Evening Star Newspaper, April 21, 1940, Page 84

THIS WEEK MAGAZINE The story of a famously thrifty Yankee who nursed a great fortune —so he could buy back for his State its heritage of rugged beauty by Arthur Bartlett F YOU think of a Down-East Yankee as a sharp-faced, crusty old codger who speaks with a terrific nasal twang, you are start- ing with the wrong picture of Percival P. Baxter. He is tall and blond, a rather hand- some round-faced man in his middle sixties, cultured in speech, gracious in manner. But he is a Yankee. And they used to tell tall tales about him in the state of Maine. In the telling, they made him out a sort of legendary Paul Bun- yan of Yankee thriftiness. Mr. Baxter was in politics for many years — was governor of Maine from 1921 to 1925 — and of course a man in politics is always fair game for story- tellers. But there is no denying the fact that he is a thrifty man. He himself would be the last to deny it. He is proud of it. When he was seven years old, his father gave him eighty dollars as a prize for catch- ing an eight-pound square-tailed trout. Young Percy knew what to do with eighty dollars. even at that age.-He put it in the savings bank. It is still there, and the last time he checked up, after fifty years, it amounted to five hundred and eighty-three dollars. He tells that story himself, to point the moral of thrift. But they don’t tell tall stories abowt him in Maine any more. Over a period of recent ayears, he has made — and is stili adding to — one of the most magnificent gifts a mart ever made. He has already given to his state more than a hundred square miles of land, surrounding and including Maine's greatest mountain, Mount Katahdin. Included in the tract are more tham thirty other mountains, and dozens of woodland lakes and streams. Before he is through, he intends to stretch the gift to more than a hundred and fifty square miles — a wilderness principality some ten times as big as his native Portland, Maine’s biggest city. What is more, he has given practically his full time, since he stopped being governor, to the job of buying up this land so that he could present it to the state. He has had to buy it chunk by chunk, fitting the pieces to- gether like parts of a puzzle. And he goes on buying more to add to it. No Detail Too Small YES. they used to say in Maine that Percy Baxter was a mighty thrifty man. And they were right. You sense it when you go into his plain, old-fashioned office in one of the many buildings that he owns in Portland. In through the outer office, with its old, high countinghouse desk in one corner, come superintendents and tenants and bankers and brokers to see him. Administering one of Maine’s largest fortunes, he calls out through the open door of his inner office for them to come on in. No detail is too small, no ex- penditure too petty, to be worthy of his care- ful attention. Then how to explain this great generosity?> Is it a complete paradox? In the midst of Maine's unspoiled wilderness stands Mount Katahdin, high peak of Percival P. Baxter's gift to posterity I think not. Let's go back to the begin- ning. . . Few of us are fortunate enough to inherit a family fortune. Percy Baxter was. It was a fortune that had been accumulated by Yan- kee thrift. Percy Baxter inherited the thrift with the fortune — or acquired it. But thrift can mean preserving and building up some- thing that has been put in your hands so that others who follow may benefit by it. That is the way heritages exist and grow. And when a man has a heritage, according to this code, it is more of a trust than a possession. It is his responsibility to guard it and pass it on. Gifts According to Code PFRC\' BAXTER'S father gave away money. But he gave it away according to the code, with a thrifty eye to values that would be preserved and would increase for those who would follow. Baxter Boulevard in Portland, a lovely drive where once there was only the marsh of a tidal backwater, was his creation. And he left a legacy with which, “when sufficiently augmented by interest.” to erect a suitable building to commemorate the lives of the founders of New England. Thrifty projects those, but generous, too. James Phinney Baxter, the father, could never have hoped to benefit by them personally. In 1904, Percy Baxter went to the state legislature, its second-youngest member. One day a bill was introduced relating to the taxation of wild lands. Young Baxter, inter- ested, began looking into the subject of wild lands. And he found that all the vast areas of forest once owned by the state had grad- ually been taken over, usually for a pittance, by private owners. Through the years, that had seemed the sensible way to dispose of this land. The private owners would turn it into industry, and that would create jobs and wealth. But as the sawmills moved in, and then moved out leaving denuded acres behind them, young Percy Baxter began to have serious misgivings. Here was a great heritage — not the heri- tage of any one man or any one family, but of all the people of the state — and it was being whittled away, lost to future genera- tions. Percy Baxter’s sense of thrift was out- raged. He began introducing bills for the re- purchase of some of these lands so that future generations might have them. The bills seldom got beyond a committee. He kept trying, as a member of the house of representatives, as a member of the state senate, as president of the senate, as governor. But he could never muster enough support. After a while the legislators just shrugged. Meantime, as he grew older, Percy Baxter was learning, as most of us do. that intangible things can be more important than posses- sions. Character, for instance. He had never married, and his family in the Governor's Mansion was made up of two Irish setters, descendants of a long line all bred from the same stock and tracing back to a dog that his father had given him when he was a boy. One day in 1923 his older dog, Garry, died. The Governor ordered the state-house flag lowered to half-staff. A storm of protest fol- lowed. It was an insult to the flag, cried his critics. “It is my prayer,” the Governor answered them, “that I always may be as un- selfish and loyal to my Master, state and nation as Garry was to me.” And recalling the incident the other day, he told me, “I did it deliberately, to call attention to the great qualities in a dog that men might well try to gain for themselves.” He became known, too, though a childless man, as “the Children’s Governor,” because he was forever entertaining groups of chil- dren, or visiting schools and talking to the children about their heritage of freedom and its responsibilities. Yes, a heritage could be something besides money. That heritage which the state had let slip away — it was more than just timber. It was the strength-giving wildness of the wood- lands; the humbling. inspirational grandeur of unspoiled mountains. Or, as he put it to me the other day: “It was the very essence of Maine’s rugged character, her greatness as a builder of men.” Heritage Demands Thrift STILL a bachelor, the Governor was, by thrift, preserving his own private heritage of wealth not for descendants but, in large part, for all the people of his state. And as | the great wild-land heritage of the state still remained unredeemed, what better way to pass on his money? So, when his term of office was over, he started buying up the one section of the state where mountains still clustered together in the uninhabited wilderness, where there were still great virgin trees that had never felt an ax, mountain lakes that had rarely been seen by white men, woodland trails that had never known a billboard, great forests where moose and bear and other wild things ran free. And in the midst of it all, majestic Katahdin, where Indian legend says dwelt Pamola, awesome spirit of darkness. That is the gift of Percival P. Baxter to untold generations of the future — for the only condition of the gift is that the land shall forever be preserved in its unspoiled wildness as a public park and forest, a sanc- tuary for animals, a sanctuary of the spirit for men. And it is known that he has included in his will a bequest of sufficient funds to maintain it so. That is his gift, yes, to the generations of the future; but he chose it because it was their heritage. And a heritage, whether it be money, or land, or beauty, or character, or freedom, is more than a gift. It is a responsibility. It demands that you be thrifty with it, for the sake of those who follow. That is the Baxter code.