Mail Order Brides: When Wyoming Men Outnumbered Women 10-1, They ‘Imported Wives’

Newspaper ads soliciting potential spouses.  Somewhat amusing, I suppose, is the German working girl "anxious" to meet a mechanic, followed by an advertisement from a 36 year old mechanic looking for a "working girl". The typesetter had to have arranged that order intentionally.  

This is a topic that tends to fascinate people as a relic of the past:

Mail Order Brides: When Wyoming Men Outnumbered Women 10-1, They ‘Imported Wives’

The truth of the matter is, of course, that since the Internet arrived, mail ordering spouses has returned.  Witness the discussions on Reddit:

I am "mail order bride" ask me anything

20f Mail Order Bride, husband is 53 AMA

I'm 26 and married a mail order bride from Cambodia and I could not be happier - AMA

This, from a Thai in the AFA Reddit threads probably explains a lot of it currently:

If you want to get out of Thailand, you marry a foreigner. It's a better life for me, and my family as I bring them over. So my parents, my sisters and I are all here in the US now.

I met Paul online through a mail order bride agency when I was 16. We talked, and he flew here when I was 17 to meet me, and he met my family. He got the approval from my parents, and when I turned 18 we got married and he brought me to the US.

I have a nice house, a man who cares and takes care of me, and a good job. I don't think I would have this back in our home country. I'm glad for Paul, and everything he's done for us. So, I am happy.

Icky aspect of this aside. . . well maybe the whole thing is icky, this probably defines things in a way, then and now, for mail order brides.  Economic desperation.  Perhaps more then, a bit, than now, but both.

Men meeting their "mail order" spouse to be at Ellis Island.  These women were from Armenia, Turkey, Greece and Romania, and likely were all Eastern Orthodox.

This is a popular story for things like romance novels.  It's the topic of at least one movie, 1974's Zandy's Bride, which was based on a 1942 novel called The Stranger.  I suspect it was way less common than generally supposed, but I don't know.  Added to that, some of what we regard as "mail order" were actually very long distance courtships by correspondence.  I.e, they knew each other that way, which is apparently at least somewhat the case for modern mail order brides as well.

Gree, women entering the country to marry correspondent fiances.

The photos that were put up here, and the advertisement, show an aspect of this that was really significant at the time, and seems to be forgotten (including by current mail orders) that being religion and culture.  The Greek women, at least three of whom appear to be very young, were escaping poverty, but they were marrying into their own culture.  Pretty rough, but they were at least marrying somebody who spoke Greek and who was Greek Orthodox.  Likely all the women in the first photograph were marrying somebody from their own culture as well.  The advertisement, however, provides less of that, but some of it.  Some men were just looking for somebody to marry.  The Jewish man was looking for a Jewish woman, however.  The German working girl, on the other hand, wanted a "mechanic" (somebody who worked with machinery) and a comfortable small home.  Two men wanted widows for some reason, which would probably make sense if I knew the context (perhaps they wanted somebody who was used to be married and whom they didn't have to romance).  Even where culture wasn't referenced, chances are they would likely be ofose cultures.

Of course, if you go further back, you can find more peculiar examples, such as the French "King's Daughters" who were sent to Quebec.  Up to 1,000 of them were sent between 1663 and 1673, which followed prior private efforts starting in the 1640s.   The King's Daughters were actually vetted for their future role, and were held to scrupulous standards based on their "moral calibre" and physically fitness. Authorities in Quebec actually sent some back that were found not to be vigorous enough, which presumably was disappointing for them.

What all of this says we could debate.  Contrary to what some people like to assert, it's never been the case, ever, that regular people didn't marry for love.  They always have.  The thing is that modern people often have a hard time recognizing that in the conditions of earlier times.

Catholicism brought in the requirement that there be consent on the part of both parties in order for their to be a valid marriage, and after that marriage ages jumped to the current norms.  Chances are pretty good that the way most couples relationships developed looked a lot more like what's depicted in Flipped, set in the 1950s, than Dirty Dancing or something.  I.e, the ultimately married couple knew each other from childhood.  That still occurs, of course, particularly in some communities.  Doug Crowe's ribald A Growing Season references that being the case in ranching communities of the 1950s, and I'd seen the same thing as late as the 1990s.  But where women were in short supply, desperate times always called for desperate measures.

Photograph from Montana, 1901.  Clearly the man with the cat was the most eligible Batchelor.

Something that should be noted is that there was a pretty high incentive for women to marry prior to the 1920s, or even prior to the 1940s, in comparison to currently.  Obviously marriage remains, but to be a "spinster" prior to the mid 20th Century came with a massive set of problems for the woman and her family.  The classic Pride and Prejudice deals with this repeatedly as the failure of the Bennet sister to marry is creating an impending financial disaster for the family and Charlotte Lucas accepts a less than desirable proposal because, in part, she's a burden on her parents. Those concerns are subtle in the film, but they were real.  The "German working girl" in the advertisement above was likely looking at serving out a life's sentence as a domestic servant if she couldn't find somebody to marry.  Most women who weren't married lived at home, and when they aged into their 30s they were looking at taking on that role for increasingly elderly parents.

All of which raises the question, do you have a couple that met in your background this way?  It'd be almost impossible to know, I'd think.  Having said that, in thinking of it, my chances of being descended from a King's Daughter are fairly high and, while not really the same thing, one of my aunts who did a family genealogy claimed that one married couple we descend from did not speak the same language when they married, although her information was notoriously unreliable (the husband was Scottish, the wife Irish. . . I think they both clearly would have spoken English).  On my wife's side, my father in law told me once that one set of his grandparents were both from Ohio originally, but that they had not met there.  Somehow the bride was sent out to marry the groom, and they married.

A few minor observations.

Cosmetic surgery, save for genuine restorative purposes, or genuine medical reasons, ought to be banned.

People who claim to be "Constitutional Lawyers" are no such thing, unless they are public defenders. Anyone claiming that title, who isn't, should be sentenced to a term of being a public defender in Dayton, Ohio for their natural lives, plus twenty years.

Seriously, that's a flaming bullshit claim. Ain't no such thing.

If you look like you are 30, when you are 60, due to cosmetic surgery, you are a deeply insecure weenie.

If you are male, and live in a rural area, and don't hunt or fish seriously, you are an insecure weenie and should move to Greenwich Village.

Boxing is a brutal sport, but it's beautiful.

Fleetwood Mac seriously sucks.  Of their songs that suck, Landslide sucks the most.

A twenty something single man giving a lecture on "the fertility crisis" is a freakin' joke.  Geez man, get married and get a real job.

If you have to think about the hairstyle a man is evidencing, he's a weenie.

If a man has perfectly combed hair at all times (think Mike Johnson), he's a weenie.

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 116th Edition. Dissing J.D., What's the point of the National Prayer Breakfast?, Drip.

Boo

J. D. Vance was booed at the Olympics

No surprise, had I been at the Olympics, I'd have booed Vance, and I'm an American.  Trump has brought the U.S. into universal contempt, so that a symbol of it gets jeered is no surprise.

Vance must go home and cry seeing his chances of being President decline below 0 every day.  His only hope in the first place was the application of the 25th Amendment and so far, in spite of my expectations, no luck there.

Trump was asked about the event.

REPORTER: “The vice president got booed during the opening ceremony. What do you make of that frosty reception?”

PRESIDENT TRUMP: “That's surprising because people like him. Well, I mean, he is in a foreign country, you know, in all fairness. He doesn't get booed in this country.”

Truly, Trump is clueless.

Ignoramus at National Prayer Breakfast

I don't see the point of this anymore.

Truth be known, I probably never did.  I appreciate prayer, obviously, but this, at least in my memory, has been sort of a lukewarm American Civil Religion event in which the sitting President makes a nod towards religion  The same guy could have been chasing skirts all week and then sound like he was really sincere at the breakfast.

Here's JFK's 1963 speech there.

February 07, 1963

Senator Carlson, Mr. Vice President, Reverend Billy Graham, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, gentlemen:

I am honored to be with you here again this morning. These breakfasts are dedicated to prayer and all of us believe in and need prayer. Of all the thousands of letters that are received in the office of the President of the United States, letters of good will and wishes, none, I am sure, have moved any of the incumbents half so much as those that write that those of us who work here in behalf of the country are remembered in their prayers.

You and I are charged with obligations to serve the Great Republic in years of great crisis. The problems we face are complex; the pressures are immense, and both the perils and the opportunities are greater than any nation ever faced. In such a time, the limits of mere human endeavor become more apparent than ever. We cannot depend solely on our material wealth, on our military might, or on our intellectual skill or physical courage to see us safely through the seas that we must sail in the months and years to come.

Along with all of these we need faith. We need the faith with which our first settlers crossed the sea to carve out a state in the wilderness, a mission they said in the Pilgrims' Compact, the Mayflower Compact, undertaken for the glory of God. We need the faith with which our Founding Fathers proudly proclaimed the independence of this country to what seemed at that time an almost hopeless struggle, pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence. We need the faith which has sustained and guided this Nation for 175 long and short years. We are all builders of the future, and whether we build as public servants or private citizens, whether we build at the national or the local level, whether we build in foreign or domestic affairs, we know the truth of the ancient Psalm, "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it."

This morning we pray together; this evening apart. But each morning and each evening, let us remember the advice of my fellow Bostonian, the Reverend Phillips Brooks: "Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks."

[The President spoke first to the gentlemen in the hotel's main ballroom and then to the ladies in the east room.]

Ladies:

I'm glad to be with you again this morning with the Vice President, Reverend Billy Graham, Dr. Vereide, Senator Carlson, the same quartet that was here last year and the year before.

I think these breakfasts serve a most useful cause in uniting us all on an occasion when we look not to ourselves but to above for assistance. On our way from the last meeting to this, we met two members of Parliament who carried with them a message from Lord Home to this breakfast, in which Lord Home quoted the Bible and said that perhaps the wisest thing that was said in the Bible was the words, "Peace, be still."

I think it's appropriate that we should on occasion be still and consider where we are, where we've been, what we believe in, what we are trying to work for, what we want for our country, what we want our country to be, what our individual responsibilities are, and what our national responsibilities are. This country has carried great responsibilities, particularly in the years since the end of the Second War, and I think that willingness to assume those responsibilities has come in part from the strong religious conviction which must carry with it a sense of responsibility to others if it is genuine, which has marked our country from its earliest beginnings, when the recognition of our obligation to God was stated in nearly every public document, down to the present day.

This is not an occasion for feeling pleased with ourselves, but, rather, it is an occasion for asking for help to continue our work and to do more. This is a country which has this feeling strongly. I mentioned in the other room the letters which I receive, which the Members of Congress receive, which the Governors receive, which carry with them by the hundreds the strong commitment to the good life and also the strong feeling of communication which so many of our citizens have with God, and the feeling that we are under His protection. This is, I think, a source of strength to us all.

I want to commend all that you do, not merely for gathering together this morning, but for all the work and works that make up part of your Christian commitment. I am very proud to be with you.

Kennedy, who was a (bad) Catholic, was only able to get elected by promising not to be really Catholic, an act of betrayal to his faith that has hurt Catholics ever since.  At least with Trump we don't have that, as he's some sort of undeclared Protestant, he says.  Crediting that claim, which I don't think deserves much credit, he's a really bad Christian.

None of which stops people like Franklin Graham and Paula White-Cain from praising him.

White Cain was pretty restrained in her opening remarks there.  She isn't always so restrained. Trump wasn't restrained in his babbling remarks, which departed greatly from Christianity.

I'm pretty skeptical about any real attachment, or perhaps understanding, of Trump to religion. Indeed, I'm firmly convinced the damage he's doing to Evangelical Christianity is deep.

Trump announced a May 17, 2026 national prayer gathering on the National Mall as part of the White House's 'America Prays' initiative, which encourages one million people to dedicate weekly prayer time. Such prayer would be beneficial no doubt, but a big gathering on the National Mall is a mistake.  It's going to gather a counter prayer demonstration for sure by Christians who see through Trump, and it'll likely generate a mass protest.  It'll be difficult to keep it from getting out of hand.

That's a Sunday.  Maybe J.D. can note that he has to go to Mass and skip out.

Drip

For the 2026 US Olympic drip, the teams has white duffle coats and a sort of winter themed sweater with the flag on it.  It looks nice, but Norway has accused the US of stealing the star motif on the sweater.

I have a duffle coat I wear as a winter overcoat.  I really like it.  I've had it for years and year, but oddly suddenly I'm getting compliments while wearing it.  It always catches me off guard as it is getting long in the tooth, but still I get a fair number of them.

The same is true with a Hanna Hats panel cap I've been wearing for about 25 years or so.  I've always received some compliments on it, but I"m getting a lot all of a sudden.  A guy actually interrupted a conversation he was having with a woman at a store just to ask me "what's that sort of cap called"?

In other somewhat surreal conversations, I picked up pizza on my way home from an unsuccessful goose hunt the other day and went into the joint in a heavy surplus European camouflaged coat.  I'm too cheap to buy the designer camo that other people do.  Anyhow, I parked my Jeep right in front of the place and when I went in the girl waiting the counter said "What kind of a car is that?"

It was a Jeep. 

That was a surprising question as Jeeps look like Jeeps and they have since the very first Jeep.

Probably because of my coat she then asked, after getting my pizza, "where you in the military"?  I affirmed and she thanked me for my service.

I note this as this sort of somewhat awkward but ready engagement seems common for people in Generation Alpha.  Indeed, back to the hat, I've had some young women, probably 20 years old or less, just look at me and say "I like your hat" in passing.  It's a little awkward and surprising.

When I was 20 myself, young women never told me that, darn it.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 115th Edition. The Killing of Alex Pretti, Hageman flees the stage, ICE blocked in hotel.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, Alex Pretti Incident, Border Patrol, Civil Unrest, Harriet Hageman, Renee Good Incident, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Wyoming (Casper), Wyoming (Riverton), Wyoming (Thermopolis), Zeitgeist

Monday, January 14, 1946. Wartime and Post War foodstuffs.

 

I"m putting up this interesting Out Our Way cartoon from this day in 1946 as it refers to something we've discussed here before, and its a bit surprising.

What we've discussed here before is hunting during World War Two.

Here's where we looked at it earlier:

Lex Anteinternet: So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in genera...So what about World War Two?

Labels: 1940s, Food, hunting, Rationing, World War Two

I've always thought this was one of the more interesting threads on this blog, and it's one of the many ones I post and wonder why there's never any comments on it.  But that's common for blogs.  Usually, they don't get posts.

Anyhow, this cartoon by J. R. Williams sort of confirms what I'd suspected.  Some people supplemented their table fare during the war by hunting.

Williams was, as we've discussed before, a Canadian cartoonist who moved to the U.S. with his family at age 15, locating in Detroit.  He soon dropped out of school and became an apprentice machinist, providing topics for his cartoons which frequently depicted machine shops.  He drifted after that, something not uncommon in that era, and worked as a cowboy in the West, as well as serving a three year stint on the U.S. Army as a cavalryman.  All of that experience likewise reflected itself in his cartoons.  Family life, in spite of his being a bit short (again, not all that uncommon for the time) also featured frequently.  

He became a professional cartoonist in 1922 and remained one until his death in 1957 at age 69.  He'd used the proceeds of his cartoons to buy a ranch in Arizona, before relocating later on to Pasadena, California.  His cartoons carried on to some extent after his death in the hands of other artists.

Anyhow, one of the things about his cartoons is that depict fairly accurate slices of life, and this running gag from 1945-46 no doubt did.  The father has taken an elk and a deer, and the family is keeping it in the ice box.  The part that surprises me is that I really like venison, and these cartoons suggest that this venison was bad, which may be explained in an earlier cartoon I'm not familiar with.

Eighteen nations entered into an Agreement on Reparation from Germany.

The USSR ratified its August 16, 1945 treat with Poland stealing the eastern portions of the country, and giving parts of Prussia to Poland.

"Southern Resorts Fashions" were on the cover of Life.

Last edition:

Sunday, January 13, 1946. The relentless advance of malevolent technology.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Cartoons, Chinese Civil War, Japan, Marshall, Newspapers, Smoking, technology, Technology is ruining everything, tobacco

Planning for little emergencies

Planning for little emergencies: Because we never know when we, or someone else, will be in need, it's best to live life ready to share, writes columnist David Romtvedt.

Thursday, October 29, 1925. No Free Speech.

 Free speech didn't work as a defense for Bily Mitchell.

This isn't the full paper by any means, but there is some interesting items here and there.

Not to tread where we shouldn't, but the advertisement above for Kotex surprises me. 

So does the item on constant pain from pimples.

And the one on credit score. This is really before I thought there was a credit score.

And you don't need to add bran to Oatmeal.

Last edition:

Wednesday, October 28, 1925 Mitchell challenges Jurisdiction.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Army, Billy Mitchell, Blog Mirror, Calvin Coolidge, Cartoons, football, France, J.R. Williams, law, Marriage, The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell, U.S. Navy, Whatever It Is I'm against it

Foothill Agrarian: In Defense of Wood Heat

Foothill Agrarian: In Defense of Wood Heat:   Or, I might have a firewood problem… Tonight, my new woodshed is full of firewood - a combination of white oak from my neighbor’s property...

A series of Sunday reflections, not all of which are appropriate for the Sabbath.

This morning, I left the house early, although I had slept in.  Sleeping in for me means it was 4:30 a.m.  

The prior morning I had awaked at 2:00 a.m. and felt like crap all day.  Part of that was because I worked, and the office was cold.  

It's worse today.  My arms are still and sore, from my shoulders to my wrists.

Anyhow, it wasn't in the morning. Sleeping in until 4:30 was nice.  I actually got up about 3:30, took my thyroid medicine (which makes me angry every day) and went back to bed.

I shaved this morning.  I don't most Sundays, or Saturdays.  If was retired, I'd grow a beard.

I left for 8:30 Mass early, as I needed to get gasoline.  The Jeep was on "E".  I pulled into the nearby mega station and the pump didn't work.  I figured it hadn't been turned on, so I ran into the store to direct the attention to the clerks.

I've only been in the station itself once.  It was a few weeks ago early in the morning and there was a middle aged thin guy and a friendly, but not so sharp, young guy working there.  The middle aged guy was a hoot.  I brought up my snacks for the day, which included some pink "sno balls" and he noted how they used to make blue ones.  He thought they had been removed as "blue balls" wasn't appropriate, but was hoping they'd bring back "blue balls". The young guy never got the joke in spite of his repeated efforts to explain it, without explaining it.

"Blue balls, man!"

Oh well.

He wasn't shaved that day either.

Today,. when I went in, the clerks were two enormously fat young women.

Now, that sounds rude, but they were.  It's not a crime to be enormously fat, although it sure isn't good for you.

Both of them had all kinds of fishing tackle affixed to their faces. Piercings, as they say.  

Now, in a second, or third, rude observation, having piercings if you are enormously fat doesn't make you attractive.  Having piercings all over your face never makes you attractive, but having them if you are fat is a really bad look.  It's similar to having tattoos if you are enormously fat woman.  It makes you look worse.

Having said that, having piercings and being very thin makes you look like a meth addict.

When I came in, I noted right away "the pump needs to be turned on". They both informed me that most of the pumps weren't working. Indeed, they were very helpful on that point.

It was extremely cold, and very windy.

I noted they might want to post a sign on the pumps in that case.  I was grumpy, unreasonably so.

They noted they hadn't had time as they'd only been there since 5:00 a.m.. 

It was 8:00 a.m.

Three hours?

They did have time to make an enormous pile of fried chicken.  It was freaking huge.  I can't imagine how many chickens had died to make it.

The two men who were there a couple of weeks ago had not done that.

Who buys fried chicken at 8:00 a.m.?

It did smell good, as it was fresh fried chicken.

It reminded me of the song "Sunday Morning Going Down", which mentions fried chicken.

I hate that song.

Oh well.  I hope their lives are happy, and I hope too they get in shape a bit.

I went to Mass.

The Priest, on the way out, called me by name.  It's not my parish, but I've been going there for months as I live the Priest's homilies'. They don't pull any punches..  I was surprised he knew my name.  He's a very good Priest.  I'll have to be a less severe sinner.

I'm often surprised when people know my name, as I'm an introvert.  Frequently, people do.

On the way home, I stopped at a different gas station.  I had to stretch the hose as the person inf ront of me, who was not filling up, and wasn't there, hadn't left enough room.  As I was finishing up she showed up.  She looked considerably older than me, but probably wasn't, and was wearing pajama bottoms.

People who wear pajama bottoms outside of their houses should be exchanged for Syrian refugees immediately.  It's sloppy in the extreme and means you don't give a rats ass how you look.

We don't want to see you in your pajama bottoms.

I ran in the store to get some outdoor snacks.  She came back i with some loud drama about how much she had paid, or not, for prepaid gas.

Seriously, even if you have a nearly new truck, if you go to the gas in your pajamas, we really don't care about your over, or under, payment. Put on some trousers.

I went out for ducks.

It soundly have been my dogs first time, but he died about a month ago, poor puppy.  He was so lively, too much dog for me really.  

I miss him. I'm not getting over his death, even though he was just a dog.

I hope dog souls, and cat souls, go to Heaven.

There were ducks, but the hurricane force winds frustrated me.

On  the way out, I had to stop as a horse trailer was blocking the road and the driver, a cowboy, was yapping it tup with a hunter while parked in the middle of the road..  Off to the side, another cowboy was helping a young Native American woman mount a horse.  The horse was calm, but the poor woman, about 20 years old, clearly didn't know how to mount it. Frankly, a greener horse would have been dangerous.

As it was, it was charming. The cowboy was concerned and helpful.  They managed it, as I drove on, she was on the horse, proud but embarrassed.

Not all that long ago, her grandmother would have known how.  That knowledge is lost quickly.

But then, not all that long ago, the grandfather of the cowboy wouldn't have helped.  He did.

The whole time, a very young boy stood there with a horse.  He's probably ten times the cowboy I ever was.

Monday, September 28, 1925. Senators meet with Coolidge.

 

The Washington Senators visited the White House.

Evelyn Cameron wrote:

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1925

Read, finished “River to Cross”. Green tomatoes gathered. Per’s birthday. Eggs 5.

Scotch mist, rain most of day. Northeast wind. Night 38°; day 40°.

Arose 7:20. David up. Milked, cleaned barn. Have been making pile outside. Two shocks of corn stalks to barn from front of house. Breakfast 9:00. Too wet to get team & do garden work. Read as above, cigarettes, snooze. Fed chickens. Had put pot of ripe tomatoes on morning, ate for lunch. Weighed huskies gathered Saturday, 40 1/2 lbs. Wrote on pieces of rag labels for plum jam, & sewed on the 5 jars. Fed David. Put more cornstalks on melons. Gathered all ripe & green tomatoes, 2 sacks former, put in cellar. Trinket had put in. Princess Pat came up alone. Dusk milked, cut up their corn. Let David go loose. Janet was to have returned today from Boulder & come here to help Roy get cattle he bought from Albrecht. Supper. Wrote diary. Cigarette. Read.

Last edition:

Saturday, September 26, 1925. No divorce.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Aircraft, Art, Country & Western Music, law, Marriage, Music, Olympics, Personalities, Pop Music, Rif War, Spanish Army, Women

Courthouses of the West: A Broken Profession

Courthouses of the West: A Broken Profession: 

A Broken Profession

This is a follow-up to something I posted here just the other day, taking the blog away from its comfortable place of depicting courthouses, into the nature of the contemporary practice.

Courthouses of the West: Things in the air. Some observations with varying ...: This blog is supposed to be dedicated to architecture, basically, although matters pertaining to the law do show up here.  Very rarely is th...

Here, I'm doing it again.

The CLEs above were on my mind to such an extent, and indeed they still are, that I've discussed them with several other lawyers I know.  Turns out some of them are on meds for anxiety.  I would never have guessed it.

There's something about this that really disturbs me,. although I don't fault them any one of them a darned bit.  Some of them seem to love their careers and are really good at what they do.  What bothers me, however, is that we seem to have developed a profession that has to heavily rely upon chemicals just to get by.

Just going back to the earliest of human mind altering chemicals, it's reported that between 21-36% of lawyers engage in problem drinking at hazardous, harmful, or potentially alcohol-dependent levels.  That's pretty disturbing, as that's between 1/5th up to a little over 1/3d of all practicing lawyers.  Some studies suggest that 36% of Minnesota's lawyers and judges drink at a dangerous level, and if that's not disturbing enough, some studies suggest that 41% of Canadian lawyers do.  Around 10% of lawyers have a drug abuse problem, but that probably includes a lot of them who have an alcohol problem.

Not good.

There's really no way to know how many lawyers are on anti anxiety medications.  Probably a bunch.  It's obviously much, much, better that people dealing with anxiety inducing situations seek medical help than crack open a bottle of Henry McKenna and poor yourself several shots.*  It's also better than smoking a joint or whatever else people are doing in the illegal drug categories, although obviously these days marijuana is sort of in a weird still illegal but not enforced much category.**

The laws approach to all of this has been to reach out to lawyers and offer "help".  But perhaps what should be obvious, but doesn't seem to be, is the profession itself needs the help.  If this percentage of its professionals, including its best and brightest, need chemical help just to get by each day, there's something existentially wrong in the profession.  All the CLE's on mindfulness in the world aren't going to fix that.

Footnotes:

*Henry McKenna is an Irish Whiskey named after lawyer and distiller, Henry McKenna.

**Marijuana is still a scheduled illegal drug in Federal law and students imbibing in it can risk admission to their State bars.  Likewise this can be true for people seeking a career in law enforcement.

What's the meaning of Charlie Kirk? Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me. Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me. What a long, strange trip it's been

 Additional labels for:  

What's the meaning of Charlie Kirk? Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me. Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me. What a long, strange trip it's been

Mid Week at Work. Three Mirrors.

 This blog, as we occasionally note has the intent . . . to try to explore and learn a few things about the practice of law prior to the current era. That is, prior to the internet, prior to easy roads, and the like. How did it work, how regional was it, how did lawyers perceive their roles, and how were they perceived?

Well, okay, clearly its strayed way beyond that, but it's retained that purpose and is focused on the period from around 1900 until around 1920, which makes a lot other things, indeed most things, off topic.

But this past week there were a collection of things we ran across that really do sort of focus in on that a bit, and given us an example of how things have changed.

Taking them in no particular order, we have the story of baseball player Tommy Brown, about whom we noted:

Seventeen year old Tommy Brown became the youngest player in Major League Baseball to hit a home run.  Brown had joined the Dodgers at age 16.

Brown provides a good glimpse into mid 20th Century America.  Nobody would think it a good thing for a 16 year old to become a professional baseball player now.  Moreover, the next year, when Brown was 18, he was conscripted into the Army, something that likely wouldn't happen now even if conscription existed.  He returned to professional baseball after his service, and played until 1953 and thereafter worked in a Ford plant until he retired, dying this year at age 97.  Clearly baseball, which was America's biggest sport at the time, didn't pay the sort of huge sums it does now.

Tommy "Buckshot" Brown as born on December 6, 1927 and January 15, 2025, and gives us a really good glimpse of the world of the late 1930s and 1940s.  He'd dropped out of school at age 12 in 1939 and went to work with his uncle as a dockworker.  Being a longshoreman is a notoriously dangerous job and frankly the occupation was heavily influenced by the mob at the time.  There's no earthly way that you could be hired as a longshoreman at age 12 now, nor should there be.  But life was like that then.  My father's father, who was born in 1907, I think, went to work at age 13.  

People did that.

If you are a longshoreman at age 12, you are a 12 year old adult.

He must have been a good baseball player to be hired on in the Majors at age 16.  If that happened now, you'd have to be one of the greatest players alive in the game. But this was during World War Two, and baseball was scraping.

It was scraping as the military was.  The service had taken pretty much all the able bodied men who weren't in a critical war industry.  We don't like to think this about "the Greatest Generation" now, but by 1944 and 1945, the Army was inducting me who were only marginally capable of being soldiers in normal times.  Men who were legally blind in one eye and who were psychotic were being taken in, and I'm not exaggerating.  The recent incident we reported here of a soldier going mad and killing Japanese POWs makes sense in this context.  It's relatively hard to get into the Army now.  After World War Two men inducted were in good physical and mental shape.  By the last days of the Second World War not all were and we knew it.

Brown's story also tells us a lot about what economic life was like mid century.  Obviously, baseball didn't make Brown rich, and there was no post baseball career associated with sports.  He went to work in a factory.

Going to work in a factory, in the 50s, was a pretty solid American job, and another story we touched on relates to this.

The US War Production Board removed most of its controls over manufacturing activity, setting the stage for a post war economic boom.

The US standard of living had actually increased during the war, which is not entirely surprising given that the US economy had effectively stagnated in 1929, and the US was the only major industrial power other than Canada whose industrial base hadn't been severely damaged during the war.  Ever since the war, Americans have been proud of the economics of the post war era, failing to appreciate that if every major city on two continents is bombed or otherwise destroyed, and yours aren't, your going to succeed.

Having said that, the Truman Administration's rapid normalization of the economy was very smart.  The British failed to do that to their detriment.

Americans of our age, and indeed since the 1950s, have really convinced themselves that American Ingenuity and native smartness caused us to have the best economy in the world in the third quarter of the 20th Century, and that if only we returned to the conditions of the 50s, we would again.

Well, the conditions of the 1950s were a lot like the conditions of the post war 1940s.  Every major city in the world, save for American and Canadian ones, had been damaged, and many had been bombed flat.   It's not as if Stuttgart, Stalingrad, or Osaka were in good shape.  We would have had to nearly intentionally mess up not to be the world's dominant economy and that went on all the way into the 1970s.  The UK did not really recover from World War Two, in part due to bad economic decisions, until the 1960s.  West Germany, ironically, recovered much quicker, but in no small part due to the return of refugee German economists who intentionally ignored American economic advice.  Japan emerged from the devastation in the 70s.  Italy really started to in the 60s.  

Many of these countries, when they did, emerged with brand new economies as things were brand new.  Japan is a good example, but then so is Italy, which had been a shockingly backwater dump until the mid 50s.

Russia, arguably, has never recovered, helping to explain its national paranoia.

The thing is, however, that the myth as been hugely damaging to Americans, who imagine that if we were only whiter and had "less regulation", etc., we'd be back in 1955.  It's not going to happen, and we can't tariff our way back to the Eisenhower Era.

Of course, a lot of that post war era wasn't all that nifty. We had the Cold War, for example, and we often dealt with significant inflation, in no small part to inflate our way out of enormous Cold War defense budgets. . .which is probably a warning of what's to come when we realize we have to do something about the national debt.

Finally, we had posted on women and careers.  Well, sort of.  Anyhow, right after that we saw a Twitter post in which a young woman who posted on TikTok was being discussed for say:

I'm just so tired of living and working and doing this every single day, and having nothing — I don't know how I'm gonna get childcare when I have to work 40 hours a week because I can't even afford to feed my family as is.  I'm having medical problems. I can't even get into the doctor because X rays and MRIs are 500, let alone a colonoscopy and endoscopy that I need. Like, I can't afford anything. My doctors cancel my appointments.

This world is just not meant to be like this, we need to make change for us, for each other. Please.

She's right.

This was under the heading, on her post, of "This world is a scam".

The world?  Well, that's a little too broad.  But the modernized industrialized Protestant work ethic world of the West?  You bet.

Interestingly, one of the things she took flak for was buying some sort of baby bottle washer.  It's been a long time since there were infants here, but when there were, I recall we tended to use sort of a disposable system, not real bottles.  Having said that, I looked bottles up, and I can recall that we had some of the ones that are still offered, so I'm likely wrong.  Anyhow, washing bottles is no doubt a pain.

The irate people, who are probably generally irate simply because she had children, and therefore is not fully lashed to the deck of the economic fraud everyone is participating in, seemed to think that this therefore meant she was rich.  Not hardly.

FWIW, I looked up baby bottle washers too, and they really aren't that expensive.  They no doubt probably save time.  Time is money and of course we need to get those wimmen's out in the workplace where they can serve the machine.

Women only entered the workplace at this level in the first place after domestic machinery freed, or seperated, their labor from the house, where it had previously been necessary.  You don't see women being criticized because their house contains a vacuum cleaner, or a dishwasher, even though this is not intrinsically different.  

Indeed, this tends to be the one area where the right and the left are in agreement, and will yell about how society needs more baby warehouses, um daycares.  The left, of course, goes further and discourages having children at all, and would indeed expand infanticide if it could, one of the issues that gave rise to the culture was and the populist revolve that we're still in.  

At any rate, she's right.  The world is not meant to be like this. We made this horror, and others.  We can fix it.

Pushing the Introvert

I've been introverted my entire life.

The way introverts experience the world is completely foreign to extroverts.  It's impossible to explain it.  It's stressful to not have extroverts grasp that.  It's also stressful to live in an extroverted society, which we do.

A lot of lawyers, although I doubt anywhere near 50%, are introverted.  That surprises people, and it may in particular surprise people that their own lawyer may be introverted.  Being introverted doesn't mean that you can't interact with people, even in a very public and effective fashion.  

Added to this is the phenomenon of "Type A" personalities, who are competitive and achieving, for lack of a better way to put it.  I have no idea if most Type A personalities are extroverts, but I'll bet they are.  It's always universally assumed that lawyers, particularly trial lawyers, are Type A personalities, and I'll bet most are, at least the trial lawyers. but not everyone is. I'm not.  I don't like competition at all and never intentionally get myself into most types of competition, at least public competition.¹   Knowing that I like history and know a bunch of stuff in general, people will try to draw me into competition or even force me into ones if I'm in a setting where I can't avoid it, which I absolutely despise.  "You're on my team!" I'll hear and we're off into a game of specified trivia or something, which I don't want to be in.²   I once had this occur with somebody betting on me following a bunch of "no, no, no" comments from me, all to no avail.  

More than one I've been talking with some other lawyer or professional who will say to me "we're both Type A personalities. . . ".

No, I'm not.

So why do I bring this all up?

I recently have had some legal matters which featured a crop of older lawyers.  Lawyers older than me.  Guys who really ought to be retired.  I heard at one of these things that "lawyers who retire are unhappy".  

These guys love the association of other lawyers.

Recently it occurs to me that I've never really liked that.  I don't pal around with big bunches of lawyers.  I have some lawyers who are my friends, but I don't call up other lawyers at random to go to lunch, or things like that.  Indeed recently the abuse that lawyers do to society and individuals has come into sharp focus to me, in part I guess, as I'm close enough to the end of my career that I don't have to pretend that every legal cause is somehow ennobling.  I think lawyers who have the attitude expressed above have it, as they love hanging around with other lawyers and, as odd as it may seem, they like the forced captivity of witnesses and deponents as they love the game aspect of the law, and just like being around with people they don't know, even if those people really don't want to be around them.  I've actually seen lawyers go on yapping at somebody in a deposition for the obvious reason that they're enjoying talking to the witness, who if examined closely is in agony.

Indeed, I bet they don't even realize that's the case. 

Okay, again, why do I bring this up?

Well, first of all, I'm supposed to go to an event this week. Well, today.  It's out of town.  But I have a lot of work to do, and I can't afford the time, and beyond that, I just don't want to go.

I just don't want to.

I don't want to sit around with the lawyers all day, and I don't want to go to the dinner.  I don't want to engage in small talk about the law, or tell war stories, or anything like that. 

I shouldn't have signed up for it, but there are CLE credits, and I need those.

So yesterday, I told my long suffering spouse that I wasn't going.

Then the hard sell came on.  

"You need to go".  "You need to keep the networks".

My wife and I, at this stage of my career, have substantially different ideas about the near term future.  I've come closer to death that I generally admit within the last couple of years, and this past week two people I know who were just a few years older than me suddenly died.  A woman I went to law school with I recently learned passed away four years ago, at age 58.  I really don't expect to be like those lawyers in their 70s, keeping on as (annoying) happy warriors until they die in their late 70s or early 80s.  Why would I?

They could probably answer that, but I can't even fathom it.

But my wife is an extrovert, and she can't conceive of a situation in which a person doesn't want to go to work every day, or even retire.  And she worries about finances, which of course is her absolute right.

So, the big push.

A lot of extroverts regard introverts not wanting to do things as something needing to be addressed.  It's sort of, in their minds, like kindergarteners who don't want to go to that first day of school.  They just need a little push.

And there's a lot of truth in that.  Sometimes introverts do need a push to go to something they'll like.

Sometimes, they need to be able to be left alone, or just with their families.

I generally work six days a week, sometimes seven. I'm in the introvert category that needs to have some downtime.  And, quite frankly, to be pushed to go to something by those who can't go themselves, due to other commitments, is agony.  My first question whenever I'm invited to something is to my wife, and that question is "are you going?"  More often than not, it's "no, but you need to".

I really don't.

And she doesn't grasp that, nine times out of ten, when I go and enjoy these things, it's because she went with me, which she very rarely does anymore.  It was her company I enjoyed, not the attendance at the event.

I tend to yield on these things, and we'll see about this one.  But, for those close to introverts, or married to them, knowing that we live in an extremely extroverted and competitive society, first do no harm.

"Don't make things worse for me" is sometimes my reply, which is not appreciated at all.  

In other words, taking somebody whose brain is wired for hard on full bore activity in public, and for whom there are no casual conversations whatsoever, and pushing them into having their brain work overtime, is not always a favor.

Footnotes

1.  I will participate in some sorts of competitions, but they're mostly ones that are really individual and I'm basically competing with myself.  In terms of team sports, I really only like baseball, which is a team sport that has such individual positions.  It's almost like a series of individual competitions. The man up to bat is really an individual.

I detest football.  I find soccer boring.  I do like rugby, however.

If I'm in an individual competition, I like to do well, but I'm not upset with myself if I don't.  I will note that highly competitive people, however, can make even individual competitions absolutely miserable by introducing their personal competitiveness into it.  Some competitive people make things into competitions that don't need to be.

As an example of the latter, two of my highly competitive colleagues are this way. On the rare occasions I've been bird hunting with them, "who has the best dog" becomes some sort of stupid aggravating competition and during football and basketball seasons endless arguments about adopted teams go on and on, in a public setting, on the presumed assumption that everyone likes to watch these verbal jousts.

For that matter, they both like to argue and will engage in verbal sparring on various topics just for sport, and again where everyone else can't avoid them.  Some time ago, I actually intervened to stop their arguments on religion as they were outright insulting to two people here who are members of minoritarian religions.

Oddly, I've found that a lot of former soldiers who really liked the military have the same mindset and don't follow team sports.  I think I know the reason why, but I'll deal with it in some other thread.

2.  I've actually had "we'll play trivia" thrown out as an educement to attend something, which nearly guarantees that I'll try to avoid it.  It's not that I mind trivia topics, or trivial pursuit as a game, but I don't want to compete with people out of a close circle who don't care if I win or lose.  I really hate being made the presumed champion who will carry a team to victory as its stress I really don't need.