Hallowell High School - Venture Yearbook (Hallowell, ME)

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The VENTURE 13 to build hospitals for the insane. The year 1853 found her in Nova Scotia and other parts of Canada. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the world-wide reputation which Miss Dix had attained along the lines of philanthropic endeavor, made her the one person in the country that President Lincoln and his administration at Washington, turned to, for assistance in the mat- ter of organizing nurses for the armies of the North. They had no Red Cross at that time, but an or- ganization called the Christian Commission was soon formed. Thousands of women nurses volun- teered for the service, and Miss Dix was called by the government to take charge of this department. She con- tinued to perform this arduous work until peace was declared. After the close of the Civil War, she took up again her labors for the insane and unfortunate ones of life, and con- tinued them until within a short time of her death. She died July 17, 1887, and her burial took place in Mt. Au- burn Cemetery, near Boston, Massa- chusetts. About a quarter of a century ago, after the fact that Miss Dix was born in Hampden had been fully estab- lished, certain patriotic men and wo- men of Hampden, Bangor, and other cities of Maine began a movement for a public park in her memory. A tract of land which embraced her birthplace was purchased and on July 4, 1889, it was properly dedicated with impressive ceremonies and an oration by the late Colonel Augustus C. Hamlen of Bangor. The following invocation was given in her memory: Father of Mercies, Sovereign Lord, We take thee at thy gracious word, Tho' thine the power to loose and bind, The merciful shall mercy find. To thee we raise our song of praise, xln thee we live and move, our ways By thee are guided, and thy love Fills earth below and heaven above, The heart that bleeds for others' woe, The generous hand, the words that glow With pitying love, the gifts that shine, Are but a pale reflex of thine. Reta Pettee, '27. CHEMISTRY IN EVERYDAY LIFE It was the great war that first brought to the public a realization of the vital place that the science of chemistry holds in the development of the resources of a nation. At that time, the chemists of the various nations were competing against each other in producing high-powered ex- plosives and dangerous gases. To- day, these' same chemists are en- gaged in the more congenial occupa- tion of making discoveries which will contribute to our national health and prosperity. We cannot get away from chemis- try and its bearing upon the whole life of any nation. The fundamental laws of chemistry make possible the scientific control of our great indus- tries, ranging from agriculture to the manufacture of steel. For in the transformation of the salts, miner- als, and humus of the earth and the elements of the air into corn, wheat, cotton and other products there is a complicated chemical change, requir- ing careful chemical control if a suc- cessful crop is to be obtained. Simi- larly, the making of iron and steel is a chemical problem, since first the iron must be separated from the ore, then free carbon driven out of it, and Vet just the right amount of carbon induced to combine with the other elements to give the steel the desired hardness. By discovering new uses for by-products previously considered worthless, the chemist has saved the country millions of dollars annually. Not so many years ago, the seed of cotton was thrown away or burned as fuel, for there was no profitable use to which it could be put. But the chemist, who is always an economist, found that by applying pressure to

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12 The VENTURE MAINE'S JOAN OF ARC Is there anyone here at this time who has not been stirred by the ideals embodied by that wonderful character in French history, Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans? For cen- turies her name has been an inspira- tion to all whose heart beats are for patriotism, loyalty, justice and truth. But do you know that Maine, too, has her Joan of Arc, a leader in a differ- ent, yet equally splendid cause? Maine's Joan of Arc was a champion of the helpless and distressed, not of America alone, but of the world. When with your automobiles you enjoy that beautiful river drive along the highway from Bangor to Belfast, you pass through the quiet and pic- turesque little village of Hampden. Upon the easterly side of the road, but on the westerly side of the Pe- nobscot river, you pass a large arched gateway, opening into the Dorothea Dix Park, named for a woman born on that same spot on the fourth day of April, in the year 1802. In many respects she was the most remarkable woman America can claim. She won distinction as a nurse during the Civil War and was honored with great praise by Presi- dent Lincoln, but it was in her life- time crusade against the old barbar- ous treatment of the insane that she won enduring fame. Dorothea Dix, fully as wonderful a woman in her way as Joan of Arc, and as much of a dreamer, idealist, and adventurer in new fields, was not aggressive. Hers was not the spirit of warg but of peace, of patience and of love. She was the antithesis of Cleopatra. She would never in the slightest degree have interested An- tony, much less have charmed him. And yet within a period of 20 years she stormed the seats of the mighty, from East Cambridge, Massachu- setts, to the Vatican at Rome, told all in authority. from the selectmen of towns to the President of the United States and the crowned heads of Europe, that they were wrong in their methods with the mentally sick, and convinced them of their mistake. You cannot say that her story is a romantic one. It was far removed from the realm of romance and fancy 3 but it is a remarkable story of the wonderful achievements of a daughter of Maine. At twelve years of age Dorothea Dix ran away from her parents and sought the protection of her grand- mother, who was then a widow living in quite a grand residence in Boston, the old Dix mansion. There, Doro- thea was trained in habits of dili- gence and attention. The change also secured for her several extra years of education. Her formal edu- cation completed, she spent some years as a school teacher and govern- ess. All of these early experiences and duties were fitting her for the great life work which destiny had ordained for her. Her social and philanthropic work began with the East Cambridge, Massachusetts, jail. Here, she found the guilty and the innocent, degener- ates, criminals, and those only un- fortunate, herded with the insane of both sexes, in a structure overcrowd- ed at all times, and without means of warmth in the severest weather. The task of changing these condi- tions was herculean in every sense of the word. Many difiiculties were before her, she had to undertake the task of meeting and convincing mem- bers of state and national legisla- tures. governors, popes, kings and presidents of their criminally wrong treatment of the insane. The success of her memorial in her own state encouraged her to press forward into all the other states. Her campaign in Massachusetts end- ed, she visited Rhode Island. New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. Later she crusaded the southern states. She induced state after state

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14 The VENTURE this cotton seed he could extract from it an oil that was almost the equal of olive oils for household pur- poses. He invented a way for re- moving by machinery the fuzz of cotton fiber adhering to the cotton, and of employing it in the manufac- ture of explosives and celluloid. The hull of the cotton seed, which is left after the oil has been extracted, is ground up and sold as dairy feed. Last year this utilizing of formerly worthless material added to the value of the cotton produced the sum of S150,000,000. From coal tar, a by-product of the manufacture of illuminating gas, a dozen primary products can be ex- tracted. With these, the chemist can build up hundreds of thousands of new substances, many of which can- not be duplicated by nature. This list of products includes 3000 differ- ent shades of artificial dyes, syn- thetic perfumes and flavors, which equal in every way but cost, the nat- ural productsg various kinds of modern concentrated antisepticsg medicines, and material for the manufacture of explosives. These two groups of material developed by the chemists are typical of what is being done with hundreds of other by-products. From corn, our largest agricultural product, chemists have recently found ways of obtaining over 100 different materials. The most im- portant of these are the corn oils. which. under the trade name of Mazola, come into competition with cotton seed and olive oils as a sub- stitute for butter and lard, parogal, a material used to adulterate rubber: corn syrurs that are so widely used in place of molasses: and, finally al- cohol. This last product offers great possibilities, for, at the rate at which we are now exhausting our oil fields, we shall soon be obliged to get some- thing to take the place of gasoline. One of the most promising of the suggested substitutes is alcohol pre- pared from corn, since it can be easily adapted for use in the internal combustion engine. With the many factory-prepared foods, that are in use to-day, it would be possible for the unscrupulous manufacturer to adulterate his prod- ucts with harmful ingredients, were it not for the pure food laws. These laws require every manufacturer to have an analysis of his products made by a government chemist, and this analysis placed on a label that marks his goods. For this protec- tion of our health we owe a great deal to the chemist. Chemistry is a most effective agent for democracy, since it actually ac- complishes, in regard to many ma- terial things, that equality which has always been the fundamental prin- ciple of the American Government. luxuries, formerly the monopoly of the privileged classes, become, through applied science, the common property of the masses. The royal purple of the ancients, and dyes far more beautiful, are now to be had at every bargain counter. Even Solo- mon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like the modern American maiden. Even though her purse be scanty, she need not lack jewels and bright- colored clothes, such as once cost a fortune. Fruits, exotic and out of' season, are upon our dinner table at relatively small cost. Even the china from which we eat these luxuries was not brought from China, at all, but made from a clay bank at home. In early ages the man who owned a piece of iron shaped it into a sword, and proceeded to use it against his enemy. The Feudal Age vanished at the first whiff of gunpowder, for that device of dangerous unseen pow- er levelled the natural and artificial inequalities of humanity in warfare. With a gun in his hand, the peasant was a match for the strongest knight in his heavy armor. '