MAINE: A Man's a Man for a1 Thai-

Back in the days of the horse & buggy, a man who waved his arms while negotiating turns in the State of Maine wouldn't necessarily have been yanked off to the booby hatch. A freeborn Republican American citizen had a right to act like a danged fool if he wanted to, as long as he didn't damage property. But since it would have been a waste of motion, with no sense to it, nobody did it. Horse knew where he was going anyhow, even if some of the drivers didn't.

After the automobile was invented, Maine saw no reason for changing this philosophy. Other states adopted hand signals, and "summer" people who came north in big shiny cars got to signaling in a familiar manner at crossroads. State of Mainers paid no heed. No law said a man had to tell the rest of the world his business. Some upstarts, to be sure, tried getting hand signals through the legislature on at least four different occasions. But each time the idea was turned down on the ground that Maine winters are so cold that a man shouldn't have to run his window down at every turn.

This year, however, after digesting the facts about the state's appalling accident rate, the legislature finally made hand signals the law in Maine. Last week State Police Chief Francis J. McCabe announced that he was "amazed and delighted" by the results. This did not mean that it was possible to tell what a Maine driver was going to do by watching him gesticulate.

In five weeks of practice, almost every body had worked out his own signals. But since it was impossible not to tramp, instinctively, on the brakes when the driver ahead began his alarming arm flapping, the accident toll was diminishing. In the face of the sternest handicaps, down-East individualism was still proving out.