly corn –. and a few hogs.” “Do you have a hired man?” “Sure. Couldn’t run the place alone.” II How much do you pay him?” “Six dollars a day and found.” “How can you pay that much for help, raising nothing but corn and a few hogs, with only 200 acres on your whole farm?” “I can’t”, said the farmer. “Most of the time lim way behind with his pay.” “what happens then?” “Then I just owe him — I give him a mortgage on the farm. n “But he’ll own the farm someday if that keeps up.” “Oh, that’s all right”, said the farmer. “He’ s already owned it three times. During the years he owns it I work for him. Then pretty soon I own it again.”
I suppose it wouldn’t be cricket to ask if that story reminds you of some of our recent government economy, especially as it is revealed in the report of the Hoover Commission. Don’t read that report unless you are ready for a tragic story of waste and inefficiency.
A very common thing is the oft-expressed wish that we had been living in some former exciting time. How wonderful it would have been to be a man of the Renaissance, to have known Michaelangelo and Rafael, Savonarolla and the Borgias. Oh, to have lived in Stratford with Shakespeare, to have frequented the *ermaid Tavern with Ben Johnson and Marlowe, or a century and a half later to have known Sam Johnson and his Boswell.
That idle dreaming does no harm unless it keeps us from properly performing the present tasks. For the fact is we are living now. This is the only time on earth we shall ever have. We had better make the best of it. There is something very wrong with our attitude toward life if we cannot muster the strength and wisdom to confront it. Certainly we have a right to speculate; assuredly we should plan for the future. But an important lesson few of us learn is to live fully and nobly one day at a time. Tomorrow never comes. When it gets here it is today.
Year: 1949