Turner's Public Spirit, November 7, 1925

A look back in time to a century ago

By Bob Oliphant

Center. At the meeting of the Tadmuck club on Tuesday afternoon, November 10, at 2:45, in the Unitarian church, a real musical treat is expected from the Harvard Folk Music Singers. The singers will appear in the costumes of the country they represent. The music committee will be the hostesses of the afternoon.

The next all-day meeting of the Alliance will be held at the home of Mrs. Charles G. Carter on Thursday, November 12. The speaker of the afternoon will be Miss Mary G. Balch, who always proves to be a pleasing and interesting speaker.

Fifteen members of the Unitarian church attended the North Middlesex conference held in All Souls church, Lowell, on last week Wednesday.

The Extension Service has arranged for a group of women to meet with Miss Tucker, state clothing specialist, for instruction in children’s clothing. The meetings will be held in Ayer and there are two women from this town, Mrs. Henry Fletcher and Mrs. James O’Brien, who are receiving this instruction. They, in turn, will hold meetings in their own town for the purpose of passing the information to other home-makers. Mrs. Draper and Miss Hedman are planning to help these leaders in their towns. They wish to know how many would like to learn how to make as well as purchase the correct clothing for children. If you are interested get in touch with Mrs. Henry Fletcher or Mrs. James O’Brien so that they may know the number to be in the group. The first meeting is planned for November 19. The class will probably be at Library hall, the time to be announced later. Mrs. Fletcher may be reached by telephone.

An enjoyable neighborhood party was held at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Eben Prescott on last Saturday evening. Whist was enjoyed and the prizes were awarded as follows: Mrs. E. G. Boynton and Henry Fletcher, first, David L. Greig and Mrs. Clifford Johnson, consolation, Mrs. James Woods. Other games were also enjoyed and during the evening refreshments were served.

The Odd Ladies conducted a dancing party in the town hall on Wednesday evening. Hibbard’s orchestra of Lowell furnished the music.

Mr. and Mrs. Harry E. Whiting, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Harry Sheldon, of Lowell, were in Worcester on Wednesday, calling upon friends.

Mrs. Fred L. McCoy entertained the W.C.T.U. on Wednesday afternoon, it being their regular meeting.

The Laymen’s league [will] hold their regular monthly meeting on Sunday evening. Refreshments will be served at seven[?] o’clock, followed by the speaker, [who will?] give a talk and [paper torn, rest of sentence missing].

At the Congregational parsonage, on Monday, November 2, at 2:30, Rev. Edward D. Disbrow, officiating, Miss Angie H. Whittier, a relative of the poet, became the bride of Harlow E. Mead. Both are held in very high esteem in their home town, North Andover. After a social hour with simple refreshments Mr. and Mrs. Mead left for a tour of northern Vermont, the boyhood home of Mr. Mead. On their return they will reside at 691 Great Pond road, North Andover.

The J. V. Fletcher library is advertising children’s book week to be observed November 8–14. Miss Day has a fine collection of children’s books for exhibition and will also take orders for any that parents or friends wish to purchase. A few of the new books recently added to the library are “The keeper of the bees,” Porter; “My education and religion,” Dr. George A. Gordon of the Old South church, Boston; “The power and the glory,” Gilbert Parker; “Queer Judson,” Lincoln; “One increasing purpose,” Hutchinson; “John Macnab,” Buchan; “Chicken Wagon Family,” Benefield, and “Greenery Street,” Mackail.

Dr. Thomas Forsley, a practicing physician and surgeon of Lowell, has opened an office on Main street, opposite the town hall [“in a room in the home of Elizabeth (Bosworth) Field at 58 Main Street” per Marilyn Day’s The Physicians of Westford MA, 1740-1960].

About Town. Mrs. Clara A. Hildreth, a resident of Dracut for the past twenty-five years, died last week Wednesday evening at her home in Dracut, aged 70 years and 11 months. She is survived by her husband, Samuel Tenney Hildreth, a native of this town, and for many years a resident of the farm at the headwaters of Long Sought [For] pond, living on the Tenney road. She is also survived by one niece, Mrs. Linwood Sanders, of Lowell. The funeral took place last Sunday afternoon and was largely attended by relatives and friends. Rev. Ernest C. Bartlett, a former minister of the Old Yellow Meetinghouse, Dracut Center, conducted the services and read the committal service at the grave. Miss Elva Judd, of Westford, sang several selections. The bearers were Charles A. and Fred A. Blodgett, Ernest H. Dane and Edwin M. Gould, all of this town. Interment was in the Hildreth [Hillside] cemetery, Westford.

The Old Oaken Bucket farm folks and the Frederick A. Snows, having a little spare time recently, planned a trip by auto by way of the north part of Westford, over Scribner hill in Tyngsboro, thence to Dunstable, thence switching onto the Groton road and Groton by way of Chicopee row. All in all the trip proved very enjoyable.

1. Francis O’Brien, of North Chelmsford, was instantly killed when the automobile which he was driving skidded and crashed into a tree in North Andover early last Saturday morning. In the car with him was William Redding, of Lowell, and Miss Ruth Leavitt, of Boston, both escaping with minor injuries. O’Brien was in the real estate business in Lowell. He will be remembered as the son of James and Theresa O’Brien, and with his parents lived for several years in Westford on the Providence road where his father still owns a cottage house. Besides his parents he is survived by his wife and two children, William, aged six years, and Louise, aged four years, and two brothers.

The members of the Masonic fraternity are to hold a banquet in Abbot hall, Brookside, this Saturday.

Mr. and Mrs. George H. Cadman left town on Monday for St. Petersburg, Fla., where they will spend the winter.

Miss Ruby McCarty has been appointed public health nurse by the board of health to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Mrs. Elva Wright. Miss McCarty is a graduate nurse of the Lowell General hospital.

Now comes forward an official geologist to say that there is no such prospect of a New England earthquake as that Harvard professor says. Well, just the same, let us still continue practicing keeping cool; we have got to anyway, on account of the shortage of coal, and we can just as well take on a not too serious quake or two and make one shiver answer for coal and quake and shake.

Gerald Decatur is spending a short vacation at home from teaching in New York.

Last week the henhouse on the Swanson place at Minot’s Corner was burned to the ground and eighty-five hens perished in the burning. There is a suspicion that the fire was the doings of something more than accidental origin. Mr. Swanson is a successful market gardener and poultryman, doing considerable marketing in Ayer. A few years before he bought this place, which is known as the Col. Metcalf place, the barn was burned down, and this was apparently of incendiary origin.

The W. R. Taylors and the F. A. Snows were spectators last Saturday at a ball game in Worcester.

Here is something in the nature of a twin to the prophecy of a Yale professor that we are to have two cold summers with severe frosts and drouths, which will threaten the food supply of the world in 1926-27: Prof. K. F. Mather, of Harvard, told the Rhode Island state teachers’ convention last week Thursday, “New England should be prepared at any time to experience an earthquake of the intensity of 1775. The quake of 1775 was about equal in intensity to that which shook Santa Barbara last summer. Modern conditions of city life obviously make such an earthquake much more dangerous today than it was at that early date. In spite of the fact that property damage would certainly be much greater today at this time than in 1775, it is probable that the greatest danger now is from panic. Earthquakes cause an unreasonable fear unless the mind is retained by previous experience or by proper training. Rushing wildly into the street is the most foolish procedure possible. With very rare exceptions safety may be found by remaining indoors.” Yes, let us keep cool.

There seems to be a feeling abroad that Rev. J. Sidney Moulton, who retired from the Stow parish after forty years, is to retire from active service. He informs your correspondent that he is to continue in action.

Labor vs. Investment. There is an almost universal commentation that farming does not pay. So much is this wail in evidence that we try to fool ourselves into believing that farming is the only industry that does not pay, but here is a testimonial from a prominent manufacturing industry that shows that it is not all dividends in other industries. Listen, brethren of the soil, while I speak my piece as I have learned it from the Lowell Courier-Citizen:

“Manchester, N.H., October 28. — The Amoskeag mills here were operated last year at a loss of $1,550,663.43, Treasurer F. C. Dumaine told the stockholders at the annual meeting today.”

There is no doubt that New England manufacturing for the last five years or more have had closer figuring to come out covering expenses than the farming industry, and unless there is an easing up of the pressure of labor leaders for more wages and less hours, and a let up in the ever increasing rate of taxation, our New England manufacturing industries will either be in their financial cemetery or transacting business under the more favorable conditions of the south. To use a slang phrase, you can put this in your pipe Mr. Labor Leader and Mr. Tax rate and smoke it, and it will contribute more towards your physical and financial health than any cut plug patent brand Connecticut valley tobacco.

Personally I am for easement in the taxing of our New England manufacturing industries as much as we can. We cannot expect to silence the tongues of labor leaders — it would be impossible to have a business emergency threatening enough to silence it or an emergency brake strong enough to stop from waging unbusiness nonsense.  I am aware that the easement of taxes of manufacturers is not popular. I am for the old-time New England business common sense, regardless of popularity. Labor in the Amoskeag mills (and for that matter all other mills) have received more returnable cash in proportion to the cash invested than the stockholder. Labor invests not one cent of cash—they invest their physical existence and so do the stockholders, and so far this investment is equal, but the advantage in investment comes when the stockholders erect mills, equip them with machines, pay taxes, insurance and repairs, and load themselves with the vicissitudes of the business. In the face of this picture it looks as if the employee was the stockholder and the employer the slave.

Those who think that they can figure out a different picture can have the use of my barn doors to figure on until I get ready to paint them, which is liable to be sooner than some. If the barn doors are not large enough to figure out your case, as I do not think they are, I will enlarge them to include the entire south side of the barn, 58×20 feet.

For all this picture that I have figured out my sympathies always have been and always will be world without end with the honest, temperate poor. But let us use a teaspoonful of every-day business common sense in our sympathies and not slop over to the extent that we believe the earth and all that is on it belongs to labor regardless of their investments.

Taxes. Last week, under “Migrating southward,” reference was made to the high taxes of the mills of Lowell as $160,000. This might be construed by some as the total tax on all the Lowell mills. No, not quite such easy tax sledding as that. As we recall it, quoting from memory, one of the Lowell mills pays a tax this year of $165,000. The mill corporations in Lowell have been cutting down their taxable property by selling corporation boarding houses and land with a view to economizing so that they may live and be driven south, and we can only recall the Merrimack mill as still maintaining corporation boarding houses. But the more the mills have economized the higher goes the taxes and are still kiting skywards. Here is a sample of debt paying recently proclaimed at a public welfare meeting. The city of Lowell, which is in debt several million dollars, is borrowing more money and contracting more debts faster than it is paying off old debts. Is it any surprise that mill property and other property is squinting southward, notwithstanding that labor leaders shout “It’s all a phantom to cut down wages.” Give us a kindergarten class of youthful, giggling girls to do the financial management of some of our cities. There is a possibility that it would be an improvement and no possibility that it could be worse.

Church Notes. Unitarian—Sunday service at four. Preacher, Rev. Frank B. Crandall, the minister. Subject. “The four crowned martyrs.”[1] Church school at three.

The Laymen’s League will meet on Sunday evening at 6.30 at the vestry.

On Sunday the preacher will indicate in his discourse, which will be of particular interest to members of the Masonic fraternity, the spirit which should dominate work in the present time.

Graniteville. The bowling season is now on and some very interesting matches are being staged at the Richard alleys during the week between the young men from the different parts of the town.

The members of the junior class of Westford academy conducted a very successful cake sale at the store of Miss Laura McCarthy on last Monday afternoon. Misses Evelyn Robinson and Lillian Dane had charge of the affair.

Many Graniteville people attended the old-fashioned dance in the town hall at the Center on last Wednesday evening.

All Saints’ day was observed in St. Catherine’s church on last Sunday, when all three masses were celebrated at the usual hour. All Saints’ day, although not a holy day of obligation, was a day of devotion. Masses were celebrated at 5 and 7.30.

Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Seymour, of Boston, and Miss Margaret McManmon [sic], of North Chelmsford, visited friends here recently.

Many from here enjoyed the auto races at Rockingham park on last Saturday.

The Abbot Worsted soccer team defeated Whittall [Mills] in Worcester on last Saturday by the score of 3 to 2.

Littleton

News Items. The new road from Littleton Common to Westford, past East Littleton depot, has been completed and opened to the public. Last Sunday morning an accident occurred at the treacherous junction of this new Westford road [Littleton Road/Rte. 110] and the Great road [Concord Road/Rte. 225], two cars colliding with considerable damage to themselves, but only minor injuries to the parties involved. A similar accident occurred also the latter part of the day in the same locality. According to reports the cause was passion for speed and lack of application of safety first principles.

Ayer

District Court. On Wednesday morning Peter Sokralis [sic, probably Socorelis] of Lowell, before the court charged with operating an automobile in Westford while under the influence of liquor, had his case continued until Saturday.

Real Estate Transfers. The following real estate transfers have been recorded from this vicinity recently:

Westford—Mary G. Provost et al. to Mary A. Provost, land on Broadway.

[1] “Today [November 8] is the feast of the four crowned martyrs, St. Castorus, St. Claudius, St. Nicostratus and St. Simpronian. Living in the third century, they were masons. After they refused to carve an idol for Diocletian, they were martyred. The four crowned martyrs are patron saints of masons and sculptors.” See https://www.archbalt.org/four-crowned-martyrs/.