Radio Script #141
Little Talks On Common Things
March 23, 1952
Let’s take another look tonight at that ugly ogre called inflation. One reason why, today or any other day, inflation is hard to stop is that, for a time in the short run, so many people benefit by it. Many people prosper under inflation for a while, as they never prospered before. Except for people with fixed incomes — the widows, the pensioners, the frozen salaried folk — a lot of people reap quick returns and fool themselves Into thinking they are better off in the long run, as well as for the short dash.
Jobs are easy to get. Work is not lost through lay-offs and forced vacations. Overtime at time-and-a-half, or even double time, is common. Manufacturers can sell all they can produce. The income of farmers goes up. Business debts get paid off in cheapened do liars. And most of all, the thousands of beneficiaries of government spending get a boost.
It is easy to blame the government for inflation, but back of the government are many persons and groups either demanding policies that make inflation or smugly condoning such policies.
But like all illusions, this dream that inflation prosperity is real prosperity is always in for a rude awakening. Of course inflation creates feverish economic activity. Everyone is at work and apparently making money. But in time the unwelcome children of Old Ogre Inflation — labor hoarding, labor pirating, inefficiency, and enormous labor turnover — result in reduced productivity per man hour. In the German inflation of the 1920’s, when it took a wheelbarrow load of paper money to buy a loaf of bread, the total production started to decline aren before the inflation peak was reached.” Vet at that ! very moment, only a few months before the wild break came and the currency was worth less, every German worker fe It glorious Iy prosperous.
So here is a warning worth heeding. Between June, 1950 and January, 1951 the index of physical production in the United States rose ten per cent, but for more than a year since 1951 it has not risen even a fraction of one percent. Remember what happened in Germany in 1922.
am sure you will be interested in two letters which I recently had a chance to examine. They were written fifteen years apart to Mrs. Nancy Clark of Benton. The first was written 105 years ago, when Benton was called Sebasticook, and H. Clark, a student at Kents Hill, addressed his mother Nancy Clark at Sebasticook, Maine, as follows:
“Kents Hill, August 30, 1847
Being now established in my new abiding place, and thinking you would like to know how I am situated, will write a few lines. I am boarding at the mansion where I did before, and am going into my old room this week, which is the best one in the house. A gentleman came here Saturday from Mass, who rooms with me — a pretty fair sort of fel low, and has seen some of the world. There are between 20 and 30 students who board here, besides several ladies, and some gents who board themse I ves in the lower part of the house. There are over a hundred scholars here al ready, and roore come in every day. I have purchased some books, a Cicero, a Greek testament, and a Latin Tutor, which will amount in all to nearly four dollars, but I could not get a long well without them, and I think I shall still have cash enough to pay my bills and get home. Board is $1.50 per week, including washing; wood and lights are extra am not at all homesick, but I should like to hear the news pretty often, for want to know my own business and everybody else’s too. So you may write as often as anything new takes place, and oftener if you have time. Especially give me particulars of all the horse-playing, electioneering, etc. If I should be likely to want more cash I will let you know it soon, but as there will be but 12 weeks more of this term, I may not want it.
Yours respectfully,
H. Clark”
This letter is, of course, without envelope, but it is more intricately folded than any other such letters I have ever seen. After it was folded, it was sealed with red wax. The postage, paid by the receiving mother, was five cents.
The other letter, written in 1862, is in an envelope carrying a three cent stamp. On the left side of the envelope’s face Is an oval, bust portrait of Abraham Lincoln, showing the pre-election Lincoln without his beard. The letter inside this envelope, addressed to Mrs. Nancy Clark, Benton, Maine, is signed by Samuel Titcomb, who apparently was Mrs. Clark’s brother and a prominent Augusta attorney. The letter reads:
“Augusta, July 16, 1862
Dear Sister:
Yours of today is at hand. In answer I have to say that no draft has yet been ordered and probably never will be. An effort will probably be made to obtain the requisite number by offering sufficient inducements to volunteers. If that fails, perhaps the same method adopted in Mass. will be resorted to, by requiring each town in the state to furnish its proportion. But in case of a draft, I think the payment of $50 under the old statute (which does not seem to have been repealed by the present law) within the 24 hours will clear any person from any liability to serve if drafted. Possibly the officers who may be elected in the different companies now forming may, when commissioned, be obliged to serve and may not be able to clear themselves by the payment of $50 or any other sum, as they will be in a different position from privates in case they are called upon. If any person should be drafted who does not wish to go~ I should advise him to pay the $50~ or procure his substitute within the 24 hours. If his $50 is refused and he shall be forced Into active service after having made his tender of the $50~ I think he would obtain his discharge upon a writ of habeas corpus.
Yours truly,
Samuel Titcomb”
Lawyer Titcomb was wrong in predicting that there would be no draft. One came before Thanksgiving In that year of 1862~ and others followed so frequently and cut so deeply into the population of all the Maine towns that the price of substitutes steadily rose and the old $50 law, to which Mr. Titcomb refers, did no reluctant draftee any good. Time came when those buyers of substitutes were ashamed to admit a practice they had bragged about when they used it.
Who was the man about whom Mrs. Clark had written her brother Samuel? Who was it she was trying to save from the Civil War draft? Probably it is Just as well we don’t know.S i nee the son who signed himself H. C lark, when he wrote the letter from Kents Hill In 1847 was 35 years old in 1862 and quite able to take care of himself, it may well have been some other relative for whom Nancy Clark was solicitous enough to seek Sam Titcomb’s advice.
Much older than those letters to Mrs. Nancy Clark of Benton, but Just as interesting, was a letter written almost 80 years before brother Samuel advised sister Nancy concerning the Civil War draft. In 1781 Daniel Tiffany wrote a letter to his brother Samuel Tiffany, and addressed it ”To Samuel Tiffany in Yassa I borough with care and speed”. Since It bears no notation of any postage to be paid by receiver, as do many of those old letters before the days of postage stamps or envelopes, it was probably sent by the hand of some traveler.
It was written from Attleborough, Mass., March 19, 1781, while the Revolutionary War was still being fought. It reads:
“Ever loving brother and sister:
After our love and respects to you. Hoping you are all well, as through the goodness of God we are at present, and informing you that all our friends are also in good health as they were when you went away. have nothing remarkable to write to you, but I shall take this opportunity to inform you of the heavy news of the death of our father, who departed this life the 9th day of January. Mehitabel Makepiece is dead. It is a very healthy time in general, saving bad colds. I have nothing more remarkable to write about. Our friend Richardson is married and is gone up country. I myself have been up to Jonathan and Thomas Richardson’s, and they are all well except Jonathan’s wife. She is in’a poor way, inclining to melancholy disorders.
I shall acquaint you of the difficulties of the times. We have heavy taxes to pay, money scarce and three years men to raise. (That last refers to Revolutionary enlistments over the past three years.) It is indeed difficult times and bids fair to be worse. There is your cedar swamp now rated to me when I already have enough of my own. (Rated here means taxed.) They have rated me 200 pounds, 9 shillings. We have not paid it yet. It lies as all the rest of the taxes. We grow more bolder and bolder.
So I subscribe myself your loving brother,
Daniel Tiffany”
As a student of language development I am always interested in letters written by persons who lacked the advantage of adequate schooling, for the spell ing of those persons is a constant attempt to make an unphonetic language phonetic. Not knowing how to spell a given word, the unschooled writer spells it the way it sounds to him. So please understand I am not making fun of Daniel Tiffany when I call attention to his unusual spelling. He spells health “helth”. Why shouldn’t he? Don’t you think it ought to be spelled that way?
Friends is spelled “frlnds”, and he probably pronounced it “frinds”. Only he spells “ondley”, stating that he pronounced it with a “d”, “ondly”. Inform is “enforme”. Heavy is “hevy”. News is “nuse”. Death Is “dethtl and dead Is “ded”. Remarkable is “remarkabell”, when he says he has nothing remarkable to “wright abott”. He spells married “mared”. Why doesn’t that make a perfectly phonetic married? Melancholy is quite naturally “melancolly”. Difficulties undergoes a wierd twist. He spells it “difekeltes”. When he says times bid fair to be worse, he has it “fare to be wos”. The cedar swamp that he thought was wrongly taxed to him was “seeder”. Money, he says, is “skers”, revealing clearly a pronunciation I have heard many times from people of my father’s generation — “skerce”. Enough is spelled “a nuff”. Isn’t that what it often sounds like?
Well, about Oanlel Tiffany’s letter of 170 years ago, perhaps this is “a nuff”.
Another of those old printed letterheads from Fairfield, with the printed ads on the fourth page, has been shown me by Steve Wing of the Waterville Savings Bank. Although the ads are much the same as In the older letters I referred to a few weeks ago, the main heading on the first page Is different. It shows thaT J. H. Gilbreth was no longer In the hardware an,d farm Implement business.
For the heading reads “Solon B. Bunker and Co., successors to J. H. Gilbreth”. The letter itself was written at Kendal Is Mills, Maine on October 2:8, 1872 TO Mr. Percival, Cashier of the Watervi lie Savings Bank. It says:
“I enclose check for $500. I wish you to endorse on the mortgage of the GilbreTh store $372.14, and the balance of Interest paid, which wi II be in a few days. Yours truly, Benjamin Bunker”.
Another letter in Mr. Wing’s possession has a famous Maine signature, that of Stephen Coburn, who 80 years ago was Somerset County’s most prominent attorney. The printed letterhead reads:
“Stephen Coburn, attorney and counselor at law, No.3 Water Street, Skowhegan, Maine”. On February 5, 1872 Mr. Coburn wrote to the Waterville bank: “Mr. G. S. Hi II sold a mortgage of $1,500 on property recently sold for $3,000, on wh ich he wants to raise the money. He will add to the security if need be. Please inform whether you will check and advise. Yours truly, Stephen Coburn”.
An anonymous listener wants information about the Shakers. I’ll try to give a little time to that interesting sect some Sunday evening soon. Meanwhile I’ll give my own and perhaps inaccurate answer to this listener’s question:
“Where is Shaker Village?”
To my knowledge there were two Shaker villages in Maine, the one still in operation at Sabbath Day Lake near Poland Springs, and the other in Alfred taken over some ten or fifteen years ago as a Catholic school for needy boys. I never knew the Alfred colony well. It had passed out of Shaker hands just before I became a frequent traveler over that road from Alfred to Sanford, which was the route we took driving from Waterville to visit relatives In Sanford. But did know rather well the older and more famous Shaker colony at Sabbath Day Lake.
The older Shaker village with its deserted stone buildings, still stands about a mile south of the newer buildings of white painted wood or whitewashed stone nearer the Poland Spring House. The old village was started more than a hundred and forty years ago; the newer village to which the colony moved 1 not more than 60 years ago. Only a few years ago some of the most exquisite needlework to be found anywhere in New England came from the hands of those aged Shaker women and could be purchased at their little store at Sabbath Day Lake. Once a powerful and populous sect, the Shakers are now almost extinct.
Some day I’ll tell you more about them.
Year: 1952