Special to the Star-Herald
My last column featured the l926 GOP senate primary in which Arthur Gould upset both former Governor Baxter and a Maine Senate President backed by the Ku Klux Klan. Though the ensuing election in this era was usually a rubber stamp ratification of the GOP nominee, Gould still encountered unexpected resistance before he could become the first Maine U.S. Senator from Aroostook County.
Only three days before the election, Republican Governor Owen Brewster created a sensation by announcing that he would withhold his support from Gould. Brewster – whose l947 show-down with Billionaire Howard Hughes was immortalized by Alan Alda’s portrayal of Brewster in the 2004 movie “The Aviator” – based his rejection of Gould on allegations that Gould had violated state law by exceeding the $l,500 campaign spending limit. Brewster’s announcement was also on the eve of a campaign spending violations hearing convened in response to charges brought by a Ku Klux Klan leader.
At the hearing, however, no adequate documentation was produced to support the charges of excessive campaign spending and Gould went on to win the election over the Klan backed Democratic candidate.
He still had to assume the office. In this he also faced opposition from a prominent force in the person of Senator Thomas Walsh. Walsh, who had recently won national acclaim for successfully spearheading investigation into the Teapot Dome Scandal, alleged that Gould was unfit to be admitted to the senate because of a $l00,000 bribe allegedly paid by Gould to the incoming New Brunswick Premier J.K. Flemming in 19l2.
Just what Gould was supposedly doing spending so much money on a prominent Canadian political leader takes a little explaining. Backdrop for the alleged bribe was one of Gould’s most ambitious projects, arising out of one of his railroad companies. His goal was to build a 200-mile long line connecting one of Canada’s busiest seaports, St. John New Brunswick, with northern Maine.
Railroads back then like those today required a lot of government support even if they were run by private entrepreneurs like Gould. For one thing, railroads needed eminent domain authority to build efficient routes over long distances. Railroads often also required large amounts of borrowed capital, in the case of Gould and his four partners in the St. John Valley Railway Company, some $7 million. To obtain the capital needed, the company went to the bond market, which refused to participate without something else governments sometimes afforded: loan guarantees.
Walsh’s senate investigation drew upon a similar investigation conducted by New Brunswick’s own government in l9l7. Then, a Canadian Judge concluded that in 1912 Gould had paid J.K. Flemming $100,000 during his campaign to become premier of New Brunswick. This was allegedly to help secure the New Brunswick government’s cooperation in guaranteeing bonds for the railroad. Flemming was elected and the bonds were guaranteed. Intervention of the First World War upset the sale of some of the last and most crucial of them, thus turning Gould’s railroad dream into a nightmare. Nevertheless, the government that later replaced Flemming’s convened an investigation in l9l7 that continued to haunt Gould as he attempted to take his seat in the U.S. Senate ten years later.
In nationally publicized senate hearings in early l927, Gould defended his claim to be seated by contending that the payment was not a bribe. Instead, Gould asserted that it was merely a campaign contribution. Gould also argued that the New Brunswick government, in the words of a Gould associate, “had us by the throat” so that the company had no choice to contribute if it wanted to sell its bonds and continue the railroad’s construction.
Walsh pressed on, contending Gould’s testimony contradicted that which he had given in l9l7, and that the contradiction alone was grounds for perjury, a basis for barring Gould from the senate.
Though in l9l7 Gould had testified that “I got the money … and handed it over to Flemming,” by the time of the l927 senate inquiry Gould testified that it was his partners in the railroad company and not himself that had carried out the payments. In any event, Gould now contended that the payments were over his objections and made without his prior knowledge. Despite Walsh’s skepticism, the senate committee and the full senate gave Gould the benefit of the doubt and voted overwhelmingly to confirm his election.
Once in place, Gould made his mark by going to bat for his northern Maine constituents. On the Senate Agriculture Committee, Gould was able to obtain increased duties on potato imports, thus helping to sustain a centerpiece of the Aroostook County economy. Gould came to the rescue of Fraser Paper when he thwarted attempts to curtail its ability to import types of pulp it needed to stay in business.
Gould achieved his greatest influence as chair of the Senate Immigration Committee. Here, Gould successfully opposed attempts to limit the number of Canadians who could immigrate to the United States. Championing the cause of Canadian-American relations became so much a theme of his interests he was sometimes referred to as “the Senator from Canada.”
Plagued by failing eyesight, Gould left the Senate at the expiration of his term. This was in l93l when at age 73 he returned to supervise his ventures in the Presque Isle area. Despite the Canadian railroad debacle, Gould again became a major player in lumbering operations and a local railroad.
A few months after leaving the senate, he confirmed his long-standing association with the Catholic Church by officially joining it, an affiliation that had earlier made him a target of the Klan.
Thomas Walsh died just two years later, a few days before he was scheduled to be sworn in as FDR’s first attorney general. Though now legally blind, Gould would thus still be consoled by outliving his senate nemesis another l3 years, until his own death at age 89 in l946.
Paul H. Mills is a Farmington attorney well known for his analyses and historical understanding of Maine’s political scene. He can be reached by e-mail: pmills@midmaine.com.
Photo courtesy Dr. Richard A. Graves III collection
SEN. GOULD made good on his plan to build an electric-powered railroad through the woods from Presque Isle to Washburn in 1910. This ambitious project was eventually expanded north to Caribou and New Sweden.
