LOCAL GOVERNMENT

One spot where town and gown are bound to rub not only elbows but noses is in the field of government of the town and precinct of Hanover. For the uninitiated let us point out that the precinct, which comprises roughly the village of Hanover, has as a fire-district had a separate existence within the town since 1855, and took on its modern form with expanded governmental powers under the legislative charter of 1901, amended in 1935. Just now, interestingly enough, legislative action is being pushed to put precinct and town back into one governmental package.

This question, however, need not detain us here for it is the general situation past and present with which we are concerned. To come at once to the nub of the matter, it can with truth be stated that in the matter of local government town and gown in Hanover have always gotten on reasonably well together. In the nineteenth century all New England towns had some social stratifications and these lines were apt to be a bit more marked in a college town where there was naturally a larger percentage of professional and professorial folk in comparison with the mercantile, artisan and farmer group. The fact that for many years Hanover's town meeting was held in Hanover Center or in Etna helped to give the rural and agricultural interests a friendlier meeting ground and to de-emphasize the role of the more intellectual Hanover Plain. In more recent years all meetings have been held in the college village of Hanover.

In the earliest times, in fact, all three Selectmen often came from that eastern area. This was due in part to the desire of the first Wheelock to keep the college district under his control and somewhat separate from the jurisdiction of town officers. Then, for about 150 years, it was the custom to choose two Selectmen from outside the college district and the other one from within it. In more recent times, due to the heavier concentration of population in the college area, it has been the other way around. But, it was not until the 1920's that College personnel began to have any very significant representation on the Board of Selectmen.

One notices in the list of town officers the strong tendency - certainly not peculiar to Hanover - to entrust town affairs to the same small group of men. Many Hanover Selectmen have served for long periods, ranging up to 25 years, and the job of Town Clerk was sometimes occupied the better part of a lifetime. Jonathan Freeman 2nd held the office of clerk for 31 years and the famous George M. Bridgman for over 40 years.

At the present time the Moderators of all three political units of Hanover - town, precinct, and school district-are professors, and of the Selectmen two are professors and the third a farmer. It happens that at present all three Precinct Commissioners have no College connection - one being an engineer and surveyor, one a real-estate salesman with Gile and Company, and the third the proprietor of the popular Lou's Restaurant. The town treasurer, the town clerk, and the tax collector are women with little or no College connection and the board of supervisors of the check list includes a retired custodian and police officer from Etna, a retired professor, and the wife of a professor. The town finance committee usually includes more members with College affiliation than not but always includes one or two members who are not so affiliated. The distribution of personnel - town and gown — in these various posts is reasonably typical of the distribution in general and all reports testify to harmonious relations.

As is often the case in municipal government one of the flies in the political jelly is a person who holds no political office at all but may wield great power behind the scenes. In Hanover probably the chief representative of this type has been found in the person of the Treasurer of the College, going back for instance to Mills Olcott and continuing through the years. The custodian of college funds by virtue of his position is bound at times to hold a winning ace up his sleeve or at least to have a club or two and is reported at times to have played such cards at crucial points of a contest. Certainly there are members of the community, including a number with College connection, who feel the College in the last analysis always gets what it wants — but the situation makes this almost inevitable. The rapid expansion of the Mary Hitchcock Hospital and Clinic has introduced a healthy third factor into the municipal picture, and in spite of a tendency of medical people to avoid public office, representatives of Mary Hitchcock are gaining increasing recognition in community affairs.

There are always in any community a few uninhibited individuals, ranging from nit-wits and crackpots through stubborn folk to sincere people with an over-supply of crusading zeal, who can at times disrupt public meetings by their extended arguments and pleadings. Hanover has not enjoyed immunity from representatives in this category. One thinks for instance of Nat Woodward and Buster Brown who sometimes slowed up the conduct of town affairs, though on one famous occasion in the old Nugget the noon whistle, reminding Nat it was time to eat, led him to cut his remarks in the midst of a rambling sentence and to make his immediate and dignified exit. A former president of the Dartmouth National Bank, Perley Bugbee, could sometimes be difficult, and there have been others on the town side. Loyalty to my profession as a teacher deters me from specific reference on the gown side, but there have indeed been professors in Hanover who, in the words of an old-timer, proved themselves, in matters of public concern at least, to be "educated damn fools."

Death and taxes are often cited as the two great inevitables of life, and taxes, as you surely suspect, hold a prominent place in Hanover life and conversation. Taxes have been going up in Hanover and outspoken representatives of both town and gown are continually threatening to shake the dust of Hanover from their shoes, though few indeed have actually made this grand gesture.

Town, precinct, and school meetings are held annually in March and attract a goodly attendance. The older folks say town meetings are not what they used to be, and most of us agree that they are not and probably never were. There is today a greater pressure of business and less time for full and free debate about all the little details. There seem to be fewer characters to raise amusing questions, and debate is less personal and less embarrassing. Some of the business is more complicated in form and substance, and God knows larger sums of money are involved. But town government still remains at the rock-bottom of our democracy and represents in Hanover now, as indeed over the years, a very respectable example of the way town and gown can and do unite in defense of a common way of life.