Maine History Online

During the last four years of the New Deal, the Roosevelt administration shifted strategies to address an imbalance of power between corporations and unions, on the assumption that stronger unions would force wages up, increase spending power, and speed recovery. The New Deal supported a wide array of measures to encourage union organization, contributing to the dramatic successes made by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1936-1940.

Despite this encouragement, Maine unions suffered brutal defeats in the textile and shoe industries and remained weak outside the paper industry. Textile workers struck in 1934, but under heavy pressure from city officials, newspaper editors, and the Catholic establishment, the strike failed.

A second strike in 1937 organized by the CIO was more successful, but in that year 19 shoe factories in Lewiston and Auburn lost a violent strike in which industrialists used police and national guard units, blacklists, tear-gas, strikebreakers, and court injunctions to defeat the workers.

The National Labor Relations Board conducted an election, and most workers voted to join the CIO, but shoe company officials simply ignored the federal mandate. Elsewhere the CIO won spectacular successes in the textile, auto, and steel industries, but in Maine inexperience, poverty, intimidation, public condemnation, newspaper criticism, opposition from the clergy, and a hostile court prevented similar victories.

The homefront in World War II

Maine benefited from a rise in tourism and generally better prospects for agriculture in the late 1930s, but it was the boost in defense spending after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 that brought the state and the nation out of the Depression.

A poll conducted by the Lewiston Evening Journal late in the 1930s found that more than 90 percent of its readers were opposed to U.S. involvement in Europe, other than sending supplies.

Events in 1940-1941 – the blitzkrieg into western Europe, the fall of France, the invasion of Russia, the Battle of Britain, and the Lend-Lease program for supplying ships and equipment to Britain – steadily eroded this sense of isolationism, and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 found Mainers prepared for U.S. entry into the conflict.

Given its proximity to Europe and its excellent harbor, Portland quickly became a focus for naval operations in the North Atlantic. By late 1941 Portland was guarded by several six-inch gun batteries on the outlying islands, connected by a network of observation posts and telephones.

Defense units laid steel mesh across the harbor mouth, strengthened Fort Williams with massive concrete walls and ammo bunkers, and mounted a pair of battleship-class 16-inch guns on Peaks Island, each with its own turret and reinforced concrete bunker.

The city became a key anchorage for the Atlantic destroyer fleet, which guarded convoys headed to Europe, and the harbor was crowded with aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, tankers, and supply ships.

The federal government constructed a huge refueling station on Long Island, and to avoid carrying oil by sea, Standard Oil of New Jersey constructed a pipeline from Portland to Montreal, making Portland one of the largest oil ports on the East Coast.

Between 1940 and 1941 defense spending in Maine leapt from $130 million to $500 million, reducing unemployment dramatically.

William S. Newell of Bath Iron Works in conjunction with Todd Shipbuilding Company won a British contract for 30 cargo vessels to be built at an entirely new facility in South Portland. Newell constructed a second shipyard in South Portland to build Liberty ships for the U.S. merchant marine and merged the two into the New England Shipbuilding Corporation.

The impact of this defense spending spread quickly through Portland, boosting real estate values and quickening the pace of business along Congress Street. Portland grew from 73,643 people in 1940 to 77,634 in 1949, while South Portland was transformed from a quiet residential neighborhood into a bustling industrial city.

The increases in employment brought new homes and apartments and activities for workers and sailors on liberty at two United Service Organizations (USO) centers as well as at city recreation centers in the Chamber of Commerce building, the Masonic Temple, the YWCA, the Armory gymnasium, the Boys Club, and in several churches.

Maine's "Blue Laws," requiring bars to close at midnight, created some tensions, as did segregation of African-American sailors in the recreational centers.

During the Depression Bath Iron Works had built several destroyers for the U.S. Navy, and with the wartime build-up the firm expanded its operations to East Brunswick as well as South Portland. In all, the company employed more than 30,000 workers at its peak, including nearly 4,000 women, and it launched 266 ships.

In addition to the BIW facilities, firms like Goudy and Stevens, Hodgdon Brothers, and Harvey F. Gamage of Boothbay Harbor and the Camden Shipbuilding and Marine Railway Company in Camden built wooden torpedo patrol boats, minesweepers, and auxiliary vessels for the Navy.

German U-boats harried convoys carrying supplies to Europe and frequently reached the East Coast, where they were a grave threat to merchant shipping.

At Brunswick, the Navy constructed an air station in 1943 primarily to train Royal Canadian Air Force pilots and radar operators, but also to launch around-the-clock patrols for submarines.

When these operations first began, the station offered only a half-mile runway with soft-tar sides and no hangers or operations tower. Pilots prepared for flight in a utility room furnished with packing boxes and a pot-bellied stove. Later the base supported auxiliary landing fields at Sanford, Lewiston, and Rockland.

When it was deactivated in 1946, the station was leased to the University of Maine and Bowdoin College to accommodate a flood of new students enrolled under the G.I. bill. The facility later hosted the Brunswick Flying Service, a skating rink, and a garage before it was re-commissioned in 1951 as an Air Force Control and Warning Facility.

In Bangor, Dow Air Force Base was built in 1941 for a squadron of twin-engine P-38s, P-40s, P-43s and P-66s, subsequently sent to Europe as bomber escorts. Dow also was closed after the war, then reactivated as a wing of the Strategic Air Command before final closure in 1968.

Later the facility became the Bangor International Airport. Because of its proximity to Europe and the long runway built for SAC bombers, the airport attracted international as well as domestic flights.

The war did not change Maine politics; the state voted against Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 and 1944. Maine and Vermont were the only two states in the country to have voted against Roosevelt in all four presidential elections.

Maine stood apart from the rest of the nation in rejecting the New Deal and in its relative economic stability during the Great Depression, and ironically, it remained apart from national trends when America emerged from the war into an era of unprecedented economic prosperity.

Maine's leading industries – shipbuilding, fishing, shoemaking, leather, lumber, and textiles – continued to decline in the postwar era.

With the election of Edmund S. Muskie in 1954, Maine re-entered the national political framework as several Democratic governors were elected in traditionally Republican northern states.

But it would not be until the 1970s that Maine's economic condition reflected the general prosperity of the nation at large. Until then, Maine struggled to modernize its tradition-bound economy, a place somewhat apart from the nation as a whole.