Supply Chain Disruption and Other Economic Problems

This past week was another one for which the weekend news shows are well worth watching.

Both Meet The Press and This Week dealt with the economy and what's going on with it. Part of what's going on is inflation, which, in spite of earlier Administration projections, is becoming a problem.

Part of that problem has been caused by "supply chain disruptions".  Both shows, both of which featured Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, agreed on this point. The problem seems to have been caused by people basically foregoing purchases of many things "during" the still ongoing pandemic, and then seeking to buy them all at once.  The Port of Los Angeles can't get all the stuff unloaded.  It's now gone to twenty-four hours per day operations, which surprises me actually as I would have thought it already had that.  

Port of Los Angeles.

So, while nobody is putting it this way, this is in part what happens when your own country no longer makes anything itself and instead relies upon China to produce everything.

There's discussion of calling out the California National Guard to act as dockworkers, which would suck if you were in the Californian National Guard.

That's not all of it, however.  Added to this is the post Covid change in how American's view work.

There are presently 11,000,000 unfilled jobs in the United States.  These are jobs that were filled before the COVID Recession.  People aren't going back to work.

And laborers are also demanding better wages and benefits in order to do the work they're doing.

This represents a dual fundamental shift in the thinking of the American work force.  Part of it is old-fashioned, and part not so much.

As for better wages and benefits, following the Reagan Administration and the economic woes of the 1970s, American labor really faded from the scene as an organized entity.  Of course, we lost a lot of labor to overseas as well.  Now the remaining labor is fed up and taking advantage of the situation, for which it cannot be blamed.

The second part of this situation, however, is remarkable.  Forced out of work during the pandemic, stay homes, lots of people discovered that modern American work sucks. They don't want to go back, as their lives were better without the work.

Some of those who don't want to go back are truck drivers. The country is short 20,000 truck drivers right now.

In recent years the country has actually imported a lot of truck drivers, something the general public seems largely unaware of.  Anymore, when I read the names of people involved in truck driving accidents, I expect the drivers to be Russian, and I'm actually surprised when they are not.   What happened here overall isn't clear to me, but over the last fifteen years technology has developed to where it's much easier for trucking companies to keep tabs on their truckers while on the road and things have gotten safer. At the same time, this means, as it always has, but perhaps more so, that these guys live on the road.  According to Buttigieg the industry has an 80% annual turnover rate.

An 80% annual turnover rate doesn't sound even remotely possible to me, but that there's a high one wouldn't surprise me.  It's a dangerous job and contrary to what people like to imagine, it doesn't really pay the drivers that well as a rule, or at least fairly often.  Often the drivers are "owner operators" who own their own super expensive semi tractor and who are leasing it to the company they are driving for.  That in turn means that they're often making hefty payments on the truck.  I don't blame anyone for not wanting to do it.

I can blame the nation for putting itself in this situation, however.

Trucking is a subsidized industry, but people don't think of it that way.  Its primary competitor is rail. Railroads put in their own tracks and maintain their own railroad infrastructure. When you see a train, everything you were looking at, from the rails to the cars, were purchased by private enterprise. When you seem a semi tractor, however, it's always traveling on a public conveyance.

It's doing that fairly inefficiently compared to rail.  Rail is incredibly cheap on a cost per mile basis, and it's actually incredibly "green" as well.  It's efficient.  Trucks are nowhere near as efficient in any fashion.  Not even in employment of human resources.  Trains have, anymore, one or two men crews, the same as semi trucks, but they're hauling a lot more per mile than trucks are with just two men.

Well, sooner or later people are going to have to return to work.  When the money runs out, that's the choice you have.

But this isn't going to return to normal. Whether we'll stabilize soon in a new economy, and we better hope that we do, or keep on enduring this, which will be wiping out savings and destroying earning capacity, remains to be seen.  The current Administration will be a key to that. 

Biden can't be blamed for the current economic situation.  And people who seem to think that Trump did all things well should be aware that we'd be looking at this if Trump had won the election.  But what the government can do now is really screw things up for a long time.

Part of screwing things up would be to invest heavily in nonsensical "infrastructure" spending.  Right now in Congress there remains a massive infrastructure bill that would fund lots of construction in an economy in which there's a shortage of laborers, not a surplus.  Where are those workers going to come from?

Well, they'll only come with much higher wages, which is inflationary.

And frankly a lot of this spending is misplaced.  Spending on "roads and bridges" particularly is. That's part of the problem, not part of the solution to anything.  A "supply chain" based on highways was never a good idea, and its weakness is now demonstrated.  And frankly, roads and bridges are mostly a local problem.

Of course, it might be pointed out, the Federal government had a big role in causing those roads and bridges to come in. That's both true and untrue. When you look at big urban bridges, those mostly were local money.  States and cities that funded those bridges don't, apparently, have the money to maintain them, which is a local problem.

But Federal highway funding does certainly exist, having really started in small but significant ways as far back as the 19th Century. The Cumberland Road was authorized by Congress in the pre railroad days of 1806.  Others followed, and then rail received a lot of support when it was first going transcontinental. So it can be justly maintained that there's never really been a time when the US government didn't have a role in transportation.

It was the early 20th Century, however, when Congress started to encourage highways. It soon followed the automobile.  The Lincoln Highway was the first big national effort at that, as we've discussed on this site and elsewhere.

This is a monument to one of the founders of the Lincoln Highway, located along its successor, Interstate 80.  The art deco memorial was created in 1938, the "L" cement markers are markers for the Lincoln Highway that can be found here and there along its route.

While this blog started out with war memorials, it's covered quite a few trail markers over the years, and indeed I will now be adding that as a category here, meaning I have to go back and edit quite a few old posts.  This marker, however, is only the second one I've posted on any of my blogs to highways, the other being the Black and Yellow Road near Gillette.

This marker is quite elaborate and very nice, being both a suitable marker for the Lincoln Highway and a nice example of an art deco piece of art.

Wyoming has also commemorated the highway, the noted individual, and the marker, with its own highway sign.

All of this is located at the same rest stop on Albany County that the Lincoln Memorial is located at.  Of note, this marker was moved from its original location, which might have been one that was preferred by the individual commemorated by the marker.

The Lincoln Highway ran, at least in Wyoming, right astride the Union Pacific, the original transcontinental railway.  This isn't surprising either as that followed the route used by the 1919 Motor Transport Convey when it did an experimental cross-country trek showing that the nation's roads were, well, junk, at least in the west.  That experiment lead in no small part to the funding of the Lincoln Highway.  Be that as it may, the nation's roads were still too dicey to be used for real transcontinental transportation, as the Second World War demonstrated.  

Things moved by train.

Following the war, however, President Eisenhower sought to change that with the Defense Highway system, which the nation's cynics, myself included, have always maintained was just a thin excuse to get highway funding done, as in the 1950s, with the Red Army on everyone's mind, you just didn't vote against a thing like that.  So we got interstate highways and with them, you got a teamster supplied nation.  You also got an annual bill as, unlike the railroads, they were public conveyances that had to keep being paid for by somebody.

So now we have them well established, but the days of Convoy are over, and the driver is as likely to be a displaced Ukrainian baker as a cowboy hat wearing part-time farmer.  In 1964 the Willis Brothers sang Give Me Forty Acres To Turn This Rig Around.  The drivers didn't get heir 40 acres, but a lot of them have apparently gotten sick of the job.

And it even, apparently extends down to local hauling.  Massachusetts called out the National Guard to serve as school bus drivers, a call-up that would suck nearly as much as being called out to be a dockworker.

Electrifying the rail system, however, would be a really good idea.  I don't see anyone purposing that, however.  If you don't have drivers for trucks, well haul things by train, and start funding that as part of the infrastructure bill.  That would more or less take us back to the hauling infrastructure that existed before the mid 1950s, but in a more modern, clean, and more efficient way.

Probably not going to happen.

Predictably Buttigieg, who is just back to work from being off for family leave, is pushing Biden's "paid family leave" as a partial solution.  That's doubly wrong.

Paid family leave, of course, is paid for by employers.   Indeed, in some unionized occupations this has been a recent point of negotiations, which is fine.  That's where that belongs.  Otherwise, what it amounts to is compulsory employer subsidization of forced female employment.

Nobody, of course, will say that, even though it's completely true.

The official line on this left wing concept is that.  Make employers pay employees family leave when they have children, or adopt a child, or sometimes something else.  Usually this has been spoken of in regard to female employees, but in the new false genderless era in which the science of baby making has been lost and babies suddenly materialize out of the ether, and human reproductive organs are simply toys, like the Atari control stick or something, its male or female.  Then, having secured family leave, the parent doesn't have to make the painful decision on whether to return immediately to work after having had, or acquired, the child, or staying home with the infant.

All that of course is a completely erroneous way of looking at this topic.

To start with, people want to stay home with their infant as they love their infant.  Prior to the second half of the 20th Century the forced industrial bargain was that men didn't get to stay home, but women could.  Prior to industrialization people simply lived with their families, as nature would have it.  The industrial revolution couldn't tolerate that, so men, the stronger part of the couple, was drug out and away from home to work and "be the breadwinner" while women still largely stayed home with their families, save for poor women who worked as well.  Mid 20th Century feminism, however,r bought hook line and sinker into the industrial line, probably not too surprisingly as all left wing thought in the early 20th Century was heavily industrial in its outlook, and thought that happiness meant being in the work place.

Turns out it's not, and COVID laid the lie bare.

Anyhow, that old fable keeps on keeping on in liberal circles, so they keep pushing this industrial idea.  The basic gist of it is "get to work, female wage slave, and leave that waling infant at home or in the collective child warehousing center. . . "

Now, nobody wants to say that, and most don't even think it, but that's the reality of it.  So is this:

Kay (momma of two)

@jacelala

·

May 6

I don’t want to work. I want to be home with my baby and I can’t afford it. I hate that. I hate it so much.

Now, thanks to COVID 19, a lot of women have effectively voted with Kay (momma of two) with their feet. They aren't coming back. And forced infant warehousing funding isn't going to change that.

But to the extent it did, and for various reasons it would somewhat, it'd be inflationary.  People would take the leave, employers would pay for, and pass the cost of a non-working employee on to the consumer.  The Transportation Secretary probably didn't realize that, although he should have as he received a taxpayer subsidized period of time off from working.  Somebody paid for that.

Well former Mayor Pete wants to "build back better".

Or maybe President Biden does. That's part of the sale pitch for the infrastructure bill, the future of which is now in doubt.

Okay, so be smart about that.  And so far, we've indicated what one of those smart things is.  Rail transportation, and electric rail transportation at that.

Another smart thing, or in the vernacular "better" thing, would be not relying on a 19,270 nautical mile transportation run to a Communist country with a government that's destined to collapse sometime in the next tent to twenty years.

We only buy from China, we'd note, as the country's leaders from both parties, from the most part, have engaged in a quiet policy of exporting jobs to wherever basic production is cheapest, and its cheapest, right now, in China.

It's not cheapest in China as China has any sort of free market economy.  It has a command economy that is at least somewhat analogous to Lenin's NEP.  Given as it and depress wages to achieve its goals, it's cheap.

The US population has no vested interest in propping up the Chinese command economy at all.  There's a basic human interest in seeing that everyone, everywhere, receives a fair wage. That can only come from one of the various free market systems.  Therefore, if we're not going to make it here, we ought to buy it from folks who adhere to that basic system. Preferably, we ought to buy stuff from people working in that basic environment who also have the same basic set of economic, labor and environmental rules we do. That would be fair trade.  

That's not what we're doing.

I'll skip how we could assure that, but we could assure that. Various administrations just rather didn't, as they were okay with cheap costs, not matter what that meant.

If we had done that, a lot of our manufacturing base would never have left. And the part that did would probably have gone south, to Mexico, and probably further south than that as well.

Mexico's achieved a modern middle-class economy, but you have to wonder if it would have achieved it earlier if a true fair trade policy had been the policy of the US.  Mexico's economy may have now been much like ours, and for that matter, the rest of Central America's might be better.

And we wouldn't have a giant bottleneck at the Port of Los Angeles now.  For that matter, we might not have a giant immigration crisis going on either.

Which I suppose bring us to our having depressed wages through a policy of ignoring illegal immigration now kicking us in the teeth.

This has been going on for quite some time with the net result that we now have 12,000,000 illegal aliens in the country.  This is a separate topic, but it's bound to be the case that somebody will say that if we have 11,000,000 unfilled jobs and 12,000,000 illegal aliens, what that shows is that we need an even more unsustainable immigration rate. Quite the opposite is true.

The giant immigration rate, legal and illegal, has had the impact of unnaturally depressing wages in the construction industry, farm economy and service industries. All of these industries would have had higher pay rates for decades but for the high immigration rate, with the wage depression being particularly true in the case of those working illegally.  It's not that Americans wouldn't have taken these jobs. .. we know for certain that Americans have been taking a lot of jobs they really didn't like, its that they wouldn't take them at the low pay scale that was being offered.

If those jobs had paid a basic American pay rate, Americans would have taken them. That would have meant that the economic impact would have been adjusted decades ago, with a probable result that average wages were higher and very high pay rates were lower, both of which would have been a net benefit, at least from distributist terms for the economy.  So here too we're dealing with decades of neglect, but not of road sand bridges that local governments could have addressed, if they needed to, but with a complete lack of an honest approach to the immigration system, one that would have brought many fewer people in, and have actually enforced the laws that were there.  This of course has also given us a massive humanitarian crisis, inflicted problems on our neighbors, and presented a massive moral dilemma for those now in power.  Building back better would probably mean looking honestly to the south towards our neighbors, rather than simply hoping to "out compete" a nation on another continent whose government will ultimately collapse but which right now has a command economy, but that doesn't even seem to have entered anyone's thoughts.

What also doesn't seem to be entering people's thoughts, at least around here, is that some things can be addressed locally.

We read an article elsewhere that beef producers in Nebraska are organizing to build a packing plant. Food prices, including meat prices, are up, but as usual, stockmen aren't seeing the benefit of it.

So why not cut out the middle man, the packing industry?  This can obviously be done, and elsewhere they are doing it.

And the state could help.

Rather than violently hurl money at fruitless lawsuits, which the state has been good at doing recently, why not instead have the state build a packing plant and organize it like South Dakota Cement or Dakota Mills?

Gasp, the reaction may be, that would be socialism!

Well, it need not be.  It could simply be an investment by the state in a cooperative effort with the ownership to be transferred to participating stockmen.  It'd be fairly easy to do.  We've addressed it elsewhere and this would be the time to do it.  Retail prices are high, ranchers don't see the benefit of that, cutting out the middleman would help.

But I'm sure we won't be doing that.

The legislature, of course, is going into a special session.  There it's going to look at illegal bills to address OSHA mandates on vaccination that haven't even come into effect yet.  A rational look at that would reveal that this will accomplish nothing, other than adding the expense of legal defenses of all sorts to the state's bills for taking an act calculated not to work.  Instead of doing what it's going to do, the legislature could look around and do something about the times we do live in, and try to take advantage of them.  But it won't, as those who want to protest the upcoming mandates will be fired up about that instead.

1919 Motor Convoy

September 6, 1919. End of the Trail for the Motor Transport Convoy

Fort Winfield Scott; Presidio and Fort Mason overlooking San Francisco Bay, September, 1919.

On this day in 1919, the Motor Transport crossed San Francisco Bay on two ferries, and then paraded at Lincoln Park.

Medals were awarded by the Lincoln Highway Association, the entity that had been boosting the highway for some time, and the command was received by Col. R. H. Noble, representing Lt. Gen. Hunter Liggett, commander of the Western Department.  Lunch was served at the convoy parked at the Presidio.

They did only 8 miles that day, but then they also crossed the bay, as noted, by ferry.

And so it was over.

Except for analyzing what had occurred.

On the same day, New York was celebrating Lafayette Day.

Myron T. Herrick (1854-1932), American ambassador to France from 1912-1914 and 1921-1929; Jean Jules Jusserand (1855-1932), French author and diplomat and French ambassador to the United States during World War I and Elise Richards Jusserand. They are attending the Lafayette Day celebration in front of City Hall, New York City on September 6, 1919

And the Gasoline Alley gang was getting ready to head out fishing.

Gasoline Alley cartoon for this day in 1919.  Note that they're altering their car, something that does in fact seem to be fairly common for that era.  Cars of the day had as much clearance as early pickup trucks and roads were fairly primitive.  Vehicles of the day, therefore, bore more of a resemblance to early Jeeps than cars of today do, and indeed more of a resemblance to them than some modern SUVs do.

September 5, 1919. Stockton to Oakland California, 76 miles in 9.25 hours. The 1st Division arrives home.

The Motor Transport Convoy pushed on to Oakland California on this day in 1919, putting them just across the San Francisco Bay from their objective.

 No bridges spanned the bay at the time.  They were feted upon their arrival.

The Gasoline Alley crowd was debating their vacation.

September 4, 1919. Sacramento to Stockton on the Motor Transport Convoy, 48 mile sin 7.25 hours.

General Pershing and officers of a composite regiment aboard U.S. transport Leviathan, Sept. 4, 1919

On this day in 1919, the Motor Transport Convoy, near the end of its destination, went 48 miles in 7.25 hours.

The Cadillac was about worn out.  And it seemed like the command was as well.

Maybe they needed a vacation, like the Gasoline Alley gang was contemplating.

Somebody who wasn't taking a vacation was President Wilson, who was touring the country promoting the Versailles Treaty.

September 3, 1919. Placerville to Sacramento on the Motor Transport Convoy. 52 miles in 8 hours. Wilson starts his tour.

On this day in 1919, the convoy went from Placerville to Sacramento, making 52 miles in 8 hours.  The roads were "perfect".

Indeed, the convoy received a heroes welcome, being showered with fruit along the way.  A Willys Overland salesman treated the company to dinner and a cabaret.  Willys was already specializing in vehicles that were designed for out of town use and, interestingly enough, they'd soon advertise, if they weren't already, that their vehicles were so easy to drive, that women could drive them without the help of men.

Also touring on this date, but by train, was President Wilson, who left on a cross country tour to promote the Versailles Treaty.

September 2, 1919. Meyers to Placerville on the Motor Transport Convoy. More Trouble on the Border. Storm brewing in the Gulf. The End of Summer.

On this day the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy resumed their travels towards the Bay with a trip from Meyers to Placerville.  Roads were improving.

Closer to home, Wyoming's oil fortunes were improving, while the situation on the border remained tense and violent.

The crisis on the border naturally got first place on a lot of newspapers, but the Lance Creek oil strikes were a big deal in Wyoming. The area still is a major petroleum province in the state.

Railroad bills were also big news, as Congress struggled with an industry that had proved problematic during the war. 

And the victorious Allies informed Germany that Austria was not to be admitted as a German state, now that the Austrian Empire had ceased to exist.  In fact, as we'll shortly see, this would be a provision of the treaty with Austria which was soon to be signed.

And school was starting up, which was an occasion for cartoons.

The Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger made note of Labor Day being the unofficial American end of summer, with Tuesday, which September 2 was, being the end of the vacation season.

A cartoon of this type shows how long certain American traditions of modern life have been around, with an American vacationer (showing that vacations were common then), labeled as "Everybody", has a wrecked bank account due to going over the waterfall of Vacation.

The Gasoline Alley gang was at work, or at least Walt was, with the gang urging him to take the day off and go golfing.

It was also hurricane season, with the 1919 Florida Keys Hurricane forming to the south of the peninsula.  In those days, there was considerably less warning than there is now.

Labor Day, 1919

American troops near Marfa, Texas, are treated to a picnic in honor of Labor Day, September 1, 1919.

September 1 was Labor Day in 1919, then as now falling on the first Monday of September.  The unofficial end of American summer was a day off for most people, including I'd note most local newspapers, and it was celebrated in much the same fashion as it currently is.  Foot races and picnics were held in the mining town of Hanna, Wyoming.  Motorcycle races were held in Marion Indiana.  Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge delivered a speech on labor in Plymouth.

In the case of American solders serving on the border, which was still quite tense, this meant, if they were stationed near Marfa, a lunch served by the American Red Cross.

If they were assigned to the transcontinental Motor Transport Convoy, which was now running several days behind schedule, it wasn't a day off. They traveled from Carson City, Nevada, to Meyers, California

The road was treacherous and the Nevada Highway Department closed the road in the Sierras for the convoy.  Motorcycles were used to police the convoy speed and spacing, as well as looking for hot bearings.   The convoy went 34 miles in 13.5 hours and its arrival in Meyers was treated as a great success.  The Mayor of San Francisco traveled out to meet the convoy.

A party that claimed to represent labor was laboring away in chaos on this Labor Day weekend in Chicago.  The left wing turmoil going on in Chicago saw yet another Communist Party emerge out of the departed hardcore left wingers of the Socialist Party, when the non English speakers formed their own Communist Party of America.

This is really confusing as there already was a Communist Party of America, that had existed since May. This new one joined the old one rapidly. The English speaking Communist Labor Party would follow within months.

Of interest, the new foreign born Communist Party of America that formed on this day was double the size of the Socialist Party of America, with 60,000 members, and six times the size of the Communist Labor Party, which had 10,000 members.  This pretty shows that the leadership of the Socialist Party was more conservative and democratic than the rank and file, which had gone hardcore left. 

It also shows that the sentiments of the Socialist were highly influenced by immigrant members who were likely hardcore leftists when they arrived in the country, something that the Communist Party and its sympathizers on the radical left have not really liked to acknowledge.  The 1910s through the 1930s were the high water mark of radical Socialism in the US and its interesting to note that this was also the case for Anarchism, although it was waning by the 1930s.  In both instances the movements had significant immigrant representation within them and, moreover, representation from certain concentrated areas of Europe where the movements were also strong.  It's fairly clearly the case that in those instances they brought radical sentiments with them, rather than acquiring them in the US, although there were certainly native born radicals as well.

All of these movements were on the way out by the 1940s for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they'd been tested with disastrous results in Europe by that time and World War Two caused an economic boost in the country that buried any lingering sympathy for economic radicalism.  But in 1919, Communism was untested and on the rise, even if a language barrier caused it to oddly develop in the US, briefly, in a fractured fashion.  Even at that, however, it never really had very much appeal for most Americans, including foreign born ones, let alone most American workers.

Workers and the high cost of living were the topic of that day's Gasoline Alley, which was published in the local Chicago newspaper.  In a somewhat serious edition of the cartoon, the Reds made their own appearance that day.

It was a day off, of course, for most Americans and that meant not only picnics and races, but trips to the movies, which the movie industry used to introduce new films.

Her Purchase Price frankly had a the type of plot that movie goers of the era loved but which are creepy today.  In that film, Sir Derek Anstruther encounters European looking Egyptian slave Sheka while touring Egypt.  She learns that she's been raised a slave since taken by a bandit in her youth.  So he buys her, after falling in love with her.

Low and behold this disrupts Sir Anstruther's inheritance so the loyal Sheka sells herself to somebody else so that he's not dispossessed.  But Sir Derek pursues, and in the meantime her parentage is cleared up and all is well.

Hmmm. . . .

For folks who were bothered by the racial qualities of that one, let alone the moral questions raised by buying your bride in an Egyptian slave market, The Brat was also released on this day in 1919.  It featured a a chorus girl known only by that nickname who resists improper advances, resulting in her arrest.  The prosecutor's brother, however, is studying the underworld and therefore the judge lets her live in his household so that she can be the subject of study.  Well you can see how that one goes. . . 

Frankly, that was a bit disturbing as well.

Well, north of the border there was Back To God's Country, in which the daughter of a Canadian woodsman grows up in nature and has a rapport with animals.  She falls in love with a Canadian government official and marries him, after escaping the clutches of a bogus Mountie who attempts to rape her and who kills her father.  She then travels with her husband on a whaler but the captain turns out to be the rapist in disguise, so she has to escape by dog sled in the Arctic, with her husband.

Maybe it would have been better just to skip the movies on that Labor Day.

August 31, 1919. The Motor Transport Convoy gets a day of rest, no rest in Kiev, turmoil in Chicago

Railroad station, Carson City, 1940.  It likely didn't look much different in 1919.  The man is waiting for the mail, which was moved by train at the time.

On this day in 1919, the Sunday day of rest returned to the command.

It darned near had to. The command was behind, by several days, in its original anticipated schedule, but it had taken it 20 hours across the dust and muck of the Nevada desert to travel the stretch before Carson City, and this on a road that was theoretically a designated highway, although the designation at that time was just that, a designation.  Very little of the Lincoln Highway, as we've seen, was improved in any fashion whatsoever.  There had been problems with teh road the entire way, but after the column hit Nebraska the road became worse with each mile, with Utah's and Nevada's roads being particularly bad.

Speed, of course, in the era was relative. . . .

The command was provided "Union religious services".  I have no idea what that actually means.  General ecumenical perhaps?  Non protestant soldiers with Sunday obligations, which at this time would have largely been Catholics, but perhaps some Greek Orthodox, would have had to hike into town to see what was available for them.

And there was transportation to Hot Springs for bathing, which was no doubt welcome.

And some worked, including the operator of a tractor.

Emblem of the former Socialist Party of America

Meanwhile, in Chicago, a city the convoy  had passed through some weeks earlier, day two of the Socialist Party of America's Emergency National Convention saw the bolting left wing of the party.  The English speaking bolters, on this day, formed the Communist Labor Party in its own convention.

This was addressed a bit yesterday when it was related that the emergency was the rise of a radical, or rather more radical, left wing of the party that was hearing the siren song of Communism.  In this, the US Socialist Party was going through the same struggle that Socialist parties everywhere were.  Nearly all of them had started out as hardcore radical parties, but over the years as their fortunes had risen, their positions became less radical as they moved towards accepting democratic forms of government.  Ironically, World War One, during which it had been supposed that Socialist would take the position that all worker should be united in opposing the war in favor of the solidarity of labor, in fact saw the opposite development and the movement of mainstream Socialist towards accepting representative democracy.  At the same time, all the same parties saw movements within them that were extremely radical.  As this process occurred, these parties split.  In Russia, the split saw the rise of four different Socialist parties, with the Communist Party being the most radical.  Germany saw a succession of splinter parties that eventually saw two parties, the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party emerge.

In the U.S. the Russian Revolution gave rise to the Communist Party of America in May, 1919.  The Socialist Party continued on but radical elements within it were attracted to Communism. The Emergency National Convention was called to address this, and to put an end to it.  By that point, however, the right wing Socialist were a minority in the party.  While they seized control of the convention, they could not keep the left wing from walking out, which it did and on this day, in their own convention, the English speaking radicals formed the Communist Labor Party.  Ironically, the Emergency Session had come about due to the left wing demanding that it occur in order to move the Socialist Party towards Communism.

The Communist Labor Party was not to be long lived as it merged with the Communist Party of America the following year, which then became the Communist Party of the USA.  The Socialist Party of the USA would continue on, with various swings and splinters, until 1972 when it changed its name to the Social Democrats, USA, reflecting the evolution of the party.  Ironically, the Social Democrats have not seemed to really benefit from the current flirtation in some circles in the US with social democracy.  The Communist Party USA still exists as well, with its high water mark really having come during the 1930s.

Elsewhere, the fights brought by Communism saw dramatic events take place in Ukraine where the Whites entered the city, taking it without a fight from the Reds during the Russian Civil War but ending up fighting, slightly, forces of the Ukrainian People's Republic that entered the town simultaneously.

Russian White victory parade on this date in 1919 in Kiev.

The entire event in some ways is emblematic of the confusing nature of the Russian Civil War.

The Ukrainian People's Republic was an Ukrainian effort to create an independent government for the region following the collapse of the Russian Empire and the withdraw of the Germans from the region.  During that period various forces contested for control of the new country with a directorate emerging that had the most support. At the same time, the country found itself facing a Soviet invasion in January 1919 and it also found itself at war with Poland to its west.  To compound matters, White Russian forces contested with the Red Army for control of the region, and Ukrainian Greens sought to bring anarchy to the country, fielding an army of their own.

Under these conditions the independence of Ukraine was unlikely to occur but the region did manage to survive surprisingly long.  On this day the re emergent Whites took Kiev but the Ukrainian government sought to as well, not appreciating the ability of the Whites to move as quickly as they did.  The Whites retained control of the city.  The Ukrainian People's Republic effectively came to an end in 1921 with its territory divided between the Soviet Union and Poland, although it would amazingly maintain a government in exile up until the country was able to form its own government again following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

August 30, 1919. Fallon to Carson City, through the night, Knoxville riots, Socialist emergency.

The Motor Transport Convoy had a long day, starting at 6:30 a.m on August 30 and ending at 2:30 a.m. on August 31.  During that 20 hours they went 66 miles.  Conditions were so bad that the soldiers had to push the vehicles through some stretches of road.

Keep in mind that this was a road that was otherwise open for civilian use. . . but without the aid of soldiers to push.

The convoy was met by Nevada's Governor, reflecting the fact that the city on the far western edge of the state is the state's capital.

The Red Summer continued on when Knoxville, Tennessee, erupted into violence.  A start of the riots was the arrest of Maurice Mays, a biracial politician, for the murder of a white woman even though there was no basis to believe that he was the killer.  This resulted in a lynch mob developing that ultimately rioted.  This in turn caused black residents to arm themselves for their own protection and to seal off part of the city.  Violence later developed.

Mays was later tried and in spite of a lack of evidence, convicted.  His conviction was overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court and he was re-tried, found guilty again,and sentenced to death.  His suspected father, the former white mayor of Knoxville, with whom he had a friendly relationship, committed suicide a few years thereafter.

In Chicago the Socialist Party convened an Emergency Session.

The Socialist Party of America was a rising political party at the time, it's boat rising with the rising tide of radical political parties everywhere.  The emergency was the invitation by Lenin for certain Socialist elements to join the Communist International which was causing a rift in the party.  The party was dominated by its "right wing", which on this day achieved control of the convention on its opening day, bringing the rift with the "left wing" to an immediate head.

The Country Gentleman came out featuring an article on "counterfeit farms".  I wish the article was available so I could learn what they were writing about.

And the movies saw the first release of Dangerous Nan McGrew, which would be re-released in the 1930s in the form of a Betty Boop cartoon.

And the Gasoline Alley gang, which seemed to be on vacation, went golfing.

MVPA Centennial Tour.

More on the MVPA Centennial tour:

2019 Military Convoy Centennial Tour

Washington, d.c. to San FranciscoAugust 31–September 16, 2019

Anticipated dates:

2019 Military Convoy Centennial

Tour Map

MVPA Lincoln Highway Convoy

The 2019 MVPA Lincoln Highway Convoy (TMC19)August 10 – September 14, 2019, York, PA to San Francisco, CA. Travel from the 44th annual MVPA Convention in York, PA to San Francisco, CA. To participate you must register by 1 May 2019. This is the second MVPA convoy to commemorate the Lincoln Highway, built by the US Army in 1909! Contact MVPA-HQ to request information, schedules and routes; (800) 365-5798, (816) 833-MVPA, hq@mvpa.org.

It'll make better time than the original, and I believe its in Nebraska right now.

Should anyone who stops in here happen across this convoy commemorating the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy, let us know and post what you know.

August 29, 1919. Eastgate to Fallon with the Motor Transport Convoy, dark beers in Belgium.

Motor Transport Co. 554 en route to Santa Cruz, August 29, 1919 to escort the Pacific fleet to San Francisco.  Motor Transport Co. 554 was making this trip in California at the same time that the transcontinental Motor Transport Convoy was struggling to get to California.

The Motor Transport Convoy trucked from Eastgate to Fallon, Nevada, in desert conditions, making 66 miles in 9.25 hours.

In Belgium, a Socialist effort at banning the public consumption of alcoholic spirits was passed which ironically spurred the development of heavy Belgium beers and ales by religious communities, giving us Belgian beers as we know them today.

August 28, 1919. Austin to Eastgate, Nevada. 80 miles in 12.5 hours.

Mechanical failures continued to take a toll, but the Motor Transport Convoy picked up some speed on this day in 1919.

On the same day, the Germans put down a Polish rebellion in Silesia.

Gasoline Alley for August 28, 1919: