In the parlance of the 2lst Century it was a “9-11” election. Just 100 years ago, when Maine conducted its statewide voting on the second Monday of September each year, occurred one of the state’s more eventful plebiscites. Though no one on Sept. 11, 1911, the date of the election, could foretell that just 90 years to the day later would this place on the calendar assume such notoriety, the occasion was still an historic one.

On the ballot were a number of issues that stirred the electorate. Among them: the state’s first citizen initiative, a major show-down over Prohibition along with a constitutional amendment to confirm Augusta as the state capital.

The primary election

Backdrop for the proposal to create a primary election system was a recent amendment to the state’s constitution which enabled 12,000 voters to force a referendum on a citizen initiated measure. The first time voters did just that was with their petitions seeking to compel Maine to adopt the direct primary as a means of nominating candidates.

The new proposal sought to replace the caucus and convention method. Under this system, voting was done so publicly by delegates that those participating were perceived to be vulnerable to potential intimidation by party bosses. Primaries, which would be done by secret ballot, were seen as averting this risk while at the same time were heralded as a means of drawing a larger turnout.

Opponents to the plan argued that primary campaigns would be so expensive that only the wealthy could run. Those against primaries also feared that candidates from rural areas would suffer because no longer would localities within multi-town districts take turns sending someone to represent them in Augusta.

Because the Democratic legislature refused to pass the primary plan, (the Republicans — then holding only a legislative minority — favored it) the citizen- initiated bill was sent out to referendum. By a better than three to one margin the bill became law and Maine joined the twenty other states which had already enacted such a measure.

The Movement to Take Prohibition Out of the Constitution

Long before the nation’s 1920s “noble experiment” with Prohibition, Maine had enacted its own ban on intoxicating liquors, so early in fact that its 1850s law to stamp out booze made the state an international pioneer: Other countries that sought to emulate us were referred to as having adopted a “Maine Law.” In the 1880s, some 30 years after putting the law on the books, the legislature proposed cementing the state’s “dry” status by offering a constitutional amendment for prohibition. Maine voters in l884 overwhelmingly ratified the Prohibition amendment, enshrining the state’s Dry status in a constitutional safe haven.

The Sept. 11 election of 1911 was a crossroads in the Prohibition saga, one that drew the interest of luminaries throughout the world and one that would also foreshadow similar confrontations in the years leading up to the nation-wide adoption of spirituous abstinence in 1919. The same Democratic Maine Legislature that did not want voters to enact a direct primary law did, nevertheless, want the people to weigh in on whether to keep Prohibition in the state’s constitution. They saw repeal as paving the way for local option voting on the issue. In sending the repeal of the 1884 amendment out to a statewide vote, they set the stage for the most emotionally charged feature of the 1911 elections, one that witnessed the first state-wide voting on Prohibition in l7-years.

Leader of “dry” forces urging defeat of repeal was Portland’s Lillian M.N. Stevens, long-time national president of the influential Women’s Christian Temperance Union, or WCTU. Her election day pronouncement typified the themes of her campaign:

If liquor money is effectual in overcoming the influence of the church, the educators, the Grangers, the reformers, the women and the children it is high time there should be a great uprising of the moral and religious forces of this nation. The nation must overthrow the liquor traffic or the liquor traffic will overthrow the nation.

The Sunday before the election, Stevens led a parade of children through Portland in an effort to put the spotlight on alcohol’s most sympathetic and defenseless victims. But the state’s leading “wet” paper, Portland’s Daily Eastern Argus, challenged this attempt to put children in the forefront of her crusade. The Argus argued:

In their mistaken zeal, the people who propose to parade the “Young Campaigners for Prohibition” forget those other children who might appropriately be called the “Little Victims of Lawlessness.”…What of the 10-year- old boy recently found insensible in a gutter in this city poisoned by the vile whiskey he had found in a railroad yard where it had been secreted by a boot-legger?”

Despite the fact that neither her juvenile followers nor the WCTU adherents of Lillian Stevens were eligible to cast ballots on the issue, their position prevailed. By a cliff-hanging 60,853 to 60,095 margin the adult men who did participate voted to retain Prohibition. Over the next eight years, the rest of the nation would follow suit. Maine’s 26th amendment would not be repealed until 1934, just a year after the end of its 14-year national reign.

Voting to Confirm Augusta as the State’s Capital

Also on the ballot that Sept. 11 was a measure to include in the Constitution a provision proclaiming Augusta as the state’s seat of government. Though the legislature had been meeting there since the city replaced Portland as the capital in 1832, Portland had made a number of ardent bids to re-claim the coveted position. The State Senate in 1907 had even voted to take the government back to Maine’s largest city and only in a House vote had Augusta held on. Augusta partisans wanted to avert close calls like this in the future and were successful in getting the 1911 legislature to propose a Constitutional amendment, which some 59 percent of voters then approved. The vote has had the effect of keeping the issue from being seriously entertained in the 100 years since that time.

This September 11th will, of course, primarily be an occasion to note the 10th anniversary of the Al Qaeda attacks on America. Not to be overlooked, however, is a memorable Maine election for which we on the same day can observe a 100th.

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: [email protected]