Navigations" is to be believed, the inhabitants wore heavy ornaments of gold, richest furs were plentiful, and rubies six inches long were a common sight. Norumbega was never found on the Penobscot or anywhere else, for it was a city of the imagination; but to the search for it was due, in a measure at least, the fact that in Maine were the historical beginnings of New England. Maine Colonized Before the Pilgrims Thirteen years before the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, a company of 120 colonists went ashore at a place near the mouth of the Kennebec and proceeded to build for themselves some fifty cabins, with storehouses, chapel and a fort. The undertaking was shortlived, to be sure, but from that time on until the establishment of the first permanent settlement within its boundaries, at Pemaquid, in 1625, Maine was not wholly without settlers-the French Jesuits on Mt. Desert, numerous fishermen associated with them on the same island, and other fishermen on the Island of Monhegan. "Welcome Englishmen," Samoset's greeting in the English tongue which so startled the newly-arrived Pilgrims at Plymouth, can be explained only by the fact that this "Lord of Pemaquid" had had at home intercourse with Englishmen. At Monhegan, in 1622, Governor Winslow, so he tells us, found food for the suffering Pilgrims. Thus Maine was peopled, if not settled, before Massachusetts or any other part of New England, a fact for which the search for splendid but elusive Norumbega was in some measure responsible. Maine's Independent Spirit That Maine should, sooner, or later, be set off from Massachusetts, to which without as much as a "by your leave" it had been annexed in 1691, was inevitable. It was not an offshoot or a colony of Massachusetts, as the story of its historical beginnings shows. Then, too, the Maine people early gave evidence of a marked spirit of self-reliance and a willingness and capacity to take care of themselves. Nowhere were these traits more conspicuously shown than in the so-called first naval battle of the Revolution, which was fought in Machias Bay, an indentation of the extreme eastern coast of the State. When the British gunboat, the Margaretta, convoying certain small sloops in search of lumber to be used by the British troops in Boston, sailed into this bay, the men of the vicinity, taking counsel only with them A SUMMER CAMP IN THE MAINE WOODS selves, seized such weapons as were at hand, including scythes and pitchforks, and made a spirited attack upon the enemy. All the officers and members of the crew of the gunboat were killed or captured and the vessel itself was sunk. This unique victory by the men of Machias, acting on their own initiative, is commemorated to-day in the names borne by two of our naval vessels, the gunboat Machias and the torpedo-boat O'Brien -Jeremiah O'Brien having been the name of the leader in the attack. There were also other reasons, geographical, political, social, and economic, why the separation of Maine from Massachusetts was merely a question of time. Maine was, for instance, anti-Federalist, or Democratic, and as such felt, naturally, little sympathy with Federalist Massachusetts. Perhaps, also, Maine saw in its severance from its guardian State an easy escape from the burdensome debt incurred by Massachusetts during the two wars with Great Britain. Maine people have always been thriftyminded. Hardly was the Revolution at an end, when Maine began to take steps toward detaching itself from Massachusetts. There is little doubt, however, that it would have been much longer than it was in achieving this purpose had not the controversy arisen over the admission of Missouri into the Union. That struggle, it will be recalled, brought about the necessity of taking one more northern State into the Union to preserve the balance of power. Here, then, was an unexpected opportunity of which, as we may feel assured, Maine was not slow to take the fullest advantage; for Maine people have always been amply endowed with shrewdness. Exactly one hundred years ago its separation from Massachusetts was finally effected and Maine, erected into a State, was received into the Union. Inevitable as it was, forty years of serious although intermittent effort were required to bring this result about; and then, when it was accomplished, it was merely a part of the Missouri Compromise! Such are often the ways of Fate! An Industrial Community Maine is not primarily the home of the leisure class, as the casual visitor there during the summer might hastily conclude. On the contrary, back of the pleasure-seekers of the vacation season, and partly hidden by them, is an industrious, hardworking, and thrifty people, the true population of the State. In evidence, I would cite the extent to which a few of the more important industries here are carried on, as indicated by either the value or the size of their products, according to the form in which the statistics are given. In 1909, the last year for which the returns of the Federal census are available, the value, in round figures, of the potato ONE OF THE WOODEN SHIPS BUILT IN MAINE YARDS DURING THE LATE WAR, THUS REVIVING A NINETEENTH-CENTURY INDUSTRY crop was $10,000,000; of forest and lumber products, $5,500,000; of shipbuilding $3,000,000; of granite quarried $2,000,000; and of sardines canned, $4,500,000. The value of manufactured goods of every sort during the year was $175,000,000. This huge amount includes the value of more than half a million tons of paper and wood pulp turned out. Measured by the value of its product, the manufacture of paper and wood pulp is the second largest industry in the State, the first being that related to the manufacture of lumber and timber. All of these values would, of course, be enormously enhanced to-day by the great increases in price, even if the amounts of the products remained the same. What, for instance, would more than half a million tons of paper and wood pulp be worth at the present time, in view of the current prices for finished paper? The imagination is almost staggered by the possible answer! In the raising of potatoes, Maine stands fifth among the States of the Union. Its normal potato crop is now about 30,000,000 bushels. Up-to-date methods of planting, cultivation, and harvesting are employed. With the prices of potatoes at their present levels there would seem to be little difference between a Maine potato farm and an African diamond mine! A Maine product of peculiar interest, inasmuch as it is the product of a State that for more than half a century has led the way in prohibition, is its mineral waters, of which more than a million gallons are sold every year. The amount of money represented by this traffic I will leave to the imagination of anyone who has purchased a bottle of the most famous of those waters! Let me not seem to imply that Maine's efforts to snatch from the lips of the world the cup that cheers and inebriates were with a view to substituting for it so huge a bumper of its own purest water-at a price! I am merely directing attention to an interesting coincidence! This story of Maine's industries is far from complete. Indeed, it is merely a few striking fragments of the whole story. But partial as it is, it should serve to convince one that in Maine somebody works. If the complete story were told, the story which includes the production of ice and hay, the canning industry, the fisheries, and all the rest, one could hardly escape the conclusion that inasmuch as the entire population of the State is hardly more than that of the Clinedinst, Washington, D. C. HON. CARL E. MILLIKEN (Governor of Maine since 1917) City of Boston at the present time, everybody here must work, not even excepting "father"! A Progressive State Ability to think and act for themselves is, as I have said, a marked trait of the Maine people. Along with it and equally pronounced is progressiveness. Dirigo, "I lead," the motto of the State, is singularly appropriate. Outcroppings of this trait are to be seen on every hand. Seventy years before the Eighteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution was adopted, Maine was experimenting with its first liquor law. Indeed, in liquor legislation Maine has been so much of a pioneer that now the "Maine law" is synonymous with a prohibitory law. Although not a forerunner to the same extent in other legislation, Maine has kept its laws well up to date. It is one of the five States that has abolished capital punishment. It has a State Board of Arbitration to deal with labor disputes, a Department of Labor and Industry, a Commission of Charities and Correction, anti-trust and public utilities acts, a child-labor law, a purefood act, and the initiative and referendum. In the matter of women's suffrage, Maine has indeed been somewhat laggard, although it has ratified the proposed Nineteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, but in much of its legislation affecting women it is second to no State in the Union. Here, for instance, a wife may hold real and personal property apart from her husband and may convey either or both by will. Another legal privilege that a wife here enjoys is that of paying her own debts; for, in Maine, husbands cannot be sued for debts contracted by their wives under their own names. Thus in this State husbands enjoy a degree of emancipation as well as their wives! Modern Farming Methods well-defined traits of the Maine people—ingenuity, shrewdness, ambition to get on, a dry sense of humor, honesty, thoroughness, and respect for law. I single out only one for special mention and that is thoroughness. General Sherman on his march to the sea was accosted, so the story runs, by a Southern farmer who complained bitterly of the depredations of the Yankee soldiers. "They have taken my horses," he said, “burned my fences, in fact, stripped me of everything that I possess except my hope of immortality; but, thank God, no one can take that." "I am not so sure," General Sherman replied, "the-Maine has not come along yet!" Even in the work of pillage, Maine people are thorough! A visit to some of the larger and more up-to-date farms, such as are to be found especially in Aroostook County, would be an To be sure these are general Yankee traits object-lesson in the progressiveness of the and not the exclusive possession of the people Maine people. Here one would find the of the Pine Tree State. But that is only latest devices in agricultural machinery- another way of saying that the Maine people potato-planters, hay-loaders, reapers and are Yankees. The Maine people are, indeed, binders, potato-diggers, and, last but not Yankees, the Yankees of Yankees. But they least, tractors. The farmers themselves that are also something else. What that somehe met on the road would be riding in auto- thing else is cannot easily be stated. Permobiles, not always "flivvers" either, but haps it is a consciousness of efficiency, which often Pierce-Arrows and Franklins. He gives a certain poise and assurance. Perwould find also the latest devices in methods haps it is merely an underlying horse-sense, as well as in machinery. "I suppose you can which would have much the same effect. But grow potatoes of any size wanted," I said in whatever its nature, it is real and easily jest to a potato raiser, who had remarked sensed. It is popularly spoken of as "the casually that the demand at that time seemed Maine" in its possessors. The facetious reto be for medium-sized potatoes. "Yes," he mark relative to the graduates of a certain replied seriously, "I can. I do it by spacing great university that you can always tell a the seed-potatoes. If I want large potatoes, I put the plantings quite far apart; if small ones, near together." Unfortunately, Maine farmers are also adopting modern methods of another and less desirable sort. They are too prone, for instance, to mortgage future crops to secure money not only for seed, fertilizer, and machinery, but for automobiles and talking-machines. Let there come poor harvests, and disaster is almost certain to follow. Yankee Traits In literacy, Maine stands not far from the first among the States of the Union. According to the census of 1910, out of every one hundred persons here ten years of age or over, only a trifle more than four are unable to read and write. Among the native-born of native parentage the number of illiterates is much smaller, in fact, less than one and onehalf out of every hundred. Bound up in the same bundle with selfreliance and progressiveness are various other -man, but "you can't tell him much," is at least a half-truth in the case of the people of Maine. You can always tell a Maine man or woman, however much or little you are able to tell them. There is a Maine type. Maine's Human Output All the Maine people are not in Maine. Indeed, I feel safe in saying that Maine as no other State, has sent out its sons and daughters, singly, in groups, and in colonies, to settle elsewhere. Transplanted Maine, if all its scattered parts could be brought together, would constitute a population not so very incomparable in size with that of the home State. Maine people have followed the flag everywhere, sometimes carrying the flag with them as in the case of recent arctic explorations. The name is legion of the social organizations of Maineborn people in places near and far outside the boundaries of the State. Minneapolis is to a very considerable extent a Maine city. Nor have the Maine-born restricted A STEAM LOG HAULER DRAWING A LOAD OF 120 TONS IN THE MAINE FORESTS the range of their hegiras to this country or this continent. The most famous guide for many years in Palestine was a Maine-born man. I recall the American dentist in Constantinople who, in the course of a conversation, dropped the remark that he had come from Skowhegan, Maine. On Maine people, as on England, "the sun never sets." Indeed, the people of Maine have wandered so freely beyond their native boundaries, that one seeing only their numbers abroad might well wonder if anyone could be left "back home." If I were asked what is the greatest product of Maine, I would answer without hesitation, "Its eminent sons and Thomas B. Reed, Roswell D. Hitchcock, Samuel Harris and his nephew George Harris, Egbert C. Smythe and his brother Newman Smythe, Henry W. Longfellow, George Hillard, John S. C. Abbott, N. P. Willis, Elijah Kellogg, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Annie Louise Cary, Lillian Norton, known on the stage as Lillian Nordica; Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Frederic P. Vinton, Lillian M. N. Stevens, Sol Smith Russell, Marcella Crafts, Maxine Elliott and her sister, Gertrude Elliott; Arlo Bates, Holman Day, Eben D. Jordan, Jacob Sleeper, Hiram Maxim, Dorothea L. Dix, Charles F. Thwing, "Artemus Ward," Oliver O. Howard-these are only a few of the Maine men and women, jotted down almost at random, who have achieved far more than ordinary distinction in some line of human thought and endeavor. To the same goodly company belong Melville W. Fuller, for twenty-two years Chief Justice of the United States; Edward P. Mitchell, editor of the New York Sun; John Knowles Paine, musical composer; James R. Day, university chancellor; Frank A. Munsey, publisher; Donald B. MacMillan, arctic explorer; Samuel V. Cole, college president and poet; H. W. Savage WILLIAM KING (First Governor of Maine, after its admission as a State on March 15, 1820) daughters." These are, of Hannibal Hamlin, John D. |