USA > Maine > Cumberland County > Portland > Portland city guide > Part 11
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The third local bank to conduct business was the Bank of Portland, es- tablished in 1819; the Commercial Bank, chartered four years prior, was never organized. Immediately the Bank of Portland and the Cumberland Bank became rivals, not only commercially, but politically as well; most of the directors of the former were Federalists, and of the latter, Democrats, and they divided on all questions of moment. Accounts between the two banks were settled daily, and often with some feeling. Each cleared its counters every afternoon of all notes issued by its rival; exchange was made, and whenever there was a balance of specie owing one institution or the other, it was wheeled over in a wheelbarrow.
Maine's first savings bank, opened in Portland the same year as the Bank of Portland, had a rather diffuse title, "The Institution for Savings for the Town of Portland and Vicinity." This first savings bank had for its president Prentiss Mellen, who later became the first Chief Justice of Maine; among the incorporators was Stephen Longfellow, father of the famous poet.
The Casco Bank, in process of liquidation in 1939, was organized in 1824. In this bank in the 1830's Eliphalet Greely gave dignified greetings from his president's box, standing, as he thought proper, with his right hand uncovered, and his left hand gloved. A year after the opening of the Casco Bank, the Canal Bank was incorporated; it had been organized in part from funds raised by a lottery authorized by the State Legislature in 1823, with the provision that one-quarter of its capital should be invested in the Cumberland and Oxford Canal (see Transportation). Still in oper- ation, the present Canal Bank stands on the site of the original Bank of
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Portland. In 1831 the Cumberland Bank became the Maine Bank, under its original management.
A branch of the Second Bank of the United States was opened here in 1827, and after President Jackson's successful fight to abolish the Bank of the United States, its affairs were largely taken over by a "pet bank" called the Bank of Cumberland, which was organized in 1835. The Port- land branch of the government bank had been inefficiently managed, but such was the political setup of the Bank of Cumberland that a country doctor was chosen to be cashier on the recommendation of his friends that he was a "faithful man and a fine penman." After a short preliminary training in Boston he set to work, and mixed up his accounts to such an extent that he soon found he had lost $1,000. He resigned. With a change of management, however, this bank continued over a period of 78 years.
Portland entered the 1830's, along with the nation, in search of new en- terprise; this was the period of expansion of America's commerce, indus- try, and land investment. The town became the City of Portland in 1832, boasting 15,000 inhabitants supporting nine commercial banks and one savings institution. However, with the financial crash of 1837, when bank- ing institutions throughout the country ceased to redeem their notes in specie, Portland finance was badly crippled. The Institution for Savings for the Town of Portland and Vicinity, which had invested almost exclusively in other local banks, failed; the stock of the Bank of Cumberland was re- duced to 40 percent of par; the Canal Bank lost heavily, and four other banking establishments went into liquidation.
In 1850 not a savings bank existed in Maine; but in the '50's three more commercial banks were locally organized, the first of which liquidated after the burning of the Exchange Building where it was located. The Portland Savings Bank opened in 1852, and seven years later the Portland Five Cent Savings Bank was incorporated; in 1868 this latter bank became the Maine Savings Bank. The International Bank, incorporated in 1859, be- came the First National Bank of Portland in 1864, under the provisions of the National Banking Act, and gave up its State charter. A year later all other commercial banks in the city adopted the national banking system.
In the period following the Civil War when most of the country, and particularly the eastern States, was suffering from commercial paralysis, Portland was little affected. On October 9, 1874, the local Eastern Argus commented in an editorial: "The panic, which caused such a crash in New York and other large business-centres, hardly made a ripple here .. . and
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the business of Portland, as a whole, has never been so large, safe and sound, as it has been this year." Before the turn of the century two of the banks formed after 1850 were consolidated, and two more National Banks sprang up. Four trust companies were organized during the period, the first in 1883, and the second, which failed after ten years of speculation in western lands, in 1887; the remaining two banks were incorporated in the 1890's.
Also during this period four loan and building associations were es- tablished, the first, the Casco, in 1888; today it is the third largest building and loan association in Portland. The second association, the Cumberland, established in 1890 is today the largest in Maine. During the 20th cen- tury five more loan and building associations have been organized in Port- land. The Morris Plan Bank, the State's first industrial bank, was locally established in 1918; twenty years later it changed its name to the First In- dustrial Bank of Maine, and today is the only institution of its kind in the State.
Under Maine laws, trust company banking is not as restricted as national banking under Federal rulings. In the early 1930's five of Portland's na- tional banks either had become, or their places had been taken by, trust companies, and only one of the original trust companies was taken over by a national bank. By 1933 accounting for consolidations among trust com- panies, of which there had been four, Portland had three national banks, two savings banks, and two trust companies.
In the 1930's security prices and business activities were cascading into the trough of the depression, and the diminishing waves of income alarmed the Roosevelt administration to the point of declaring a national banking holiday on March 4, 1933. For ten days no checks were cashed in Port- land, and depositors could not withdraw money from any local bank. The suspension of payments in specie a century before could hardly have been a greater blow to the confidence of the people in their financial institutions, and there was a good deal of impatience and confusion. On the tenth day the Canal National and the Portland National received certificates from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, enabling them to open on a tem- porarily restricted basis. The next day the State Banking Commissioner authorized the two savings banks to transact regular business, with tem- porary restrictions. A receiver was appointed for the First National Bank of Portland, and by October 31, 1938, it had paid 95 percent of its de- posits; the depositors of the liquidating bank secured by subscription
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$500,000 and organized the new First National Bank at Portland, an in- stitution in no way connected with the old bank. The two trust companies, Fidelity and Casco Mercantile, were placed under conservatorship and to- day are still in process of liquidation. They have paid respectively 75 and 60 percent on savings deposits, and 52.5 and 40 percent on commercial deposits. In 1933 the National Bank of Commerce was organized; a year later the Casco Bank and Trust Company, entirely independent of the origi- nal Casco Mercantile Bank, was established. With the consolidation in January, 1940, of the Portland National Bank and the First National Bank under the name of First Portland National Bank, Portland has the largest commercial bank east of Boston.
Deposits in Portland's banks are increasing, with a total of nearly forty million dollars in the five commercial banks alone. Thirty-eight percent of this amount is represented in cash, and about one-third in loans. Capital accounts increased about five percent in the city up to the close of 1938.
In Portland's schools a modern school bank has been formed, with the same equipment and facilities as many large institutions, giving pupils first- hand knowledge of banking methods, as well as an incentive to save money. Accounts may be started as low as one cent, when the child first goes to school, and when the sum has reached one dollar, it is transmitted to the Maine Savings Bank. Students use these accounts for various activities, often financing their own senior high school trip to Washington, D. C., the Junior Prom, and the expense of graduation.
Our present-day financial institutions, controlled by State and Federal laws, are in marked contrast to the old-time methods of banking. The Port- land historian, William Goold, who was himself a bank clerk, tells the story of the cashier of the Maine Bank who had some difficulty in balancing his cash account. After some discussion the bank directors voted to sue the cashier's bondsmen to make up the deficiency. The bondsmen learned, however, that the directors were accustomed to meddle in the cash drawer, and they in turn informed the accusers that just as much evidence could be produced to prove that those in higher positions could have filched the money as that the cashier had lost it, whereupon the suit was dropped.
As far as is known, there has been but one robbery in the banking his- tory of the city; it occurred in 1818 at the Cumberland Bank. Locks were not over-complicated in those days, and while the Cumberland's lock was being repaired at a blacksmith's shop, Daniel Manley got an impression of the key and made a duplicate. He and an accomplice entered the bank on
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a Saturday night, taking $200,000 which they buried on the shore. Manley, suspicious of his own partner in crime, stole back and changed the hiding place. It appears that the bank directors acted as 'G-men' pro tem in the complicated events that followed; they questioned the men after obtaining the incriminating evidence that Manley had bought molding sand at a local foundry. His accomplice weakened, in the best fictional manner, and led the perambulating directors to the shore; finding the money gone, the aghast ally produced a pistol and shot himself. Manley was not informed of this, and was offered a large reward if he would return the money; it later developed that third parties had been silent and furtive witnesses to the whole financial interment, and had dug up the cash hoping to get the re- ward. In the final adjustment, Manley was given two things: one-half of the money, and twelve years in Charlestown (Mass.) prison. It is said that he returned to Portland later, and followed the straight and narrow path.
HUMISTONE
LABOR
Somewhat shielded by the continuous development of the surrounding frontier, and sheltered by its thriving commerce, Portland did not feel keenly the early economic crises that intensified the problems of wage- earners in other sections of America and prompted the formation of labor unions. It was not until 1863 that the first union was established in the city, the Portland Typographical Union No. 75. It had about 30 members and established, in its trade, the 10-hour day and the 6-day week; the standard wage for day work was $13 a week, and for night work $15. This was 23 years before the American Federation of Labor officially came into existence.
Organization of local labor unions has continued since 1863, and spread to new fields; it has been considerably stimulated by the late depression. There are at present approximately 8,000 wage earners in the Portland metropolitan area organized into unions. Of this number, 6,000 are directly represented in the Portland Central Labor Union of the American Federa- tion of Labor, and the remainder are divided between Railroad Brother- hoods, Congress of Industrial Organizations, and A. F. of L. locals un- affiliated with the city's central organization.
Details of labor conditions in the early days of the settlement are lack- ing. During the years 1638-45 John Winter, the Englishman, as agent for the Trelawny interests on Richmond's Island, had at one time 60 men in his employ in the first fishing and shipbuilding industries. Men received very small wages when getting out the masts for the English Royal Navy from 1727 until the Revolutionary War. Two shillings eight pence was the daily wage; 16 shillings were paid a man and two oxen for three days' work.
During the pronounced inflation and labor scarcity occasioned by the Revolutionary War, Parson Thomas Smith pettishly exclaimed in his
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diary: "Common laborers have four dollars a day, while ministers have but a dollar, and washerwomen as much." However, this was an exceptional statement about an extraordinary situation.
In 1820 clerks in stores received $50 to $75 a year for their services, with board, sleeping in the attic or the rear of the store. In the following decade William Goold, a local historian, was able to secure a job on a ship for his partner's son. He quoted the shipmaster as saying: "We can load our ship with rich men's sons, who will serve without wages, but at the request of Mr. Lawrence we will take the boy at six dollars a month." These sketchy statements are the only inferences from which we may construct any pic- ture of working conditions a century ago.
To Neal Dow in his Reminiscences we owe the following picture of labor in the early part of the 19th century: "Most of the men who did not work at lumbering were engaged in the fisheries, in which industry, during the sea- son, many vessels were employed .... My employers built vessels on a large scale, and employed many men, who took up their wages mostly at the store in family supplies and rum for themselves .... Working men and their families were always poor .... In the winter of 1829, the Maine Char- itable Association took under consideration a proposition to change a cus- tom almost universal, and appointed a committee to recommend some plan by which masters would stop furnishing their journeymen and apprentices with ardent spirits .... So general was the custom that even the small num- ber of workmen who did not care for, or would not drink, the liquor, re- ceived no more pay in cash for the same amount of labor .... The practice of ringing the 'Eleven O'clock Bell' was a signal for workmen to rest from labor and refresh themselves with liquor."
The building and outfitting of privateers, brought on by local repercus- sions to the Embargo Act of 1807 and the War of 1812, revived the stag- nant commercial trade. By 1832 Portland had 412 vessels employing 2,700 seamen. Although not a few Maine vessels had the unenviable reputation of being "hell" or "blood" ships, the local men willingly shipped out; mutinies and ill-treatment were just part of their day's work.
With the building of the Cumberland and Oxford Canal, completed in 1830, and the Portland, Saco and Portsmouth Railroad in 1842, came an influx of immigrant Irish and Italian laborers. A picture of these foreign canal builders is given by S. B. Cloudman in his Early Recollections of the Cumberland and Oxford Canal: "The banks were dotted all along with rudely-built shanties which overflowed with little children and healthy-look-
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ing mothers. From four to six families were somehow packed in each shanty. Locks, wasteways, and farm bridges were built by a crew of rough- and-tumble carpenters."
As early as 1851 better working conditions were advocated by John Sparrow, manager of the Portland Company, when he directed a "strong and urgent petition" to the officers of the corporation, recommending a re- duction of the number of hours in the day's work to ten. Prior to this workmen were accustomed to put in an almost unlimited number of hours, covered by the phrase "a long and hard day's work." The concern finally conceded the point, but their example was not universally followed, for in 1863 when Portland's first labor organization declared itself in favor of the 10-hour day, employees of the Portland Glass Works were put to work on a "watch and watch" system, six hours on and six hours off, 12 hours out of 24.
Local railroad employees began to organize in 1871 with the formation of a union for locomotive engineers. Ten years later firemen and engine- men had a joint union, Great Eastern Lodge No. 4, which was char- tered January 15, 1881. Conductors formed a union in 1890, and in 1896 the Henry W. Longfellow Lodge No. 82 of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen was instituted. Its membership increased gradually but steadily, until it became the largest lodge in New England with a membership of more than 500; in 1920 it was divided because of its size, a portion of its membership forming another lodge. The closed-shop principle was never favored by the Railroad Brotherhoods; they preferred to leave it to the employee's sense of fairness whether or not he should join the union. Re- lationship with the companies has been amicable and, except in one in- stance, entirely free from strikes. That incident occurred in 1910, when the men on the Grand Trunk Railroad were called out on July 18 on the demand for an increase in pay; they went back to work August 4, having won their point.
In 1872 a mutual benefit association was established among the em- ployees of the Portland, Saco and Portsmouth Railroad. Although not actually a labor union, it was the first organization of its type in the city. A few months later another was formed among the employees of the Portland Company; the bylaws of this association stated: "The objects of the Asso- ciation shall be to aid, and benefit, such of its members as are by sickness or accident, unable to work . . . . Regular employees of the PORTLAND Co., without regard to nationality, or station of life, of good moral character,
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healthy, sound, and free from any mental or bodily infirmity, able or com- petent to earn the means necessary for the support of himself and family, are eligible for membership in this association." This organization paid benefits in case of sickness or accident, as recommended by an investigating committee; a death benefit was collected by a stipulated assessment on the brotherhood.
The Portland Longshoremen's Benevolent Society adopted its bylaws and rules of order January 31, 1881, and the following year the Portland Laborers' Benevolent Union was organized. The preamble to their consti- tution read: "Realizing the fact that for years the class of laborers employed throughout the city as assistants to builders and mechanics on excavations and improvements, have not been dealt with in that just manner which is conducive to their well being, and wishing to advance their interests as regards remuneration for labor performed, we shall in the future be sub- ject to the tariff which shall be formulated and adopted by this association, and without becoming arbitrary in our demands, shall always and by every legalized means endeavor to obtain a 'fair day's pay for a fair day's work,' and also mutually assist each other in obtaining just demands from em- ployers in all cases where those demands may be disputed or withheld .... We shall be benevolent by forming a fund for the relief and sustenance of any of our body, who may become sick or disabled, and endeavor in all cases to discharge our duty to the sick, by attending to their wants, and also, in the event of death, to use our funds in such manner as hereafter stipulated in our Constitution."
In 1883 the Portland Bricklayers' and Masons' Benevolent and Protec- tive Union came into being. This union not only provided benefits in case of accident on the job and sometimes during sickness, but also concerned itself with wages and hours, taking action against the discharge of a worker due to membership in the organization. The Bricklayers' and Masons' Union even had certain articles to protect the contractors for whom its members worked, for while it provided that the standard rate of pay was $3 a day for 10 hours, the union required its members to work only for con- tractors, or to demand the contractor's rate. Members were also forbidden to work with non-union men wherever the union men were in the majority.
In 1885 the pioneer labor organization, Portland Typographical Union No. 75, was re-organized and chartered as No. 66 of the International Typographical Union, affiliated with the A. F. of L. In this decade, also, the Portland locals of the Carpenters' and Joiners' Union, and the
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Brotherhood of Painters, Decorators, and Paper Hangers had their origin, although the present charters of these organizations are both dated 1900. The Portland Central Labor Union was organized in 1900 to co-ordinate the activity of Portland organizations affiliated with the A. F. of L. insofar as they cared to participate. Today this central union has over 30 affiliated local unions.
Studies made by the State Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics of Portland wage earnings during the early 1900's showed that trades that were organized were receiving higher wages than the unaffiliated workers. In 1907 bricklayers, locomotive engineers, and typographical workers were earning $4 a day; the most common union wage in the other trades was $2.50 . a day. In contrast, unorganized laborers were receiving $1.50 a day for skilled work and $1 for ordinary labor. Women worked a 10-hour day, receiving from $2 to $4.50 a week. On local conditions among women workers of that period, a survey booklet states: "In New York the living wage, the very least on which a girl can exist, is placed at $5.00 a week, and only then when several girls club together. In Portland, at the present rates, it could hardly be placed at less, and yet there are many girls re- ceiving below this figure."
The Portland Musicians' Association, Local 364 of the American Federa- tion of Musicians was chartered in 1904. Since its inception its growth has been sound; today it includes the majority of professional musicians in Cumberland County. The object of this union is to unite the instrumental portion of the musical profession for the better protection of its interests in general, the establishment of a minimum scale of prices to be charged by members for their services, and the enforcement of good faith and fair dealing between its members. The organization is affiliated with the Port- land Central Labor Union and the State Federation of Labor, both of the A. F. of L.
In a Portland Board of Trade publication of 1909 appeared a notice which is in marked and amusing contrast to current advertisements that pay tribute to the city's intelligent labor supply; after urging that land and materials should be sold cheaper for new industries than for any other purpose, the item continued: "Why? Because if you have plenty of manu- factories you are bound to have three mighty valuable acquisitions, viz: Brains and energy of the management. Capital invested in the industry. Employees and animals to do the work."
In 1936 the International Seamen's Union, at that time affiliated with
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the A. F. of L., opened an office here. It later joined the industrial union movement, and in May, 1937, was changed to the National Maritime Union, the first of the local organizations now affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The Portland Newspaper Guild was chartered July 6, 1937, and the following year successfully negotiated a contract with the largest newspaper in the State. Other C. I. O. organizations represented here are the American Communications Association and the United Furni- ture Workers of America.
In 1936 the United Truck Drivers of Maine, an independent union, was organized with headquarters in Portland, and the following year was char- tered as Local No. 340 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Stablemen and Helpers, of the A. F. of L. In 1937 the In- ternational Machinists Association chartered its Local No. 1256 here, also of the A. F. of L. There has been a tendency in several trades for larger locals to split up and form two or three smaller organizations comprising workers employed on work of a kindred nature. This has been the case with long- shoremen, electrical workers, painters, building trades laborers, and others.
In 1938 the Maine Labor League, an organization open to all union members and designed to bring together informally local people in both the craft and the industrial union movement to discuss their problems, adopted bylaws and held several meetings here. Although these meetings were not continued regularly, and the league has apparently ceased to function, it did serve as a common meeting ground for members of local unions affi- liated with the A. F. of L. and the C. I. O., two organizations which, while their national policies may seem at variance with each other, nevertheless do co-operate in many localities and situations.
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