After having been on strike since March 1, when their three years agreement expired, the 300 cutters at the Hallowell Granite Works will return to work tomorrow, a compromise having been effected today. The employees demanded a minimum wage of $3 a day for eight hours while the company demanded the right to incorporate in the bill of contract a clause allowing the men the right to work by the piece.

50 Years Ago, 1955

Investigators of the Maine Insurance Commission plan to start, “as soon as possible,” a survey in Lewiston of the number and location of abandoned gasoline tanks like the one that exploded Monday, killing former Lewiston fireman Percy W. Maguire, 49. Plans for the proposed survey, aimed at eliminating the tanks, were disclosed last night by Donald H. Rogers, one of commission investigator assigned to this area.

Maguire, operator of a fire-fighting equipment concern, was pumping carbon dioxide into the underground tank on Middle Street when the blast occurred. The CO2 was being used to eliminate any blast danger. It was theorized gasoline fumes in the tank were touched off when a static spark was created by striking the metal nozzle of the discharge hose against the side of the fill pipe.

25 Years Ago, 1980

Citing current interest rates, several Lewiston automobile dealers Wednesday agreed with the National Automobile Dealers Association president’s assessment that some form of assistance program is needed for dealers nationwide. “The dealer absolutely must have immediate assistance in the form of temporary…low-interest loans or interest subsidies or he cannot survive,” NADA President George F. Irvin told the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business Wednesday. The number of dealerships nationwide that failed or closed from 1976 through 1978 was 455, Irvin said, while the figure jumped to 600 last year and has already passed that rate in 1980.