Radio Script #270
Little Talks On Common Things
September 11, 1955
Here we are aga in after a summer’s rest to your ears from these broadcasts about old time things. This is our eighth consecutive season. Folks keep asking me if material hasn’t pretty well run out, if we haven’t exhausted every conceivable subject of the old days. Not at al I. Thanks to you listeners, who keep putting me in touch with new material, we can keep the old program going for a few weeks yet. Seriously, there is material enough around to keep a program like th is on the air for years to come.
I want to take the occas i on of th is first program of the new season to thank the Central Maine Garden Club for the honor which they did me in July.
Their wonderful floral exhibit at the old Winslow Congregational Church was set up a round the theme of my book HKennebec Yes te rdays ” • The I ad i es had shown marvelous ingenuity in adapting flower arrangements to various chapters of the book. One of them had found a genuine century-old rum bottle to use as a flower vase illustrating The chapter t!Rum and Gingerbread”. If the ladies did not serve genuine rum for refreshment at their exhibit, tney Ulu ;:)~IVt:l ut:liiclous trulT punch, and with it honest-to-goodness gingerbread. For this fine tribute to the book and the rad i 0 program I am especi ally indebted to Mrs. Sh i r ley Holmes of the County Road, whose hundreds of varieties of African violets have won her renown al I up and down the Kennebec Val ley.
Mrs. Holmes and her husband operate a large dairy farm on the land where stands one of the very old houses of this region — the Frye-Davis house, about which I have this to say in !fKennebec Yesterdays!l:”Just outside of Watervi IIe 1 on the old county road that passes over the Cedar Bridge beyond the Thayer Hospital, is a large farm, house known as the Frye-Davis house. The original structure was bui It by Winthrop Morri I I about 1770. When that house was already a hundred years old l it was called Half-way Housel because it was a regular stop for change of horses about half way on the stage route from Augusta to Anson. ”
During the summer all sorts of important and spectacular news has jumped at us from the headlines. President Eisenhowerl not the Russians, got the spot light at Geneva; The Air Force has a new secretary; Adlai indicates he is going to run again in 1956. Yes 1 a lot has happened since we left the air last June.
One newspaper story of the summer struck me with special force. As you know, this program has stoutly defended private enterprise against the encroachments of government operation. We are glad to see that the final report of the Hoover Commission has taken the same stand. But it is not that report of which I speak. The news story to wh i ch I refer appeared on the front page of the New York Times of SundaYI August 7. It told how it had been possible for the Rockefellers to make benefactions of three bi Ilion dollars whi Ie actLtally giving of their own funds one bi II ion.
Now a lot of people have lost money in stocks l especially in the crash of 1929. But there is plenty of evidence to show that the purchase and long hold~ ing of conservative stocks brings fruitful increase with the years. As the Times puts it, ”How a total of one bi II ion dollars in contributions has come to equal three times that amount is an interesting example of the way money reproduces itself when properly handled. A sum invested at six per cent compound interest reproduces itself in twelve years. The Rockefeller investments did much better than that.
So much for the Times quotation. Now let us see what happened to one of the major Rockefe II er benefact i ons 1 the Rockefe Iler Foundat ion. The elder John D. established the foundation in 1909 with 72,569 shares of Standard Oi I of New Jersey, having a total value of $50,000~000. When the government forced the great Standard Oi I empire ~o be divided into 23 different companies, the holdings were I ikewise divided. The 72,000 shares of Standard of New Jersey stock had become, through stock dividends and splits and new companies, a total of 10,000,000 shares in the 23 companies, at a total value of $743,000,000. The original Rockefeller gift of $50,000,000 had increased to $743,000,000; in ‘other words it had multiplied itself 15 times in 46 years.
The enemies of old John D. said that he was giving away money late in life after years of miserly penny-pinching. Not so. All his long life, from ear- I iest youth, Mr. Rockefe Iler gave away money. In 1855 he went to work as a bookkeeper for a firm of commission merchants at 50 cents a day. Yet out of that he gave five cents every Sunday to Sunday School and ten cents a month to foreign missions and corresponding amounts to several other causes. In his first four months as a bookkeeper he gave away $5.98, whi Ie in the same period he spent only nine dol lars on clothes. During his first ful I calendar year of work, 1856, he gave away $19.31. By 1860 he was giving over $100; by 1865 his contributions had reached $1,000. Twenty years later his gifts reached $155,000 in 1885, and in 1890 for the first time he gave away half a mi I lion in a single year. The very next year his gi fts reached the mi I I i on mark. Long before the days of income tax deductions Mr. Rockefeller had given away many mi I lions.
As the Times told us, the total spending from the accumulations of the Rockefe Ilers’ gifts of one b i I I i on has a I ready reached three bill ion do II ars.
That amount is difficult to comprehend. It means giving at the rate of more than $3,500 a day for every day since the birth of Christ.
What have the Rockefeller benefactions to do with old time things? Just this. In the first place, Mr. Rockefeller’s first giving was in 1855, exactly one hundred years ago. In the second place, it represents an important feature of the American Way of Life — the responsibility that men of great wealth feel for the best use of their mi Ilions in the public welfare.
Now let us get back to some 0 I d time th ings nearer home. Fred 0 liver of Vassalboro has a copy of an amazing broadside 158 years old. It advertises the first elephant ever seen in America. The old handbi I I, published in Boston in 1797, ba I I yhooed the arri va I of the big pachyderm with the fo II ow i ng words:
“The Elephant, according to the celebrated Buffon, is the most respectable quadruped. In size he surpasses al I other terrestrial creatures, and by his intelligence is as near an approach to man as matter can approach spirit. A sufficient testimony to the intelligence of this animal is that, the proprietor being absent for two weeks, the moment he arrived at the door of his apartment and spoke to the keeper, the animal’s knowledge was beyond any doubt confirmed by the cries he uttered, ti II his friend came within reach of his trunk, with which the animal caressed the man to the astonishment of all who saw him.
ttThis most curious and surprising animal is just arrived in Ebston from Ph i I ade I ph i a • He will stay here but a few weeks. He is on Iy four years 0 I d and we i ghs about 3,000 pounds, but wi I I not come to his fu I I growth ti I I he shall be between 30 and 40 years old. He measures from the end of his trunk to the tip of his tai I 15 feet 8 inches, round the body 10 feet 6 inches, round the head 7 feet 2 inches, and round the leg above the knee 3 feet 3 inches. He eats 130 pounds a day, and drinks all kinds of spiritous I iquors. Some days he drinks 30 bottles of porter, drawing the cork with his trunk. He is so tame that he trave Is loose and has never atte~ted to hurt anyone. He appeared on the stage at the New Theatre in Phi ladelphia, to the great satisfaction of a respectable audience.
“A convenient place has been fitted up at Mr. Valentine’s, head of the market, for the reception of those ladies and gentlemen who may be pleased to view this greatest natural curiosity ever presented to the curious 1 and is to be seen from sunrise to sun-down, every day in the week, Sundays excepted. “The elephant having destroyed many papers of consequence, it is recommende ed to visitors not to come near him with such papers.
“Admittance, One Quarter of a Dollar, Chi Idren Nine Pence. Boston, August 14, 1797. n
It is generally believed that this old advertisement is for the first elephant ever brought to the United States. He is said to have cost $10,000, but repaid the investment many times over.
Another famous elephant of early Ameri can days was HOI d Bet”. In 1815 a Yankee skipper named Bai ley went auction-crazy in london. For $20 he bought an elephant — an elderly female called Old Bet. Bai ley had a brother in \’lestchester County, New York, who had seen that first elephant, described in Fred Oliver’s old· handbil I and had heard that exhibiting the creature had made a lot of money for the owner. So when the skipper brother arrived in New York with Old Bet, the Westchester brother paid him $1,000 for her. She was smuggled through the countryside at night, so as to give no one a free look. For a fee Ba i ley showed her in barns a II the way up into Connecti cut. The pub Ii c responded so wei I that Sai ley was able to expand into a menagerie with monkeys and other foreign beasts. He was well on his way to a fortune when Old Bet caused a farmer’s horse to run away. Furious, the farmer grabbed a gun and k i I led the elephant. Though grieved at his loss, Ba i ley was gratefu I for a I I that Old Bet had done for him. With the money she had earned him, Bailey Duilt d red brick tavern at Somers, New York, and named it the Elephant Hotel. He also erected a wooden statue of Old Bet, painted it a shining si Iver, and mounted it on a high pedestal on the lawn in front of his hotel. There it sti II stands, a reminder of how one Yankee made his money 140 years ago.
In “Kennebec Yesterdays” I make some comments on the subject of pie for breakfast. Miss Mabe I True of Dover-Foxcroft sends me a de Ii ghtfu I story on that topic, and with her story we’ll close the program tonight. A Maine woman was reporting on a supper at which she had been a guest. “Sakes alive”, she said, “you just oughta seen the sweet food. Layer cake, fruit cake, gingerbread, sugar cookies, tarts and apple pie. Now pie for dinner you got to have, and pie for breakfast is no more’n what’s right, but pie for supper — that’s just downright puttin’ on airs!”
So, tonight we’l I put no more airs on the air, but say Good Night for old times’ sake.