After submitting you to eight weeks of recorded programs, it seems good to\u00a0me to be back here in the WTVL studio on Sunday eveni ng, speaki ng to you aqai n\u00a0in a live broadcast. It probably makes little difference to you, but it matters\u00a0a lot to me. When , know that my words aregoi ng out on the air direct Iy to you.\u00a0without the med i ati on of any recorded ins trument 1 I fee I much closer to you, and\u00a0I am ceda in Iy much freer to take advantage of recent events than I am when I\u00a0have to record a program ei ght weeks before hand. Doubtless we shall have to\u00a0make much use of recordi ngs in days to come, but 1 assure you that whenever possible\u00a0I shall talk to you directly. as I am doing tonight.<\/p>\n
Some ten thousand miles of travel and a lot of interesting sights are now\u00a0but a memory since we leftWatervi lie on December fT rst. Have I learned any–\u00a0thing? Well, I certainly hope so, but! tell you right now that I am not turning\u00a0this program into a travelog, Many of you listeners know other parts of the\u00a0Un i ted States much better than I sha II ever know them. But one cannot trave I\u00a0across our great continent without getting certain impressions, and some of\u00a0them are perti nent to the . common themes of th i s program. So. from time to\u00a0time, as I refer to something on our two months I trip, I shall not be trying to\u00a0show off as the great American traveler, but shall merely seek to share with\u00a0you some Western experience that has to do with our usual program.<\/p>\n
Do you reca II our talks some time ago about the diary of Watervi lie’s Forty-\u00a0Niner. Solyman Heath? When I gave those talks, I tried hard to work out Solvman’s\u00a0exact route from Independence, Missouri to the gold fields of California,\u00a0I di d pretty we II unt; I I got Solyman to what is now the northeast border of the\u00a0state of Ca I i forni a; then the tra i I became somewhat b leary because So lyman used\u00a0no names of p I aces. He re fe rred me re I y to ‘lthe d j gg i ns” and “the city “‘. From\u00a0his remarks it was clear that the city must have been Sacramento, but where\u00a0were the diggins? could find no conclusive evidence. They might have been\u00a0anyone or more of a dozen places within twenty mi les of Sacramento.<\/p>\n
There the matte r has res ted for more than two years. I t took a tr i p to\u00a0California to bring a definite answer. Strangely enough I found that answer not\u00a0in northern Cal j forn i a, in San Franci sco or j n Sacramento, but far to the south\u00a0in the much newer city of Los Ange les \u2022 One day I vi s j ted the magn if j cent h j storical\u00a0museum in Los Angeles’ Exposition Park. In an exhibit devoted to the\u00a0old gold-rush days I found a model of old-time Placervi I Ie, The descriptive\u00a0card on the case read: lIThis place was originally called Dry Diggins, and was\u00a0the first place reached by immigrants coming through the Carson Pass.”<\/p>\n
Solyman Heath had fooled me by his reference to “the diggins” with a small\u00a0“d\\!. He surely meant the place everyone was then calling Dry Diggins or simply\u00a0llthe ll Diggins, because he certainly got there through the Carson Pass~ and it\u00a0Was his introduction to the gold fields.<\/p>\n
Modern Placerville is some 45 mi les due east of Sacramento, on Route 50\u00a0from Sacramento to Carson City 1 Nevada. Th i rty mi les to the north is Route 40 ,\u00a0the main highway from San Francisco to Salt Lake City. The 1950 census gives\u00a03,749 people in Placervi lie. It probably had nearly as many as that when Soly-man\u00a0Heath arrived there in 1849. Unl ike many of the old mining towns of the\u00a0West, however, j t is not a ghost town, not mere Iy a wide p lace i nthe road! It\u00a0is a quiet I ittle trading vi Ilage in what was a hundred years ago the scene of\u00a0some of the wi rdest and wool ies t vi 0 lence of thegol d rush.<\/p>\n
Speaking of the wi Id days of the gold rush reminds me of the wi Id times\u00a0which used to accompany the perfectly legal lotteries of a hundred years ago.\u00a0You may recal I that once I told you how the only sizable canal ever bui It in\u00a0Maine was financed by a state lottery. That staunch friend of this program,\u00a0Jo.than Hobbs of Fairfield, has shown me how common lotteries were a hundred\u00a0years ago by sending me a circular of lotteries operating in the state of Maryland\u00a0in 1853.<\/p>\n
The circular was a publication of E. N. Carr & Son, state Lottery Brokers .\u2022\u00a0138 Pratt street, Baltimore. The firm declared itself the oldest lottery agency\u00a0in the Union~ and doing the largest business of any such agency. because, as\u00a0they put it, “of our far-famed reputation as the special agents of Dame Fort-une.!:\u00a0What follows in the Carr statement seems exceedingly bold in these days\u00a0when the rna i Is are closed to a II such schemes. 11We court your acqua intance\u00a0through the medium of the mails, and will be most happy to receive an order from \u00a0you, which might tend, as it has in hundreds of other cases, to make you independent\u00a0for life. All orders are answered by return rna i I .\u2022 and names of custe-mers\u00a0are kept inviolable. Correspondents can safely mail any amount to our\u00a0address. We have never had a vatuable letter miscarry. Give us an opportunity\u00a0to prove our ce lebr i ty as pri ze se Ilers.!’<\/p>\n
Carr’s major offering was The GrandConsol idated lottery of Mary\/and, to\u00a0be drawn in Ba It i more on May 28, 1853. The first pri ze was $80,000. There we re\u00a0four prizes of $20,000 each, four of $10,000, seven of $3.963, 800 of $500, and\u00a0so on, graduated down to 10,620 prl zes of $16 each. I n all there were 41,856\u00a0prizes aggregating $1,825,824.\u00a0Th is was no two-b it pol icy racket. The price of tickets was substant i a’.\u00a0A whole ticket cost $32; a half-ticket $16, a quarter $8, and an eighth $4.\u00a0But, if you had been around in 1853, you wouldn’t have had to risk as much\u00a0as $4 to get a minimum chance In an authorized lottery, Besides the Grand Con~\u00a0so I i dated, th iss I ng Ie Carr ci rcu I ar announces 32 other lotteries.<\/p>\n
In one called Class 130, to be drawn on May 2, 1853, a whole ticket cost\u00a0only $3, but there were only 44 prizes, with the top one of $9,000.\u00a0Class 22, with a first prize of $25,000 and 126 prizes in all, offered\u00a0tickets at $8, with haf”ti-, and quarters respectively for $4 and $2.\u00a0If you couldntt scare up two dollars~ there was one Carr offering you\u00a0could enter for only one dollar. It was cal led Class 131., and offered only ele~\u00a0ven prizes, a grand first prize of $4,400 and ten prizes of $400 each.\u00a0Carr even made a bid for people with less than a dollar to risk. He offered\u00a0quarter shares in Class 146 for 62t cents; and he hit his final low by offering\u00a0a quarte r share inC I ass 141 for 25 cents.<\/p>\n
The customers Carr was most anxi ous to get were those who bought lottery\u00a0tickets by what was called the package. A package wasabundle of 25 tickets of\u00a0wholes, halves, quarters or eighths. These were sold at considerable discount\u00a0and if this customer could resell them at single ticket price, he could make a\u00a0rather handsome profit. For instance 25 whole tickets in the Grand Lottery for\u00a0May 27th bought at thei r I isted price of $4 apiece would cost $100. But bought\u00a0asa package of 25 they cost only $53.<\/p>\n
for some reason the packages for the Grand Consol idated, with its huge\u00a0$80,000 first prize, contained 26 rather than 25 tickets. Now 26 of those whole\u00a0tickets at $32 apiece would come to $832. The price for a package was only\u00a0$488. If the purchaser of a package could find 16 buyers, he would get back\u00a0his $488 and $24 profit, and st! II have left ten tickets he could hold to take\u00a0chances on the p ri zes.<\/p>\n
I suppose that was the scheme and the bait for those lotteries. for every\u00a0person who won a prize there were thousands who never won a penny. And, just\u00a0as happens in the illicit gambling of todaY1 the managers and lottery brokers\u00a0flourished at the expense of many an American fam; Iy. It is bad enough to have\u00a0illegal gambl ing with us today but, as Senator Kefauver showed, in his exposure\u00a0of conditions in Nevada, legal gambl ing is worse. We can at least be glad that\u00a0the state of Maine is not in the lottery business today.<\/p>\n
Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs have supplied me with another historic item besides\u00a0the Maryland lottery circular. It is a school catalog published exactly one\u00a0hundred years ago by a school not far from my boyhood home In Western Maine.\u00a0The school was the Oxford Normal Institute at South Paris. Among its\u00a0trustees in 1853 was Sldney Perham, later Governor of Maine, and Zadoc Long of\u00a0Buckfield, father of John D. Long, Governor of Massachusetts and President McKlniey’s\u00a0secretary of the Navy. The school boasted ten teachers, of whom only\u00a0fl ve wereacadem i c \u2022 Th ree were teachers of mus i c, one of penmansh i p, and one\u00a0of drawing. Two of the teachers had imposing names: Ebenezer Pierce Hinds and\u00a0Beza leel Freeman Kendall.<\/p>\n
The names of the,?tudents could have been dupJi cated in many a county in\u00a0Old England. There’wer~:cno Irish, no French, noltalian, and those splendid\u00a0citizens of Paris, the”Finns,,’:had not yets~’tfled if’! the community. The Allens.7\u00a0Andrews, Blakes ~\u00a0. ‘Morses,f:’1or :t()ns,\u00a0Browns,.CI~rkSt Cummi ngs, Drakes, Herseys, Hutchi nsons, Knights,\u00a0Newha;ii$~$\u00a5~~tlsand Walkers domlnate the I ist; and i {you\u00a0ft,ndan occasiona I striilngename 0 keHenrietta Tue IlorWat~rman Hewett), you can\u00a0be pretty sure itt606Hgin~ted in OJd Engtand.<\/p>\n
The oJdcarr-alogte.Jlsus Just “,hat kind of school the Oxford Normal Institute\u00a0was designed tolJe \u2022.. 1flt”, says the. book, “is located in South Paris .. a\u00a0large and flourishing village 10 the shire !ownof Oxford County, .in the midst\u00a0of a mora I and i ndustrJous GOf!llTlunity ab9yt.Qne-fourth of a mi Ie from a depot of\u00a0the At1antlc and Lawrence Rai Iroad. For young gentlemen and ladies who wish to\u00a0qualify themselves Jorteachlng it affords opportunity to become thoroughly fami\u00a0liar with the various subjects taught in public or high schools, Its Instructors\u00a0direct the student to the elements of each particular study~ to incite\u00a0his mind to healthful energy and encourage him to think, Thoroughness is re ..\u00a0quired in the preparation of every exercise of the school,\u00a0The school year was di vi ded into four sess ions. I n the year 1853-54 the\u00a0fall sessJon began on August 30 for 12 weeks, The winter session opened on\u00a0November 29 for 11 weeks; the spring session on February 28 for 12 weeks; and\u00a0the summer session on May 31 for ten weeks. The sessions were quite independent.<\/p>\n
Very few students attended all four; some attended only one in any given\u00a0SChool year. This is proved by the statistics that the 1853 catalog gives for\u00a0the preceding school year of 1852-53. Although a total of 229 students were\u00a0enrolled during the year~ the average attendance for each of the four sessions\u00a0was only 85, and the largest session — the fall one — had only 160. To raise\u00a0an average of 85 to a tota I of 229, a lot of those 229 must have attended for\u00a0only one term.<\/p>\n
On one page of the catalog are listed the text books then in use. About\u00a0the only one a student today would recognize is Webster’s Dictionary. But a\u00a0modern student’s grandfather would recognize Greenleaf’s Arithmetic. In fact\u00a0the Institute was strong of! mathematics. Besides Greenleaf’s book, it !ls.~d\u00a0e ‘;>,”<\/p>\n
Smyth’s Algebra and Tri.gonometry~ Davles’ Geometry and Surveying,Bondifch~’s\u00a0Navigator, Davies’ Analytical.Geometry and Calculus. forsc1ence it had Par..;> ‘. , ‘ ‘ <‘;ke.r’s Natural Phi losophy~ Sf ‘JJman’s Chemistry~ Cutter’s Physiology, Peterson’s’\u00a0Faml Jiar Science, Wood’s Hotany, Loomi s’ Geology .. Dana’s fl.1i nera logy , Brockfeby ‘s\u00a0Meteorology, Ohnsted’s Astronomy .. and Buritt’sGeography of the Heavens.\u00a0Believe it or not, the Oxford Normal Institute a hundred years ago taught\u00a0six foreign languages: Latin, Greek, French)’ Spanish, German and Italian,\u00a0To know their own country every Oxford student had to read Goodrich’s History\u00a0of the United States.<\/p>\n
What did it cost to attend that fine old school in South Paris a century\u00a0ago? The catalog tells us the tuition was 20,25,30 or 35 cents per week, according\u00a0to the studies pursued. Instruction on the piano, including use of the\u00a0school’s instrument was $7 a session. Pencil, Monochromatic or Polychromatic\u00a0Drawing, ranged from $1 to $3 a session, and instruction in penmanship, including\u00a0The necessary stationary, was $1. Board could be obtained in South Paris fami\u00a0lies at $1.50 a week for boys and $1.25 for girls. Did boys really eat that\u00a0much more proportionally than girls a hundred years ago?<\/p>\n
The catalog says, f1800ks may be obtained at the village bookstore at Portland\u00a0prices.!!<\/p>\n
Let us close the program ton i ght with a few items about ~’I ins low. No more\u00a0than half a century ago a lot of sheep were raised in the town of Winslow. In\u00a01898, the year of the Spanish-American War, the town paid a total of $32.50 to\u00a0farmers as compensation for sheep ki lied by dogs 1 and every year from 1890 to\u00a01900 shows two or more such items. Furthermore the town frequently took action\u00a0against the marauding dogs. In 1894, for instance l the !’!i <\/em>ns low town records\u00a0show a payment of $19.00 <\/em>to J. R. Pollard for his services notifying dog owners\u00a0and ki II i ng eleven dogs.<\/p>\n The Winslow town books contain several unusual items in that last decade of\u00a0the nineteenth century. Here are a few of those items, picked at random:<\/p>\n $11.40. Among the expenditures for the Winslow town farm in 1896 were six cents\u00a0for starch. 92 cents for coa I, 25 cents for butter paper, 37 cents for an under”\u00a0shi rt, 40 cents for fly paper. and $1.25 for a screen door.<\/p>\n Here are a few articles selected from the Winslow town meeting warrants in\u00a0the 1890’s:<\/p>\n To see if the town will vote to ra ise a sum of noney to purchase\u00a0and hang a fi re be II.\u00a0To see if the town will give any special instructions to the school\u00a0commi ttee in rega rd to run n j ng the s tilDal s \u2022\u00a0To see what action the town wi II take in relation to the care and use\u00a0of the hearse.<\/p>\n What was the tax rate in Winslow 50 to 60 years ago? In 1893 the rate was\u00a012 mills on a total tax commitment of $14,059. The next year it jumped to l6t\u00a0mills because the appropriations :went up to $19,900. Evidently that was too\u00a0much for the voters because In 1895 appropri ations dropped to $18,319 ~ and the\u00a0rate went down to 15 mills. The next town meeting cut appropriations again,\u00a0down to $17,822″, and it went down to 14t mills. But there the ecomony wave subsided,\u00a0and both appropriations and tax rate went up, unti I at the turn of the\u00a0century in 1900 the rate was again 16t mills.<\/p>\n Even at that suspect a lot of present Winslow citizens would like to get\u00a0back to that 1900 tax rate — only $16.50 on every thousand dollars of valuation. Read the script for “Little Talks” program #173, broadcast on February 1, 1953<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[740,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7370"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nPainting and repairing the hearse, $17 .50.
\ni~atervi lie Granite Co., for inscribing names on Soldier’s Monument”
\nI nterpreter on Sand Hill, $4.00.
\nSulphur for the Board of Health, $2.75.
\nPerambu I at i ng the town line I <\/em>$9.25.
\nExpense incurred in consequence of Thomas Brown running away from the\u00a0poor house, $5.28.<\/p>\n
\nYear: 1953<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"