USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Jefferson > Centennial celebration of the town of Jefferson, Lincoln County, Maine, U.S.A., August 21, 1907 > Part 2
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In 1900 we had 94 billions of wealth. If that were distributed among the people, it would give each individual $1,235. That means that there is now in the accumulation of wealth estimated per capita, that is to each individual, about eight times as much wealth in the country as there was in 1790. Of course it is not necessary for me to enforce the proposi- tion that this is not all equally distributed. I don't know that we all have our proportion of that sum. Some people have a good deal more than their proportion.
This accumulation of wealth gives an idea of the general condition existing now as compared with the past. Why is that? How does it happen that this vast accumulation of wealth has taken place, and largely within the last fifteen or twenty-five or thirty years?
It is rather complimentary to our people, and, in the first place, it is because of their energy, intelligence, capacity and industry, and, in the second place, it is because this country has had, and has now, vaster natural resources than any country of which we have knowledge. Our people have utilized those vast natural resources, but if I had the time
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I could go on to show that in many instances they have been wasted, prodigally wasted. But, notwithstanding all that, they have been so great and so tremendous that we have been able to make this vast accumulation.
Perhaps I might more effectively illustrate this growth by giving a few more remarkable facts. The government at that time received from its collections for all purposes something like four and one-half millions of dollars from England. The expenditures amounted to two millions, showing a surplus in the treasury of two million dollars. In 1896 this Federal Government under which we live collected 594,000,000 of money in its various methods of taxation-the combined sum received from imports, from International Revenue taxation, and from all other sources from which the Federal Government derives its income-nearly two million dollars every time the sun rolled around in twenty-four hours. Today our expenditures are 556 millions of dollars, showing a surplus as compared with the receipts of something like thirty millions every year.
I suppose our relation to the rest of the world and a comparison of our wealth from that standpoint would be more clearly shown by calling attention to our relationship with other countries. We cannot raise in this country everything that we eat, drink and wear. We do raise the most of it, but we have to buy, and, on the other hand, we find it necessary to sell. Our fathers had to buy a great deal more than they had to sell. The result was, in 1790, when the country was young and its resources undeveloped, they were obliged to pay to foreign countries relatively much more every year than we do in our exchange of products.
Those who claim to know about political economy say that this was a very unfortunate condition of affairs. There is what is called by the political economists the "balance of trade," which may be explained in this way: When the exports of a country exceed the imports, the foreign debtors may send money for the balance of the indebtedness, and this is called the "balance of trade." The excess of exports over imports is said to create a favorable balance of trade, but when imports exceed exports, and money is sent abroad to pay for the excess, the balance of trade is said to be unfavorable. The impression prevails that when the balance of trade is in our favor that demonstrates our prosperity. When the balance of trade is against us, that demonstrates that we have diffi- culty in getting along. Now our fathers were infinitely worse situated in that respect than we are. By the way, they have been a long time dead, and of course they can make no complaint if we criticise them.
Our imports in 1790 were 2,794,000 more than our exports. That is to say, we were obliged to buy, to pay for, 2,794,000 dollars' worth of goods from abroad more than we were able to sell to them, which involved a drain upon the country. Our fathers could very illy stand it. It was more than the full amount paid for running the Federal Govern- ment during that period for its ordinary expenses.
In 1906 the conditions were such that we sold to foreign countries $517,148,233 more than we bought of them. Now that means that the money of the world, which is gold, the great standard and medium of exchange, upon which our financial policy, by common consent, without
THE PARADE
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reference now to principles of any political party, is based, and which is conceded to be the great fundamental standard of value-that simply means that that vast volume of money comes into this country at the rate of something like five hundred and a half millions every year, enriching the country by that very amount, and illustrating in a very large degree why it is that this country, that this people, with these opportunities, has been able to accomplish these tremendous and unpar- alleled results.
Of course that might raise, and does raise, a very interesting political question as to the why and wherefore. But this is not the time, nor is it the occasion, to engage in anything like a political discussion, or in anything that is sectarian or religious, for we all meet here today upon one common level. It matters not who we are, where we came from, what religion we profess, or whether we do not profess any, because we are all here on the same common level, as free born American citizens. I may stop here and say that the chief glory of this country is that it is not only the land of the free and the home of the brave, but that it is the land of free thought and free speech. Now what does that mean? That simply means that every man and every woman, every boy and every girl, has the God-given, constitutional right to think as he likes, and speak as he likes, on any question, political, financial or religious, subject only that he does not violate the rights of his fellows and trans- gress the law. That is free thought and free speech.
That there are a great many people I am aware who say that free thought means that you must think as I think, and free speech means that you must speak as I speak, otherwise you are heterodox and not orthodox. Those are theological terms, but the real orthodoxy is in every man thinking as he likes and speaking as he likes, with no one to molest or make him afraid. And that is worth a mighty sight more than the increase in population or the immense aggregation of wealth.
I should like to mention now one potent illustration of expenditures. Before I do that let me say that these facts and figures I am giving to you as I go along were largely gathered by me from the census taken by the Federal Government in its regular ten year, decennial, periods, and I would like to give them here as a matter of curiosity and interest. The original volume that contains the census of the American people in 1790 is a very small affair. The volumes that contain the census of this people in 1900 I think number something like sixty, and they have anywhere from six to eight hundred pages in a volume. A horse, unless a good strong one, could hardly convey them in this procession up and down this street.
Perhaps I ought to stop here to say as a matter of compliment to the gentleman arranging this procession that it does him credit to be able to present upon this occasion so delightful a parade, so well man- aged, as the procession we have seen today. I have seen a great many in my time-I do not want you to think by that that I know all about it-but I have seen a great many processions of this kind, and I have never seen in a place of this size as pretty a procession, so admirable in all its features, as your procession here today.
I will now call your attention to this matter of the census. The volume now on file in the Library of Congress that contains the census
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for 1790 is six or eight inches in size, and contains about from seventy- five to one hundred pages. It is about as large as a Noah Webster's spelling book or an ordinary primer that we use in the primary schools.
Here is a salient fact. In 1791, which of course was after the close of the war of the Revolution-the most gigantic war in which this country was ever engaged, yet by no means the largest-we then paid about 175,000 dollars a year in pensions. Today we pay in pensions $141,000,- 000 a year, thirty-four times as much as the total receipts from all sources of the government when our fathers founded it in 1790, and the republic has paid to the men who imperilled their lives, and to their descendants, in all the vast sum of over 3,000,000,000 of dollars during this one hundred and twenty years-more than the total debt caused by the vast war of the Rebellion, which war saddled the country with a greater debt than any war within modern times has involved upon the countries that were engaged therein-vastly greater than this war between Russia and Japan, although they had gone so far when they got around to the consideration of peace that it was only a question of a short time as to which could hold out the longest, because both had reached the limit of their money, and neither of them could continue without the sup- port of Christendom from a financial standpoint. That was one of the great reasons that enabled President Roosevelt to be successful in ter- minating that war by a treaty of peace between those two great nations.
The dissemination of knowledge and information is one of the first duties incumbent upon an organization that has to do with the people, and it promotes the prosperity of the people more directly than in any other expenditure of money. In the Post Office Department in 1871 we expended $4.62 per capita in the distribution of the mail, in order that the people might have information. In 1905 we expended $12.05-three times as much as in 1871, and it is a matter of some gratification and satisfaction to us as American citizens to know that while wealth has been accumulating, while the people have been increasing in this matter so essential to their prosperity and welfare, the government has con- stantly increased its expenditures in the distribution of the mails, so that this government expends today more than any other country with a like number of people, because we have to transport the mails thousands and thousands of miles upon land and water. There is no other country with the population of this that shows it distributed over the same amount of territory.
The introduction of the Rural Free Delivery during the last ten or fifteen years has given the greatest boon to our agricultural population that they have received at the hands of the government for years. With the benefits of the Rural Free Delivery may be mentioned the telephone, which has now so generally penetrated to the country towns. Every man now insists on having a telephone, not only that he may communicate with others, but that he may hear others when they communicate with others.
In 1800 five dollars apiece was found sufficient to transact the busi- ness of this country. In 1905, instead of five dollars per capita, we had $31.08 in circulation of coin. In addition to that it should be borne in mind that the amount of money in circulation bears relatively a very small percentage to the total amount of business done, because the people
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in these days do a great amount of their business by checks and drafts, which makes it unnecessary to pass money from hand to hand. While this amount of money in circulation is no index to the vast amount of business transacted, we may be sure that it is vaster than it was in 1800.
Here is another important feature that is a direct contribution to the prosperity and industry of our people: In 1800 there was no such thing as a savings bank. There were no trust companies, no national banks with savings deposits. In 1905 there were in the savings banks in this country three billions of money. I may say here that the State of Maine in many respects stands ahead in the amount of its savings, the number of its banks, the number of its people having deposits therein, and the character of its deposits. It speaks volumes for the thrift, the energy, the industry, and, what is more, vastly more important than all else, the sobriety of the people of the State of Maine-no matter what my views may be upon the question of temperance and the Maine law. I may go farther and say that the record of Maine banks shows that in the last ten years the increase in savings has come largely from the farmers, the agricultural element of our population, showing that they have exercised thrift, and have not only been able to maintain themselves and their wives and children, but have been able to accumulate for a rainy day.
I want to call your attention now to one of the indispensable factors in all of this great development that has taken place: In 1832 we had 229 miles of railroad. In 1906 we had 230,000 miles of railroad. There are millions of acres, and millions upon millions of investments in this country that today would not be worth the paper upon which their stocks are printed were it not for the fact that they have speedy and cheap transportation over the railroads throughout the country. The great transcontinental lines that tie together the Atlantic and the Pacific give a long haul at a low rate, which seems absolutely indispensable to the development of the vast natural resources of our country.
We have right here in the State of Maine two extraordinary examples of what the railroads have made possible. They may not pre- sent so impressive a proposition to you people here in this rural com- munity, where you are not dependent for your prosperity upon the manu- facturing industries and the transportation abroad of the things that you raise. We have two extraordinary illustrations of the fact that without speedy and economical and cheap railroad transportation there would be no development. One of them is in my district, and is the town known as Rumford Falls. Fifteen years ago, where there are now eight or nine thousand people, one or two farmers lived and endeavored to till so much soil as there was-it was largely rocks. Today there is an undeveloped water power there of something like thirteen thousand horse power, and a developed water power of something like seventeen thou- sand horse power. It is a most thriving, prosperous, and industrious community, and will favorably conpare in the rapidity of its growth with any place in New York or the Middle West. That town was built and this remarkable growth is due to the fact that a railroad was constructed to carry in the raw material and at the same time carry out the manu- factured product. Without the railroad such a phenomenal advancement as has there been made would not have been possible, and it would have been but a haunt for wild beasts and a habitation for owls.
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Millinocket is another case in point, although not so striking an illustration, because I think there we have only four or five thousand people, but it represents the investment of millions of money. In 1899 it was only a log camp and a farm house in the woods, and in this short time, through the operations of the Great Northern Paper Company, which turns out the largest amount of paper of any mill in the world, Millinocket has become what it is today.
I merely call attention to the fact that without these great facilities for transportation the vast undeveloped resources of this country would be unutilized, and that the railroads are not only indispensable to our peace and comfort but to our industrial and business existence.
I live in a town where I help pay taxes part of the time at the rate of three per cent. per annum in order that we may have the Knox & Lincoln Railroad, and it takes five or six hundred thousand dollars right out of the pockets of its tax payers for the purpose of having an opening to the world. It has cost us a good deal of money to get it, but we need it because Rockland would hardly be on the map if we could not be reached with rapid transportation.
Behind the railroads there lies a great fundamental, natural force that has been largely responsible and is largely entitled to the credit of this great expansion, and that is steam. Within the last fifty years- I think it was in 1832 that it was first applied to railroads, and in 1840 first applied to steamships to any extent-we have had the application of steam to human effort and endeavor. A great English writer says that it is an equivalent in co-operative power to 250 men.
There is another great force which is undoubtedly responsible for and entitled to the credit of this phenomenal development, and that is electricity. In a great many instances there would be no electricity without the gigantic power of steam. In the last ten years by the means of transmitting the electric current a long distance it has been possible to combine the water power of a whole river and transport it to one par- ticular place, and there use it in industries of various kinds. That is one reason why the State of Maine is likely to have an industrial future because we can aggregate the water power of a whole river by concen- trating it by means of an electric wire.
Now I want to say a word about the future: I do not see how it is possible through the next fifty or one hundred years to see anything like the industrial or financial development that this country has seen during the last fifty years. We have the telephone and the telegraph of electricity, we have the railroads, we have steam, we have transporta- tion through the air by means of the flying machine. I don't see how it is possible in time to come to duplicate those magnificent inventions.
I think I may say for the future, if we transmit to our children the same elements of industry, of probity, of sobriety and intelligence that were transmitted to us by our fathers, if we maintain our system of education, disseminating useful and valuable knowledge everywhere, that we can expect to see a continuation of the development that has been going on, but we cannot expect to see a duplication of the last fifty years. Those of us who have lived during the last fifty years feel that the achievements of our day can hardly be duplicated in the future.
It rests upon us as patriotic American citizens to live up to and
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abide by the laws of the United States and the teachings of the fathers. If we do, with these changes, these opportunities and these resources, this country will always endure, and will be, as it now is and always has been, the land of the free and the home of the brave, containing homes where the comforts, conveniences and luxuries of the long ago are now necessities, and the standard of living, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the things we drink, has reached a higher and finer degree of development in the ministering to the comfort of human kind than has ever before been seen anywhere in any land that the sun shines on.
Hoping now that we may be able in our weak and feeble way, as simple factors in this great development, to contribute our share, I thank you most heartily for your very kind attention under these very adverse circumstances.
THE HISTORICAL ADDRESS
The Chairman :
It is my pleasant duty to welcome to his native town for this auspicious day, my brother of the healing art, than which there is no nobler profession, the honest, the able, the true, the trusted family physician, Dr. Willis G. Bond, of Revere, Mass., who will now deliver the Historical Address.
Dr. Bond :
FIRST SETTLERS IN MAINE
On Easter Sunday, March 31, 1605, George Weymouth sailed from the Downs, England, and on May II came in sight of the American coast near Cape Cod.
He sailed northwardly, after a few days, and on May 17, 1605, he anchored on the north side of a prominent island, which he named St. George, but now known as Monhegan.
The next day he found a harbor to the north "among the islands" and in range "with the mountains," and there came to anchor.
He also discovered St. George's river, visited Pemaquid, perhaps went farther west in the shallop which he made, and then, with five Indians which he captured, returned to England.
The glowing account of Weymouth's exploration of the coast, its spacious harbors, the abundance of fish and game, the noble trees, the luxuriant herbage and the balmy climate aroused general interest in England and doubtless had some influence upon the formation in the fol- lowing year of the great stock companies.
April 10, 1606, King James I. of England granted two patents for purposes of colonization.
The company which was to take charge of the southern colony was composed of London gentlemen and because known as the London Com- pany, while control of the northern branch was in the hands of men of Plymouth and therefore called the Plymouth Company.
The London Company was permitted to begin a settlement any- where below 41 degrees north latitude.
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Their first settlement was made at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, whose ter-centennial is being celebrated at the present time.
The Plymouth Company was allowed to settle anywhere above 38 degrees north latitude. Neither company could begin a settlement within one hundred miles of the other.
The Plymouth Company sent out a colony consisting of "one hundred and twenty persons for planters." They came in two ships, the larger one called "Mary and John," and the smaller, the "Gift of God."
This expedition was in charge of George Popham, a nephew of Sir John Popham, and sailed from Plymouth, England, June 10, 1607.
They settled at the mouth of the Kennebec river and formed the first English speaking settlement in New England.
Popham having died during the winter, the colonists, disheartened by the severity of the climate, returned to England the following spring.
The southern branch of the corporation or the London Company obtained new patents, which were more definite in scope of territory and authority over it at two different dates, 1609 and 1621.
Believing such action a necessity at the north, the Plymouth Com- pany, through Gorges, petitioned the Crown for a new patent, which was granted November 3, 1620.
This last company consisted of forty noblemen and gentlemen, who, in their associate capacity, were termed "The Council established at Plymouth in the County of Devon, for planting, ruling and governing New England in America."
The name New England here appears for the first time in high official form.
The bounds of the new company were set in the patent, between the 40th and 48th degrees of north latitude, which on the coast line com- mences at the parallel of Philadelphia and extends along the mainland to the Bay of Chaleur. East to west the patent extended "through the mainland from sea to sea."
There had been, up to 1632, at least twelve and probably more grants made by the Plymouth Council along the shore of Maine; but two only of these will be considered as they cover the territory under consideration.
On January 13, 1630, a grant was made to William Bradford of the new colony of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and his associates, of fifteen miles on each side of the Kennebec river extending from its mouth to the Cobossee river at the present site of Gardiner.
Additions were afterward made by purchase and otherwise, and the northern bound was finally fixed at the present town of Norridgewock.
THE KENNEBEC PURCHASE
In 1661, the Plymouth colony conveyed the Kennebec tract to Antipas Boyes, Edward Tyng, Thomas Brattle and John Winslow for four hundred pounds.
This was known as the "Kennebec Purchase" and the sale was made because of trouble with the French and Indians, which had rendered Plymouth trade here quite unprofitable.
The Kennebec patent lay dormant until the year 1749, a period of eighty-eight years, when Edward Winslow, Robert Temple, Henry
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Laughton, Jacob Wendell, Thomas Valentine, John Bonner, Samuel Goodwin, John Fox and Joseph Gooch, heirs and assigns of Boyes and his associates, met at the Royal Exchange tavern, in King street, Bos- ton, and organized a company which they called "Proprietors of the Ken- nebec Purchase from the late colony of Plymouth."
At a later date, William and James Bowdoin, Thomas and John Hancock, Dr. Sylvester Gardiner, Benjamin Hallowell, James Bayard and many others became their associates.
On February 19, 1631, the Pemaquid patent was made to two mer- chants of Bristol, England, Robert Aldsworth and Gyles Eldridge.
James Sullivan in his "History of the District of Maine," published in 1795, describes this grant as follows : "Pemaquid, 12,000 acres, bounded from head of Damariscotta river to the head of Muscongus river, thence to the sea, with all islands within three leagues."
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