Rivalries between different parts of Maine have been around as long as there’s been a state. The “Two Maines” debate is only the latest manifestation of sectional friction.

A century ago, these geographic jealousies erupted in an ugly brawl in the Legislature over whether to build a wing onto the nearly new Eastern Maine Insane Hospital in Bangor. The Queen City turned out to be the loser, as even some lawmakers from remote areas of eastern Maine – what we call “the Other Maine” today – refused to pay their respects to the region’s biggest city.

Bangor Mental Health Institute, as the Eastern Maine Insane Hospital has come to be known, sits today on what was once called Hepatica Hill, at the corner of State Street and Hogan Road, a Victorian behemoth safely ensconced on the National Register of Historic Places. Opened in 1901, the hospital was overcrowded almost immediately, and regional politicians thought they had a deal to build a new wing to take care of the problem.

The alternative was to renovate an old arsenal, a recent gift from the federal government, in Augusta next to the Maine Insane Hospital, and ship some of Eastern Maine Insane Hospital’s mentally ill to the capital city for care at that hospital, which had an even worse crowding problem. Not only would this be a hardship to the families of these patients, but the arsenal wasn’t fit for such a purpose and it would cost more to renovate than constructing the wing in Bangor, opponents claimed.

On March 21, 1905, the first vote took place in the Senate. The Eastern Maine Insane Hospital lobby was defeated 17 to 12. Most of the vote was along predictably sectional northeastern-southwestern lines. For example, the three Aroostook County senators voted to build the wing, while the three York County senators voted against it.

To the great shock of the Bangor hospital’s proponents, however, four senators who lived in eastern Maine voted against the appropriation. Led by Sen. Lucius C. Morse, R-Liberty, they also included Sen. Edward S. Clark, R-Bar Harbor, Sen. Bion M. Pike, R-Lubec, and Sen. Sumner P. Mills, R-Stonington. A couple of opponents from Somerset and Oxford counties weren’t mentioned, apparently because they were not considered part of the “Other Maine” back then.

Sen. Isaiah K. Stetson, R-Bangor, led the charge to expand the hospital. “Mr. President, do you realize the present crowded condition of our insane hospitals and how these poor suffering people are crowded like sheep in the corridors and basements?” he said. “I say it is a wicked shame, upon the fair name of our state, to let these conditions exist one moment longer.”

Then Morse, the only senator to speak against the wing, spoiled everything. “Have we come here to legislate for the people of this state as a whole or for sectional purposes? Shall we ask the people all up and down this state to pay taxes for something that will benefit only a certain locality?” he asked.

Sen. Halbert P. Gardner, R-Patten, responded angrily, “I’m tired of this factional business. This isn’t a matter confined to one section.” He also ridiculed the alternative plan of remodeling “a lot of gunpowder vaults” in Augusta into a mental hospital.

A clearly aggrieved Bangor Daily News reporter announced huffily that Sen. Morse had succeeded in “downing the resolve.” Writing with the kind of opinionated abandon that reporters aren’t allowed to use anymore, he said he sensed “a peculiar note of jealousy or something running through the whole matter and the result, although not a surprise exactly, was a keen disappointment.”

The issue moved on to the House of Representatives the next day, where the wing for the Bangor hospital was passed easily on a vote of 68 to 53.

During the debate, Rep. D. Allston Sargent, R-Brewer, wanted it “distinctly understood that this wasn’t any special Bangor measure, but that it affected the whole eastern section of the state.”

That same day the Bangor Daily News chimed in with an editorial calling the Senate’s negative vote “a reflection on its wisdom and sanity.” The editorial writer pointed out that prominent “alienists,” as psychiatrists were known back then, believed that mental patients could be cured, but only in a modern, properly constructed facility.

The next day the issue went back to the Senate, where it was defeated again, by a vote of 16 to 11.

“Who Is Responsible?” raged the BDN’s headline writer. The story beneath told the tale. The same four turncoats – “Morse, Clark & Co.” – were listed as the villains.

Sen. Gardner glumly summed up the situation, saying the poor patients at the Eastern Maine Insane Hospital would continue to sleep “in a place where I wouldn’t put my dog.”

Meanwhile, the BDN reporter, who had access to “men who ought to know,” reported they had told him “somebody is going to dance for it all. Just what that means only those on the inside apparently understand.”

As is usual, an editorial writer had the final say a few days later: “Greed and graft and collusion have marked the progress of the Maine legislature from the opening days. The good things which should have been done have been left unaccomplished. The bad things which should not have been done have been pushed through and lobbied along until they found enactment.” No lists of these “things” were provided.

As it turned out, the physical plant for the Eastern Maine Insane Hospital fared well after that donnybrook. In 1905 and 1907, several farms were added to the original land on Hepatica Hill. In 1907 and 1908, a building for 50 tuberculosis patients and a second building for 150 female patients were constructed. Then, in the next two years, a building for 150 male patients was built, according to Kenneth M. Johnson in his University of Maine masters thesis. More space was added up until the 1960s, when “deinstitutionalization” became the trend, and slowly the population began to decline with the advent of effective psychiatric drugs.

But the fight over the expansion of Eastern Maine Insane Hospital 100 ago showed that Mainers had only the most rudimentary notion of regional services. It would be a long time before they were ready to give up local control in health care, education and a host of other areas, even if it would improve services and save money. The battle, of course, still continues.

Wayne E. Reilly has edited two books of Civil War era diaries and letters, including “The Diaries of Sarah Jane and Emma Ann Foster: A Year in Maine During the Civil War.” He can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.