Radio Script #123
Little Talks On Common Things
November 18, 1951
When new taxes are contemplated, most of us how loudly, “Leave us alone; layoff the little fellow; soak the rich.” Even more loudly we demand that the big corporations be soaked long and hard. What we forget and ought especially to remember is that if the power to tax is the power to destroy, the saying applies equally to individuals and to corporations.
Recently Congress has been facing the question, hON much of the defense cost should business firms continue to bear? There is a saturation point beyond which the burden becomes so great that the power to tax becomes the power to destroy. For too tight a squeeze on profits definitely undercuts the capacity of private industry to finance new plants and equipment needed for the defense effort.
Industry admits that in World War II it received significant plant expansion help from the government, and it admits that some of those RFC lOans were not too savory. But today — unlike 1943 and 1944 — private industry is financing almost all of the huge program to expand production. And about two thirds of the money that has been plowed Into the expansion and improvement of our Industrial machine since 1945 has come out of profits.
The business corporations of America must have fair treatment, as fair as that given individuals under the tax laws, or else the private enterprise system in America’s doomed.
Mrs. Theodore Kloss of W8st Street has shown me an old scrap book of cooking recipes. The book was put together some time between 1860 and 1870 by some ancestors of Mrs. Kloss in Maine’s Penobscot tc.” of Bucksport. The recipes are all clipped from newspapers and are grouped together by subjects. They begin with meats. Fi rst appears a picture of a cow with the various beef cuts clearly marked. Then come directions for coming beef, pickling tongue, smoking hams, trying lard, salting pork, and making sausage.
In those days long before modem refrigeration, folks found clever ways to keep meat. One of the pasted Items in Mrs. Kloss’ book is headed, “Beef-steak for Winter Use.” It goes on to state: “Cut the steaks large and have ready a mixture of salt, sugar, and finely powdered saltpeter. Sprinkle the bottom of a large jar with salt, lay in a piece of steak, and sprinkle over It some of the mixture, then put in another steak, sprinkle, and so on until the jar is filled. Sprinkle the mixture on the top, then cover with a p late with a weight on It, and set in a cool, airy place, where It will Rot freeze. This needs no brine, as it makes its own. Twenty to thirty pounds may be kept perfectly sweet In this way.”
Meat was not expensl va when this scrapbook was made. One long clipping, extolling the virtue of young pig pork over fat hog, mentions that butchers were then paying three cents a pound on the hoof for beef, and only H cents for hogs.
Two pages are devoted to a long clipping headed, “A Lesson in Carving”, giving detailed instructions how to carw every variety of meat. Gentlemen carvers all, listen to this advice! “Many authorltte~ lay down the rule that one must never stand when carving. I f a person Is tailor the chai r quite high, there Is no doubt that It may be more graceful for the carver to keep his seat, especially when the pleee de resistance is small and easily carved. But when he confronts a large piece of beef, mutton or ham, it is certainly easier and we believe more graceful to carve sanding. Anyhow, If fashion and common sense here come into collision, we prefer the latter.”
After meats, the next section of the scrapbook is given over to soups, literally scores of recipes for soup of every variety and description. Then come directions for making hash — meat hash, fish hash, red flannel hash, and just plain hash. There are several pages devoted to sandwiches. Yes Indeed, the sandwich was known and well liked long before 1860.
There are numerous recipes for cooking fish — not merely the salt water varieties like cod, haddock, hallbut and flounder, but directions for baking pickerel, frying brook trout, and salting deJtm barrels of fresh water smelt this scrapbook Is not a complete cook book. It Is devoted entirely to the cooking of meat, fish, soups and eggs. It does not contain recipes for making bread, biscuits, or pastry of any kind. Probably the housewife had plenty of those recipes tucked away In a drawer or pasted In some other book.
You may recall that, when I talked about the first prescription book at the hundred year old drug store now operated by Robert Dexter, I told you what interested me more than the prescriptions was the book in which the prescriptions were pasted, for that book proved to be the accounts of Waterville’s Ilqoor agency for the years 1845 and 1846. Likewise, the book In which Mrs. Kloss’ recelpes are pasted interests me even more than do the recipes themselves. That book Is called the “Maine Subscribers Business Directory for 1861”. By counties, and by toms within each county In alphabetlcal order, are given the names of persons of various occupations. Unfortunately the pasted recipes cover the pages devoted to both Cumberland and Kennebec Counties, so I do not know who got their names mentioned in Waterville or in my native town of Bridgton. But the Fairfleld entries are intact, and they are amazingly Interesting. Do you remember my telling about the old photograph taken from the hill in Benton and showing he triple span of covered bridges across the Kennebec at Fairfield? You may recall that I expressed rrrf own surprise a the number of mills visible in that picture. This old business directory contains the names of eight different factories at Kendalls Mills alone. They were operated-respectively by William Connor, E. and N. Totman, Gibson and Newhall, Fogg Hall and Co., Samuel and Crowell Taylor, H. C. Newhall, 51 las Bates, Moses Fogg and J. and J. Foss.
Other names that have come down to our am day were Vickery and Lawry, dry goods; Stephen Wing, furniture and crockery; Samuel Eilts, lumberman; Charles Piper, teacher and fanner; Edward Rollins, dealer in stoves; Joseph Nye, deputy sheriff; William P. Nye & Co., dry goods — and perhaps most interesting of all, here recorded in the old directory is the father of the man who, in our day, was hero of that best-seller, “Cheaper by the Dozen”, for here recorded is J. H. Gf Ibreth, stoves, hardware, iron and steel, proprietor of the Island Nursery.
As one glances over the lists for various Maine towns, one’s struck by the uniqueness of some of the occupations recorded. In Swanville, for instance, there was William Smart, ax handle man, and J. Q. Adams (doubtless named for the President John Quincy Adams), who was listed as stave and shingle man. In Unity R. B. Hussey was farmer and blaster, Benjamin Chandler was keeper of temperance house, and H. B. Rice was harness maker and trimmer. Over in Steuben G. W. McCurdy was a horse tamer, William Dyer was a boat caulker, A. E. Trundy was farmer and bootmaker. In Calais William Marsh was a boom man, and In Topsfield the entry after the name of Lonna Bean is “for the mite society”.
Up in Harvey Eaton’s town of Cornville, James Frost was selectman, overseer of the poor, and mechanic; George Sanford was fanner “and brickmaker; William Richards was fanner and stone cutter; and about every third man in town was listed as farmer and dealer in stock. Up in little Concord, across the river from Bingham, there must have been a lot of sheep in the 1860 ‘s, for no less than seventeen men are listed as farmers and wool growers. In Canaan C. H. Smith was proprietor of the stage line, Abel Prescott was tanner, currier, harness and shoe man, and Jesse Dorman was manufacturer of satfnet, carder and clothler.
Over in Searsport Walter Nichols was soldiers’ pension agent; Isaac Blethen dealt in corn, flour, glass and crockery ware; Emery Sawyer was a general soliciting agent; and D. S. Simpson was a cabinet maker who also sold furniture and paper hangings. A part of this old directory is devoted to general information. There’s, for instance, a section on Maine’s principal rivers. Of the Kennebec it says, “This river, by Its two principal branches, the Dead and the Moose Rivers, rises in the northwestern highlands near the sources of the Androscoggin. Moose River, after an easterly course of about 70 miles, enters Moosehead Lake. It Is boatable nearly its whole length. The Dead River branch has a longer course and joins The main river about 20 mi les south of the lake. The river bears the name of Kennebec only from the lake, and after a course from that point southerly for a hundred and fifty miles through a fertile and picturesque country, it joins the sea at Georgetown and Phippsburg. The tide rises to Augusta, to which it is navigable for small vessels; to Bath ships of large draught ascend. To The Forks of the Dead River the ascent is 570 feet, to Anson 407, to Watervilie 219. At these points and some others there are rapids and falls. The level of Moosehead Lake is 960 feet above sea level. The territory Included In the whole Kennebec basin Is 5,300 square miles.”
A page is devoted to Maine lakes. This was long before the days of our vacation business; so note how lightly the writer slips over the Belgrade Lakes. He says, “In the mntral and more cultivated parts of the state are numerous extensive ponds, which furnish many facilities for trade and intercourse to the I nhab ItanTS on thel r borders. Among these are the Pushaw, Sebec, Newport, the Belgrade and Winthrop ponds.” Interesting is the section devoted to Maine’s schools and colleges. In the 396 towns of Maine, with their 628,000 inhabitants, there were in 1861 a total of 4,146 school districts, but only 3,946 schoolhouses. The aggregate expenditure for school purposes by all towns, diSTricts, and the state Itself was $616,000.
I am sure many of our listeners can, like me, remember when normal training courses were taught in the academies of the state as well as in the established normal schools. That all began In 1860; so this old subscribers directory In 1861 was giving a fresh account of something brand new in Maine education. The state had appropriated $3,600 for the establishment of oor”lllal schools in 18 existing seminaries and academies which agreed to introduce a department for the Instruction of teachers. The directory proudly reported that, only one year after passage of The act, 566 persons were availing Themselves of this plan. Eighty-nine of them were enrolled in the normal course at Kents HI I I, 53 In the Maine state Seminary at Lewiston, 23 at Hampden Academy and lesser numbers at Bridgton Academy, Eastern Maine Conference Seminary at Bucksport, in the academies at Thomaston, Newcastle, Paris, Bloomfield, Freedom, Eliot, LImerick, North Yarmouth and Presque Isle, and in New Sharon High School. It is especially noteworthy that the boys exceeded the girls. Preparing to be teachers in those normal courses were 303 males and 263 females.
“The advantage of education in Maine”, says this report of 1861, “are not limited to common schools. There are two colleges, well endowed and furnished with able Instructors and suitable apparatus; these are the college at Waterville and Bowdoin College at Brunswl ck.” Of our own col lege the report says: ”Waterville College was incorporated in 1820, and was established by the Baptist denomination, but is open to all sects and classes. It has received donations from the State as well as from individuals. The number of students in 1860-61 was 122. Its library contains ten thousand volumes. The President is James T. Champlin, D. D., who is assisted by four professors and one tutor.”
Another section of the directory is devoted to a list of Maine newspapers. There were then sf x dally papers in the state, two in Port land, two In Bangor, and one each in BaTh and Lew I ston. The Kennebec Journa I was then stl” a weekly paper, as was also the Eastern Mal I in Watervi lie. The PorTland dal lies were the Eastern Argus, which fifty years ago the Republicans in my boyhood town used to call “the lying Argus”, and the Portland Advertiser. The Bangor papers were the Whig and Courier and the Evening Times. The Bath paper bore the same name that I t does today and that i t did un de r the long ed i torsh i p of Frank N i ch 01 s -the Bath Times; and the lewiston paper, forerunner of what was long Maine’s best known evening news sheet, was then called the lewiston Falls Journal.
The weekly papers were nurnerous In Maine ninety years ago. There were the Aroostook Times, the Oxford Democrat, the Piscataquis Observer, the Somerset Farmer, the Port I and Transcri pt, the Be I fast Repub II can Journal, the Bri dgton Reporter, the Ellsworth American, many of which are sti II known today. But long since gone and all but forgotTen are the Saco Democrat, the Paris Pioneer, the Skowhegan Clarion, the Richmond Rising Sun, and the Dexter Gem and Gazette. There were plenty of religious weeklies, which ran the alphabet from the Augusta Age, through the Maine Evangelist to Zion’s Advocate. AT Mt. Vernon was published a monthly called the Young Folks’ Monitor, whi Ie down In Portland they had another way of taking care of the young folks through the Maine Teacher. Yes, there was a lot of publishing in Maine a century ago.
One section of this old directory is headed “Population of some of the principal cities and towns of the United States”. This Is an eye opener, for in 1860 there were only eight cities on the whole country with more than a hundred thousand people. They were, in order, New York, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Baltimore, Boston, New Orleans, St. louis and Cincinnati. Chicago had only 80,000. Portland was larger than Worcester; louisville, Kentucky had more people than Washington, D. C.; and New Bedford was larger than Dayton, Olio. Cleveland was a mere pigmy compared with Cincinnati, having only 43,000 peop Ie to the latter’s 160,000. In fact in 1860 San Francisco had considerably more people than Cleveland, but Los Angeles isn’t even mentioned.
Next week I want to tell you about some of the advertisements in that old directory of 1861.
Year: 1951