‘Fuel famine’ frightened Mainers 100 years ago

The cost of fuel was as much on the minds of Mainers a century ago as it is today. A “fuel famine” seemed always in the works. Coal was the nation’s dominant source of energy, but wood was still important, especially in places such as Maine where there was lots of it. Oil, natural gas and hydro dams supplied only tiny amounts of the nation’s power. Everyone was trying to predict the future. The newspapers carried frequent stories and editorials. Frequently, they were wrong.

The Bangor Daily News warned that the local wood supply was dwindling. “The time is drawing near when near-by woodlots, from which the people of Glenburn and Hampden and Orrington were in the habit of cutting wood and hauling it to Bangor and Brewer, must be exhausted. Most of the land has been cut over, and is now under cultivation or else turned out to pasture,” an editorial noted on May 5, 1908. “For a number of years past most of the wood has come in over the Maine Central railroad, and as the years pass, this practice will grow, until by the middle of the present century there will be a small amount of wood employed for heating and cooking, and this will come from some forested area 50 to 150 miles away.”

People who cut wood for a living said it was profitable to haul it into Bangor by sled in the winter for only about eight to 12 miles. “During winters when sledding is good and a pair of horses can haul nearly two cords to Bangor at every load, an active man who has a pair of quick-stepping horses and who will get up early and work late, can find a margin of profit in hauling dry wood 12 miles, though under ordinary conditions eight miles is the limit for hauling by horse power,” said the editorial writer.

The fuel famine was not as serious in Maine as elsewhere, but it was ominous enough to provoke serious thought, especially considering the recent depression. “With the asking and selling price of both wood and coal growing higher every year and with the cost of living not diminishing the way it should under the threat of hard times, we must become more economical,” the editorial writer said.

He proposed scavenging, rather than conserving. “There are waste chips and shims and fragments of bark littering the yards and encumbering the roadsides about Bangor and Brewer mills sufficient to supply dozens and scores of … families with fuel for a year,” he noted. “Only 10 miles out of Bangor in the village of East Eddington the waste from the spool factory is carted off to a safe field and burned as fast as it is made. There are small mills all about Bangor where for a few dollars one can secure fuel enough to last for a year.”

Then this editorial writer concluded optimistically, “We Mainers have not learned the first elements in fuel economy as yet, but as population becomes dense and competition gets keen, we shall gain wisdom, and with this wisdom will come wealth and true economy.”

While this cracker-barrel philosophizing was going on in Bangor, the forces of big business and technology were setting the nation’s energy agenda. Wood was definitely not part of it. But these learned men had no more of a grasp on the future than the editorial writer at the Bangor Daily News. One prominent energy guru was Charles Proteus Steinmetz, the genius of General Electric Co. in Schenectady, N.Y. His predictions on the country’s energy future, given in a speech at an engineering conference, were published in newspapers across the nation, including the Bangor Daily Commercial on May 22, 1908.

Steinmetz said the current generation would run out of anthracite coal. Then, the government would have to step in to curb the use of bituminous or soft coal because of the poisonous gases it produced. Hydropower would be expanded until “the rivers of the future will be merely a succession of sluggish lakes, with electric power stations in between.” But even that would not be enough. Solar power would provide one answer, he predicted.

Bangoreans were already excited about the possibilities of electricity, which was lighting some streets, public and commercial buildings, and a few homes. Newspaper stories frequently described the building of new dams to produce electricity on Maine’s numerous rivers and streams.

The Bangor Railway and Electric Co., which operated the area’s electric trolley system from power generated at a dam in Veazie, was always touting electricity for domestic use. On Feb. 8, a story in the Commercial listed many of the services that could be performed at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour. You could light a barn with three lamps for one hour a night for 30 cents or do eight washings for 50 cents with a small motor attached to a machine and wringer. You could run an electric fan for 31/2 a day for 30 days or do two weeks of sewing on a motor-driven machine for 50 cents.

About the same time, Alderman William H. Grady, chairman of the city’s committee on street lights, told a Bangor Daily News reporter that enough power went to waste annually at the Bangor dam to bring the city an income of $18,000, if sold to some large manufacturer. The story ran on Feb. 10.

In none of these stories was the potential of oil mentioned. Neither Steinmetz nor the Bangor Daily News gave it notice. Apparently, it was mainly useful in propelling sputtering autos up and down hills, good mainly for scaring horses and fouling the air. It’s time was coming, however, and Americans could rest easier about the supply of coal and wood.

Wayne E. Reilly may be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.