Radio Script #33
Little Talks On Common Things
June 26, 1949
Our very first broadcast, 32 weeks ago, mentioned that commonest of disliked things, taxes. What is the outlook concerning taxes in the near future? Of one thing we may be sure: high taxes are here to stay. The Government will need at least $35 billion a year for many years to come, just to pay running expenses and the huge interest on the national debt, without reducing that debt a dollar. If any reduction of the debt is attempted, the annual need will be nearer to $40 billion. It takes a lot of tax money to produce that stupendous figure.
Nevertheless it is predicted by competent observers that some tax reductions can be made, probably not in the income tax but almost certainly in some of the excise taxes. Those taxes are becoming a noticeable hindrance to business activity out of proportion to their yield. perhaps the first to go will be the 3% tax on freight bills, because it unfortunately and unfairly pyramids in its power to add to the cost of goods. Every time any raw material, partly finished product, or finished article moves by freight, the tax is collected. The 15% tax on passenger fares, by bus, rail, boat or plane becomes increasingly burdensome as business declines. That tax may be the second to go.
Along with it the 25% tax on telegrams and long distance telephone calls may be cast aside, and perhaps the 15% tax on local telephone calls. Few people could ever see any sense in the tax on electric light bulbs, and most men resent paying a tax on talcum powder and shaving lotion in the name of cosmetics. The U. S. News predicts that 1950 may see the abolition of the excise taxes on cosmetics, jewelry and furs.
Now tonight let’s get to work on those old ox slings. Mr. Lewis Whipple has supplied me with a picture of an ox sling in the old Sands blacksmith shop at West Buxton. It is said to be over 200 years old. Mr. Carroll Otis of Oakland has gone to a lot of trouble making us a drawing of an ox sling showing side and end views, and has written a fine description of its operation. It is difficult to show you how the apparatus worked without visual aid. You too ought to see the diagram or the picture. If we had television we might give you a clear idea. We must do the best we can with mere words. First you have two rows of three heavy upright posts, and across the top of each row a big beam. Suspended from the beams in the gap between the two rows of posts are two leather belts, eight inches wide. The other end of these belts attaches by hooks to an 8-inch wooden roll.
Now an ox is an unpredictable and cantankerous creature. “Move” and “gee” and “haw” and goad were necessary to get one inside such a contraption. So at the front end close to the floor was a 4 x 6 roll, to which was attached a windlass. A 3/4-inch rope was tied to a chain round the ox’s neck and given several turns around the roll. Then, by turning the windlass, the ox was literally pulled into the sling and its head was drawn firmly down to the roll.
Next the two belts were drawn under the ox’s belly and were attached to the hooks on the other roll which we first mentioned, up on one side, parallel with the ox. By levers, just wooden sticks stuck in holes in the roll, the roll was turned and. the animal hoisted up so that its feet just touched the floor.
Near the front a hardwood block about a foot high and 6 inches square was mortised into the sill on either side, the top of the block sloping slightly toward the rear. On these blocks the blacksmith placed the ox’s forefeet for shoeing. A chain held the foot firmly in place. Similar blocks in the rear took care of the hind feet.
Yes sir, shoeing an ox was quite a chore. Not only did the blacksmith have to go through all these preliminaries, but he had to put on twice as many shoes as on a horse, for old Alderman ox wore eight shoes.
Mr. Otis adds the interesting information that only the outer shoe on each foot was sharpened in winter, thus preventing the ox from caulking himself. Mr. Whipple has dug up startling information about the ox population in Maine. In 1860 there were about 100,000 working oxen in the state, one for every five persons. Oxen outnumbered horses in every county except Aroostook.
The score was pretty close in Waterville, which then included Oakland under the name of West Waterville. This town had 370 horses and 340 oxen. Winslow had 266 horses and 376 oxen. Buxton, where the pictured ox sling still stands, had 382 oxen. The record was held by the town of Waldoboro which had 986. That part of the state probably still has the most oxen. Ox teams may even today be seen at work in the town of Jefferson.
Mr. Whipple tells of a memorable haul by oxen. In 1866 a heavy timbered barn 50 by 40 feet (and that’s quite a building) was hauled through the streets of Solon on skids by 60 yoke of oxen. One hundred and twenty oxen on one haul. That is some team!
We must correct an error we made last week. The Charles Hill who ran the Elmwood Livery Stable was not the Charles Hill who operated the Belgrade Hotel. Both were named Charles, but they were no relation. We are reminded of a debate in Congress a few years ago between Senator Brewster and Senator Happy Chandler, now the baseball czar. They brought up the Biblical story of Lazarus, or rather two stories — one about Lazarus raised from the dead, the other about Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom while the rich man languished in Hell. The debate ended by the President of the senate solemnly declaring, “The chair rules that there were two different Lazaruses. II Well, those were two different Hills, both good citizens.
How much is a billion? We need a couple of striking illustrations to visualize such a huge figure. Eighteen of those newest and speediest processing machines for plastics at the Keyes Fibre plant, if they operated twenty-four hours a day seven days a week without stopping would turn out just about a billion pieces in one year.
Here’s another illustration. Suppose it were your job to hand out one dollar bills, a bill every second of a forty-hour working week, and except for your Saturday and Sunday rest you never took a vacation. You wouldn’t live long enough to hand out a billion one dollar bills for that would take you 133 years.
So when the Hoover Commission says its plan will save us at least four billion dollars a year, that is a great deal of money. In almost every state there has been formed a citizen’s committee to support the recommendations of the Commission. In Maine that committee is led by Dr. Charles Phillips, President of Bates College, and its membership is composed of leading citizens in business, industry and the professions. Let all of us support their efforts.
Write your Congressman that you want this saving made.
Let us look tonight at a few more items in the commission report. Last week we referred to the post office and the commission’s plan to save at least half a billion dollars a year in that single department. Let’s see now what the commission says about the federal budget. It calls that instrument an “inadequate document, poorly organized, and presenting no understandable or workable plan for government expenditures.”
For instance, the Veterans Administration has an appropriation item of over a billion dollars for salaries and expenses, which indicates nothing of the work done by that organization. The Naval Hospital at Bethesda, Maryland receives allotments under twelve different appropriation titles. In no one place in the budget can he locate the cost of operating a naval hospital. The Bureau of Ships is financed by 27 different appropriations, many of which have no connection with that bureau. Whereas the budget shows $26 million for the Forest Service, the total operating cost of that service is actually $43 million.
The United States Government is the largest purchaser of supplies in the world; yet it has no central purchasing authority. Each agency buys as it pleases, and many are not manned by competent, trained and experienced purchasers. Efficient purchasing requires training and skill, as every business man well knows.
Half of the several million orders that go out of government offices each year are for less than ten dollars, yet those orders require all the recording and all the red tape of large purchases. The commission points out the astounding fact that the cost of processing those orders amounts to more than the cost of the goods. For every ten dollar purchase the average office processing cost is twelve dollars.
The not unexpected result of this unorganized buying is that every agency has excessive stocks of supplies, stocks which the commission estimates could easily be reduced by nearly two billion dollars. In fact, improvement in purchasing and supply management alone would save the nation about three billion dollars a year perhaps the strongest attack of the commission falls upon the military.
Listen to the commission’s words: “Military strength is important, but it is only one element in national security. National strength depends upon economic, political and human values. The military arm of the government, in its new strength, must not grow into a thing apart. It must unequivocally be under the direction of the executive branch and be fully accountable to the President, the Congress and the people.
Everybody knows that the worst feature of our national defense has been the continued quarreling and lack of unity among the various branches of the service.
The new act creating a Secretary of Defense has done something to remedy this deplorable condition, but things are by no means right yet. The Hoover Commission finds still much disharmony and lack of unified planning in the armed services.
It finds inexcusable extravagance and waste. It finds that the new National Security organization lacks control authority and direction, is still plagued by divided responsibility, and provides no clear civilian control. The authority of the Secretary of Defense is weakened by the rigid structure of a kind of federation of Army and Navy rather than their unification. The commission says: “In direct proportion to the limitation and confusion of authority among their civilian superiors, the military are left free of civilian control.”
In short, teamwork is still sadly lacking, and too many brass hats are determined that the military shall on all matters be independent and not subject to the will of the people.
It happens that this speaker knows more about one government organization than about all the others. Because we have been Veterans Coordinator, serving as liaison agent between Colby Coll~ge and the Veterans Administration in respect to veterans attending college under the so-called G I Bill of Rights, we have had occasion to watch the progress of veterans legislation in Congress, and the operation of the laws by the V. A. offices. We have only the highest respect for the efficient, friendly management of the V. A. office at Togus, Maine, under the leadership of Col. Stoddard; and we cannot praise too highly the Togus Division of Rehabilitation and Education under Col. Earle Reed. But of the overall management on the national scale, of the orders and directives concerning which Col. Stoddard and Col. Reed have no discretion, we cannot speak so highly. Our own experience bears out some of the findings of the Hoover Commission with regard to the Veterans Administration. Let us take a look at those findings.
The V. A. spends more money than any other federal agency except the military establishment. It spends $5,350,000,000 a year, or 11 cents out of every dollar going for all government expenses. That is an average of one thousand dollars.for every veteran assisted. Of the whole 5 1/3 billions, it spends $859,000,000 for salaries, or 16% of its whole budget. The Commission points to serious defects in V. A. Management. There are conflicting lines of authority between Washington and the field. May we digress here for a personal comment.
Early in 1946 this speaker made a public statement that was given wide publicity. One clipping reached us, for instance, from a paper in st. Augustine, Florida. We then said, “We do not have a Veterans Administration in the United States i we have forty-eight veterans administrations.” How true the last three years have proved that statement to be. We have repeatedly tried to get Washington to see sense in a plan which Togus would willingly allow, if the big chiefs on the Potomac would agree. We have simply asked that a veteran attending college, with clear intent to complete his course and get his degree at that college, may accelerate his program by attending summer school in another state without transfer of his V. A. records to the second state. In other words let the college and the V. A. office in that state be permitted to farm the boy out, as it were, for the summer in another state. But Washington says “no”. A time-consuming and costly transfer of all papers must take place. When a Colby veteran attends Boston University for the summer, all his V. A. records must be transferred to Boston. When he returns to Colby in the fall, back the whole bunch of papers goes to Togus.
Now to what the Hoover Commission says. They find in V. A. too many organizational units. They find the whole system too complicated, with an excessive volume of written instructions that defy intelligent execution. There are 665 varieties of technical bulletins, over 400 circulars, and 88 different instruction manuals. On veterans’ insurance the confusion and delay long ago became a public scandal. The employee turnover has been out of all proportion to the number of personnel. In short, the commission suggests that V. A. is in for a complete shake-up and reorganization.
If the few facts presented tonight do not convince you, we recommend that you read the summary of the report of the Hoover Commission, a large print, easily read book which you will find at the Waterville Public Library.
This is our last broadcast for the season. We vacate the mike during the summer months quite as much to provide relief for you patient listeners as to get relief ourselves. We are happy to announce that we shall be back with you in September, again under the sponsorship of that progressive and friendly firm, the Keyes Fibre Company. In no small part we attribute the cordial reception which you listeners have given to this program to the fact that it has been completely free from advertising. You have heard no plugs or jingles in behalf of pie plates or plastic trays. Just the simple announcement, at the beginning and the end of the program, that it is made possible by the Keyes Fibre Company. If you think that company has rendered a public service by these thirty-two broadcasts, why don’t you tell them so. They know perfectly well that the program has little effect on their sales, and the only way in which they can know that you have enjoyed it is for you to tell them so.
Perhaps after thirty-two weeks a kind of recapitulation is in order. What have we talked about? We have tried, first of all, to uphold and proclaim the American.way of life, the system of private enterprise upon which our strength as a nation and our opportunities as citizens has been securely built. Then, because we are surrounded on every hand by modern gadgets and ultra modern ways, we have cast many a nostalgic eye upon the old-time things. Please note that we have never suggested bringing them back, but our reason for mentioning them is more than mere reminiscence.
The present is always the child of the past. Out of nothing, nothing comes, and the past, for most of us, is filled not. with great_events and colossal possessions, but with little things , many of them things which the younger generation never knew, but out of which sprang the conveniences of our modern day. Life is not a system of isolated lakes, it is a river flowing ever onward to some eternal sea. We make no apologies for following that river back upstream, and on its banks we’ve found some interesting things: the narrow guage railroads, the old canals, the blacksmith shops and the livery stables, the barrels of flour and the old round crackers, and the grand old words and sayings of long ago.
For us it has been a rich experience, and we have tried to share it with you. So, with many, many thanks to all of you, we say Goodbye until September.
Year: 1949