Radio Script #1032

Little Talks on Common Things
December 29, 1974

By looking in some detail at Waterville statistics revealed by the U.S. Census of 1970, I have discovered some interesting facts that I suspect are not known to most inhabitants of this city. Many people do know that the 1970 census showed Waterville’s total population to be about 18,000. The exact figures were 18,192. What is not so well known is that 3,730 or 1/5 of that total population – one person in every five reported that one or both of their parents had been born outside the United States, and that 980 said they themselves were foreign-born. Those figures did not include people of French Canadian extraction, both of whose parents had been born in the United States. If those were counted, the total of non-Anglo Saxons would be at least half of Waterville’s total population.

Today most of our French-Canadian residents are bilingual, and in many French-Canadian homes of the third or fourth generation the French language is seldom heard. But in the census breakdown between those who respectively claimed French or English as their mother tongue, the figures were 11,457 English, 5,456 French.

How many veterans are there in Waterville? At the time of the 1970 census they numbered 42% of the male adult population, or 2,502, and there were 18 women who had been in the armed services. Waterville then had 367 veterans from the Korean War and 363 from Vietnam.

The census also showed some unusual facts about Waterville employment. Of our 18,192 people, 7,117 were gainfully employed. Bear in mind that the whole population includes a great number of children, defined as persons under 16 years of age. Amazing is the number of women employed in comparison with the number of men. The male employment totaled 4,193, while the women employed numbered 2,924, or 42% of the total employees.

Despite the loss of the Lockwood cotton mills in the previous decade, Waterville was in 1970 still a prosperous manufacturing city. Of its 7,000 workers, 1,868 were engaged in manufacturing. The second highest group was in retail selling with 728, while the third was in private education, 618. The total number getting their earnings from education, when the 369 in public education were added, was 987. Working in government at some level were 258 of our people. In religion and private welfare organizations were 127.

Everyone knows that Waterville, like all communities of its size, has a scarcity of household workers, such as maids and cleaners. The 1970 census showed only 138 in that employment.

It will surprise some of you to hear that 87 Waterville persons are engaged in wholesale trade, that 113 are engaged in printing and its allied occupations, that we have 164 people dealing in insurance and real estate, and that 216 serve in baking and dairying.

Waterville is fortunate to retain the Maine Central Shop, although that railroad no longer carries passengers. In all its departments the railroad still employs 190 persons.

How were Waterville people faring financially in 1970? We then had 4,281 family units, and the median family income was then $8,761. Median income means the figure below which there were exactly the same number of families as there were above it. In other words, in 1970, one-half of Waterville families had incomes less than $8,761 a year, and half had incomes more than that. It is astounding to learn that 52 families had income of less than $1,000 in 1970, and 892 families were below the $5,000 level. With income over $10,000 there were 1,769 families. Of that number 1,204 had incomes over $12,000, and 154 had more than $25,000. What is most astounding is that there lived in Waterville, in 1970, 21 families each of which had annual income of more than $50,000.

Often we hear the expression “average income”. Let me show you why that is much less meaningful than median income, which I have already explained. In 1970 the average income of Waterville’s 4,281 families was $10,176 while the median was $8,761. The difference is explained by the high incomes. To obtain an average, you divide the total income of all families by the number of families. The high figures of a minority in the upper brackets distorts that average. It means much more for the real picture to show that half our people were living on less than $8,761 a year. Another pair of figures is also significant: with incomes less than $5,000 were 21% of all our families; with income over $12,000 were 28%.

How well educated are Waterville people? Persons over 25 years of age in Waterville numbered 9,427 in 1970. Of that number 4,145 were men and 5,282 were women. Yes, in our population of people over 25, there were 1,137 more women then men. Now take a look at their education. While 32 men had enjoyed no schooling at all, there was only one such woman, but 116 men and 136 women had gone no farther then fourth grade. Leaving school at grade 5, 6, or 7 were 417 men and 475 women. Now note the surprising fact that more women than men had completed 8th grade, but had gone no farther: 584 men and 771 women. Leaving school at either grade 9, 10 or 11, were 667 men and 901 women. Now comes the pleasing side of the picture. Persons over 25 who lived in Waterville and had graduated from high school were 1,263 men and 1,754 women. But of proportion to their admitted excess of total numbers over the men, the women’s preponderance of 492 high school graduates is truly astonishing. The summary shows that 56% of all men over 25 in Waterville had completed high school, and 58% of the women. These particular census statistics do not show how many Waterville people are college graduates, but we know that the number is significant, partly because Waterville has long had Colby College and for a shorter, but appreciable time Thomas College.

Some comments made in the 1970 census are worth quoting. Concerning finances the comment was: “Fully one-third of Waterville families are living on very modest income.” About employment, it said: “More than half of Waterville’s employed are in one of four areas: services, sales, clerical work, and professional pursuits. They outnumber by far the total engaged in manufacturing.”

Well, anyhow, I submit to you that the 1970 census, looked at closely, does tell us a lot about living conditions in Waterville.

By this time listeners to Little Talks know that I have long had a deep interest in the English language. In fact, as a teacher of English, my major interest was not its literature, but the language itself – its historic development, its complex origins, its unnatural grammar, and its eccentricities that make it so difficult for a foreigner to master.

One branch of language study is semantics, the study of meaning. What does a given word mean? If you utter by itself just the word sole, do you mean only, do you mean the bottom of the foot, or do you mean spiritual being? Very few English words have definite, textual, unambiguous meaning of themselves. Their meaning depends on the context, the other words with which they are used. We know what sole means in these sentences: “He is the sole remaining original director of the company; he has a callous on the sole of his foot; he is a lost soul”.

It is said that great events hang often on a straw, as in Caesar’s invasion of Gaul, the crossing of a brook decided the conquest of a world. It’s just as true that great events hang on the meaning of a word. This often happens in translations from one language into another.

An historic example occurred within the memory of everyone more than 40 years old today. At the end of July, 1945, Germany and Italy had surrendered, and the Allies had issued an ultimatum to Japan to surrender also. Japan’s Prime Minister called a press conference, at which he stated his country would Makusutu the Allied ultimatum. That word was an extremely unfortunate choice. The Prime Minister intended it to mean that his cabinet would consider the ultimatum. But the Japanese word also has another meaning, just as some English words have contradicting meanings.

For instance, the English word fast can mean rapid, quick, speedy. But the same word can mean fixed, fastened, hitched – the exact opposite of meaning speed. So while in Japanese Makusutu means “consider”, it also means shun or “take no notice of”. So it happened that the translator at Domei, Japan’s overseas broadcasting agency, decided on this other meaning, and the radio-listening world heard that Japan had rejected the ultimatum, while actually the Japanese cabinet was already considering it. Domei’s misinterpretation led the United States to send B-29’s laden with atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If Makusutu had been correctly translated, the bombs need never have been dropped.

Two weeks ago, when talking about the Maine opera singer Nordica, I mentioned the fact that, in a letter from London, her mother wondered whether any people from Farmington attended Nordica’s concert in Portland in the fall of 1891 – a concert given by the great singer when I was exactly one week old. I told you that Farmington people did attend that concert.

I can now be more specific.

The Farmington historian, Hon. Benjamin Butler, informs me just what Farmington people were present at that evening concert in Portland. They included Dr. and Mrs. J.T. Linscott, Mr. and Mrs. George Cole, and Mr. and Mrs. E.O. Greenleaf. In fact the Greenleafs built the Farmington house in which Mr. and Mrs. Butler now live.

Mr. Butler comments: “Poor Nordica had a difficult time with husbands and jewelry. While singing at Boston’s Tremont Temple in that same autumn of 1891, Nordica noticed that a brooch she had been wearing was missing. It had cost her $1,500 in London. Now it was gone.”

Year: 1974