Radio Script #97
Little Talks on Common Things
February 18, 1951
Sometimes we seem to forget that this program bears the title “Little Talks on Common Things”. We spend so much time talking about the things, common and uncommon, of long ago days, that we need occasionally to refer to some common thing of our own time.
I don’t recall that we have previously mentioned that very common household thing, glycerin. At least it was very common not so long ago. Between 1942 and 1945 we were constantly reminded of the importance of glycerin in winning the war. As everyone knows it is highly important in the making of explosives. Formerly glycerin was collected bit by bit throughout the world as a by-product of the manufacture of soap. We all recall the fat-saving campaign during the war. Today it is quite different. Glycerin is produced from the products of the great oil industry, and it can be made in almost unlimited quantity. Very common things are the insect pests that eat up our gardens. Every season sees some new insect killer put on the market.” How are these pest killers made? The new fungicides and insecticides, the materials to treat seeds to insure better germination and the nitrogenous fertilizers to stimulate their growth all come from the great petroleum industry — the same folks who refine the gasoline that is pumped into your car.
We are reading lately about the new amino acids, the building blocks of the proteins, and the research scientists tell us that from the oil industry will come these new aminos to supplement the existing proteins of the vegetable and animal world.
We are now told that nearly half of all the products of the organic chemical industry are derived from oil. The petroleum industry is growing to be more and more like the old woman who lived in the shoe, so abundant and varied are her children.
In these days when the papers carry so many items about commercialized amateur athletics, it is easy to think the practice is new and previously unheard of. But it is very old indeed. The columns of the Waterville Mail in 1896 make it clear how the accusations flashed back and forth among the schools and colleges half a century ago.
On January 3, 1896 there appeared in the Mail a letter to the editor signed anonymously “An Honest Sport”. There had evidently been published in Harper’s Weekly an article that attracted a lot of attention. Its reference to non-students playing on the high school teams of Portland and Bangor had brought Maine some national but undesirable publicity. The letter to the Waterville Mail, alluding to the Harper’s article, went on to say:
“The Bangor papers take exception to the article and claim their team has been run on the square. Perhaps the athletic standards in the Queen City have been improved, but we do know that in former years the studies of some of their players came under the heads of recess and football. Why Portland and Bangor were selected in the Harper’s article we do not know. Certain it is that any other two school elevens in the state could have been taken as bad examples. Probably nowhere in the Union are school athletics in a more unsavory state than they are in Maine today.
“It is pleasant to say, however, when we turn to the Maine colleges, that we find conditions IIDlch improved. But there is room for still more improvement. One college already imagines that the 1897 baseball pennant waves over her diamond because two or three New England League players will enter that college next spring.”
The Bangor Commercial picked up that letter with delight. The Commercial said:
“It is seldom that the Waterville Mail allows any belaboring of Colby through its columns, but we notice in that paper a most sensible communication from a writer Who signs himself ‘An Honest Sport’. While he doesn’t mention Colby, we all know what college expects baseball players from the New England League.”
The Waterville Mail immediately retaliated: “The article referred to is not aimed at Colby and has no reference to the athletic situation there. It has particular reference to the fitting schools, the academies of Maine. We are not aware that Colby needs any reproof for failure to encourage purity in athletics. If all the other Maine colleges were as faultless in this respect, there would be little ground for criticism.”
When games were played in any of the sports back there in the 1890’s, feeling often ran high. The Waterville Mail carried a stern protest about tactics in the Colby-Maine football game in 1896. Although Colby had won the game 10 to 0, the Mail commented: “Hook, Colby’s quarterback, had one of his arms roughly twisted by a Maine player, an act that had no excuse and which furnished an example of dirty football Which was in striking contrast to the gentlemanly manner in which the Colby men treated their opponents.”
That blast was too much for the Bangor Commercial. They let loose with the following barrage: “The State College boys did well in Saturday’s game. They had to play Colby’s mercenary team. Messrs. Scannell and Gibbons are not novices. One of them is an employee of a Waterville hotel. It is a pity to have such hired sluggers introduced into Maine football. President Butler of Colby knows this is not honorable. We hope that Colby team will this year be wiped from the face of the earth, and that Messrs, Scannell and Gibbons will come in for all the extra punches that can be introduced into the rough and tumble of the game.”
The Mail had its come-back all ready: “Messrs. Scannell and Gibbons came to Colby from Phillips Exeter Academy. If one of them helps pay his way through college by working in a hotel, it is a more honorable business than are the sneers of the falsifying writer in the Bangor Commercial. Those two fellows are bonafide students and honorable young men. The Commercial’s insult to President Butler and to Colby is beneath contempt.”
I know from experience that feeling between the academics was even more fierce at times than between the colleges. Not only did I see the great battles between Hebron and Coburn, and between Hebron and Kents Hill, during lJl.y eight years as a teacher at Hebron, but I caught a glimpse of the bitterness of those conflicts even before I ever saw the Hebron campus.
When I was in college an annual spring event was the baseball tournament of the so-called Colby Junior League. The league was comprised of the four Colby prep schools, Coburn, Hebron, Higgins and Ricker. The tournament consisted of three games, the preliminaries being drawn by lot, then the two winners playing each other for the championship.
A lot of hard feeling was caused by college students, not graduates of any one of the schools, siding with one school — in succeeding years not by any means the same school — and going out in large numbers to cheer that school to victory. The college played favorites, said the partisans of the other schools; the tournament wasn’t fair. At any rate, feelings finally ran so high that the annual tournament was abandoned.
Well, as I said, my personal experience verifies the fact that those prep school contests were heated affairs. One spring in my college days Coburn had just defeated Hebron in the finals of the tournament on a Saturday afternoon. I had returned to the fraternity house and was standing by a second floor window overlooking the walk When I heard loud and high-pitched voices in angry argument. As anyone within half a mile could hear, the bone of contention was the game that had just ended. I stuck my head out the window to see if I recognized these arguing combatants, now verbally playing the game allover again. I was amused, but in light of What went on in those days, not wholly surprised, to see that the embattled conversation was between George Stanley Stevenson and William E. Sargent, respectively the dignified principals of Coburn and Hebron.
All the furor over athletics half a century ago was not confined to the schools and colleges of Maine. On June 22, 1897 the Waterville Mail commented as follows: “In his recent lecture in this city, President Gates of Amherst incidentally referred to the fact that the captain of the Amherst football team has been dismissed from college for failure to maintain proper standing in his studies captain Callahan, who was referred to, is said to be one of the finest centers in the whole list of college players, and it turns out that Amherst’s loss is Yale’s gain, for Callahan has entered the New Haven institution. He can’t play on the Yale team under the rules, however, until the season of 1898. Perhaps a year’s retirement from football will give him the scholastic standing he lacked at Amherst.
Back there in the 1890’s the big football game of the year was not Colby’s game with any of the other Maine colleges; it was the annual Thanksgiving Day contest between Coburn and Waterville High School. In 1896 that game was played on November 26, which is regarded as a rather late date for football in Maine.
Coburn won the game 6 to 4. On Friday the Waterville Mail devoted three first page columns to the battle. “The conditions for football playing”, said the Mail, “were the worst ever seen in this city. Instead of frozen ground, the teams had to play on ice covered with snow, and it was wonderful how the men kept their feet as well as they did. A drizzling rain that froze as it fell continued throughout the game.” All together it proved a gloomy day for the high school, but somewhat comforting by two winning points for Coburn.
Less than one per cent of humanity have caused most of the world’s major troubles. And did you ever stop to think that those trouble-makers have all been imbued with a hatred of the basic truth of Christian democracy — the truth that every human being is a child of God, deriving his human rights from God, not from the State? Whenever a Caesar or an Alexander, a Napoleon, a Hitler or a Stalin sets out to enslave mankind, he knows that he can succeed only by eliminating religion and erasing.all reference to the fact that man gets his rights from God, and that the ultimate purpose of government is to protect those rights down to the last and ‘weakest individual. If the conquest-bent dictator can wipe out that precious heritage that has comedown through 1,900 years, he knows his victory is won, perhaps you don’t belong to any church. perhaps you haven’t been inside a church for a long time. Perhaps you just don’t like the churches. Well, that is your privilege as a free American; but you may not always be a free American unless a great many people continue to believe in and support the church.
For it is the church that, year in and year out, generation after generation, keeps alive the precious truth on which our forefathers founded the government of the United States; that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In this time of world crisis, when the very foundations of Christian democracy are threatened, we ought to take seriously to heart the words spoken 250 years ago by William Penn: “Those people who are not governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.”
Year: 1951