‘The fuel question’ was a hot topic in 1909 Bangor

“THE FUEL QUESTION,” as the Bangor Daily Commercial put it in a headline, perplexed Mainers a century ago. Would there be enough coal or wood to heat their homes? Would they be able to afford it?

A ton of hard coal cost $7.50 “on time” and $7.27 for cash, according to the Commercial on Oct. 22, 1909. Soft coal was selling for $6.25. A coal strike could drive up prices. That was always a fear. But this year no strike was in sight, and the price was expected to hold up through the winter.

The port of Bangor would soon be closed by ice, and coal dealers would be getting all their product in before then on barges (although coal was being shipped by rail to the interior of Maine by then). This could be good or bad. As winter went on, Bangor coal dealers were unable to “follow the market,” taking advantage of downward turns in price, said the newspaper. A colder than normal winter could also drive up prices, especially if no more coal was to be had.

The other source of heat for many people was wood. “Birch edgings” and “hard wood in the stick” were selling for $6.50 a cord, while “prepared” wood was going for $7. The price had dropped a bit, because “the last two years have been exceptionally good ones in the woods.”

The reporter said his source was one of the most prominent coal and wood dealers in Bangor. Thus, he concluded, “The people of the city can rest assured that no remarkable rise or decline in the price … will take place in the near future unless the coal miners go on another strike or the coal vessels all sink and such a calamity is hardly likely to occur.”

Of course, if you didn’t have any money to buy fuel, that was another thing entirely. The prices quoted above sound absurdly low today, but the average worker made only $300 or $400 dollars annually. Telling him to buy a coal furnace and a few tons of coal was like suggesting a flight to the moon.

That’s where Jennie Johnson, the city’s missionary, stepped in. She helped “the deserving poor” — mainly the disabled and unemployed. Back before the government took over aid for the poor, charity was largely a private matter. Johnson’s job was to scrape together enough money from the minuscule amounts provided by the city and from private sources to help the very poorest of the poor.

A rudimentary system had already emerged for helping people pay for fuel, and Johnson seemed to be at the center of it. In 1909, as winter approached, she was having trouble making ends meet. Poor people were clamoring for wood or coal, and she was having trouble finding the resources to help them, she told the Commercial on Oct. 20. The public overseers of the poor told her they distributed fuel to only paupers dependent upon the city for all their needs. The only other group to whom she could turn was the Bangor Fuel Society, a private charity.

Incorporated in 1899, the Bangor Fuel Society is an excellent example of how the middle class banded together back in the Progressive Era to help out the poor. The organization had a hierarchy of volunteers — officers, trustees, one collector each for the city’s east and west sides, and distribution agents for each of the city’s seven wards. In 1909, these individuals represented a wide variety of occupations, including two lawyers, a banker, insurance agents, a painter and art supply store owner, vendors of real estate, sewing machines and undertaker’s supplies, and the chairman of the city’s board of health.

The fuel and heating industry was also represented. The president of the Bangor Fuel Society, Charles H. Wood, was president of Wood & Bishop, a stove manufacturer. The distributors in wards two and seven, respectively, were Charles L. Snow, manager of the Hincks Coal Co., and Alfred J. Robinson, treasurer of Bacon & Robinson coal company. It’s hard to tell today how generous local lumbermen and coal dealers may have been in boosting this effort.

I was able to find very little information about the operations of the Bangor Fuel Society other than a brief recollection by William E. Jordan (1881-1975) whose memories are recorded at an Internet site. The Bangor Fuel Society “brought in great piles of wood from the mills along the river and stored them at the city farm (former site of Beal College) on Main Street. They saw to it that nobody went cold,” Jordan recalled.

Results of the group’s annual meetings occasionally were published in the newspapers. For example, the group had spent about $1,300 for fuel distribution, according to the report published in the Bangor Daily News on Dec. 3, 1907. It had an endowment fund provided by 14 individuals totaling $7,250.

During the fall of 1909, Johnson approached the society looking for money, but she was told, according to the Commercial, that “the funds of the society are all gone and nothing is being done, nor can be done, in the way of fuel relief until the treasury is replenished. Causes of exceptional need are now met, but the society is necessarily going very slowly.” Hence some people would have to wait until the group met on the first Monday in December, when it would reinvest its funds and replenish its treasury. For some people, it would be a long, cold autumn.

While researching this story, it was pointed out to me by Bangor historian Dick Shaw that the Bangor Fuel Society still exists. The group still donates annually about 150 vouchers for 100-gallon fuel oil allotments to charitable agencies for distribution to needy individuals. The screening is done by the Salvation Army, the Eastern Area Agency on Aging, Community Health and Counseling Services, and the city of Bangor, according to John Bragg, a trustee. The endowment is now nearly a million dollars, depending on the vagaries of the stock market. One of the oldest corporations in Maine, the Bangor Fuel Society is still quietly performing its role using some of the same money donated more than a century ago by wealthy individuals who helped build the Queen City back in its lumbering days.

An illustrated collection of Wayne E. Reilly’s columns titled “Remembering Bangor: The Queen City Before the Great Fire” is available at bookstores. Comments about this column may be sent to him at wer@bangordailynews.