Radio Script #784

Little Talks on Common Things

December 1, 1968

Though sugar beets have recently been in the Maine agricultural picture, it is fitting to note that this is not the first time Maine has paid attention to those big root vegetables. Such a situation hit Maine more than a century and a quarter ago, in the 1830’s.

Since 1820 the press of the northern states had been urging farmers to produce beets for sugar. In 1839 Ezekiel Holmes, editor of the Maine Farmer, took up the cause. He said: “The sugar beet is destined to become to the North what sugar cane is to the South, and I see no good reason why the farmers of Aroostook may not find it a safe and valuable business to embark upon.”

Then we must note with surprise Holmes’ next sentence, for he emphasized. “However, the staple crop of Aroostook is and must ever be wheat. For this the climate and the soil are exceptionally favorable.”

Think of that — Aroostook’s major crop not potatoes, but wheat! Good men and keen thinkers — and Holmes was certainly such a man — can and do often make wrong predictions, simply because they have no way of foreseeing the causes of change. In 1839 Ezekiel Holmes knew nothing about the rich loam of the prairies and what it would do to Maine wheat.

Holmes did not entirely ignore potatoes. He said: “The potatoes raised in Aroostook, when planted in season, are equal in quantity and quality to any produced elsewhere. The climate and the soil seem congenial to this root. What is wanting is greater facilities for getting them to market.”

As for wheat, all through the 1830’s, Holmes kept urging farmers, not only in Aroostook, but allover Maine, to raise more of it. He said: “We mean to touch on this subject again and again until Maine shall be rid of the reproach that she does not raise her own breadstuffs. No state can be considered independent so long as she does not raise the grain for the staff of life. but has to look outside for her sustenance.”

In 1837 the Maine Legislature granted a bounty of two dollars for 20 bushels of wheat and 6 cents for each additional bushel. In 1837 the bounty reached $76,954 on 1,015,144 bushels, and in 1838 it was $87,352 on 1,107,849 bushels. In 1839 the bounty was repealed because of the serious financial panic of 1837-38.

Here is an old-time story about Maine oats that is reminiscent of the definition of oats in Samuel Johnson’s famous dictionary of 1754. Johnson’s definitions were by no means wholly objective. Johnson was a strong hater, and one of his pet hates was everything Scottish. So the irrascible Englishman set down in his dictionary this definition of oats: “A grain used in England for horses, in Scotland to support the people.”

Now for an incident about oats that occurred up on the Aroostook River in the 1830’s. Captain Francis, chief of the Penobscot Indians, was a dinner guest at a house on the river. The hostess set before him a steaming dish of oatmeal pudding. The old chief tasted it and shook his head. “Now you, Miss White Man’s Squaw”, he said, “what you think I have ’em most blood in me — horse blood or Indian blood? If I have ’em most horse blood. then I eat ’em your oats.”

Did you know that there was once a serious attempt to cultivate silk in Maine?  In the late 1820’s and through the 1830’s mulberry trees were planted and silkworms raised in most of the eastern states. An infant industry sprang up that ran the familiar course of boom and bust. Hundreds of Maine people were caught in the excitement.

The Maine Farmer carried many articles on the culture of silk. William Noyes of Winthrop sold mulberry seed and Holmes, the editor of Maine Farmer, himself planted 2,000 white mulberry trees on his little three-acre farm on Powderhouse Hill, General Norcross of Livermore set out 4,000 trees, and a man in Newport 6,000. To encourage the new industry the legislature in 1836 granted a bounty of five cents a pound on cocoons and 50 cents a pound on silk raised in Maine. Quite an amount was produced for a few years, but the project failed to gain a firm foothold, even though the bounty remained in the statutes long after the last Maine silkworm had vanished.

A few weeks ago I referred to Waterville’s paper of the 1890’s called Turf, Farm and Home. That paper was by no means confined entirely to agriculture and horse racing. In 1899 it took up a subject that seems very familiar to us today the sad deterioration of youth. Editor Mayo complained of the idleness, the bad manners, the noisy depredations of teenagers in the 1890’s. He was immediately attacked by staunch defenders of youth. Early to reply was President Nathaniel Butler of Colby College. who wrote: “I believe, Mr. Mayo. your assumption is in error. The praiser of times gone by is always with us. No one intimately connected with American colleges for the past 50 years can doubt for a moment that there has been steady moral and social advance. Never in the history of our country have so many students been enrolled in college, yet month after month passes with no ripple of disturbance or departure from approved behavior. Of course in every community -and a college is a community — there are a few bad actors who can be appealed to only by the policeman’s club and the county jail. But it is unreasonable to apply the exceptional to the mass. Because a town has a shocking murder, it does not label all the citizens as murderers. Acts of student disorder must certainly be denounced and dealt with. The law should apply to students as to all other citizens. But the past 25 years testify to a marked improvement in student behavior.”

President Harris of the University of Maine wrote in similar vein: “He is blind who cannot see the improvement in manners and morals made in our colleges during the past half century. Year by year we see our students freeing themselves from foolish practices and habits of which their fathers were persistently guilty. Our boys are not perfect; they still do foolish things. But they are not half so foolish as they are reported to be. If I may credit what I hear about the way our legislators in Augusta enliven the quiet hours of the night at the Augusta House, those oldsters can do more cutting up than a whole campus of college boys.”

But it was really President Hyde of Bowdoin who got in the last word. In reply to Editor Mayo’s request that he comment on the situation, Hyde wrote: “Those who know the least about school and college discipline are most willing to talk about it. Every case is so individual that no general rules are of much use.”

What was the cost of meat and vegetables when E.P. Mayo was publishing his Turf, Farm and Home? Here are some of the prices in 1899. Beef roasts, 12 cents a pound; smoked hams, 8 cents; lard. 7 cents; butter, 18 cents; cheese, 10 cents; frankfort sausage, 7 cents; eggs, 15 cents a dozen; old potatoes, 60 cents a bushel; new southern potatoes, $3.00 a barrel; strawberries, 10 cents a quart.

In 1899 by no means was everyone enthusiastic about the United States taking over the Philippines. Among the skeptics was Editor Mayo of Turf, Farm and Home. Listen to what he had to say on that national subject: “Do we want the Philippines? No! Why not? Because we are a nation of and for peace. Florida, Louisiana, Alaska — all came to us honestly. True, we had a little scrimmage with Mexico over Texas, but that was not typical. In the main our acquisitions have come peacefully. The politicians are eager for us to have a national debt that will never be paid. If they can get bonds that run forever, that will be just fine for the financial money grabbers, whose tools the politicians are.

“So their first move was to stir revolt in Hawaii. Then they set up police regulations in Cuba and made certain we would run that island. Now they reach out to the other side of the world and claim the Philippines by right of conquest. We will need a standing army of 25,000 in the Sandwich Islands, another 25,000 in Porto Rico, and at least 50,000 in Cuba. All those thousands of troops must be fed, clothed and equipped and their wages paid by the industry of the U.S. Then we must add high paid diplomats, consuls and agents. The costs will plague us, our children and our children’s children for generations to come. We have already spent enough on this Spanish War to build the much needed canal across the Isthmus of Nicaragua and keep it in repair for a hundred years.

“But the financial cost is not the worst feature of our colonial policy. If we keep the Philippines, we make American citizens of some 15 million Japanese, Chinese, Negroes, Malays, pirates and Lord only knows what else. The game is not worth the candle. The United States needs the Philippines like a dog needs a fifth leg.”

Editor Mayo’s fear that young people were going to the dogs — his attack that brought replies from the Maine college presidents — was not his only fear of change. In one issue of Turf, Farm and Home he had the following to say about the changing times in those years we look back upon now as very stable and unchanging, the decade of the 1890’s. Mr. Mayo wrote: “What are we coming to? Children no longer obey their parents. Boys are no longer willing to put in a day’s work on father’s farm. Grown men prefer to idle in the poolroom, rather than work in the mill. Women are no longer demure and modest.” And so on went the article at some length.

Just as he did when he attacked college youth, Mayo got replies. One of them is worth quoting in full. It said: “You were mistaken when you described all modern change as for the worse. Your lament for the good old days of righteousness and truth is touching; but you forget that good as well as evil has always been with us, and we have much to be thankful for in change. Who wants to go back to the days of no railroads and no telegraph? What woman wants to discard her modern range for the old brick oven? I wonder if modern faults are confined to the young. I know of parents who censure their children for the very things they themselves did. I can remember boys and girls of that lamented generation you so highly praise, who were always cutting up in school and out. Yet they grew up to be respectable men and women. The trouble is that memory is the thing we forget with. Let us look at something besides the shoals and the quicksands.”

Year: 1968