Friday, September 15, 1911. Taft starts a trip.

"Fallen Monarch", September 15, 1911.  Mariposa Big Tree Grove

President Taft concluded his vacation at Beverly, Massachusetts and embarked on a 15,000 mile tour of 30 states.

Last edition:

Thursday, September 14, 1911. Stolypin shot.

Labels: 1910s, 1911, Ethnicities, La Matanza, Pyotr Stolypin, Russia, Texas, Texas (Laredo)

It happened in 1911.

A post more in keeping with the purpose of this site, as opposed to keeping track, for instance, of Donald Trump's mental decline or the eclipse of the United States as a serious nation.

After all, we're supposed to be focused on the 1890 to 1920 time frame here.

So, some focus on things 1911.

1.  The first one we've already covered, the Colt Government Model.

The M1911 is the greatest handgun of all time.

Everything Old is New Again. Yeoman's laws of History and Behavior and the U.S. Military Sidearm.

While it had been in the works for a few years (not many, really) the final version of John Browning's design for a .45 Automatic Colt Pistol handgun for the Army was adopted in 1911, as we recently covered.

Wednesday, March 29, 1911. The adoption of the M1911.

The Colt Government Model has never gone away, although there was a period of time after the service adopted the M9 in which it looked like it would.  It not only did not, it actually revived in the civilian and even military markets thereafter.  It's just too good of a design to leave.  Technologically, there hasn't been a single handgun design feature introduced after it that didn't already exist at the time, and there's never been anything to surpass it.

2.  Tony Lama Boots

Here's an odd one you wouldn't quite expect.

Anthony Lama was born to an immigrant family in Brooklyn just six months after his family arrived in the United States from Italy. By age 11 both of his parents had died and he apprenticed to a shoemaker in Syracuse, New York.  At age 16 he joined the U.S. Army illegally (he was underage) and, given that he had leatherworking skills he was assigned as a saddler in the cavalry.  Saddlers worked all sorts of leather at the time and were highly regarded for their leather working skills.  Lama, in that capacity, worked and repaired footgear.

After being discharged upon completion of his service, he stayed in El Paso where he continued to repair boots for servicemen. That soon spread into shoemaking.  He opened what was initially a small repair shot in the city in 1911.  His reputation was such that he was soon sought out by local cowboys and then entered the cowboy boot manufacturing business.

Showing somewhat the nature of the worldview of Catholics, in 1917 he married local Esther Hernandez, and therefore the family consisted of what Americans at the time regarded as two "races", Italian and Hispanic. By the 1930s it was making boots on a wholesale basis.  The family business was incorporated in 1946, showing the extent to which it had grown.  In 1990 it was bought by Justin boots, so it now belongs to another company, but the brand name and brand continues on.

I've had two pairs of Lama's over the years.  They were both very high shaft real cowboy boots and I liked them both.  One pair, with a very high heel, I still have, although they're really only useful for riding.

3.  The Maine Hunting Shoe.

L. L. Bean was the inventor of the Maine Hunting Shoe, and the shoe, which is really a boot, caused the company to come into existence the next year.

Rubber soled with a leather upper, they boot came about as Bean himself was tired of getting cold wet feet while hunting.  The design, which was initially extremely high topped, took off rapidly, allowing for Bean to turn the shoe into an enterprise.  

The boot has remained popular for decades, indeed, well over a century, which belies how revolutionary it was at the time.  In 1911 outdoor boots were normally hobnailed, if in fact they just didn't have simple leather soles.  Rubber soles shoes had first appeared in the 1860s, but they were problematic and for hte most part, outdoor boots, did not use them until they started to be introduced in earnest in the 1920s.  Even as late as World War Two every major army other than the US Army used hobnailed boots.

The Maine Hunting Shoe proved to be really popular in the niche in which it occupied.  During World War Two it was adopted by the U.S. Army as the "Shoe Pack", something my father always referred to them as.  At some point, and I'm not sure when, these boots evolved into the popular insulated boot of similar construction.  Apparently some shoe packs had insulated insoles in World War Two so it must have been no later than that period.  During the Korean War the insulated style was widely issued.  The boots, while designed by Bean, were largely manufactured by other companies.

I have two pairs, one of which is a Cabela's knock off.  My good pair are like the originals, very high topped.  I actually bought them some time in the 1980s for duck hunting, as I lacked a dog and found myself frequently getting into the water to retrieve ducks, and I otherwise was doing a fair amount of stomping around in wet terrain.  They're great for that.  I've known some people who really favored the shoe variant of it, which I've never owned.

4.  The M1911 Campaign Hat.

The M1911 was the last felt campaign hat to be issued by the U.S. Army and, like the M1911 pistol, it's never gone away.

 M1911 type campaign hat, of the original pattern with the three rows of brim stitching, but actually a nice contemporary version, soldiering on as an outdoorsman's hat.

Campaign hats are a type of broad brimmed hat adopted for military use.  In most instances, they very closely resemble broad brimmed hats common in their culture of origin, and in some instances there's no difference at all.  This is pretty much the case with the M1911 campaign hat.

Broad brimmed hats have been used by the Army since there was an Army.  Usually the M1858 "Hardee" hat is cited as the first example, but it really isn't.  During the American Revolution soliders commonly used them, with some of them being "cocked" and some not.  The cocked ones are the best remembered in the example of the "tricorner" hat, but you can find examples where only one side was cocked or there was no cock at all.  

Contrary to common assumption, Congress completely disbanded the Army after the Revolution, choosing to rely on state militia's for ground troops instead.  It wasn't until the Northwest Indian War that it came back into existence.  1794 ought to be regarded as the actual birthdate of the U.S. Army, since there's been an Army since then.

I'm not an expert in 18th Century military uniforms, and for that reason I can't really say when the tricorner went out of favor.  What I can say is that the Army generally followed European uniform patterns after that, and it wasn't until the Mexican War that the Army really determined that European military headgear was, well, stupid.  After the Mexican War the Army adopted the Hardee Hat, which was a campaign hat, which had originally been contemplated for mounted troops.  It officially came in as an Army wide dress hat in 1858,  About the same time the Army adopted the kepi, with those first coming in during the early 1850s.  The kepi is a pretty simple hat and perhaps we'll deal with it elsewhere, but some deficiencies must have been noted early on as in 1858 the Army also adopted the M1858 "forage cap" which was quite similar, but larger, and which could serve as sort of a wool bucket for foraging.

In spite of being a dress hat, the Hardee hat did see use in the field as a campaign hat, with it frequently being reshaped by the user so that its original shape was practically unrecognizable.  Additionally, during the war thousands of troops on both sides chose to wear broad brimmed felt hats rather than official kepis or forage caps as they simply liked them better.

After the Civil War the Army adopted a broad brimmed campaign hat in 1872, the M1872, which was one of the odder official campaign hats in that it was designed so that its substantial brim could be folded up on both sides, sort of like 19th Century naval officers hats.  The hat wasn't hugely popular and troops often bought their own more substantial hats.  The 1872 hat yielded to the 1876 hat, and from there a series of short brimmed nutria fur campaign hats that went from black to tan in color as the 20th Century approached with the last official version being the M1895.  During the entire period, however, soldiers routinely bought private purchase broad brimmed hats of better quality, with the same also being true of boots, and even trousers.

A popular civilian style of "cowboy hat" was the Montana Peak, with it being particularly popular in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century.  The style was used by the Boer War Canadian volunteer cavalry unit the Strathconas and the North West Mounted Police picked it up unofficially, until 1904 when they officially adopted the style  The U.S Army adopted the style on September 8, 1911, with the ridges pointed differently than Mounties variant and the brim being shorter.  The Marine Corps adopted the design in 1912.  New Zealand's army, following an internal example of some New Zealand militia units, adopted it in 1916.

In every service unit which has adopted it, it remains in use.  It was universal issue in the U.S. Army until 1917, when the helmet was introduced and the Army started to issue overseas garrison cap, reflecting that in combat troops were now wearing the helmet and the big hat was awkward to store, but it returned to general issue in 1919 and remained in general issue until some point in 1940.  During World War Two it remained an official item but was not generally issued, except to cavalrymen.  Following the war it remained in use, but only for rifle and pistol teams, however, in 1964 it returned and was also issued to Drill Instructors.  This followed the example of the Marine Corps which had also stopped general issue of the M1912 during World War Two, but which kept it on for marksmanship units.  The Marines adopted it for Drill Instructors starting in 1956.  A variant was later adopted in blue for Air Force Drill Instructors.  Due to the advances in hearing protection, marksmanship units have abandoned the design as it does not readily accommodate the same, for now. 

Wednesday, March 8, 1916. Villa crosses the border.

Pancho Villa and about 400 of his men crossed the Mexican border near Columbus New Mexico.

The town had a U.S. Army garrison of 600.  

The town was also the home of Sam Ravel, a man to whom Villa had given money to buy arms but who had not delivered, although that is unlikely to have been the reason for the attack, as we discussed here:

The Columbus Raid. Why did it occur?

Ottoman forces stopped a much larger British force attempting to relieve Kut.

The sledging party of the second arm of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was reduced to three walking members during their return trek from Mount Hope in the Antarctic.

Last edition:

Tuesday, March 7, 1916. Villa close to the border.

Labels: 1910s, 1916, boats and ships, British Army, Egypt, Mexican Border War, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Pancho Villa, Royal Navy, Senussi

Wednesday, November 25, 1874. Joe Gans

Joe Gans was born in Baltimore Maryland.  He was the greatest lightweight boxer of all time.  

He died of tuberculosis at age 35 on August 10, 1910.  His tombstone reads:

I was born in the city of Baltimore in the year 1874, and it might be well to state at this time that my right name is Joseph Gant, not Gans. However, when I became an object of newspaper publicity, some reporter made a mistake and my name appeared as Joe Gans, and as Joe Gans it remained ever since.

Last edition:

Tuesday, November 24, 1874. Barbed Wire Patented.

Labels: 1870s, 1874, Agriculture, technology

Seats for female employees.

§ 5815. Failure to provide seats for female employees.  

Every person or corporation employing females in any manufacturing , mechanical or mercantile establishment in the state of Wyoming shall provide suitable seats for females so employed, and shall permit the use of such seats by them when they are not necessarily engaged in the active duties for which they are employed. Any person or corporation who shall violate the provisions of this section, shall upon conviction thereof, be considered guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine of not less than ten dollars, nor more than thirty dollars for each and every offense . [ L. 1901 , ch . 33 , §§ 1 , 2. ] 

Wyoming Statutes, 1910. 

OROZCO by SK GUNS and Pascual Orozco himself.

Wow, that's a wild commemorative.

Pascual Orozco was a Mexican Revolutionary who originally supported Madero before falling out with him.  He was of immediate Basque descent, something we tend not to think about in regard to Mexico, which is in fact more ethnically diverse than we commonly imagine.  He was an early recruit to Madero's 1910 revolution, and was a natural military leader, and could be rather morbid.  After his January 2, 1911, victory at Cañón del Mal Paso he ordered the dead Federal soldiers stripped and sent the uniforms to Presidente Díaz with a note that read, "Ahí te van las hojas, mándame más tamales" ("Here are the wrappers, send me more tamales.").

On May 10, 1911 Orozco and Pancho Villa seized Ciudad Juárez, against Madero's orders, a victory which caused Díaz to briefly resign the presidency.  Madero would naively choose to negotiate with the regime, which resulted in The Treaty of Ciudad Juárez allowing for the resignations of Díaz and his vice president, allowing them to go into exile, establishing an Interim Presidency under Francisco León de la Barra, and keeping the Federal Army intact.

Like Zapata, he went into rebellion against the Madero government, which he felt had betrayed the revolution.  He openly declared revolt on March 3, 1912, financing it with his own money and confiscated livestock sold in Texas.  His forces were known as the Orozquistas and the Colorados (the Reds). They defeated Federal troops in Chihuahua under José González Salas. Madero in turn sent Victoriano Huerta against him, who in turn were more successful.  A wounded Orozco fled to the US. After Madero was assassinated and Huerta installed, Orozco promised to support him if reforms were made, and he was installed as the Supreme Commander of the Mexican Federal forces.  As such he defeated the Constitutionalist at Ciudad Camargo, Mapula, Santa Rosalía, Zacatecas, and Torreón, causing his former revolutionary confederates to regard him, not without justification, as a traitor.

He refused to recognize the government of Carvajal after Huerta's fall and was driven into exile again.  He traveled in the US in opposition to Carranza along with Huerta.  In 1915, he was arrested in the US, but escaped.  An unclear incident at the Dick Love ranch in Texas led to claims that he and other like-minded combatants had stolen horses from the ranch, which in turn resulted in a small party of the 13th Cavalry, Texas Rangers, and local deputies pursing the supposed horse thieve with Orozco being killed once the party was holed up.  What exactly occured is not clear.

His body interred in the Masonic Holding Vault at the Concordia Cemetery in El Paso by his wife, dressed in the uniform of a Mexican general, at a service attended by a very larger gathering of admirers.  In 1925 his remains were retuned to Chihuahua.

Why the commemorative?  I have no idea.  He is not an obscure figure in the Mexican Revolution, but not a well known one like Villa or Zapata.  I can't see where he's associated with the M1911 either, a weapon that was brand new at the time the Revolution broken out.  The .38 Super, which is apparently popular in Mexico, wasn't intruduced by Colt until 1929.

Saturday, June 2, 1923. Criqui v. Kilbane

Eugène Criqui knocked out Johnny Kilbane in the sixth round at the Polo Grounds in New York City to take the World Featherweight Title.  Babe Ruth, who had hurried over from a Yankee's game, was in attendance.

Cirqui.

Cirqui had been a professional boxer since 1910, although his career was interrupted by World War One during which he was shot in the jaw by a German sniper.  His jaw had been reconstructed with wire, the bone of a goat and silver.

He died at age 83 in 1977.

Kilbane.

Kilbane was from Ohio and from a classically difficult childhood.  He'd been boxing since 1907.  He served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army during World War One and retired shortly after losing this fight.  He died at age 68 in 1957.

The Kaufman Act passed, requiring the electrification of all New York City railroads by the beginning of 1926.

The Federal Government wasn't taking New York's no to Prohibition lightly.

Sunday Morning Scene. Churches of the West: St. Patrick Misson Church, Denver Colorado.

Churches of the West: St. Patrick Misson Church, Denver Colorado.: 

St. Patrick Misson Church, Denver Colorado.

This Catholic Church in North Denver is St. Patrick Mission Church.  The Mission Architecture Church was built from 1907 to 1910, and served the Denver Highlands.  Its architectural style is unusual for Denver.

This Church is also called St. Patrick's Oratory, and has a presence by the Capuchin Poor Clare Sisters.

There's more to this church than I have here, I just don't know what it is, but it may be explained by the Capuchin sisters. The church as a bit of a campus, and therefore as a mission, it might strongly reflect their presence.

Industrial History: Coors Brewery in Golden, CO

Industrial History: Coors Brewery in Golden, CO: ( 3D Satellite ) Historic Denver posted Coors Brewery in Golden, CO. (1910) [The Banquet brand is still brewed in just Golden and is shipped...

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
    And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    ⁠And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    ⁠Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
    ⁠And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!

Mid Week At Work: Combat Photographers

 

Monday. June 11, 1921. The truce between Ireland and the United Kingdom ends the Anglo Irish War.

The flag of Ireland.

Hannah Carey, a 48 year old waitress in Killarney, was killed by a shot fired from a Royal Irish Constabulary truck.  She was likely not a victim of murder, but of an accident, as the RIC was reacting to an IRA attack upon a British Army unit just minutes prior.

She was the last causality of the Anglo Irish War.

On this day in 1921 the Anglo Irish War came to an end under an agreement between the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the President of the putative Irish Republic. The agreement had not only included an agreement to end the fighting, but also to engage in talks that would obviously outline the formalities, and there were indeed many to work out, of the existence between the two countries.   The Irish delegation would leave for London on July 12, the following day.

The history of the English presence in Ireland is a complicated and not really subject to easy summation.  England was a more powerful nation, comparatively, to Ireland dating back to the early days of the English kingdoms and as England's rule began to consolidate in a single king, that king often made claims of authority over Ireland even though they really were incapable of being enforced.

In 1169 the Normans, who were then into a century of their rule over England, having conquered the English thrown in 1066, invaded Ireland.  The invasion started in the form of an Anglo Norman mercenary intervention on behalf of one of the Irish kings but grew in scale until the English crown intervened against both the Irish kings and the Anglo Norman mercenaries.  The Crown then preceded over a period of years to consolidate its power in Ireland.

It is therefore commonly claimed that the Anglo Norman Invasion brought about "800 years of English rule" but it is not really true.  Even after the invasion, direct English rule was somewhat weak and grew weaker. The Anglo Normans assimilated surprisingly rapidly and by the 15th Century English rule was mostly titular with Ireland ruled by its own parliament and the Crown largely ignored.

The Reformation, however, rapidly changes this and in 1542 King Henry VIII, not content with all of the other destructive things he was doing, proclaimed himself the King of Ireland.  This was backed up by English military might and the contest took on a religious aspect given the English separation from Rome.  Indeed, the British effectively chose to fight out some of their contests for power on Irish ground.  Real British rule in Ireland, therefore, really dates to 1542.

In 1801 Parliament consolidate the rule with an Act of Union, making Ireland part of the United Kingdom. This was a political development that had been ongoing in Great Britain and had already brought about the union between Scotland and Wales that still exists.  This union was more problematic in Ireland, however, given that Ireland's population was overwhelmingly Catholic and Catholics were repressed in the United Kingdom.  The union was never really accepted by the Irish and a series of moves towards regaining independence occurred in following years.

Prior to World War One a strong move towards "home rule", which would have essentially granted Ireland regained independence in association with the Crown, leaving the British Parliament with authority on foreign policy, gained grown. These moves were strongly supported and strongly opposed.  They were gaining enough strength prior to the Great War that, had the war not broken out, Ireland would have obtained home rule prior to 1920, and the following Irish history would likely have developed differently.

As it was, moves towards an open civil war were already afoot prior to World War One and indeed they caused an infamous mutiny within the ranks of the British Army in Ireland which looked as if it would oppose any sort of Irish political freedom.  The British were still dealing with the aftermath of this mutiny when the Great War broke out, and the war quickly set all of these issues aside.

As we've been dealing here, the one group that didn't put them aside were Irish republicans, which struck during the late stages of the war itself in open rebellion.  This move was very unpopular inside of Ireland whose sons were fighting in France, but it did gain international attention. At the same time, the republicans took the wise course of action of forming their own putative representative government, setting up rival institutions to the official British ones where they could, and declaring themselves to be the legitimate government of the nation.

Following the Great War the British government was wise enough to see the handwriting on the wall, even though surrendering one of the major portions of the United Kingdom was a gigantic concession.  To some degree, much of recent UK history has stemmed from this, as the UK has slowly devolved rule to the other nations that remain in the United Kingdom.

This was of interest, to say the least, to the Irish American community in the United States.  An article on how this was reported on can be read here:

American reporting of truce in Ireland, July 1921

Former President and current Supreme Court Justice William Howards Taft was sworn in as the Chief Justice.

On the same day, President Harding signed a new Naval Appropriations bill that reduced spending for the Navy by $80,000,000 for the upcoming year.

In fairness, the US was still winding down from World War One and now had a gigantic surplus of ships.  The American people, for their part, were growing into disillusionment about their recent role in the Great War and the thesis that it was all a big plot by industrialist was starting to gain steam.

Perhaps related, or not, the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor concluded a meeting with a call for global disarmament by 1923.

The Bogd Khan was restored to titular head of Mongolia by Mongolian revolutionaries.

He was a Buddhist monk whose claim to power, or perhaps burden of it, was similar to that of the Dali Lama's and in fact he'd been born in Tibet and proclaimed the Bogd Khan in the presence of the Dali Lama and the Panchen Lama.  He had ruled the country as its theocratic head since the onset of the Chinese revolution in 1911, but his powers were limited due to his religious position.  During his first reign he'd been the subject of a propaganda campaign lead by the Chinese who wished to remove him and install a communist government.

In 1919 he was removed by the Chinese government as the crisis on the border with the infant Soviet Union developed.  Showing his position in the country's people, he was reinstalled, ironically, by the communist revolutionaries on this day in 1921 and would retain his position, being the last to occupy it, until his death in 1924.

Poster Saturday. Some posters we saved to put up, and then didn't get around to it, in 2020

One of our "trailing threads" here are posters, which we like, and which we typically post on Saturdays, if we get around to it, which more often than not, we do not.

As the computer files on which the posters were saved are about to go, as there's a lot of them, and we're going into a new year, I thought I'd put some of those that were saved to post, but which weren't posted, up.  

More often than not, I don't comment on the posters. Some of them deserve comment, however, so its here.  Comment yourself if  you feel like it, and if feel like, please comment.

The poster is an old Hires Root Beer advertisement.

In a year in which Mia, the Native American woman on the cover of Land O Lake dairy products, was sent packing as culturally insensitive, this old poster no doubt also is.  Indeed, she reminds me of the Navajo Trucking of a blue eyed ostensibly Native American woman still on the doors of their trucking fleet. Still, this blog chronicles the century old and the poster is visually attractive.  

What role does birch bark play in Root Beer?

1920 was a banner year for women and we've posted a lot of magazine covers that dealt with that.  We missed the one above from July, 1920, however.

Magazine illustrations of the period, we'd note, were really art. That's something that's really been lost in the past century.

We also saved a lot of World War Two related posters that never went up.   Some of them are below.

The poster above is interesting in that the printing style retained the World War One appearance, even though its a World War Two vintage poster.  Which is a nice way to note that we also saved a few World War One era posters we didn't get around to putting up, in part because our century retrospectives dealt with the 1920, and not 1914 through 1918.

Cigarettes actually became a big deal during World War One. They weren't nearly as popular before the Great War.  The results would be disaterous.

The thought of Liberty calling on an old style rotary dial phone is a bit odd.  Not one of the better posters of the Great War.

1920 was a tragic year in the Russian Civil War; seeing the Whites driven out of Crimea and into exile, if they survived to make it into exile.  We covered that a bit this past year.  Surprisingly, given the conditions in which it was fought, it generated a lot of poster art, including this White poster from below.

1940, like 2020, was a census year.  The Federal Government according issued this poster hoping to get the populace to be counted.

2020 turned out to be an oddly controversial year this way, having to do ultimately with the counting of illegal residents in the country.  The topic of who to count is an oddly old one in American history going all the way back to the adoption of the Constitution which saw a compromise that slaves and Indians would be counted as less than a full person.  As the count determines representation in the House of Representatives, how people who cannot vote are counted has accordingly been a very long lasting feature of American politics.

Labor. 1920, and now.

 

Jewelry workers, 1920.

A Labor Day post.

It can be difficult to take the necessary wrenching steps to prepare for the future, but looking back at the past may help us to see how important these steps are. The graphic below depicts how occupational employment has changed in America since 1920. Students entering the workforce today face a dramatically different landscape of jobs than their parents did in the 1980s or their grandparents in the 1950s. And the work world that their great-grandparents entered in the 1920s is almost unrecognizable.

Back then, about 25 percent of jobs were in agriculture and 40 percent were in manufacturing and other blue collar fields. Today, fewer than one percent of jobs are agricultural and only about 20 percent are blue collar.

In the 1920s, only about 5 percent of workers held professional jobs. This has exploded over the last 90 years and today about 35 percent of workers have professional jobs. Rapidly advancing technology has not only automated and eliminated many jobs that once provided manufacturing, blue collar,  and agricultural employment for millions of Americans, but it has also increased demand for professionals who create, manage, and explain this technology, many of them working in occupations that were unimaginable 90 years ago.

From:  StatChat, University of Virginia.

Looking back a few years earlier, to 1915, reveals this interesting information:

Labor force participation. The 1915 annual average civilian labor force participation rate is estimated at 56.3 percent. This percentage isn’t strictly comparable to the 2015 annual average of 62.7 percent, because of differences in survey coverage and definitions.¹⁷ However, despite the similarity in overall labor force participation, the participation rates of men and women were very different from each other 100 years ago. The 1920 census shows that, among people ages 14 and older, the proportion of the population that was in the total labor force was 85 percent for men and 23 percent for women in January of that year. (Civilian labor force data by gender are not available for 1915.) In contrast, the Current Population Survey shows a 2015 annual average civilian labor force participation rate for people ages 16 and older of about 69 percent for men and nearly 57 percent for women. Table 1 points out that young boys were much more likely to be in the labor force in 1920 than now. Not surprisingly, women of all ages are much more likely to be in the labor force now than in 1920. Half of all boys ages 14 to 19 were in the labor force in 1920; nowadays, about one-third of boys age 16 to 19 are in the labor force. Labor force participation among girls those ages hasn’t shown as much change.

From:  Bureau of Labor Statistics.  And also from the BLS, this interesting statistic which we've discussed as a topic here before.

Education. A century ago, most jobs required little formal schooling, and most of the population had not gone beyond elementary or grammar school. In fact, high school graduates were a rarity: in 1915, only an estimated 18 percent of the population ages 25 and older had completed high school, and only about 14 percent of people ages 14–17 were in high school. Royal Meeker, appointed Commissioner of Labor Statistics by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, had recently written a New York Times article advocating compulsory public education through the intermediate grades. He noted, “Boys and girls drop out of school at all stages of the educational process, but fail to drop smoothly into any part of our economic system.”¹⁸ While failure to graduate remains a concern, more than 86 percent of the U.S. population age 25 in 2010–14 had completed high school or more. The average length of the public school term was about 160 days a century ago, compared with 180 days now, and the average number of days attended in 1915 was only 121.¹⁹ Many young girls and boys worked instead of being enrolled in school. In fact, New York City’s State Factory Investigating Commission in 1914 reported that “nearly 75 percent of factory women studied had left school before the eighth grade, as had nearly 40 percent of the female store employees interviewed.”²⁰ The legal age for leaving school was generally 14, compared with 16–18 today.

And this interesting set of figures, related to the "everything was cheaper back then" claim that people so often hear:

Of course, most prices of food in 1915 were much different from those in 2015, and several staple items are substantially more affordable today. Here are some examples of 1915 and 2015 prices (using data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics):

Item	1915 price	1915 price in 2015 dollars	2015 price
Bread (1-lb loaf)	$0.07	$1.65	$1.42
Butter (lb)	.36	8.48	3.18
Eggs (dozen)	.34	8.01	2.81
Ground coffee (lb)	.30	7.06	4.61
Potatoes (10 lbs)	.15	3.53	6.55

Interestingly, in that chart, the only thing that's really climbed in adjustered prices is the price of potatoes, which is nearly double the current (or the 2015) prices.   The only thing that has near parity with its century old price is bread.

Blog Mirror. The Weekly Postcard No. 59. The girl I left behind me.

The Weekly Postcard No. 59

Postcards of a singular them from the Great War, expressing an age old sentiment.

As does this song, traced back to 1758, and which saw very widespread use in English speaking militaries in a prior era which was considerably more violent, but perhaps more grounded and realistic as well.

The Mexican Revolution. . . where we're at in terms of century delayed time.

Yesterday we ran this item:

Lex Anteinternet: Venustiano Carranza assassinated . . .: .

Venustiano Carranza assassinated . . .

on this day in 1920, by officers who had betrayed him, pretending to offer him a safe lodging for the night in the town of Tlaxcalantongo.  Sometime during the night, their forces surrounded the house and then opened fire into ito.  Oddly, the assassins then telegramed Obregon to inform him that "we are at your service" but also asked for permission to bring Carranza's body to Mexico City for burial.  Obregon replied with the comment "It is very strange that a group of officers who vouched their loyalty and honor should have permitted him to be assassinated instead of complying with your duty."

And it goes on from there.

So, where are we at on this story that we've been following for years and for which there are now 306 entries on this blog.

The story starts with the revolution against Porifirio Diaz in 1911

Well, not really.  Diaz, who had been a lieutenant of Mexican revolutionary and then president Benito Juarez, served as President of Mexico three times with his last period of dictatorial service running form 1884 until May 21, 1911.  An odd statement to an American reporter about being willing to hold elections in 1908 lead to one and ultimately he proved unwilling not to run, as he'd promised, with his running meaning an assured reelection..  That lead to the rebellion in 1910 we now call The Mexican Revolution, lead at first by the improbable Francisco Modero.

Diaz at age 77.

On this date in 1920, Diaz had been dead five years.  He'd died of natural causes at age 85 in France.

In 1911 he took to his exile and was succeeded by Francisco León de la Barra y Quijano, whom Mexican conservatives called the "white president" due to his purity.  He only served until November.

León.

During his short administration León had to attempt to deal with the growing revolution against him and the growing right wing extremism in his army.  He wouldn't succeeded, but he did succeed in outliving the revolution  He was still living in 1920 and had a career as a diplomat ahead of him.  He ultimately retired to Spain, but even there was used unofficially in this capacity as a go between between France and Spain.  He died in 1939 of natural causes.

Modero.

León's successor was Modero who was a weak president from November 1911 until he was killed in a military coup on February 19, 1913.  His death threw the country back into civil war.

The fallen Huerta.

His successor was the successful head of the coup, Victoriano Huerta.  Huerta was able to topple Modero, but he couldn't quell the revolution, and he went into exile in July 1914.  Going first to Europe and then the United States, he died an alcoholic in 1916.

His successor, Francisco Sebastián Carvajal y Gual, served for only a month before also going into exile, a victim of Huerta's failed effort to reclaim Diaz's position in Mexico.  His story was happier, however, as he met his wife in exile in the United States and he ultimately returned to Mexico in 1922 to resume his legal practice, which he occupied until his death by natural causes in 1932.

And then came Carranza.

So, so far we've seen the assassination of two of the real revolutionary presidents of Mexico, the odd but admirable Modero and the determined and not so admirable Carranza.  And we've seen the exile of three of the right wing pretenders, two of whom had died by natural causes.

Not dying by natural causes up to this point were thousands of Mexican soldiers who had fought on both sides of the Mexican Revolution, and in some cases literally on both sides.  Included in that number was Emiliano Zapata, the greatest of the Mexican revolutionaries, who was its best post Modero hope.

And the revolution was getting increasingly extreme. Having gone from a hope for democracy with Modero it was coming to increasingly reflect the extreme left wing politics of revolutions of its age, something that would have ill consequences for Mexico in coming years.

Indeed, a real oddity of Mexico's post Maximillian politics in general, up to this point, is how radical it was even when seemingly combined with conservative elements.  If Diaz sometimes dressed like Napoleon, his politics, he in some ways was like him.  He was a political liberal but one who did not trust the democratic process.  Ultimately he governed as a moderate liberal with a focus on stability.  Even today he is credited with having laid the foundations for modern Mexico.  His real fault was in not trusting democracy and running for reelection in 1910, when he promised not to.

Had Diaz held to his initial promise, Modero would have been elected in 1910.   Whether Diaz stepping away from politics voluntarily would have necessarily resulted in a Mexican army that would have accepted the election is another question, and one we will never know the answer to.  Had that occured, Mexico would have stepped into being a true democracy in 1910, something that would take another century to occur.  Diaz's failure to trust his own people lead to a revolution in which propelled radicals to the top.  One of those radicals was Carranza, who ended up sharing that lack of trust with Diaz.  He sought to dictate the results of the upcoming 1920 Mexican election, which in turn lead to his bloody end in May, 1920.  That put Obregon in the position of being the assured ultimate next president of the country, with extreme radicals rising up right behind him.