Turner's Public Spirit, February 23, 1924
A look back in time to a century ago
By Bob Oliphan
Center. The leading social event of the holiday will be the dance given in the town hall by the American Legion. Flanagan’s orchestra, assisted by Comrade Connors, soloist, will furnish the music of the evening. The Essex coach will be awarded to the holder of the lucky number.
The Missionary society of the Congregational church met with Mrs. Edward Disbrow on Wednesday afternoon.
The regular social of the Congregational church is being planned for Friday evening, February 29. The supper will be in charge of Mrs. McMaster, while the entertainment will be under the direction of William E. Wright, Warren Hanscom and Arthur Walker.
The all-day session of the Ladies’ Aid, held at the home of Mrs. A. H. Sutherland on last week Thursday, had an attendance of twenty-nine. An excellent dinner was served at noon by the hostess, assisted by her daughters Beatrice and Lillian.
Probation Officer James Ramsey of the superior court will be the speaker at the next meeting of the Laymen’s league held at the Unitarian church on March 9. Mr. Ramsey is no stranger in Westford and his talk should prove very interesting.
A Reo Speed Wagon, filled with high school pupils, driven by Carl Lydiard, while returning from the basketball game held in Groton on last week Friday, skidded and overturned. The driver received injuries and some of the others bruises, but fortunately no one was seriously injured. Principal William Roudenbush was also one of the party.
Arthur G. Hildreth, of the Newton Technical high school faculty, is spending his vacation at his home in town.
Mrs. Ranney, of Wayland, has been spending a few days in town at the home of her father, J. E. Knight.
The Y.P.R.U. of the Unitarian church held an enjoyable whist party in the church parlors on last Saturday evening.
Chief Whiting went to Pawtucket, R.I., last Sunday to bring back Charles Liazzott, charged with larceny of money belonging to a Forge Village man.
“Radio Broadcast” is a recent addition to the magazines which may be borrowed from the library. It has already proved of interest to some who have seen it, and all others interested in radio are invited to use it.
Pictures of the three French war artists, Droit, Jonas and Poulbot, are on exhibition in Library hall, loaned by the Library Art club. They will remain until March 3.
Miss Ellen F. O’Conner, who spoke on Celtic art at a meeting of the Tadmuck club in the fall, has presented to the library two books on Ireland, which are a valuable addition to our collection. The books are “The story of the Irish race,” by Seumas MacManus, and “Ireland and the making of Britain,” by Benedict Fitzpatrick.
Henry Wright, of Quincy, was the guest of his brother, H. L. Wright, Sunday.
- Herbert Fletcher was the guest of his cousin in Farmington, N.H., over the weekend.
Miss Florence Colburn, lecturer of the Grange, resigned her office at the meeting held on last Thursday evening, owing to having accepted a position in Concord, N.H., which makes it impossible to attend to the duties of the office.
The all-day session of the Alliance, which was held at the home of Mrs. J. Herbert Fletcher, was largely attended, twenty-three being present. The forenoon was devoted to sewing, while in the afternoon a business meeting was held, at which time plans for a sale were discussed, and the matter of repairs at the vestry. Mrs. Alice Howard read the Religious News and Mrs. Adeline Buckshorn read an interesting paper entitled “Let us be honest.”
The Progressive Poultry club, under the direction of George Kohlrausch, leader, had an enjoyable sleigh-ride party last week. The club members, Edward Sullivan, pres.; Clarence Mann, vice pres.; Elmer Bridgford, sec.; Donald White, treas.; George Mann, Ernest Peterson and Gustave Peterson, were accompanied by guests and chaperoned by Miss Pauline Kohlrausch. The club held a business meeting Thursday noon at the William E. Frost school. The speaker was E. H. Nodine, assistant state leader, who spoke on “Grading and testing of birds.”
The Tadmuck club will meet in the Unitarian church on Tuesday afternoon, February 26, at 2:45. The speaker of the afternoon will be Mrs. Bruce Elwell, whose subject will be “Egyptian art.” There will be music and a club tea, with Mrs. Flora Edwards as hostess.
About Town. Word has been received from Ann Arbor, Mich. that Prof. and Mrs. John A. Taylor are to spend the summer in Europe. They will conduct a small party for the Temple Tours Company, of Boston. The itinerary includes travels in Scotland, England, Holland, Belgium, France and Switzerland. Special features of the trip will be motor drives through the English Lake region and the Shakespeare country, a week in and about historic London, excursions to interesting places in Holland, visits to the great war battlefields, ten days among the rugged Swiss mountains, [and] pilgrimages to the art centers of France and Belgium. The party will sail from Montreal on June 27 and return to New York on August 25. Prof. and Mrs. Taylor have the privilege of including friends in the make-up of the party.
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Dugan, of Osceola Mills, Penn., announce the marriage of their daughter Nell to Walter Thomas Monahan on Thursday, February 14. Mr. Monahan is the son of Capt. and Mrs. John Monahan of the well-known firm of Edwards & Monahan of Westford and West Chelmsford, contractors and builders. Young Monahan is associated with his brother in the capacity of Monahan Bros., civil engineers, and [they] are remembered as surveying in the Stony Brook valley for the Abbot Worsted Co.
In the House Beautiful for January [pp. 33-36] are some very fine pictures of Allan B. Craven’s living-room on Beacon hill, Boston.[1] Mr. Craven is pleasantly remembered by his Westford friends, where he was born and educated in the public schools and graduated from Westford academy. His sister, Mrs. Robert Elliott, has a very attractive summer home, “hilltop,” on Westford hill. His friends extend congratulations to him on his splendid success as an interior decorator.
On account of the 10 below zero weather in Missouri about New Year’s time it is estimated that there will be about 50% less peaches to account for as zero has shown its ability to account for the other 50%.
Gerald Decatur is home from his New York school to spend holiday days at the old homestead on the Lowell road. He has not finished cutting all of the 3000 aces of meadow land which he bought of Dave [perhaps Dan is meant?] Sheehan last haying season.
Hon. and Mrs. Herbert E. Fletcher are happy grandparents again—named Herbert Ellery Fletcher, second child of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Hill (Proctor) Fletcher.
Rev. Ashley D. Leavitt, of Brookline, conducted the vesper services at All Souls church, Lowell, last Sunday. He will be remembered by Littleton and Westford people as a former resident of these towns, with his parents, several years ago. Among those from this town who were privileged to hear him in Lowell were Mr. and Mrs. Leonard W. Wheeler and Mrs. Charles L. Hildreth. They report him an able thinker and preacher.
Chelmsford has investigated by a committee the modified form of town government as adopted in Brookline. The committee reported favorably and as a result the question will go to a referendum of the voters on the ballot at the next annual town meeting.
Let us not crowd our memory so but what we shall have room to remember that James P. Ramsey, our probation officer for Middlesex county, will be the speaker before the Laymen’s league on Sunday evening, March 9. Let us also remember that he is a Scotch laddie and has the real Scotch wit to reason and set forth his address. Regardless of the weather let none of us have cold feet that night.
Buyers for farms and village homes not suited with what I’ve shown. Shall I show them yours? E. H. Bliss, Groton, Tel. 28-5.
A California Westford Boy. Have recently received a copy of the Sawtelle Enterprise from our old friend and former townsman, Hiram Dane, of Sawtelle, Cal. What gave me the first surprise in opening the paper was to see in his own full lead pencil writing in large, clear type, “Hiram Dane, 68.” California must agree with him in renewing youth, for it seems but a few years since I knew him as eighty. I was well aware that California was agreed upon as the land of perpetual sunshine and no wit has added perpetual youth or age recovering back to useful youth again. The last time I saw our Hiram Dane, his useful, youthful happy spirit was revolving around twenty-one. As an item of interest that covers the United States, I quote the following from the Sawtelle Enterprise:
The Sawtelle board of directors of the Chamber of Commerce went on record at their last meeting as favoring the name of Warren G. Harding for the Sawtelle new high school and sent a resolution to the board of education to this effect.”
I quote again from the same paper: “Last Sunday’s rain couldn’t be postponed so we had to postpone playing baseball.” Here, at the same time it read: “Baseball game postponed on account of the snow, Sunday.”
A Good Investment. If there are any skeptical sceptics who think that we can get more for our money out of a Fourth of July celebration than we can from agricultural demonstration work for youth and some hayseeds to balance the show, let me convince them by quoting from the report of W. Otis Day, our efficient director: “The work of the boys and girls during the year 1923 was of the very highest order with a total enrollment of 54, divided as follows: Garden 10, canning 22, home economics 22. At the county field day held in Groton the girls and boys won the championship and were instrumental in the town winning the fifth prize banner. At the Groton fair the girls and boys won more prizes than the exhibitors from any other town. Alice Heywood was second highest in the county canning club work and was awarded the two-day trip to the Massachusetts Agricultural college. These young people were a part of the great County Achievement organization containing nearly 3000 girls and boys who produced during the year 1923 $129,000 worth of products. All of these were under the leadership of agents of the County Extension Service and 200 volunteer local leaders.”
Who was it who said “Westford is awful slow?” Well, you cannot charge that thought up to your uncle correspondent for he voted with both hands and part of his tongue for $400 for 1924, a raise of $150 over 1923. And who says that we do not get more for our money with this investment than with it as a Fourth of July investment?
Farmers and Loans. I have recently received a letter from a relative in Salt Lake City, who is cashier of the Desert [sic, Deseret] Savings bank, the largest bank in Utah. I wish to quote a little as a bearing on bankrupt farming.
“In my business we have a great many loans to farmers and the last three years it has kept me busy endeavoring to encourage them to better earnings for their farms. They have become so settled in their idea that because they received high prices for their grains during the world war that those prices would continue and a great many of them began to live beyond their means and purchased additional land which involved them to an extent that they have been unable to pay their taxes and interest on their mortgages, and mostly on account of being compelled to hire help at a high wage. Farming in the west is different than in the east, especially in Idaho, our sister state, in that they have large farms and are compelled to hire help. In Utah we have fared better, as we have smaller farms and as a rule the owner and his family do all the work. We have loaned quite extensively in Idaho and it has fallen to my lot to be the trouble man.”
As a member of the Mormon church he adds an indirect hint that the element of laziness is part of the cause of the financial hold-ups when he says, “Among the members of the Mormon church there is no place for a ‘drone.’ There is something for every man, woman, boy and girl to do and a plenty of it, and those who do it honestly find joy and happiness in their work. Doing service for others brings more pleasure than anything else in this life. We emphasize charity, mercy, virtue, honesty, temperance and reverence, and all that is involved in the golden rule.”
They are fundamentalists without straight-jackets or the rack and stake prayers for the dead and future probation. All in all what I have gathered in interviews at my own residence and other reliable testimonials they live out in their daily life more of the golden rule than that class of fundamentalists who ordain themselves the whole show and the reserved right to send you right straight to the other over-populated country to spend your vacation.
Range of Prices. It will be recalled by some that Mr. and Mrs. H. C. Berrang [sic] started from New England some time ago on a trip to California by ox-team express. They have now reached Boise and Fayette Valleys in Idaho. Here are a few notes in the Rural New Yorker, bearing on prices of fruit in the valley from producer to consumer that have been culled from his letter:
“The impression one gets going through this valley is that [it] is a place where the farmer is prosperous, but when one stops and has a heart-to-heart talk with the natives one soon finds out it is the same old story, ‘the farmer is the goat.’ Here are some facts I gleaned from these thrifty people in regard to crop returns for apples. One man specializes in Rome Beauty; in 1922 he received from the Fruit association six cents per box for C grade, ten cents per box for fancy, and fifteen cents per box for extra fancy Rome Beauty apples. From this he had to pay all ranch expenses, pruning, irrigation, spraying, picking and hauling to packing houses. One can readily see if the returns on an apple crop averaged ten cents per bushel it would make a man scratch some to have enough left to pick his teeth. Last year’s crop, the best he ever had, was sold from $12 to $30 per ton, an average of $18, or about forty-five cents per box. I saw with my own eyes these same apples displayed in store windows not fifty miles away priced at $2.75 extra fancy, fancy $2.50 and C grade $2. Quite a spread between forty-five cents and $2.75. Another orchardist gave his crop over to the same fruit company to sell on commission. The railroad company secured $10,000 of his money for freight and he signed a note for $1200 to reimburse the fruit company for their commission claim above what the apples brought. Can you beat that?
“While shopping a few days ago I saw a placard sticking on a box of Delicious apples ‘6-35, 2-15.’ I asked the clerk what that meant. He said, ‘Two of those apples for fifteen cents.’ ‘Why,’ I said, ‘I’m informed that’s the price the farmer gets for the whole box.’ His answer was, ‘Well, I can’t help that.’”
In view of these testimonials and acres and acres more like it, it is clearly evident that one of two remedies must be applied; either the producer must organize in an effort to shorten the financial gap between producer and consumer, or else the government must take a hand in devising some better system of getting food to the consumer’s mouth that does not cost more to get it to said mouth than it does to produce said food. As farmers cannot sell a quart of milk without spilling half of it in a fraternal rumpus, it looks as if the government would have to be our guardian and selling agent. Cheap loans on easy terms is a temporary relief, but it is no remedy for the trouble. There are too much of the Teapot Dome principles involved in handling this food to the consumer. A bill should be passed by congress to build a large national almshouse covering several acres and send a lot these needless, poverty-producing middlemen to it for life and all others who show willingness to fill the poverty-producers’ gap.
We could save millions over and above the cost of keeping them. I am well aware that some honest middlemen’s system is necessary between producer and consumer, but it does not seem as if their head was worth 300% to sell food to the consumer or that it is necessary to have twelve stores to an acre of population, as in some places it is, in order to get food to the consumer’s mouth before his pulse gets so low that he is not able to open his mouth.
Church Notes. First church (Unitarian)—Sunday service at 4 p.m. Music, “Our Father,” Mason; choral responses chanted by chorus choir; “The dream of paradise,” Gray, Miss Eleanor Colburn, soprano. Preacher, Rev. Frank B. Crandall, the minister. Subject, “If one thing changes.” Church school at three.
On Sunday, the preacher will deal with the personal problems of the individual soul, pointing out that a totally different method is required in looking backward and in looking forward.
- P. R. U. Whist Party. The Y.P.R.U. held its first military whist party last week Friday evening at the vestry. Seven tables engaged in play, under the direction of Mrs. Charles A. Normand of Ayer, who had kindly volunteered to introduce the game to the players. The highest score, 61 points, was made by Mrs. Eben Prescott, Mrs. William R. Carver, Mrs. Henry A. Fletcher and Mrs. John Feeney, Mrs. Alice M. Wells finishing the play for Mrs. Feeney. They received boxes of correspondence cards as souvenirs. The lowest score, 26 points, was gathered by Elizabeth Wells, Gladys Ingalls, Gordon B. Seavey and Miss Marion Fletcher, for whom Mrs. F. B. Crandall completed the play. They received [paper torn, 2-4 words missing] of Barney Google and Spark Plug filled with candy.
Homemade candy and nuts were served during the evening at each table. Mrs. Alice Johnson was in charge of arrangements.
Graniteville. The movies here on Tuesday evening were very largely attended, the feature picture being Jackie Coogan in “Oliver Twist.”[2]
Many from here are planning to attend the Legion hall in Westford this Friday evening.
The Abbot Worsted baseball team has been admitted into membership in the Boston Twilight league. It is needless to say that the Abbots will have a very fast team, and many new faces will be seen in the lineup. R. J. McCarthy will again act as manager during the coming season.
The Abbot Worsted soccer team has been trying hard to stage a game at Forge Village during the last two weeks, but owing to unfavorable weather conditions were obliged to call it off. Several important matches are now on the schedule, awaiting the time when the ground will be clear.
Mr. and Mrs. W. O. Hawkes are feeling much improved after their recent illness.
The mills of the Abbot Worsted Company were closed on Friday for the holiday.
The night school pupils are planning to hold a dancing party in Westford in the near future.
Middlesex County Extension Service Happenings Hereabout
The Progressive Poultry club of Westford is planning to have a poultry exhibit in connection with the achievement program in the spring. Not only will the club members exhibit, but the townspeople will be asked to show their birds also. One of the local poultry men is to be the judge. This club holds meetings weekly at the homes of the members or at the home of their leader, George E. Kohlrausch. The mothers are cooperating with the club and serve refreshments at the close of the meetings. This club recently held a sleighride and invited a number of girls from the home economics club to enjoy it with them. The party ended at one of the local inns, where refreshments were served.
Ayer
Real Estate Transfers. The following real estate transfers have been recorded from this vicinity recently:
Westford—John A. Healy to Vasil Puptik [probably Wasil Pupchick, born 1896 Grodno, Poland], land on Bridge street.
[1] See https://archive.org/details/sim_house-beautiful_1924-01_55_1/page/32/mode/2up?view=theater.
[2] The American actor John Leslie “Jackie” Coogan (1914-1984) began his film career as a child in silent films. His first big movie was with Charlie Chaplin in the 1921 film The Kid. Coogan was 7 years old when Oliver Twist was made in 1922; Lon Chaney played Fagan in Oliver Twist. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Coogan.