Radio Script #688

Little Talks on Common Things

April 17, 1966

During recent weeks this program has been rather restricted to Waterville, as we have been telling how this city looked in 1887, in 1896 and in 1921. Today it is time that we turned our attention, as we have often done in the past, to other parts of the state.

I am indebted to Harry Mosher of Waterville for an old newspaper that I have found very interesting. Long ago, in connection with this program, I became accustomed to coincidences. I have more than once told you how strange it seems that I keep running on to items for the year 1891, the year of my own birth. Then too, when I notice Maine events before the Civil War, I am struck by how often they are dated in 1847, the year of Waterville’s first murder. But today it is neither 1847 nor 1891 that offers a coincidence. but a later date, 1911. The paper which Harry Mosher has sent to me is the issue of the Mars Hill View for July 6, 1911.

Now the coincidence is this: 1911 was the year when I first saw Aroostook County. That spring, when I was a sophomore at Colby, the Musical Clubs, in which I was a humble player of the mandolin, toured Aroostook during the spring vacation, and one of our concert stops was Mars Hill, where our patron organization was the Aroostook Central Institute. So the old newspaper was printed just a few months after I had made my first visit to Maine’s potatoland.

On the paper’s first page is a large map of the county, showing in heavy black the lines of the Bangor and Aroostook R.R. Shown in a dotted line is a projected rail route of which I am ashamed to say I never heard. The paper refers to it as the proposed Allagash line. Starting at Fort Kent, it was to go up the St. John River to St. Francis, then run south along the general route of the Allagash Stream to the foot of Long Lake, whence it would go west of Eagle and Chamberlain Lakes, then down the east side of Chesuncook, cross between Permadumcook and Jo Mary Lakes, and join the main line of the B&A just below West Sebois. As we all know very well, that railroad was never built.

The View was published by E.L. Lowell at $1.00 a year. Although it carried Mars Hill in its title, it was actually printed in the neighboring village of Blaine. Publisher Lowell was somewhat ashamed of what Blaine voters had recently done, and he let people know his feelings in this editorial: “We dislike to give our readers the result of the vote at the special town meeting of Saturday, held for the purpose of securing fire protection for Blaine village. The vote was 94 to 63 against the proposal. More than half of those NO votes were cast by poll tax payers only. The man who pays a real estate tax has a right to vote as he chooses, but the poll tax payer has no more right to vote on raising money for town improvements than he would have in hiring out to a farmer, then telling that farmer what he could or could not raise on his farm. The men of Blaine are making a mistake when they vote against fire protection, since they can have it for less than $300. But what can you expect of voters who have no property to protect?”

People may well have been dollar conscious in Aroostook or any other part of Maine in 1911. Wages and prices were both low. D.L. Dickinson, who operated what he called the “Save-You” store in Mars Hill, ran a full page ad in the View. He was putting on a special sale from July 7 to 18. His ad said: “For ten days, in order to convert as much of our stock as possible into cash before taking inventory, we have applied a knife to everything in our store, and have made such cuts as will make our profits fade away and stay in the pockets of our customers while they carry off the goods.”

Now let us take a look at some of Dickinson’s sales prices of clothing and shoes. He offered men’s Kuppenheimer suits from $14.00 to $19.50, trousers for $2.75, khaki pants for a dollar, straw hats for 50 cents. neckties for 19 cents, and boy’s knicker suits for $2.90. One item in the big ad read: “All of our $1.00 dress shirts, including Hathaway, for only 79 cents. Work shirts 39 cents.” Dickinson had linen collars for 10 cents and rubber collars (they were probably celluloid) for 20 cents. A line of ladies’ skirts went for $2.95, and remember those were the days when a skirt had a lot more cloth in it than it has today. A smart fellow could buy a derby hat for $2.00, a pair of Bull Dog suspenders for 39 cents, and a pair of socks for 10 cents. He could buy the very best shoes for $4.25, and if he could get along with a less handsome pair he need pay only $1.35.

The Meade Cycle Co. of Chicago, looking for agents allover the country, had placed an ad in the Mars Hill paper. As an inducement for a fellow to buy their bicycle the company offered special terms to anyone who would be their salesman, but they made it perfectly clear that the fellow had to pay for his sample.

In one corner of an inside page of this old paper is a picture many an oldtimer would find familiar. It is a photograph of a King Kineo kitchen range, much like one that used to sit in the kitchen of my boyhood home, with its two high shelves in the rear and its attached hot water tank at one end. On many a winter Saturday night I have taken a bath in a big tub set in front of that kitchen range. But that was long, long ago.

Some of the local news items in the paper also bring back memories: “Sheriff Bryson swooped down on the Line last week and captured three quarts of liquor.”

“Delegates to the Epworth League convention in Houlton were taken for an auto drive to view the beauties of Houlton.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Paul Bubar spent the Fourth in town fishing and swimming.”

“If you think we don’t need another railroad, listen to this. A local dealer paid freight of 32 cents each on watermelons from Bangor to Mars Hill.”

Now comes a reference to a venerable clergyman still living and whose son is well known today in Central Maine: “Rev. Benjamin C. Bubar, author of ‘The Devil Let Loose in Maine’, is here this week on a vacation.” Having known the fighting qualities and the tireless zeal of the elder Ben Bubar, I’ll bet he didn’t let the devil keep roaming loose even if Mr. Bubar was on vacation.

It was good growing weather in Aroostook that summer. The View said: “One thermometer here in town got up to 106 on July 4th and then pushed the nail up over the roof and out of sight. But the crops are growing like a whirlwind, so we can afford to sweat.”

The local newspaper publishers always tried to be promoters of the new as well as boosters of local things as they were. So publisher Lowell had this to say in that hot summer of 1911: “If someone will build a park in Mars Hill the View will guarantee to put 10,000 people inside the fence on the opening day. We need a park to hold trots, fairs and celebrations. Who will build it?”

Like all weekly papers, the Mars Hill View had its rural correspondents and their charming familiarity has not entirely disappeared from weekly papers today. I have no doubt in some Maine paper of 1966 you can find items not much different from the following: “Nearly everyone on the Snow Road attended the picnic given by the editor of the View last week. The coffee and cream were the best we have seen for a long time. Mr. Tarbell was a little late, but better late than never. It was very kind of the editor to give us such a nice picnic to enjoy.”

“Harry Trueworthy, wife and baby attended church at Mars Hi 11 Sunday morning.”

“We have new neighbors on our road. They have moved into William Young’s house. We have not learned their names yet.”

How familiar the following i tern sounds: “Road making has begun and there will be some rough roads to drive over for a while.”

Some of my listeners who lived in small Maine towns half a century or more ago will recall how negotiable as currency were the town orders. My father was for several years treasurer of a Maine town. He would, of course, cash the town orders drawn by the selectmen, whenever he had any money in the town treasury. But often the pot was empty and the holder of a town order, which of course was a legal instrument instructing the town treasurer to pay a certain amount of money to the person whose name appeared on the order, had to wait for his money, sometimes weeks or even months, or turn the order over to a merchant. Sometimes, for the sake of making a sale, the merchant would accept the order at face value and himself wait until the town treasury had funds. But more often the merchant would demand a discount. If, for instance, the order called for $20, the merchant would take it for $10. Sometimes town orders were lost, and that kind of mishap explains an ad in the Mars Hill View; and with that ad we shall close our account of that 1911 paper and turn to another subject. The ad said: “Caution. All people are warned not to cash or negotiate a certain order on the Town of Blaine, Maine. No. 82, date June 12, amount $30.50, as the same was lost. C.D. Huntington, Robinson, Maine.”

In our closing minutes today, let us take a quick glance at a newspaper more than a hundred years old — not a local Maine paper, but one from the great metropolis of New York. It is the New York World of August 13, 1860, published only three months before Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States.

Two points in the big city lured visitors from afar: Barnum’s Museum and the big ocean liner, the Great Eastern. Of the museum the World said: “Mr. Barnum exhibits thousands of curiosities, among them the giant baby, an albino family, a great living seal, the beautiful angel fish, and Tommy the Japanese, represented in wax.”

Lying in New York harbor and on exhibition to the public was the Great Eastern. It would be the last opportunity to go aboard the ship before she sailed for England in a few days.

What did it cost to visit the Great Eastern or to inspect the curiosities in Barnum’s Museum? For the Great Eastern tickets were 50 cents for adults and 25 for children. Barnum charged the grown-ups only a quarter and the kiddies only a dime.

Today the transactions on the New York Stock Exchange take several pages in a daily paper. In 1860 the World gave all of Wall Street’s buying and selling of the previous day in less than half a column. There was not a single manufacturing corporation offering securities. In fact there were very few such corporations existing in 1860. Most factories were owned by individuals, by families, or by partnerships.

What was traded on the NY Exchange were the stocks and bonds of 19 railroads, 17 banks, the Delaware and Hudson Canal, and just one shipping line, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. An entirely separate exchange called the New York Mining Board, listed quotations on 26 mining stocks.

Except for ever-present and ever-enticing real estate, all an investor in securities could find for his money in 1860 were railroads, steamship lines, banks, canals and toll bridges. And with that we must say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1966