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1949

Radio Script #25

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Little Talks On Common Things
May 1, 1949

Consistency,thou art a jewel, but one which few members of Congress ever wear. How many a congressman can reconcile some of his votes either with his party platform or with his own conscience is beyond the comprehension of the ordinary citizen.

Both the Republican and Democratic parties have in their platforms strong planks on the subject of civil rights. Both assert that no citizen should be denied the rights accorded to other citizens because of race, color or religion. What is more, many Congressmen of both parties have made emphatic speeches against racial and religious discrimination. One would suppose that any time when the filibustering Dixiecrats would let the issue come to a vote, discrimination would be hit an overwhelming Congressional blow.

Now let us see what actually happened. After debate lasting several days, the Senate finally came to a vote on various amendments offered to the Housing Bill. During that long night session of April 21, Senator Bricker of Ohio offered the following amendment, which I quote in its exact words in order that there be no misunderstanding or misrepresentation:

“In recognition of the fact that public policy requires equality of treatment of all people and prohibits discrimination on account of race, color, creed, national origin or ancestry, in regard to public housing, every contract made pursuant to this act shall provide that the housing project to which the contract refers shall be operated without discrimination.”

When that amendment came to a vote, it was defeated 46 to 32, with 18 senators not voting. One would expect opposition from the hardened Dixiecrats like Ellender of Louisiana, Russell of Georgia and Eastland of Mississippi. But among those who voted against the Bricker amendment were Flanders of Vermont, Tobey of New Hampshire, Taft of Ohio, Morse of Oregon, Myers of Pennsylvania and Young of North Dakota. stranger still were the negative votes of such men as Senator Humphrey of Minnesota, who led the fight for the civil rights plank at the Democratic convention last June, and of Senator Taylor of Idaho, who was Henry Wallace’s running mate in the November election.

Unfortunately both Maine senators were absent when the vote was taken, excusably absent on necessary business. When the roll was called, Senator Saltonstall of Massachusetts, in charge on the Republican side of the aisle, announced that Mr. Brewster and Mrs. Smith were both absent on official business, and that if present and voting, both would vote yes; that is, in favor of the Bricker amendment.

Just before midnight that same night the Senate finally passed the Housing Bill, and it contains no provision whatever against discrimination because of race or religion.

One of our Winslow listeners, Mr. Clukey, adds notably to our list of covered bridges, by calling our attention to two such bridges which still stood in the same community until within the past year. One was taken down less than a year ago; the other still stands. In the northwest corner of Maine, between the Rangeley Lakes and the New Hampshire border, is Lincoln Plantation with its little village of Wilson’s Mills. Through this region flows the Magalloway River. It was crossed by the two covered bridges Mr. Clukey mentions. The one still standing is called the Storey Bridge.

Mr. Clukey mentions another practice of covered bridge days which we had never heard of before. He says that, in his native Vermont, people living near the bridge kept their RFD boxes inside the bridge. A very sensible device to keep mail from onslaughts of the weather, it must have been a convenience also to the mail carrier, who could take a breather under shelter of the bridge while he distributed the mail.

We are frequently reminded that just around the corner is the middle of the twentieth century. On this program devoted to common things it may be appropriate to think a bit about some of the things we have that were unknown when this century was born. In 1900 there were not only no radios, there weren’t even movies.

The airplane was unheard of; aviator was a word that belonged only in the Arabian Nights. Doctors of that day not only went without penicillin; they didn’t even have insulin. The ladies of 1900, in their big-sleeved shirt waists, visited no beauty parlors and read no cosmetic ads. Then men never went to Rotary or Kiwanis or Lions or Exchange, because luncheon clubs were unheard of. Only in the larger cities did people have luncheon anyway. Folks ate a good hearty dinner at noon and supper at night. When our century dawned, there were no boy scouts and no state police, no chain stores and no self-service, no income tax and no surtax. They didn’t have that nuisance one encounters when he registers his car today, that nuisance which I once heard an indignant taxpayer call his exercise tax.

In 1900 bobbing meant sliding down hill, not cutting a woman’s hair. In the vocabulary of that day, unknown were the words cafeteria and automat, hitch-hiker and high-jacker, jazz and juke-box. In Maine fifty years ago the word “drive” had no connection with soliciting money. It meant either a pleasant experience with a horse or a tough experience getting logs down a stream.

To how many people living today does the expression safety bicycle have any meaning? Even in 1900 it was a bit pass:, for I cannot remember ever hearing it in my youth. And good reason why; for I have only the faintest recollection of the older, supposedly unsafe bicycles, with the tremendous front wheel and the tiny rear wheel, and the rider mounted precariously high in the air. I can recall just once when I saw one of those vehicles being ridden by a human being, and in the last decade of the nineteenth century, that rider was .even then a somewhat archaic curiosity. Memories have to go back farther than mine, into at least the 1880’s, to recall those high-wheeled bicycles in any plentiful numbers.

Anyhow just about the time I was born along came the present type of bicycle, having both wheels of equal diameter. When one fell from it he had not so far to fall. It was, indeed, a less precarious thing to ride. In short, it was a safety bicycle.

Mark Sullivan, popular historian of this century’s first quarter, claims that it was the bicycle that started the revolution in women’s dress and women’s sports. Previous to the coming of the modern bicycle women’s only sport had been croquet. Women had, of course, ridden horseback, but only on sedate side-saddles and in a costume, the “riding habit”, in which the amount of covering and cloth was even greater than the long trains of ordinary dress.

Suddenly manufacturers began to make a safety bicycle adapted to women, by installing nets to protect skirts from entanglement~with the whirling wire spokes. Gradually and daringly a few women began to wear shorter skirts, weighing the hems down with little strips of lead. When women took up tennis, modification of stays and corsets was inevitable. Then the more daring females began to appear in bloomers. It took years for the changes in dress to pass from specialized costumes for sport to ordinary wear.

In 1900, for women as well as for men, Sunday best meant something in clothes. But as long ago as 1925 it had no meaning for American women. In that quarter of  century women in offices were as well dressed as women of leisure, Sunday or any other day. The average working girl had so many changes of costume that, in June, 1925 the Detroit Free Press remarked: “Give women’s fashions time enough and they will starve all the moths to death.” The old timers, who didn’t like the changes a little bit, often let loose such sarcastic remarks as that of the old sailor who said: “I s ‘pose the girls wear their dresses at half-mast as a mark of respect for departed modesty”.

When bobbing of women’s hair became a common fad, some indignant barbers, with more prejudice than business sense, put out signs reading: “Barber Shop for Men Only”.

What changes half a century has wrought on the farm as well as in the town. In 1900, though the mowing machine had come in, plenty of farmers still cut huge fields with the scythe. Oxen were still sharing the power task with horses. Every farm housewife had her own coffee-grinder, sausage grinder, and apple-parer, her up-and-down churn, and her vat for making soap. When the farmer and his wife went to town in winter, they rode in an open one-horse sleigh, Shielded from cold by a thick buffalo robe. If their sleigh was one of the latest style, it was called a cutter. Those journeys to town carried a memorable glamor unknown to a generation brought up with the automobile.

Last week we referred to some curious facts about the common thing we call time. I suppose it was the railroad that first made time important to Americans. Time in the pre-railroad days might well be described in the well-known language of Octavus Roy Cohen’s fictional character Florian Slappey, “it’s what I ain’t got nothin’ else but”.

After the railroads had been perfected so that a train could actually go faster than a horse something which it definitely could not do at first — to be on time meant to be on time for the train.If any great man was ever oblivious to the passage of time it was the nature lover and hermit author, Henry David Thoreau. In Walden he wrote: “The trains come and go with such regularity and precision, and their whistle can be heard so far, that the farmers set their clocks by them, .and thus one well regulated institution, the railroad, regulates the whole country. ”

The most punctual people on earth are said to be railroad men. As long ago as 1833 modern time belts were established as a result of the railroads, but the Federal Government ignored them for 35 years. Not until 1868, after the rail lines had spanned the continent, did we get official, government recognition of Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific time, with Maine even to this day feeling some effects of a fifth zone, Atlantic time, in the eastern end of Canada. For 35 years the government listened to the pleas of local people for their own local times, to the ranting of ministers against tinkering with God’s time. But finally the speeding iron horse won out, and people soon got used to our four national time zones.

As I said when I talked about the narrow gauge railroads, I am not a railroad man. I just happened to be brought up in a narrow gauge town. But there are a lot of interesting facts about such a common thing as railroads, that even greenhorn passengers like me are pleased to know. So next Sunday I shall speak again of railroads, not the old two-footers this time, but railroads of any size and any gauge — just plain railroads.

Laura Knight of Fairfield, apropos of my talk on the old-time peddlers, wants to know if I remember the old pack peddlers. Yes, I do recall a few of them — all foreigners, Italian or Armenian — carrying assortments. of dress goods and dressmaking wares. The older generation of native pack peddlers were long before my day. Mrs. Knight remembers a peddler who kept his goods tied up in a huge piece of blue and white bed ticking. He would spread it all out on the grass in front of the house, if it was a fair day, or on the kitchen floor if it rained. Too often the prospective customer had no money, and in great indignation the peddler would tie up his bundle and depart.

Occasionally two peddlers would meet in the same community. Each was sure the other was encroaching on his territory. They seldom came to blows, but they used a very complete vocabulary in berating each other.

I am sure we are all grateful to Mrs. Knight for this interesting information about the old pack peddlers. Most women use every known device to conceal their age, but Mrs. Knight is proud of hers. She tells me She is 78 years old, and I can assure her that in spite of failing eyesight she still writes a fine letter, and her memory of the old days and the old-time things is undimmed.

Year: 1949

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