Turner's Public Spirit, August 15, 1925
A look back in time to a century ago
By Bob Oliphant
Center. John P. Wright will lead the Sunday evening service at the Congregational church. There will be special music. Subject, “Rules for the Game.”
Miss May Day has returned home from a six-weeks’ trip to Alaska, California and other points west.
Mr. and Mrs. Louis E. Day and Allen G. Day were guests last Sunday of their sister, Mrs. John Felch.
Joseph Murphy is working in Concord, N.H., for the week.
Miss Alcey Stevens, who has been the guest of Mr. and Mrs. David Greig for the past week, has gone to visit her brother.
Mrs. Hugh Ferguson has gone on a vacation.
Mrs. Helena Bartlett has been entertaining her aunt during the past week.
Miss Maude Robinson is at North Adams.
Marden Seavey has returned to Cuba after a month’s vacation spent at his father’s [Homer M. Seavey] home [once located between the J. V. Fletcher Library, 50 Main St., and the house at 56 Main St.].
The Charles G. Carters are vacationing in Maine.
Miss Florence Barnard is the guest of Mrs. Oscar Spalding.
- A. Hanscom left Friday on a camping trip, going over the Mohawk Trail.
George F. White has leased his farm to Robert Thompson, who will continue to furnish the same grade of milk and plans to enlarge the output of milk and cream. Mr. and Mrs. Thompson and daughter are now living in the house formerly occupied by E. J. Whiting.
The storm of Tuesday morning crippled the electric lights and put many telephones out of order. The house at the Read farm [164 Main St.] was struck and a large limb of the old elm in front of J. C. Abbot’s barn was torn off.
The annual agricultural fair of the Congregational church will be held on September 30.
About Town. The Old Oaken Bucket farm folks and some of the F. A. Swallows[1] attended the garden inspection in Littleton last week Wednesday. We saw more and better garden crops at this inspection than we have beheld at the Old Oaken Bucket farm in seventy-nine years and more. It was just condensed thrift.
We are warned by the Massachusetts Agricultural college that there is a new potato pest, called the “hopper burn.” Thank you for the information, but we got up so early in the spring and planted the early Irish Cobblers and marketed them and got the cash before the hopper burn knew that we had potatoes that we do not care to entertain the new [paper torn, line or two missing] evangelist, will conduct a three-days meeting at the People’s Baptist Tabernacle in Manchester, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, August 18-20, inclusive. Mr. Rader[2] will speak at three o’clock and at 7.45 each day. This will be Mr. Rader’s first visit to New Hampshire and will afford an opportunity for radio fans who have heard him from Chicago during the past winter to see and hear him.
There are rumblings that if the new telephone rates reach $2.50 per month for private houses there will be less than $8,000,000 raised in this state as their share to keep up eight-percent dividends. There is a disagreement of the financial doctors as to what it will be. One answers $2 and another doctor answers $2.50 from the same office. At a meeting of the Mayors’ clubs of Massachusetts they passed resolutions in disapproval of these rise rates. Oh, it’s not all cowhide boots that’s doing the kick act.
The F. A. Snows and the W. R. Taylors, who have been summer breezing at Hampton Beach, have returned to West Chelmsford and Westford beaches. Mr. and Mrs. Carlos D. Cushing, of Framingham and Miami, Fla., have been occupying the W. R. Taylor home in their absence at Hampton Beach.
Rain, rain, rain and still more rain make the words of James Whitcomb Riley appropriate. “When it rains, rain is what I want. There is no time of locking horns with the Almighty in running the weather.”[3]
Amos Polley, on the Morning Glory farm, has been this week on a visit with his sister, Mrs. Arthur Gilman [nee Harriet A. “Hattie” Polley], in Woodstock, Vt.
Mr. Lybeck, the owner of the six-acre farm on the Lowell road, is excavating a well near his strawberries and raspberries as a reservoir for irrigation next season. Mr. Lybeck is in the employ of the John Hancock Life Insurance Company, with a summer residence on this small farm.
A giant tunny fish, nearly fifteen feet long and weighing 1165 pounds, was landed at Manasquan, N.J., recently by the Manasquan Fish Company’s launch. The fish was entrapped in stake nets a mile and a half off shore and was beached only after a two hours’ struggle.
Col. Russell H. Conwell, the celebrated lecturer, soldier, lawyer and popular Baptist minister, says, “The church stands to make bad men good and good men better, but we are missing our opportunity by infighting over the non-essentials.” He got that clear right and the ancient thought expresses the same infighting spirit in the words, “While we saith I am of Paul and another I am of Apollos are ye not carnal and walk as men?”[4]
Daniel H. Sheehan has had a chance to sell his farm for an aviation field. A recent call by an aviator led to a conference on the question of sale. In this connection, as a bearing on the subject, an airplane sailed over the Stony Brook Valley last week Friday and it was rumored that Daniel was in the airplane and closing the deal for his farm, while other knowing ones said he was on his way to his 80,000-acre wheat plantation in North Carolina. In a recent chat with Daniel he mentioned the possibility of selling for an aviation field.
We were in error in reporting the W. R. Taylors and F. A. Snows as at Hampton Beach. They are at Nubble Light, York Beach, Me., and will not return until next Monday.
The musical Blackadar family, who have been living for the last modern quarter of a century at Chelmsford Center, have moved into their newly-remodeled house and small farm on the Providence road, formerly the home of the late William E. Green. They ought to prove a valuable, inspirational asset to the life of the town.
The Congregationalist is authority for the statement that Dr. Howard A. Bridgman, late of the Pillsbury outing at Lawrence academy, is to return to the Congregational House in September. Another statement on public authority is to the effect that he is making arrangements to open a private school in Shirley Center, having purchased a large house there for this purpose. As Dr. Bridgman’s home is in Shirley the story has much of plausibility to it. He is a good inspiration in any town.
Telephone Rates. Those who have studied the facts state that with the additional telephone rates Massachusetts telephone users will be taxed $49,000,000 this year as against a state tax of $48,000,000 for all of varied business that the state stands for and we are to pay $1,000,000 more for the single item of talking and transacting private business. Isn’t that piling it on some for a single item of business as compared with the business of the state? And yet there is a wailing and gnashing of teeth everywhere and has been for years over our high state tax, but our still higher telephone tax we are expected to quietly lay down and let the juggernaut come the road roller out on us. To the charge that certain papers knew the decision of the commission before they officially gave it out, is not any surprise to anyone who has got a brass button’s worth of the law of initiation in his brain makeup must have known what the verdict would be even before the hearing. While the public utilities commission are good and honorable men there was too much eight percent dividend in their constitutionality for the amount of sweat that has ever exuded from it. The commission should have been a shirt-sleeved, bare-footed Vice President Dawes, Hell & Maria & Co.[5], and then it would have been “Diamond cut diamond.” As it is it was “Diamond cut putty.”
Cruelty to Animals. Here is something as a hearing on cruelty by Mrs. Minnie M. Fiske[6], the actress. The steel trap is the most villainous instrument of arrest that was ever invented by the human mind. The human race is in terror of physical agony and spends millions of dollars a year in research to conquer pain. The scientist who discovers some new method to relieve pain is acclaimed a world hero, yet we are unawake to the suffering to the countless dumb animals which feel almost as we feel. The steel trap has no place in civilization and we hope to awaken the modern woman to the shame and horror and degradation of it. When women know how furs are obtained they will band together and refuse to purchase or wear furs procured by the steel trap.
Mrs. Fiske, for more than twenty-five years, has been actively interested in anti-cruelty work. She believes that if American women knew the inside story of trapping and its subsequent torture, public opinion would stop the manufacture of the instruments. With this end in view Mrs. Fiske early this autumn inaugurates a campaign among women, not for the purpose of discouraging the wearing of furs, but with the object of outlawing the steel trap in the fur industry and will visit the leading cities and personally meet the women in a campaign to eliminate the steel trap. All hats off to do this effort as a bearing on minimizing the cruelty of the steel trap.
A petition was sent to the legislature in 1913 by a gentleman from Ayer asking for legislation regulating the setting of steel traps as the result of unregulated setting of steel traps whereby three dogs in the vicinity of Ayer were caught in steel traps in zero weather and remained in the traps [paper torn, line or two missing] of the trap. As a result of this petition the legislature passed a bill making it compulsory in setting a trap to have your name plainly marked on the trap and to visit the trap not less than every twenty-four hours. But law is law, and enforcement is some other concern, but perhaps it is being strictly obeyed. I recall but one instance of its being enforced in this vicinity. A trapper set a steel trap in the vicinity of Graniteville without having his name marked on it and caught a dog. Evidently the dog had been in the trap for more than twenty-four hours. The man was tried in the district court in Ayer, found guilty and paid a fine and had his license revoked for one year.
The steel trap is not the only instrument of cruelty. The two-edged butcher knife used in slaughtering animals is a cruelty beside of which Nero was painless with our cruelties. Either quit the meat diet or find a less painless system of torturing it to our mouths. Many of the foreign nations that we boast of our superior civilization over stun their animals before slaughtering. If we have got to eat food tinctured with such cruel slaughtering we had better eliminate all animal food except ice cream, cucumbers, watermelons and moonlight peaches.
At present we have the reputation of being the great meat-eating nation on earth, and the greatest death rate in proportion to population. We have prohibited rum and there is need of prohibiting gluttony with the emphasis on meat gluttony. The late William Jennings Bryan was a national illustration of gluttony. His personal friend who accompanied him on his presidential campaigns said, “He frequently ate six square meals a day, including six eggs and Virginia ham for breakfast.” There is little doubt but what this excess diet and worriment over the monkey evolution trial sent him to his premature grave.
Weak Railings. The most mutilating auto accident in this part of the state occurred at about four o’clock last Saturday morning when an automobile containing nine persons crashed through the fence of the Chelmsford street bridge near the Middlesex street depot, Lowell, and fell fifty feet onto the railroad tracks. Of the nine passengers five were killed instantly and two more nearer death than life when found, while two others give promise of recovery. The parties to this accident were all Greeks and two were to be married in the Greek Orthodox church last Sunday. They had been on a joy ride to Tyngsboro and on the return trip home, in turning from Westford street into Chelmsford street they took too long a turn and the auto struck the fence of the bridge and plunged onto the railroad tracks. The responsibility for the accident is yet to be fixed. The inspector for the auto company “finds brakes and steering gear O. K., but a weak railing of the bridge.” This is the report of Ralph Karch, chief inspector of the local registry of motor vehicles.
In addition, he said, “I leaned against the wooden railing this morning as I was looking down upon the wrecked car and found it was very unstable. Of course the unsafe condition of the rail does not mean that the accident would have happened if due care had been exercised. The car was speeding, no doubt of that. The driver cut the corner and was unable to straighten out in time.” Probably, probably; but at the same time, with the congested traffic over this bridge there is danger enough of being crowded against this unstable railing to make it imperative to build a more substantial railing, and there have been narrow escape warnings enough. Only about a year ago an auto containing father, mother and several children crashed into the railings of this bridge, the forward wheels hanging over the fifty-foot precipice, and only the quick action of the driver in applying the emergency brakes held the car from plunging to death and destruction.
The public is entitled to safer railings. A railing that will not give way when congested traffic with electric cars crowd an auto up to this death trap railing. There is no argument in the thought you have no business running onto the sidewalk and against this railing. We have no right traveling on the left hand side of the road, but sometimes in a mix-up it’s the only alternative against accident. In skidding time, when autos are uncontrollable, railings should be strong enough to allow of auto contact.
This is not the only death trap railed bridge. There are railless death trap bridges. The Willard Fletcher bridge over the Stony brook on the Stony Brook road is railless on the easterly end. Charge this up to fishermen. But, have we forgotten that a railless bridge cost Westford several thousand dollars in two law suits several years ago, and we lost out on both suits?
Evolution. We read with much interest and enlightened surprise the article in last week’s issue signed Ralph H. Brown, instructor for summer sessions of Peabody college. I confess surprise to the number of colleges and seminaries of higher learning located in the southern states. Most of these I apprehend have been established since and as the outcome of the civil war. They are all doing something to raise the cloud of ignorance and deep-seated prejudice from the minds of those whose judgments are fixed contrary to the evidence or only ignorant guess work of a jury who decides the case on excluded evidence. As a sample of pre-judgment ignorance I wish to quote from his communication. “It was because responsible people in educational circles in Tennessee evidenced little interest in the Dayton trial. They at least did not attach much importance to the outcome of that travesty on jurisprudence.” As a travesty it never has had the equal in the history of the United States except trial by lynch law. The defense was lynched by the first witness, who was a member in good standing in the Baptist church— superintendent of the Sunday school and teacher of a bible class. When asked, “Do you believe in evolution?” he answered, “I do.” To the next question, “Do you know of any zoologist but what believes in evolution?” lynch law as it relates to free inquiry strangled the witness against an answer, and ditto all the rest of the witnesses for the defense and thus won the prejudice of a trial.
Financially considered and morally, it would have been better for the judge to have announced at the opening of court “The verdict has been agreed upon and the case of monkey evolution is adjourned to where they are not afraid of sunlight.” The prosecution is very much related to “The earth is flat and stationary, and the center of the universe.” Our teacher said so and we believe—unscientific teacher in place of scientifically proven facts as it relates to the world being stationary and the center of the universe, when modern, powerful telescopes (not related to the defendant, Scopes) inform us that our sun is a mere pin size of a marble, compared with the large suns and solar systems revolving in space, of which there is any evidence of any end to number of solar systems.
Forge Village. Eugene Delorais was fined $15 in the district court at Fitchburg Tuesday for permitting his 15-year-old son James to drive a truck on the Lunenburg state road. The defendant [paper torn, line missing] [Officer] Brooks on July 18. Delorais was sitting in the front seat of the truck with his son when the officer chased the pair on his motorcycle and brought about the arrest of the father.
Townsend
Center. Mrs. Stephen Keefe, of Westford, formerly of this town, was a weekend visitor at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Keefe.
Ayer
Real Estate Transfers. The following real estate transfers have been recorded from this vicinity recently: …
Westford, Jess Dupuis est. by adm. to Ludger Carbonneau et ux.; Josephine Murphy to Helen Frances Maher, land on Groton road; Prescott C. Picking to Richard Picking, land on Tyngsboro road.
[1] Although the text has “Swallows” I think the reference is to Sam Taylor’s son-in-law and daughter, the F. A. Snows. It is likely an inside joke in their family.
[2] “Daniel Paul Rader (1879-1938) was an American evangelist and college football player and coach. Influential in the Chicago area during the early 20th century, he was [the] first nationwide radio preacher in the United States. Rader was senior pastor of the renowned Moody Church from 1915 to 1921 and was also the second president of the Christian and Missionary Alliance.” Quoted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Rader_(evangelist)/
[3] This quote is a corruption from the “Hoosier Poet” James Whitcomb Riley’s (1849-1916) poem “Wet-weather Talk.” The poem begins with:
It hain’t no use to grumble and complane;
It’s jest as cheap and easy to rejoice.—
When God sorts out the weather and sends rain,
W’y rain’s my choice.
And from the fifth stanza:
They hain’t no sense, as I can see,
Fer mortuls, sech as us, to be
A-faultin’ Natchur’s wise intents,
And lockin’ horns with Providence!
See the complete poem at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45895/wet-weather-talk.
[4] This quote is from 1 Corinthians 3:4, “For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal?” KJV
[5] “In February 1921, the U.S. Senate held hearings on war expenditures. During heated testimony, [then Director of the Budget] Dawes burst out, ‘Hell and Maria, we weren’t trying to keep a set of books over there, we were trying to win a war!’ He was later known as ‘Hell and Maria Dawes’ (although he always insisted the expression was ‘Helen Maria’, an exclamation he claimed was common in Nebraska).” See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_G._Dawes.
[6] “Minnie Maddern Fiske (1865-1932) was one of America’s greatest actresses. She was born in New Orleans to the manager of the St. Charles Theatre and of Lizzie Maddern, an actress. She began her theatrical career on stage at the age of three and was billed as “Little Minnie Maddern.” She made her New York debut in A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing in 1870. In adolescence she toured across the country in melodramas and farces and performed in roles such as Little Eva in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Prince Arthur in King John and other youthful roles. She then returned to the New York stage where she excelled in several plays. She achieved stardom in the role of Stella in In Spite of All (1885).
“In 1890, she married Harrison Grey Fiske, editor of the influential New York Dramatic Mirror, and announced her retirement from the stage. Four years later, she could no longer resist the lure of the stage and appeared as Nora in A Doll’s House, which brought her recognition as a serious actress. Thereafter, she remained active in the theater until a few months before her death in 1932. …” See https://historicelitchtheatre.org/minnie-maddern-fiske/.