President Roosevelt has endorsed the Carnegie Spelling Reform movement. He issued orders today to Public Printer Stillings that hereafter all messages from the President and all other documents emanating from the White House shall be printed in accordance with the recommendation of the spelling reform committee headed by Brander Matthews, professor of English in Columbia University. This committee has published a list of one hundred words in which the spelling is reformed. This list contains such words as “thru” and “thou” as the spelling for “through” and “though.

50 Years Ago, 1956

An apartment for $60 a year and board for $2.50 a week – those were the rates a 100 years ago when the Hill Block on Canal Street was new.

But that was in the days when the workers were paid once a month and the average wage was between $3 and $6 a week, says the Bates News, Bates Manufacturing Co. publication.

The Hill Block, which is being torn down now to make room for a new supermarket, is one of three such sets of buildings built for textile workers about a century ago. The Bates Block on Canal Street between Ash and Chestnut streets was razed about 10 years ago. The Androscoggin Block tenements at the end of Canal Street will be torn down soon.

25 Years Ago, 1981

About 8,000 Maine men will have their names posted in public buildings this week, as the Selective Service starts a program one legal group calls an invasion of privacy.

The names are men born in 1962 or the first quarter of 1963 who registered with the Selective Service before June, said Col. Averill Black, a Maine Selective Service official. An employee in Black’s office said the lists were mailed Friday.

Maj. Gen. Paul R. Day, Maine’s Selective Service director, said in a release that names are being publicly posted in courthouses and municipal offices “to revitalize the U. S. Selective Service System for military personnel and to provide for a quick response in the event of a national emergency.”