Blog Mirror: A Hundred Years Ago: 1919 Advice About Substituting Foods in U.S. to Help Needy Children Abroad

A look at the immediate post World War One World:

1919 Advice About Substituting Foods in U.S. to Help Needy Children Abroad

It's interesting how, in our American memory, when World War One ended, it just ended.  Looking back we just recall the end of the war as the turn to peace and all that was good about that.

But in reality, millions of Europeans were refugees.  We've published some photos of them here recently.  A lot of the French were attempting to return to their homes only to find them destroyed.  French farmers who had been driven out of their lands due to the fighting returned in many cases to find a totally altered landscape (a landscape that we'll be posting some images of here soon).

And this wasn't limited to Europe.  In the Middle East millions were adrift.  An entire people, the Armenians, had been in peril since the beginning of the war and many had been victims of genocide.  Those who had survived had been driven east and west, with some ending up as far away as the United States.  In the region of their homeland, the opportunity to break free from former colonial masters meant border combat with other regions doing the same which were their neighbors.

Fighting raged on elsewhere also.  In Germany fighting went on in individual cities and towns over what Germany was to become.  Germany had been on the knife's edge of starvation in the Fall of 1918 and now that the war had ended, the situation was somewhat alleviated, but only somewhat.  On Germany's borders a war raged with Polish revolutionaries, supported by a newly born Poland, over whether certain regions would be Polish or German.  Likewise, the Poles were fighting off a Czech invasion from the south over which border regions would be Polish or Czech. At the same time the Poles were fighting the Ukrainians over large sections of their frontier due to the rarely noted ethnic fact that the Poles simply grade into the Ukrainians, and the two people are closely related.  And the Poles were fighting off a Red Army invasion as well, part of an effort to impose a Communist regime on Poland and whose Red Army commander, Trotsky, imagined might carry his Red forces all the way to Berlin.

Russia was in an enormously violent civil war, which the United States and the other Allies were participating in, in varying degrees. And not doing too well at the century removed moment either.  The Russian Civil War would prove to be a human tragedy of epic proportions, in no small part because both sides became vicious in regard to the other, and the Communist became genocidal nearly from the onset.  Millions would die in that war, following the Great War in which millions of Russians had died.  Millions more would die due to Communist violence, purges and acts of intentional starvation after the Civil War ended in a tragedy that, for the Russians, started in 1914 and would really only abate just before 1950.

The Reds were also fighting in the Baltics, with all the Baltic nations struggling to break away from the Russian Empire, aided in their struggle mostly by the British, but to a degree by the Finns, who had succeeded in that effort and who had fought their own, brief, very violent, civil war in the closing days of World War One.  All over western Russia and what had been parts of the Russian Empire stranded German troops had yet to return home, with some them still serving in combat at that against Red forces they'd helped come about through their late Imperial government's ill thought out intrigues. 

In a bit of a foretaste of what was to come for all of the remaining European colonial powers after World War Two, the United Kingdom was suffering a rebellion in its oldest colony, Ireland.  The UK was pursuing a policy of ignoring the newly formed Irish Dail, but the IRA wasn't ignoring the UK and had already commenced a terrorist rebellion against it.

Things were a mess.

Back from the dead. Was Lex Anteinternet: Voter cross over bill bits the dust. . sort of.

A few days we reported this:

Voter cross over bill bits the dust. . sort of.

Just as we predicted, we might note.

This is the bill in its original form, which would have prevented voters from switching parties a certain number of days prior to the primary election.  An amended version of the bill, which would create an open non partisan primary, lives on, providing a lesson about those starting wars, perhaps, never knowing where they might end, although we predict that one will fail as well.

We were too fast, it turns out.

Due to political machinations, in which the leadership of the GOP in the Senate moved this bill from committee to committee until it found a committee that liked it, this bill is back.

That's correct.

This bill hadn't made it out of committee in the Senate. And then it didn't make it out of another committee.  Not it has.  It made it out of the Agriculture Committee.

Whatever a person thinks about this bill, that's really more than a little bit odd and is one of the thins that makes average folks not too keen on politics.  You'd think the Senate Agriculture Committee would deal with, well, agriculture.

Not always, apparently.

The other bill on this topic, regarding open primaries, has since died since the earlier entry.

A Bill update. Perpetual Mountain Daylight Savings Time Passes the House

We most recently discussed this bill here;

Lex Anteinternet: A Bill update.: So, what's passed and what's dead in the Legislature? Well, that'd be a long list, so we're only going to do a select few ...

As we noted in that post:

A Bill update.

So, what's passed and what's dead in the Legislature?

Well, that'd be a long list, so we're only going to do a select few that we've mentioned or should have mentioned, but the list is interesting, hopefully.

HB 14, which supposedly set Wyoming on Daylight Saving Time year around has passed its second reading.

Except it doesn't do that actually.

The Bill is set out below, but what it actually does is put us on Central time year around, apparently.  The bill is set out below.  That'd basically be the same, of course, as being on daylight savings time year around.

But wait. . . three neighboring states would have to do the same thing or nothing becomes of it.  So. . . unless half our neighboring states take the same action. . . .

Well, it's passed the House and it's on to the Senate.

Stay tuned.

The you don't have to build that here bill.

HB277 is yet another bill in this year's session that seeks to take on a Teton County land ordinance and repeal it legislatively.  So once again, in a state where conservatives generally espouse the concept of acting locally as much as possible, Teton County is regarded as having gone in the wrong direction through its ordinances and some in the legislature would like to claw back some of that power.

In this case, it's a Teton County reg that requires the construction of affordable housing.

It's long been the case that Teton County has had a housing crisis.  Starting in the 1970s the tightly constricted valley began to change from a Wyoming mountain town with an economy based on outdoor recreation, with a remnant of agriculture, into one that became the residence of the rich.  Over time, even small houses became unaffordable for regular people.  At the same time, there remained a fair amount of work for tradesmen and service class individuals given the alteration of the town.  That remains the case now.  So ironically, while Jackson has become largely unaffordable for regular people to live in, the town requires a lot of service class and blue collar workers, a fair number of whom are coincidentally Hispanic.

The town has politically altered over the years as well and is slowly becoming one of two or three counties in the state that fairly reliably elects Democrats to office.  This has reflected itself in its county commission, which has elected some relatively progressive provisions trying to address land issues, one of which is housing for the less than rich.

Well, now a collection of legislatures want to keep counties from having provisions like this.  The primary sponsor of the bill is a freshman house member who is also a real estate agent.

There's something disconcerting about the concept of the normal backers of local control being opposed to local control.  Usually the concept of local control is, at its roots, "you over there don't need to tell us here how to do things, we can do it ourselves and know what best to do".  If the same political element finds that it doesn't like what the locals say they want to do, that makes the entire argument rather weak.

2019

STATE OF WYOMING

19LSO-0707

HOUSE BILL NO. HB0277

Town and county development regulations-2.

Sponsored by: Representative(s) Duncan, Clem, Lindholm and Olsen and Senator(s) Bebout and Scott

A BILL

for

AN ACT relating to counties, cities and towns; modifying authority to impose zoning assessments; specifying applicability; and providing for an effective date.

Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:

Section 1.  W.S. 15‑1‑601 by creating new subsections (e) and (f) and 18‑5‑201 are amended to read:

15‑1‑601.  Regulations; scope and purpose; uniformity within authorized districts; to follow plan; objectives.

(e)  No regulation, ordinance, resolution, condition of development, comprehensive plan or subdivision plan shall include or require:

(i)  The direct or indirect allocation or dedication of a percentage of existing or newly constructed residential or commercial units for affordable or workforce housing; or

(ii)  Any monetary exaction for:

(A)  The acquisition of land for affordable or workforce housing; or

(B)  The construction, dedication or rehabilitation of affordable or workforce housing.

(f)  Nothing in subsection (e) of this section shall limit the authority of the governing body of any city or town to implement an incentive based program designed to increase the construction, dedication or rehabilitation of affordable and workforce housing.

18‑5‑201.  Authority vested in board of county commissioners; inapplicability of chapter to incorporated cities and towns and mineral resources.

(a)  To promote the public health, safety, morals and general welfare of the county, each board of county commissioners may regulate and restrict the location and use of buildings and structures and the use, condition of use or occupancy of lands for residence, recreation, agriculture, industry, commerce, public use and other purposes in the unincorporated area of the county. However, nothing in W.S. 18‑5‑201 through 18‑5‑208 shall be construed to contravene any zoning authority of any incorporated city or town and no zoning resolution or plan shall prevent any use or occupancy reasonably necessary to the extraction or production of the mineral resources in or under any lands subject thereto.  No regulation, ordinance, resolution, condition of development, comprehensive plan or subdivision plan shall include or require:

(i)  The direct or indirect allocation or dedication of a percentage of existing or newly constructed residential or commercial units for affordable or workforce housing; or

(ii)  Any monetary exaction for:

(A)  The acquisition of land for affordable or workforce housing; or

(B)  The construction, dedication or rehabilitation of affordable or workforce housing.

(b)  Nothing in this section shall limit the authority of the board of county commissioners to implement an incentive based program designed to increase the construction, dedication or rehabilitation of affordable and workforce housing.

Section 2.  This act shall apply to all existing and future regulations, ordinances, resolutions and conditions of development.

Section 3.  This act is effective immediately upon completion of all acts necessary for a bill to become law as provided by Article 4, Section 8 of the Wyoming  Constitution.

(END)

Thursday, January 30, 1919. Like a bad penny. . .

he keeps turning up.

Pancho Villa, that is.  Back in the headlines again.

And while distiller were reported to take on the topic of the vote for the 18th Amendment in several states, coffee consumption was reported to be up, due to Prohibition, in Puerto Rico.

Lex Anteinternet: American Service Organizations During the Great War. More on the YMCA. . .and smoking.

Pipe smoking French soldier.

I ran this item back in September;

Lex Anteinternet: American Service Organizations During the Great Wa...: Some time ago we published this photo: Gov. C. E. Milliken addressing new soldiers at Y.M.C.A. Hut 24, Fort Devons, Massachusetts. Augus...

One of the organizations I referenced in this entry was the YMCA.  What I didn't realize when I posted that item is that World War One wrecked, for a time, the reputation of the YMCA.

I learned that from listening to a Pritzer Military History podcast on smoking.  I did know that World War One popularized the cigarette, which before the war had been seen as an effeminate foppish thing to smoke.  The war changed that massively as cigarette companies gave out vast numbers of cigarettes during the war.

The sold vast number too, and soldiers came to crave them.  They weren't issued in a ration, at least at first, and so they had to rely on people with stateside and rear area connections.  Enter the YMCA men.

The YMCA, being an organization that supported the Muscular Christianity movement was more or less actually opposed to smoking.  But YMCA men, wanting to help the soldiers, bought cigarettes and then resold them to the troops.  The resale was necessary but soldiers didn't appreciate that, and felt they were being gouged. 

After the war, the YMCA had to over come that.

It's cold. It's January.

Child in cold weather, 1912.

Apparently this is news.

I don't really believe it is.

Every year it seems the national news comes on with some absurd story in December through February about it being record cold.  As in this is the worst stretch of cold since the Pleistocene.

Bull.

American soldiers in Arachangel, 1919.

It gets cold every year in the winter. Some winters are a lot colder than others, and we can debate the trends and why that is, but just because some person with a Metro Geo can't get out of his driveway in New Jersey in January doesn't mean its the coldest January since the history of Januaries.  It's just January.

Some of this, by this point, I'm pretty sure is due to confirmation bias, which gets me to another topic.

I've read more than one account that claims the World War One years or the World War Two years were the coldest years in Europe in eons.  I don't believe it.

American ambulance stuck in the snow, Europe 1917.

I do believe that if you spent four years rotating in and out of sodden trenches it would seem to be the wettest and coldest four years you'd ever seen.  Sure, if you otherwise spent January in your hovel in Dusseldorf or Wickham, it's freaking cold.  Likewise, if you walked from Omaha Beach to the Rhine in 1944 and 1945, much of that would have seemed really, really cold, particularly if you'd otherwise been working in a Bethlehem Steel plant where it's as hot as the surface temperature of the sun in January.

American soldier drawing water from a stream, December 1944.

But that doesn't mean it was the coldest set of years in all time.

Moroccan soldier in Italy, 1944.  Bet the weather seemed really cold to him.

But, you are saying.  I don't live in Dusseldorf and haven't been sent to the trenches.  Hah!

Nope, the logic still applies.

Unless you live in a draft house insulated with newspaper and heated by wood or chunks of coal, and spend the better part of your day working outdoors everyday, or walk to work from your ill heated apartment to work in an ill heated office and walk home at the end of the day, you really don't experience the cold weather that much anyhow.

You would have, if you'd lived a century or more ago.

You don't.  You probably live in a nicely heated home and travel in a nice warm car or nice warm train and don't actually get out that much.  So a cold snap is really remarkable for those short periods of time in which you are out.

But its not really novel, in a real sense.

Ending Budget Sessions

As most Wyomingites know, ever session of the legislature isn't a full session.  Every other year is a budget session. This year is a regular session.

A bill is in the legislature to eliminate budget sessions and make them regular sessions. 

There's solid logic to this.  The budget sessions have become regular sessions in spite of themselves.  They're more constrained in time, but legislators nonetheless try to run through a bunch of regular bills through them. Why bother with the charade is the logic, and it's pretty solid logic.

Having said that, for careful observers there's always a certain sense of dread about the full session as the legislature has more time to monkey with stuff.  Making that occur only every other year provides a little relief.  And on that, the legislature isn't actually required to have a budget session, its just allowed to.

It'd be nice, in an odd way, to have the legislature actually skip the budget sessions for awhile before just giving up on them. That would make the general session really packed, but maybe that would also keep out a lot of the bills that really waste time by being simply unpassable.  But passing on budget sessions is asking for more restraint than most deliberative bodies can muster.

Anyhow, there's a bill out there.

SF159. The good faith effort to sell act

There have been a lot of interesting bills in this legislative session.

Of course, I suppose there are in every session, really.  But this has seen some unusual ones.

SF159 would require companies that are closing coal fired power plants to make a good faith effort to sell them or it would deprive them of the ability to pass the cost of building a new power generation facility on to the consumers. 

Obviously, this is a bill designed to keep coal fired plants in operation in Wyoming.

This caused me to realize I don't actually know how many coal fired power plants there are in Wyoming.  More than I likely know of, I'm sure.  I can think of several, but I'm sure that more exist.  There has been a national trend towards closing them, although there has not been in Wyoming so far, which of course features power plants that are close to their source of coal, at least by rail, no matter where they are.

National trends are likely to determine the long term outcome of these plants in Wyoming.  For the time being they're likely safe from being closed except in the case of obsolesce or material decline, which is always a concern for older plants.

2019

STATE OF WYOMING

19LSO-0701

SENATE FILE NO. SF0159

New opportunities for Wyoming coal fired generation.

Sponsored by: Senator(s) Dockstader, Bebout and Driskill

A BILL

for

AN ACT relating to public utilities; limiting the recovery of costs for the retirement of coal fired generation facilities; providing a process for the sale of an otherwise retiring coal fired electric generation facility; exempting a person purchasing an otherwise retiring coal fired electric generation facility from regulation as a public utility; and providing for an effective date.

Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:

Section 1.  W.S. 37‑2‑133 and 37‑3‑116 are created to read:

37‑2‑133.  Exemption for purchase of coal fired generation facilities that would otherwise have been retired.

(a)  Except as otherwise provided in this section, the provisions of this chapter and chapters 1 and 3 of this title shall not apply to a person who is not a public utility and who contracts to purchase an otherwise retiring coal fired electric generation facility from a public utility under W.S. 37‑3‑116. Except as otherwise provided in this section, the provisions of this chapter and chapters 1 and 3 of this title shall not apply to a person who is not a public utility and who contracts to purchase an otherwise retiring coal fired electric generation facility from a public utility under W.S. 37‑3‑116 and who further contracts to sell electric generation services from that facility to a retail customer of a public utility, provided that the retail purchaser of the electric generation services remains a customer of a public utility for purposes of obtaining backup service. As used in this section, "backup service" means an electric service provided by a public utility that replaces electricity ordinarily generated by the person who purchased an otherwise retiring coal fired electric generation facility under W.S. 37‑3‑116. Backup service provided to a person who also purchases electric generation and associated transmission service from a person who purchased an otherwise retiring coal fired electric generation facility under W.S. 37‑3‑116 shall not include charges for transmission service to the extent the person who purchased an otherwise retiring coal fired electric generation facility under W.S. 37‑3‑116 already pays the public utility for transmission service to deliver electricity to that customer.

(b)  The person who is selling electric generation and associated transmission services to a retail customer of a public utility through a contract entered into under this section shall not be subject to regulation as a public utility under this chapter and chapters 1 and 3 of this title except that:

(i)  The person who is selling electric generation and associated transmission services through a contract entered into under this section to a retail customer shall file a copy of any such contract with the public service commission in a manner consistent with W.S. 37‑3‑111; and

(ii)  The intrastate retail revenues received by any person who is selling electric generation and associated transmission services through a contract entered into under this section shall be subject to the uniform assessment provisions of W.S. 37‑2‑106, 37‑2‑107, 37‑2‑108 and 37‑2‑109.

37‑3‑116.  Limitation for recovery of costs associated with electric generation built to replace retiring coal fired generation facility.

(a)  Notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, the rates charged by an electric public utility shall not include any recovery of or earnings on the capital costs associated with new electric generation facilities built, in whole or in part, to replace the electricity generated from one (1) or more coal fired generating units or plants located in Wyoming and retired on or after January 1, 2022, unless the commission has determined that the public utility that owned the retired coal fired electric generation facility made a good faith effort to sell the facility to another person prior to its retirement and that the public utility received no reasonable offer to purchase the facility.

(b)  In determining whether the public utility made a good faith effort to sell the retired coal fired electric generation facility under this section the commission shall consider:

(i)  Whether the public utility provided sufficient time prior to the facility's retirement for potential purchasers to evaluate purchasing the facility;

(ii)  Whether the public utility used reasonable efforts to make potential purchasers aware of the opportunity to purchase the facility; and

(iii)  Whether the public utility reasonably evaluated any offers received by the public utility for the purchase of the facility.

(c)  In determining whether an offer to purchase a coal fired electric generation facility under this section was reasonable the commission shall consider:

(i)  Whether accepting the offer to purchase the retired facility would have reduced costs to the public utility's customers as compared to retiring the facility;

(ii)  Whether accepting the offer to purchase the retired facility would have reduced risks to the public utility's customers as compared to retiring the facility including any diminished environmental remediation risks; and

(iii)  Whether accepting the offer to purchase the retired facility would have been in the public interest.

(d)  In determining whether an offer to purchase the retired electric generation facility was reasonable the commission shall not consider any impacts to the public utility associated with potential lost revenues from the sale of electric generation to customers who could have elected to purchase power from the person purchasing the electric generation facility under W.S. 37‑2‑133.

(e)  Upon application by a public utility, the commission may approve procedures for the solicitation and review of offers to purchase an otherwise retiring electric generation facility in advance of a proposed retirement. If the public utility follows the procedures approved by the commission to solicit and review offers to purchase an otherwise retiring electric generation facility under this subsection, there shall be no limitation under this section for recovery of costs or earnings associated with electric generation built to replace a retired coal fired electric generation facility.

(f)  Any agreement between a public utility and another person for the sale of an otherwise retiring coal fired electric generation facility shall be approved by the commission. In reviewing the agreement the commission shall consider:

(i)  Whether the proposed purchaser has, or has contracted for, financial, technical and managerial abilities sufficient to reasonably operate and maintain the facility;

(ii)  Whether the proposed purchaser has, or has contracted for, financial, technical and managerial abilities sufficient to reasonably decommission and retire the facility if and to the extent the facility is decommissioned and retired;

(iii)  Whether the proposed purchaser has, or has contracted for, financial, technical and managerial abilities sufficient to reasonably satisfy any environmental obligations associated with the operation, maintenance or potential retirement of the facility; and

(iv)  If the coal fired electric generation facility is comprised of one (1) or more generation units at a larger power plant where the public utility will continue to own and operate one (1) or more generation units, whether the proposed purchaser and the public utility have made reasonable contractual arrangements for the sharing of thecosts associated with any joint or common facilities at the plant.

Section 2.  This act is effective July 1, 2019.

(END)

Wednesday, January 29, 1919. Colonies in issue, Secret Treaties Exposed, Immigration to be halted, State Prohibition Bill Advances as 18th Amendment Certified, Mexican Rebels reported defeated again, and Yanks can Marry By Mail.

English Inns at Court being used as an American Navy rest barracks, Red Cross supplies being unloaded.  January 29, 1919.

There was a lot to report on on this Wednesday, January 19, 1919.

The Peace Treaty was struggling on what to do with the colonies of the defeated.  Giving them nation status, unless they were European, seemed out of the question, so League of Nation mandates were being argued about instead.

The 18th Amendment was certified by Congress as ratified, but the State was still going to pass a prohibition bill anyhow, showing that the desire to act on the already acted upon purposelessly already existed. There was no reason to pass any Prohibition bill in Wyoming, but the Legislature was going to do it anyway.

And American soldiers could marry their sweethearts by mail, it was decided, exchanging vows by correspondence, apparently.  The validity of that in certain faiths, it might be noted, would be questionable.

As, in most cases, would be the purpose.  Separated by an ocean, the couples were not going to reunite until Johnny Came Marching Home anyhow.  And if he was going to instead find the Belle de France in la belle France. . . well that was probably going to happen anyhow as well.  About the only reason to do this would be to resolve questions of impending legitimacy, which perhaps would have been a concern in some instances.

And the economy was tanking while there were vast numbers of Europeans who were refugees, which no doubt put focus on immigration and which was accordingly being addressed in Congress.

Among the refugees were the Armenians.  Their plight was well known but it had not been addressed.

Apparently, to my huge surprise, leaving for Florida in the winter was already a thing.  I would not have guessed that at all, once again showing the application of Holscher's First Law of History.

Elsewhere, Mexican rebels were reported as defeated, once again.

New counties were a hot issue in the Legislature as well.

And a Laramie policeman was compelled to draw his pistol when in s scuffle with somebody who was thought to be speaking German.

Laramie, fwiw, had a German language church early on and, I think, at this time, so a Laramie resident who could speak German wouldn't be that odd.  Let alone that its a university town where, presumably, some people were still learning the language.

"An American soldier wounded by shrapnel is being given blood plasma transfusion by Pfc. Harvey White, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in Sicily" July 1943. But the reason that I posted this photo was. . .

for the Italian villagers behind the scene.

What a change between 1945 and now.

I've commented on it before, but the Italian women and girls behind the soldier aren't shoeless because there's a war on.  They're shoeless because they're Italians.  Italy was dirt poor.

And far from glamorous.  Indeed, Italy had the reputation as a backwater with spectacular architectural and cultural exceptions.  But by the 1950s that view was changing and by the 1960s Italy was thought of as glamorous. And rather obviously something changed not only in the depictions of Italy, but in Italy itself.

January 28, 1919. The rights of small nations. . . Near Beer. . . and Girls.

French refugees receiving Red Cross materials on this day in 1919, in Riems.

One of the things that the Allies claimed to be fighting for, during World War One, was "the rights of small nations".

Not too surprisingly, which of those nations had rights, in the views of colonial powers, which all of the European powers were, including tiny Belgium, came to be an immediate topic of the Paris Peace Conference.  Indeed, in some ways, it went right off the rails, right from the start, for that reason.

Japan was going to be getting former German colonies, and it had the backing of other colonial nations in that.

This would be in the form of mandates, ultimately, meaning that they didn't really have colonial status.  But for nations that would be subject to that status, the difference wasn't really particularly clear.

A rosy glow was being put on the Red defeat of the Allied troops in norther Russia as well.  They were retreating, hardly a cause for celebration.

Well, at least there'd be Near Beer to drink anyhow.

And the troops would soon be back at Ft. D. A. Russell, which was good news for Cheyenne.

Although, if the Wyoming State Tribune was correct, those returning American troops might not be as enamored with the girl next store as they once had been. . .