Radio Script #226
Little Talks On Common Things
May 9, 1954
last week I pointed out that, over the nation,buslness men are becoming increasingly interested in the welfare of the schools. Take, for Instance, that phase of education which concerns every last one of us, its cost to the taxpayer. listen to these words from an address by the president of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, Richard Bowditch:
“Of d you ever stop to th ink what it is that rea Ily makes a fine i nsti tution or a fine company? It is not bricks and mortar and machines. It Is not the material things turned out. A fine organization is made so by just one thing — the fine people who work for ft. I could name you companies that had the last word in bui Idlngs and equipment, yet they fai led. Why? Because they drew poor emp loyees and had poor morale In thei r p I ants.
“It is just the same with non-business institutions, including the
schools. Everything depends upon the kind of people who teach. Yet how do we reward our teachers? How do we try to retain the best ones in our classrooms? I am shocked when I compare the sa I ary of schoo I teachers wi th the wages these same people could get for the most ordinary kind of factory work.
“It is a mystery to me”, continues Mr. Bowditch, “why a town wi II fight a modest raise of teachers’ salaries, and wi II at the same time vote for some unneeded gadget. know of one town that voted to put a 4O-f()ot Swedish be I I tower on top of the school bui I·ding when they couldn’t afford enough teachers to staff the classrooms. I say, let us rather pay the sa larles to get the very best teachers we can possibly afford in our communities, and then consider those other material things when and if we can afford them.”
Some tt me in the 1890 ‘s — I am not sure of the exact year — one of those stock dramati c compan ies that we used to see so common Iy 50 years ago spent some time in Winthrop, Maine. One day the manager of the company ran off, leaving the players stranded, without even money enough to pay their board bills and leave town free from local debts.
Among the many interesting mementos preserved by Mr. and Mrs. Emery Haggerty is a handb i I I, exp I a In i ng how those dese rted p I aye rs I ntended to get out of their difficulty. The bi II carries a big, heavi Iy leaded heading, “lend a Hand Comedy Company”. It says: “By no fault of ours we find ourselves abandoned and stranded in this delightful and beautiful town of Winthrop by the fa Ise promises and b I andi shments of our emp I oyer , a former res t dent of the town.
We want to pay our board bill s and leave honorab Iy, and we are w I III ng to do any honest work to that end. By the advice of some of the leading citizens we wi II, in 0rider to pay those who have fed us, gi ve an enterta inment at the Town Hall on Friday, September 26 at 8 o’clock P.M. We will present a_comedy iri.-_four acts, The Nine Crazy Kids (crazy to pay our bi lis and get home>. This wll r be fully worth the price of admission. We are done with Tremblay. He has done with us. All right! The Miles C. Tremblay Stranded Company.”
Then follows a local endorsement: ”We have made inquiries and find these people worthy, and hope our people will help them. lend a helping hand — l. T. Carleton, J. A. Foster.”
Finally the handbill reads: “Admission, the low price of 25 cents. No reserved seats. The ladles of the company will call on you with tickets. Buy one! The band wi II give Its services. Free tripping of the light fantastic toe. ”
In 1877 the re was started in North Vassa Iboro a I ittle month Iy paper of only four pages called ”The Young America!!. The mast-head designated it as a monthly amateur journal. It was published by C. F. Monk and Company. Does any listener know who was C. F. Monk, who pub I ished a pape r in Yassa I boro 75 years ago?
This partlcu lar paper is characteristic of hundreds pub lished owr . the country at that i”i me. They were not newspapers, they carried no news at a II. Their contents were stories, poems, puzzles and odd items. The publishers were usually boys, and sometimes girls. in their teens, just as were Sam and Nettie Burleigh when they produced the “Clarion”. These papers were so numerous that there exi sted a Nati ona I Amateur Press Associ ati on, the poll ti cs of wh i ch is commented upon in one issue of the . North Vassalboro paper in these words:
“Charles Herman had the meanness to withdraw from the struggle for the presidency of the N.A.P.A. at the very last moment in favor of recreant Dick Germer I hoping to obtain by his influence enough votes to secure the election of his chum. We were delighted to see his scheme soundly defeated.”
The Young America sold for 25 cents a year, three cents a single copy. Its advertising rates were 30 cents an inch or $2.25 a column. The editor announced he wanted to exchange with other papers, but added: “Excnanges must come regu I a r or not at a I I • ”
We are not sure that this paper was actually printed at North Vassalboro.
An ad, soliciting orders for visiting and address cards, says: “Your name pri nted on the above cards and sent postpal d on recel pt of pri ce”; but perhaps the proprietors of The Young Ameri ca were on Iy agents for another printer.
There was so much interest in these Ii tt Ie amateur papers 75 years ago that certain professional printers exploited the boys and girls to enrich themselves.
In the North Vassalboro paper we find an ad that reveals what was going on.
It reads: “Amateur papers printed in the highest style of art at the following prices — 500 copies, 4 pages, 4 x 6, $2.50 per page; 6 x 9, $3.50; 9 x 12, $6.50. Set up in leaded long primer. James O’Connell, 638 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y.”
The issue of Young America for September, 1877 carried only five local ads in add i ti on to those inserted by the pub Ii sher hi mse If. A II five take on Iy slight Iy more than a col umn. One is an ad for Buffun’s Express, a stage line leaving North Vassalboro for Watervil Ie at 8 A.M. and 3 P.M. Returning, it left Watervi lie on the arriva I of trai ns.
J. W. Strong, with a tai lor shop in the Abbott store at North Vassalboro, announced that he would cut and make a whole suit of clothes for $7.00.
E. H. Young advertised an interesting business. Just listen to his ad:
“Why will you starve when Young wi II bring you nice fresh fish every Friday, and good nice hot baked beans and brown bread every Saturday morning? Also oysters fresh from the shel I. Thanking the good people of North Vassalboro for their liberal patronage in the past, I hope, by strict attention to business and fair dealing, to merit it in the future.!!
That one ad makes a whole fi Ie of the old Vassalboro journal worth preserving.
What could be more typically New Enqland than fish on Friday, beans and brown bread on Saturday?
Now for a bit more about old days in Biddeford. One act of Sir Wi Illam Pepperel J ‘s had interesting repercussions for the town. It was Sir Wi Iliam who led the British troops in the attack on the French settlement at Louisburg in 1745. As a result, large numbers of English settled in Nova Scotia, founding the city of Halifax. As that settlement grew, it found itself sandwiched in between the French of Cape Breton and those in the section known as Acadia.
Those Acadians were called French Neutrals, because they refused to take sides with either France or England in the bitter dispute that, on this continent, became known as the French and Indian War. But, as often happens, the younger people did not accept neutrality. When English soldiers captured a French fort I n the Bay of Fundy, they found 300 young Acadi ans alYPng the garrison. The Briti sh then ordered the terrib Ie deporTation of the Acadi ans — the exi Ie which prompted Longfellow to write Evangeline.
In less than five years more than 6,000 men, women and children were forcibly scattered among the American colonies. A few of them fled to escape deportation, among them the French who fi rst settled in our st. John Valley. Altogether about 1,300 of the deportees were brought to New England, and two shiploads were disembarked at ports between Falmouth and Kittery. An official Massachusetts document shows that in 1760 there were 61 of those unfortunate Acadlans assigned to settlements in York County. The tragic separation of fami lies, so feelingly expressed in Longfellow’s poem, is shown as glaring fact by one of these 0 I d documents. I treads:
“The comml ttee to make a di vi s i on of the French peop Ie I n the County of York, late inhabitants of Nova Scotia, into the several towns within the county, beg leave to report that they met on the 17th of July, 1760, and made the follow i ng di vi s Ion: Bi ddeford, Claud Boudrl n and wi fe, with one ch I I d; Scarboro, Joseph, John, Mary and Margaret, chi Idren of Claud Boudrln.”
This was a fami Iy of seven not only driven from their horne in the Annapol i s Va I I ey, but actua Ily broken up so that four of the ch I I dren we re taken from the parents and sent to live with strangers.
In the 18th century a considerable number of Negro slaves were kept by Biddeford families. These Negroes were house servants rather than field hands.
The census of 1764 showed a total of 116 fami lies in Biddeford, numbering 627 wh ites and 12 Negroes. The census clearly reveals that there were fami lies of substantial means In Biddeford 200 years ago, for slaves were so expensive that only the well-to-do could afford them.
Captain Samuel Jordan, Indian fighter and merchant, was given the dubious credit of being Biddeford’s first slave owner. The inventory of the captain’s esta”te, made at his death in 1742, revealed among his other assets ”one Negro, 20 pounds”. He may have been an 0 I d and unworkab Ie co lored man, because his value was placed at less than half that of a roan horse, and 15 pounds less “than a yoke of oxen.
Black HeTTy, who was helping Madam Ladd pick beans when the Pepperel I coach arrived, was almost certainly a slave, for in her husband’s estate the Madam had Inherited two Negroes valued at 113 pounds, and another at 26 pounds.
Perhaps one of them was the manservant who ki lied the young pi g for Si r William’s dinner at the Ladd tavern.
Speaking of colonial days, the first half of the 18th century was a time when all along the coast of Maine people then knew the meaning of “the King’s broad arrow”. You have heard me mention several times on this program the profitab Ie bus i ness once done In Mai ne by pravi ding masts for HI s Majesty’s sh I ps.
The letters and diaries of early comers to Maine frequently mention their amazement at the size of the vi rgi n pines. Some of those trees were six feet in di ameter and 200 feet ta II. The record shows that, In 1666, one such tree sh I pped to Eng I and was so huge that, even after it had been tri mmed and hewed, It st I I I conta i ned 30 tons of I umbe r • Even the ave rage mast pine was 10 feet around at “the base and 125 feet tall, representing a growth of 300 years.
So prized were these pines for masts to go into the King’s big wooden warships that every straight pine more than two feet through, at a point a foot above the ground, was declared the property of the King. Royal inspectors went through the woodS, marking every such tree with the King’s broad arrOtl. It was really a crude mark made with three simple strokes of the axe, two slanting and one perpendicular, giving the whole design somewhat. the shape of an arrowhead.
There was something about that mark of the King on their own pines which angered Maine men much as the tea tax angered the Bostonians. Those smart Maine settlers found plenty of ways of evading the law. Sometimes there was even open resistance, and men disguised as Indians, just as the tea-party patriots had disguised themselves, took good timber away from the King’s inspectors, who had se i zed it at a sawmi II because it measured more than two feet.
The hated inspectors even entered the homes of inhabitants, in search of floor boards more than two feet wi de. It is sa i d that no Saco Va I ley home bui It before the Revolution will be found to contain boards wider than 23 inches. To escape the King’s inspection, shrewd Maine settlers trimmed every wide board down to jus t unde r the cruci a I two feet.
Year; 1954