Radio Script #99
Little Talks On Common Things
March 4, 1951
It is a good American trnt to distrust people who acquire too much power. The Famed Boston Tea Party was born in a distrust of monopolies, especially a government monopoly. Raving been fed up on monopolies in Old England, the colonists of New England jealously guarded the rights of the colonial legislatures granted them in the royal charters and by later precedents.
When the representatives of the several colonies gathered to write the Constitution of the new federal government they were careful to write into it these words: “Powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” Not only did they zealously guard the rights of the several states, they set up the further safeguard of dividing the powers of the federal government into three branches, each a check on the others. They further saw to it that, while population should decide the number of representatives in the lower house of the Congress, each state should have the same number in the upper house.
Now notice how dictatorship, anywhere in the world, always acts. When Hitler became Chancellor, his first official act through his stooges in the Reichstag was to abolish the powers of the little German states. Lenin, tolerant toward the Russian provinces, was scarcely in his grave when Stalin took away their powers. Nobody is so foolish as to claim that a new Hitler or Stalin will do the same in the United States. But a lot of honest, straight-thinking Americans are worried about the growing trend to place more and more power in the hands of a few men in Washington. That is what this debate about troops to Europe is all about. That is why some people oppose the molmting billions of federal aid to the states, for he who pays the piper calls the tune.
More than a century ago Thomas Jefferson said: “When all government shall be drawn to Washington as the center of power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as oppressive as the government from which we separated.” A century after Thomas Jefferson, General Eisenhower said: “The concentration of too much power in centralized government need not be the result of violent revolution. A paternalistic, hand-out government can gradually destroy the will of the people to maintain any high degree of local responsibility. ” Every time we run to Augusta instead of solving a problem at home, every time Augusta turns to Washington for help, government gets farther and farther removed from the grass roots. Of course certain matters must be the concern of the Federal government, but not all matters. Because charity begins at home, it doesn’t have to stay there. But let it all drift off to Washington and not even charity is left any longer at home.
So it seems appropriate that we turn our attention tonight to the good old subject of town meetings.
It is town meeting time again. Tomorrow the citizens of many Maine towns will assemble for the annual meeting. Other towns will meet a week later. A few have even abandoned the traditional Monday date and hold their meetings on Saturday. But, by and large, all over rural New England, the first Monday in March is still town meeting day.
Many men of my age think that town meetings have grown genteel and sophisticated, like most other gatherings since the days of our youth. With the town budget committees meeting in advance to recommend or oppose articles in the warrant, with the voting for town officers by Australian ballot, sometimes on a separate day from that on which the articles in the warrant are considered, with the presence of women voters, and with even the introduction of amplifying equipment into some of the town halls, we old-timers insist the town meeting, like the old gray mare, ain’t what she used to be. But perhaps we are just getting old and forgetful. The old town meetings may have been more dignified and less riotous than we seem to remember them.
My earliest: recollection goes back not merely before the days of printed ballots, but before any written ballots at all. Town officers were elected merely by show of hands, or by having the voters file past tellers. And many a row was caused right there. In one town I well remember what caused the introduction of the check list. A candidate for first selectman knew he was going to have a bard fight. So he rounded up some recently arrived workers in a local mill, rushed them past the teller for his side, and won the election.
Somebody soon found out that those rounded-up voters not only had not established residence in the town but actually hadn’t yet been naturalized as citizens of the United States. Rather than let an embittered citizenry take the case to the courts, the selectman resigned. The next year, and ever since, that town has used the legal voting list to check the voters for town offices.
In the old days the moderator had a real job. By the time I was old enough to be elected mocierator of an Oxford County town — that was only thirty years ago — the town meetings had calmed down a lot. Except for being challenged to a fist fight by an irate voter whose motion I had declared out of order, I didn’t encowter anyth:i.ng very exciting at that 1920 meeting. A couple of constables rushed the irate and somewhat inebriate protester out of the hall and the meeting went on about its business.
But that was well on into the twentieth century. Before 1900 town meetings were tougher. To begin with, it was always a kind of holiday. I say a “kind” of holiday, for there was none for the clerks in the stores. It was one of their busiest days. Many of the men coming in from the tams to town meeting brought their women-folk along, and those women had saved up egg and butter money for many weeks for this grand event. If a store clerk got to town meeting long enough to vote for officers he was lucky. He seldom got in his vote on any article in the warrant,unless the proprietor of the store had an interest in the article.
Most women of the village had no time for shopping that day. Their place was in the kitchens of grange hall and church vestry. For promptly at twelve o’clock noon, down came the moderator’s gavel as he declared the meeting in recess.
Then the arguing, sometimes very boisterous crowd, suddenly realized that they were hungry and off they trooped to their favorite church or to the grange hall. No one dining place was ever big enough to accommodate them all, and sometimes a fellow had to go to two or three before he could find a seat.
But the food was tasty and abundant in all the places, and he fOmld one about as good as another. What food it was – the heaping bowls of baked. beans, great loaves of brown bread baked in five pound lard pails, apple pies, mince pies, squash pies, custard pies, cream pies, cut in real, man-sized pieces, not in those tantalizing little samples one now gets in a restaurant. And coffee gallons upon gallons of it — made in those enormous, old fashioned coffee pots and served in those huge, straight-sided white mugs that would hold a full pint.
What did that meal cost the hungry voter? I recall very well how, in 1898, one church was very nearly boycotted because it raised the price to 25 cents. When the good women realized that the voters were passing them by, they quickly put out a big sign announcing reduction of their price to the conventional 20 cents.
Whether it was the presence of women voters or simply a change in rural customs, something happened about thirty years ago to take the sawdust off the town meeting floor. That sawdust was just. as much a fixture of town meeting as it was the inevitable accompaniment of the meat market. Smoking was not permitted in the town hall because of the fire hazard, but that generation was a generation of chewers and the sawdust served a useful purpose. Praise be, with all their habits, that is one with which the younger generation is not cOJlllllOD.ly afflicted. Only in the South do you any longer see the advertising signs for Eating Tobacco. Along with the old-time snuff it is gradually disappearing from New England.
I xemember some of the prominent town meeting characters very well, and I suspect they were types whose counterparts could at that time be found in, almost every town. There was the Reverend Hacy who spoke frequently and pompously with a kind of Daniel Webster oratory. He could lend polish and importance to the simplest subjects. Once the town was contemplating the purchase of a new snow roller. Disgusted with the economy-minded folks who wanted to pass over the article, the Reverend Hacy launched into a flowery tribute to sleigh bells on the snow and their inevitable disappearance unless the roads were well rolled.
The only trouble with Hac was that he was that ram specimen, a Democrat, in a staunch Republican town. He had mpresented a New Hampshim district in the national Congress when Grover Cleveland was Pftsident, and he never let folks forget it, not even his Sunday parishioners. In town. meeting he was listened to with reasonable- politeness, but the votes usually went the other way.
Then there was Uncle Brad, who was just naturally &gin everything. His pet hate was the schools. Be had a natural gift for scathing sarcasm and I can still see him waving those lanky arms as he fought the introduction of music into the- curriculum. ”They want to take valuable school time away from mading, writing and ciphering to teach my Silas to sing. Why, Godfmy mighty, that’s like tryiDg to teach a sow to lay eggs.”
Once, through aGE aCCident, Une-le Brad arrived at a meeting late. ‘~t they trying to do now?” he asked as, out of bmath, he nudged his way into the crowd. ”They want to tumpike an old- road”, someone said. Uncle Brad got the floor at once- and denounced the waste of Iloney spent modernizing old roads that had ao- use anyhow. Not until the next speaker got the floor did Uncle Brad learn that be bad been denouncing a plan to iaproft the roac:l past his own fame Thea. there was Joe. Joe was the perpetuaf seconder of motions. No sooner would anyone make a motion than Joe would second it. T~e moderator ouly wasted his breath by regularly pointing out that Joe had already seconded a 1IIIOtion on the other side. He kept right on with the practice, to which be gaft his own peculiar pronunciation, for he.always said, “1 second the emotion”. There was indeed a lot of emotion in the way he said it.
Just once was Joe caught napping. He got engaged in a discussion with another fellow while the ‘Eeting was trying to decide who should collect the taxes. -The job usually went to the lowest bidder, and the fellow who wanted the job badly had underbid everybody else by offeriug to collect for half a cent on the dollar.
One of those wags that inhabit every town saw J~ ‘SabsOJ:ptiClll and said, ”I move Joe collect them for nothing”. Catching the spirit of the occasion, the moderator asked, “Does anyone second the motion?” Joe hadn’t heard the motion, but he heard the moderator’s question, and rose to the bait. ”1 second the emotion”, he shouted. The moderator then declared the motion out of order and the half-cent bidder got the job. But Joe never heard the last of it.
‘l’he town aetiugs fifty· years ago were not all hUllor, explosive oratory and big dinn.em. Huch sound bus1sss was done aDd a lot of leftl-headed d1scussion took place. We should thaDk. a beneficent Providence or our New England luck or sOlllethiug that the· town meeting still survives. It is all we have left of real democracy in America. It is the only legislatift body onearth where every voter, regardless of education or wealth or family status, can have his say. When the town meeting decides an issue it is literally the will of the people. We must never let the town meeting die.
We are pleased to leam that Clinton’s little paper “The Advertiser” is remembered in other places besides Clinton. Mrs. Lucy Roberts of North Vassalboro has loaned me fiVe issues of the little paper, which had been preserved by her mother many’ years ago.
Usually my interest in these old-time village newspapers is confined to the local items, but occasionally one of the boiler-plate pieces attracts my attention. What those rural editors called boiler-plate was material all formed and ready’ to print, which was· furnished them by some syndicate, and which they used to fill up the colUIIIDS.
Such a piece of boUer-plate occupied much of the first page of the Clinton Adverti_r on November 10, 1892. It is entitled “Geman Ideas about America” and 18 a memorable example of ethnocentrism. That’s a big, hard word, but a good one to know and remember. Ethnocentrism is the belief that the ways, customs and culture of one’s own country or one’s own part of the coUlltry ate superior to all other peoples and places.
Considering the plight· of GermaDS today, it is interesting to know what they thQught of us fifty years ago. Says the article:
”Though no longer considered a race of Indians, Americans ate supposed to be a very uncivilized race of white men. Yet Germans believe that in the course of time those savage traits of character will disappear and Americans will become as polished as are the Gexmans. Living as we do among Negroes and Indians, compelled to’ defend ourselves with pistols and bowie knives, surrounded by deserts and mountains, the GeDUlDS consider it remarkable that we are far enough advanced to publish newspapers, and with great condescension they applaud the rapidity of our progress.
Local matter, I still insist, provide the cream in those old newspaper.
Boiler-plate, e’Vell on what the 1890 Gemans thought of us, is only the skilllled milk. So I was pleased to note in the Clinton Advertiser of March 20, 1890 that a Clinton schoolteacher had the courage to defend herself against criticism contained in the report of the school supervisor. She wrote: “How could a supervisor be so blind to his duty as to retain the services of a teacher whose manner, he claims, was boisterous and whose services were useless to the school. He says that parents felt the same way. How could they, when no word of complaint came to me during the whole term? If complaints were made and were justified, why did not the supervisor get rid of the boisterous teacher? On the contrary, he made not a single complaint to me during his calls at the school. The comments in his report are unjust and undeserved.”
Year: 1951