Radio Script #294
Little Talks On Common Things
February 26, 1956
One strong tenet of the free-enterpri se system of industry in Ameri ca has always been the value of competition. The American people have had a wholesome fear of monopo Iy in any commodity or servi ce needed by the pub I i c. That expia ins the interest in anti -trust legi s I ati on and in other efforts to keep open the ways of competitive trade.
An excellent example of the value of competition in this 56th year of the twentieth century is shown by the decision of the Ford family to approve of the placing on the public market of 90 per cent of the Ford Motor Company stock held by the Ford Foundati on • Many reasons are given for the deci s ion, among the most persuasive of which was the splendid phi lanthropic motive to enable the Foundation to make larger donations to the public welfare. When the Foundation recently made the unprecedented gift of $500,000,000 to colleges, medical schools, and hospitals, it released the information that such a large sum actually exceeded the book value of its financial holdings. Because no Ford Motor stock was held by the public, that stock had no definite market value. The Foundation knew it would sel I on the market for much more than the value it had on their books. But how much more? Only public sale could answer the question.
Fine and logical as that motive is, another quite different reason has for some time persistently claimed attention of the Ford interests. Quite frankly, that reason is the competition of General Motors. That company’s stock is wideI y d i stri buted among thousands of stockho I de rs rep resenti ng a I most eve ry soci a I and financial section of the public. As a result many thousands of citizens have a vested interest in the sale of General Motors cars. On the other hand, no one except the Ford fami Iy and the Foundation and the Ford dealers had any- thing to gain by the sale of a Ford car. This situation was having an effect on the strenuous efforts of each company to surpass the other in sales. Very soon there may be just as many informal salesmen of Ford, Mercury and Lincoln cars in the form of stockholders as there are now such salesmen of Chevrolets, Oldsmobi les, Pontiacs, Buicks and Cadi I lacs.
It is just as true in 1956 as it was in 1856 that competition is the life of trade.
Listeners to this program know that one of the men toward whom I have long had a kind of hero worship was the great Quaker phi losopher, native of South China, Dr. Rufus Jones.
About a year ago the South China Library Association published a neat mimeographed volume of fifty pages under the general title of “Reminiscences of South China”. It consisted of six addresses given by Rufus Jones at the annual summer socials of the South China Community Fellowship from 1942 to 1947. The book can be obtained from Mrs. G. J. Walenta, Mrs. Ralph Austin, or other members of the South China Library Association, and I assure you it is eminently worth reading by any citizen of Central Maine. Tonight I want to tell you about some of the incidents of by-gone days in South China which Dr. Jones recounted in those addresses.
One of the best of those stories is how the community of South China began.
Dr. Jones tells us that in the spring of 1774 Ephraim Clark walked from Gardiner, leading a cow, to bui Id a log hut and clear a farm near the present vi I I age of South China, where at that time was no vi Ilage, not even any settlement at a I I. He had purchased two lots of the John Jones survey at the south end of the pond.
Ephraim found, instead of the cabins of fellow settlers, an immense pine forest, with trees a hundred and fifty feet high and five feet in diameter.
Clearing and planting seemed too much of a task for one man. So Ephraim summoned his three brothers to help him. Before winter set in, they had bui It a log house, sheltering eight persons, and they had a sma I I crop of corn and potatoes.
In spite of relatives of both sexes around him, Ephraim Clark felt lonesome.
He had no wi fe. Especi a Ily when the brothers left to make .nearby homes for themselves, when his mother died, and Ephraim and his aged father were
alone, he determined to get a wife. Ephraim was now 44 years old and 21 years had gone by since he first came to the foot of the pond. In that year of 1795 Danet Braley settled about a mi Ie from the pond’s north end. He had a daughter 01 i ve, who was born the very year that Ephraim came to South China, and was therefore 23 years younger than he.
Dr. Jones tells us that Ephraim Clark fi rst saw Olive Braley at a Friends Meeting held at the home of Jedidiah Jepson at the head of the pond. Now let’s have the story in Dr. Jones’ OlIn in i mi tab Ie, witty sty Ie. “AI I of a sudden the click came. Here was what Ephraim had been waiting for all the years. But one-sided clicks do not settle anything. You have to win the girl, and it is not too easy when you are 44 and have quite a beard. But luck was with Ephraim.
He was i nvi ted home to di nne r with the Bra ley fami I y. He watched 0 I i va get the pot of beans and the loaf of brown bread out of the steaming bean hole, make tea from the kettle hanging on the fireplace crane, and set the big table. They ate and ate, and talked and talked, and then Olive brought on the huge apple pie she had baked in front of the open fire the day before. As soon as dinner was over and Ephraim had helped wash the dishes, as a good man should, he started right in courtin’ in straightforward fashion. In colonial days these affairs of the heart moved fast. Ephraim started at once making a beaten track to 01 i ve ‘5 door. He had no gui tar like Romeo. He di d not dance. He took no bouquets or chocolates to her. He didn’t get down on his knees — he did that only when he prayed. He talked about the farms he had cleared, the stone walls he had bui It, the bear and moose he had shot, the departure of the last Indians, and especially about the prospects for them together in the new world ahead.
“One hot summer day they took a long wa Ik together. They c limbed the hi ghest hi II and Ephraim showed 01 i ve M:>unt Blue and the peaks of the Kennebago range. There and then 0 live promi sed to marry him, and at the fo Ilowi ng month Iy meeti ng of Friends in East Vassalboro their intentions were approved. The marriage, after the Quaker custom, took place in the home of Jedi di ah Jepson. After a solemn gathered si lence, Ephraim said ‘·In the presence of the Lord and this assemb Iy, I take thee, 01 i ve Bra ley, to be my wife, p romi sing to be unto thee a faithful and loving husband, unti I it shall please the Lord by death to separate us.’ 01 ive smi led and said ‘In the piresence of the Lord and this assemb Iy, I take thee, Ephraim Clark, to be my husband, promising to be unto thee a faithful and lovi ng wife, unti lit sha II p lease the Lord by death to separate us. f “When it was allover, and the proper amount of kissing had been done, Ephraim mounted a horse, with Olive behind him on a pil lion, and rode to the log house at the foot of the pond, whe re 0 live cooked her first suppe r for Ephra i m in the room hung about with crook-necked squashes, and adorned with old muskets and the antlers of moose and deer.”
“Thatff, says Dr. Jones, “was the beginning of South China. Ephraim and Olive had twelve chi Idren, six boys and six girls.” That was the first fami Iy in the annals of the South China community.
Dr. Jones was one of the best and cleverest re lators of anecdotes who ever came out of Maine, a state justly famous for its story tellers. Frankly Dr. Jones gave credit for many of his stories to an earlier spinner of yarns, South China’s vi I I age blacksmith, whom Dr. Jones identified simply as Theed. What made the stories in Dr. Jones’ sermons and addresses so memorable was their perfect app Ii cati on. He never dragged ina story. He tol d one a Iways to make a point, and the point was thus made definitely and convincingly. The blacksmith Theed seems to have had the same kind of abi lity.
On one occasion Theed was denouncing some of the people who dallied about the i r hay i ng. “They ought to keep ri ght at it”, sa i d Theed. “Remi nds me of a fe Iler up in Aroosti c. He was se II i ng p lows up there when he saw a Canadi an Frenchman and hi s wi fe reap i ng wheat. He asked the Frenchman how much they had reaped that day. ‘Oh’, said the man, ‘about an acre and a half, I guess. We’d a got more done, but my wife had to stop and have a baby, and that held us up qui te a I ot • ,n When, in his boyhood, Dr. Jones and another boy kept at the exasperating task of making a water wheel that would saw wood, Theed the blacksmith said to them, “You remind me of the kid in the Sunday School class. The teacher asked what they had learned from the wonderful story of Jonah, and this bright kid answered, ‘You can’t keep a good man down.’ Remember, boys, you can’t keep a good man down.”
Theed was always exci ted about pol i ti cs, and he was a staunch Democrat in, a community of Republicans. One day Theed orated to the assembled citizens in the blacksmith shop: “Remember what Thomas Jefferson did for the country, what Andrew Jackson did for the common people. Now we have found a man who has the same ideals, the same rugged honesty, the same high quality of wisdom. He is Samuel J. Ti Iden, but you in your ignorance wi II probably vote for Rutherford B. Hayes. You remind me of the girl who was getting ready to be married. Somebody asked her if she had given serious consideration to this momentous step. She rep lied, ‘Oh yes, I’ve been to two fortune te I lers and a c I a i rvoyant, I’ve stud i ed a sign book an’d dreamed on a lock of his ha i r. Everyth i ng te I I s me to go ahead. I ‘m not one to marry reck less like.’ That’s about the way you fe 1- lows vote. You don’t want to vote reckless like.- Your old cocrupt party is at last going to be turned out of office. It doesn’t know it yet, but that’s what’s comi ng. It’s like the turt Ie the I ri shman was carryi ng after the creature’s head had been cut off. Somebody asked him if the turtle was dead. ‘Sure’, said Pat, ‘he’s dead all right, but he ain’t conscious of it yet.’ That’s the way it is with you boys. Your old party is dead, but it ain’t conscious of it yet.”
Both on th is program and in “Kennebec Yesterdays” r have had much to say about the schools of by-gone days. As you know, teachers got very low pay a hundred years ago, but most of them took what they could get without complaint, because supply exceeded demand — there was always someone to take a teacher’s p I ace. So it is refresh i ng to di scover a teacher who p laced a va I ue on her serVices and wasn’t afraid to say so. Among the papers recently given to me by the widow of Jotham Hobbs of Fairfield, is a letter written to Mr. Hobbs’ grandfather, then a school supervisor, by Jenny Ware on Apri I 21, 1858. The letter says:
“Dear Sir: Upon reflection with regard to the school in your district, I have come to the conclusion that I cannot take it for less than three dollars a week. I would like it at that price, but should not feel that I was doing myself justice to take it at less. If you wish me to have it, please let me know this week.”
Some teachers were more eager to get jobs. On November 24 of that same year of 1858 Char les Emerson wrote to the fi rst Jotham Hobbs: “Yours of the 21st is at hand and in reply would say that, although it wi I I cut short my present school two weeks, yet wi II accept your offer andre co~ the flf§.T Monday in January next, if you cannot possibly postpone it unti lone week later, which would carry the time for its commencement up to January tenth. If you could say January tenth, the favor would be gratefully received by this distri ct as we II as by myse If. However, I will engage to teach your schoo I and you can gi ve me an answer at your lei sure whether it sha II commence the 3rd or the 10th.
Why was Emerson so eager to accept the Hobbs’ offer? Because it would pay him 25 cents a week mon9, $2.75 instead of $2.50 a week.
Wi th that accent on a quarter of a do II ar, we say good night for 01 d ti mes t sake.
Year: 1956