Radio Script #66
Little Talks On Common Things
April 30, 1950
We frequently lament Maine’s standing today among the 48 states in respect to support of education. It was not so in 1855. That old Augusta newspaper, the Rural Intelligencer — the same one in Which we found the editorial stand against stoves — proudly pointed out the following facts about education in Maine a hundred years ago. Said the editor:
“OUr free schools educate more persons at public expense than any other state in proportion to population. The number in Maine is 60,212; in New Hampshire, 7,705; in Connecticut 10,912. In Maine only one adult in a hundred cannot read and write; in Massachusetts it is three in a hundred; in Virginia nine in a hundred; in North Carolina 14 in a hundred. Pay earned by Maine farm laborers is higher than in any other state except Massachusetts. In Maine it is $13 a month, in Ohio $11.10, in Virginia $8.43, in Alabama $9.62.”
Editor Drew went on to point out that of all the states Maine and Rhode Island stood highest in freedom from crime. Said the editor proudly: “It is clear that Maine is one of the best, if not the very best state in the Union for a man to live Who would rear his family among those social, educational and moral influences which secure for life the best of its charms.”
Ninety-five years after Editor Drew penned those lines, we still think Maine is the best of all states to live in, but we hang our heads in shame when the educational statistics of the 48 states are laid before us. Only the deep South stands worse than Maine in public support of education.
In that year 1855 Governor Anson Morrill became chief executive of Maine.
Only six years later the whole nation would be involved in a bitter civil war·– not a war against a foreign nation, but the worst of all kinds of war -killing of citizen by fellow citizen, of brother by brother. In the Kennebec Valley of 1855 did that awful conflict cast any looming shadows before? Yes, indeed. In his inaugural address Governor Morrill spoke out emphatically against Henry Clay’s Compromise of 1850, the compromise which gave a green light to the extension of slavery into certain territories. Maine had been born as a part of the famous Compromise of 1820. She had secured her admission into the Union largely on the deal that demanded another free state to offset the admission of Missouri as a slave state. There was good reason for Maine to espouse the anti-slavery cause.
But she had been slow to do so. with the Yankee conservatism that characterized Maine folk then, as it characterizes them now, they had held aloof from the raging controversy. But in 1855 Governor Morrill spoke out. Maine, he said, could not support the Compromise of 1850, despite its sanction by Daniel Webster, nor would Maine recognize the legality of the Fugitive Slave Law. The governor said: “However desirous our people have been to refrain from discussing or agitating the question of slavery, lest such agitation might impair the permanence of the Union, the time has now come when that question must be met and discussed in our national and state councils with the same freedom with which we discuss other questions.”
Discussion did become more open and more violent, and in a few years Maine boys were laying down their lives at Bull Run and Chancellorsville, at Cedar Mountain and Gettysburg.
A lot of ordinary people like me, who can lay no claim to expert knowledge of the intricate workings of money, credit and currency, are asking what this talked-of dollar shortage is all about. Because a dollar is something that I usually don’t have, I can describe my kind of dollar shortage, but that of course isn’t what the newspapers are talking about. So I thought I would look into this matter and see if I could tell you anything about it.
In the ordinary course of trade, the way a nation gets money to buy goods from another nation is just the way you and I get money to buy goods of another person. We sell goods that we have, or we sell our labor or services for money, and we can then buy goods with that money. If a nation has to buy more than it can sell, it is just like you or me when we do the same it is in trouble.
In the 35 years from 1914 to 1949 the amount of goods and services that the United States sold abroad amounted to $270 billion, while our purchases from other countries amounted to only $170 billion. Thus we sold $100 billion worth more than we bought.
It is obvious that the foreign nations had to find some way to get those hundred billion dollars that we could not take their goods to meet. If we could not take that amount in trade, what could those nations do?
First, they sold their gold and silver assets held in this country to the tune of $16 billion. Secondly, they got about a billion from the World Bank. Third, they received $10 billion by remittances from American individuals and organizations, and $10 billion more from investments of U. S. business and individuals in foreign industries. That makes a total of $37 billion, leaving $63 billion still to account for.
Now listen. That $63 billion came from U. S. Government aid; $18 billion in loans, and $45 billion in outright grants or gifts. In other words we gave outright to foreign nations almost half the difference between our own sales and purchases.
After 35 years the problem is even farther from solution than it was a third of a century ago. The world is more desperately short of dollars today than ever before. The prospect is that the United States will continue to sell more than she buys for many years to come. We certainly don’t know the answer, but we have the temerity to ask how long Uncle Sam can keep on playing Santa Claus to all the world.
Some time ago, you will recall, we were seeking information about oldtime blacksmith shops in this vicinity. My young friend Brian Alley, the Waterville boy who is an authority on narrow gauge railroads, recently asked why I didn’t settle the question, since the needed information is available in print. Brian proved his point by bringing me a copy of the Maine Register of 1903, in which are listed the Waterville blacksmiths.· of half a century ago.
There were eight of them: John Davidson, Front Street; J. L. LaBranch, Charles Street; Joseph Loubier, Gray Street; Morris McNelly, Silver Street; Louis Poulin, Paris Street; Omer Poulin, Water Street; A. I. Trafton, Front Street.
Unfortunately the information i~ the Maine Register is not always accurate.
Sometimes information from the various towns and cities was supplied to the editor carelessly and superficially. It is therefore possible that this list of waterville blacksmiths is not complete. All we say is that, if there were others besides those eight blacksmiths, they were not recognized or listed in Maine’s official publication.
What about WinSlow? Were her blacksmith shops all closed by 1903? No. The Maine Register of that year records one Shop on the east side of the river, operated by A. M. Ballentine.
Fairfield had two blacksmiths at that time, F. T. Brown and A. V. Worthing.
Oakland did a big business in iron work and horse shoeing, for it had five smithies then at work: W. H. Prentiss, Gilman and Booker, E. A. Watson, J. T. Flynn and F. H. Abbott~ Not many of our listeners ever heard of the blacksmith shop where, as a boy, I used to “see the flaming forge and hear the bellows roar”. It was the shop of Ernest Burnham on Depot Street in Bridgton. In fact that short street between the post office and the narrow guage station in Bridgton boasted three blacksmith shops in 1903, and though the town was less than a third as large as Waterville in population, it had altogether seven blacksmiths.
By the way, I think one of the most memorable odors from the boyhood days of men my age is the smell of heated iron pressed to a horse’s hoof.
The pungent reek of smoke when the smith plunged the hot shoe into a tub of water was one sort of smell, but the much stronger and longer remembered odor arose when that only sligl\tly cooled iron was placed against the hoof, as the smith fitted the shoe.
That same copy of the Maine Register, printed 47 years ago, gives us information also about the old livery stables. The Elmwood Stable was then run by Silas Small, while Charles A. Hill, the liveryman we mentioned a year ago, operated a stable at 12 Mechanic Square. There were, in fact, ten livery stables in waterville in 1903. Two of them were almost directly opposite each other on Silver Street, where Ira Mitchell had one at No. 22 and A. E. Sawyer operated one at No. 23. Charles Perry ran a stable on Percival Court; C. Witham and Son had one in the rear of 57 Temple Street; W. M. Wilshire had his in Railroad Square; L. W. Rollins’s was at 29 Front Street; F. M. Hanson’s on Union Street; and there was one on the Plains, operated by J. E. Pooler at 57 Water Street.
Waterville had fourteen barbers in 1903, of Whom I think only one remains — that beloved and respected veteran of the shears and clippers, Victor Robichaud. Felix Audet, at the Elmwood Hotel barber shop, must be getting pretty close to fifty years as a Waterville barber. If he was practicing the trade in 1903, however, it was before he had a shop of his own.
Louis Breton of the Giguere shop on Main Street is another man who has been barbering for many years.
Speaking of the Elmwood, this year 1950 is its hundredth anniversary.
It was in 1850 that this venerable hostelry first opened for business under the proprietorship of Seavey and Williams.
It was not the first tavern on the same spot. There in what was simply a large dwelling house Deacon Abial Follansbee had conducted a “Temperance Hotel” before the Civil War. Destroyed by fire in 1878, the Elmwood was rebuilt larger and better than before. In his centennial history of 1902 Dr. Whittemore said of the Elmwood: ‘.’It has furnished a pleasant home to its many city boarders, a fine headquarters for convention delegates, a worthy place of entertainment for commencement dignitaries, and the scene of many festal occasions when clubs and college societies have celebrated after their fashion. ”
When I entered college in 1909; for dining purposes the Elmwood was overshadowed by the new, luxurious, gaudily ceilinged dining room at the Hotel Gerald in Fairfield, and it was there that I attended my fraternity initiation banquet. Four years later, when I was graduating, the Gerald was forgotten and banqueters usually sought the Elmwood again.
Another Waterville centennial of 1850 is the drug store now operated by Robert Dexter, so long conducted by his immediate predecessor, Jim Allen.
According to available records, and they are not many, the first drug store in Waterville seems to have been opened by Dr. Moses Appleton, who came here in 1796. Whether he had a separate apothecary shop or dispensed drugs from his residence is not entirely clear. Dr. Appleton, though a graduate of Dartmouth and once a school teacher in Boston, was a man who clung long to the old customs.
For many years after others had abandoned the practice, he wore his hair down his back in an old fashioned queue. The story is that one day the doctor went to a colored barber named Decatur on Water Street to have his hair trimmed and dressed. The doctor fell asleep. Suddenly he awoke,with a start and shouted to the barber, “Look out for my queue”. Decatur replied, “You is too, late, suh. It’s gone.” The doctor had been the victim of a quicker and more painless amputation than any he had ever inflicted on a patient.
Dr. Appleton made some curious notations in his fee books. One such note that he wrote in 1799 read: “It is agreed with Jabez Mathews that he pay me at the rate of two cords of wood per annum in consideration of being supplied with materials for keeping his family cured of the itch.”
NOW, as old Sam Pepys would say, “and so to bed”.
Year: 1950