For those who slept through the history section on the Great Depression.

 

What Is the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act? History, Effect and Reaction

Friday, January 26, 1945. Audie Murphy.

The Przyszowice massacre began in Upper Silesia, Poland. It carried into the next day, during which the Red Army killed between 54 and 69 civilian Poles in the community.  The Soviets may have mistaken the Poles for Germans, which still wouldn't justify their actions.

The Battle of the Heiligenbeil Pocket began on the Eastern Front.

The Battle for the Kapelsche Veer began in the Netherlands.

Lt. Audie Murphy performed the actions that resulted in his winning the Medal of Honor.  His citation reads:

2d Lt. Murphy commanded Company B, which was attacked by 6 tanks and waves of infantry. 2d Lt. Murphy ordered his men to withdraw to prepared positions in a woods, while he remained forward at his command post and continued to give fire directions to the artillery by telephone. Behind him, to his right, 1 of our tank destroyers received a direct hit and began to burn. Its crew withdrew to the woods. 2d Lt. Murphy continued to direct artillery fire which killed large numbers of the advancing enemy infantry. With the enemy tanks abreast of his position, 2d Lt. Murphy climbed on the burning tank destroyer, which was in danger of blowing up at any moment, and employed its .50 caliber machinegun against the enemy. He was alone and exposed to German fire from 3 sides, but his deadly fire killed dozens of Germans and caused their infantry attack to waver. The enemy tanks, losing infantry support, began to fall back. For an hour the Germans tried every available weapon to eliminate 2d Lt. Murphy, but he continued to hold his position and wiped out a squad which was trying to creep up unnoticed on his right flank. Germans reached as close as 10 yards, only to be mowed down by his fire. He received a leg wound, but ignored it and continued the single-handed fight until his ammunition was exhausted. He then made his way to his company, refused medical attention, and organized the company in a counterattack which forced the Germans to withdraw. His directing of artillery fire wiped out many of the enemy; he killed or wounded about 50. 2d Lt. Murphy's indomitable courage and his refusal to give an inch of ground saved his company from possible encirclement and destruction, and enabled it to hold the woods which had been the enemy's objective.

Murphy is famous, of course, for having been the most highly decorated US soldier of World War Two, although that is no longer the case or at least not clearly the case.  He was, undoubtedly, heroic.

His life was, overall, quite sad.  He came from an impoverished background in which his father abandoned his large family.  He acquired hunting skills as a child in part for that reason, as that provided necessary food for the table.  His education ended at the 5th Grade level.  Seemingly a natural born soldier, he wanted to stay in the post war Army and even contemplated trying to attend West Point, but his lack of an education and physical injuries precluded it.  He did remain in the Texas National Guard.  He had an explosive temper even as a child, and suffered from PTSD after the war. 

After the war, he worked as an actor and songwriter.  

He died in 1971 in an airplane crash.  His father outlived him, dying in 1975.  His beloved mother died in 1941.

Last edition:

Thursday, January 25, 1945. The Beginning of the Evacuation of East Prussia and the Nature of the Red Army.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Army, Battle of the Bulge, British Army, Burma, Evacuation of East Prussia, German Wehrmacht, Health, Philippines, Prussia, Rape and the Red Army, Red Army, Volkssturm, World War Two

Tuesday, December 31, 1974. Americans get to own gold again.

Depression era restrictions on the private ownership of gold in the US were removed.

The prohibition, as well as government price setting of Gold, had come into effect in 1933.

South African Kugerrands and Canadian gold coins immediately became very popular as a hedge against inflation.

France ended its state monopoly on television.

Catfish Hunter signed with the Yankees, becoming baseball's highest paid player at that point.

Last edition:

Monday, December 16, 1974. Safe Drinking Water.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, 1928, 1970s, 1974, 1974 at the movies, ANZUK, Australia, Burkina Faso, Growing up in the 1970s, It was because of the Vietnam War, law, Mali, Movies, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Upper Volta, Weapons

"And I'm gonna tell you workers, 'fore you cash in your checks They say 'America First,' but they mean 'America Next!' "

I've been seeing some political signs around town that say "America First!"

Americans are, I'm afraid, notoriously dense about history, which doesn't keep Americans from citing it.  Just recently, for example, as I already noted here, the state's populist's caucus cited Operation Overlord as a great example of American virtue and heroism, apparently dim to the fact that Operation Overlord was made necessary by the US sitting out the post 1917 to 1941 world stage's drama and that the heroism was made necessary by the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor, not the US waking up one day to the dangers of fascism.  Indeed, recently populist have been itching to repeat the betrayal of Czechoslovakia, in the form of Ukraine, so we can finally bring World War III about, although they are dim to the fact that's what they're doing.

Part of that late 1920s and 1930s drama that it seems people have forgotten (in addition to massive tariffs being a horrific idea, and that taxing upper income levels at the 50% rate actually doesn't hurt the economy at all) was the rise of the America First idea, which was that the US could just sit around and ignore the world, safely.  It turned out, of course, that ships going down daily in the Atlantic, numerous people being murdered due to their religion, and the Japanese fleet proved that concept wrong in a bloody fashion, but populists are imagining it again.  This time its pretty likely, I'd estimate in the 75% range, that the Chinese navy and ballistic missile force will prove that idea wrong again.

Anyhow, when I read "America First!" on political signs, having a sense of history, I can't help but recall this Woody Guthrie song:

While I suppose it's not directly applicable to the current times, I love the last line of the song:

And I'm gonna tell you workers, 'fore you cash in your checks

They say "America First, " but they mean "America Next!"

In Washington, Washington

Messed Up Animal Ecology. Why you can't separate out your favorite animal, and demonize your least favorite, and make a lick of sense.

The other night on the local news, some guy from some environmental outfit was yapping about "wild horses", equating them "with other wild animals like deer and elk", and suggesting that cattle need to be removed from the range.

One of the things he brought up about cattle were their numbers, in comparison to "wild" horses.

His argument was intellectually bereft, but then arguments in this area often are.

Winslow Homer painting of a (fairly thin looking) plow horse.  Lots of "chunks" were let go in the 30s when their owners droughted out, their descendants still roaming the range today.

There are no wild horses in North America at all.

None, nada, zippo, "0".

There are a little over 64,000 feral horses, all in the West, in the Western United States.  If we include burros, which at least nobody pretends are a wild animal, there are 82,000 feral equines.  

All wild equines stem, at the very oldest, from animals that were brought on to the continent in 1519.  Quite a few probably don't really have any Spanish blood in their veins at all, and hail from horses much more recently brought in. There's fairly good evidence that in the upper West horses came down out of Canada, not up from Mexico.  

Some poor coureur des bois awakened one morning, in other words, and thought "Chu dans marde! Mon cheval est parti!"

"Bourgeois" W---r, and His Squaw" by Alfred Jacob Miller, depicting a coureur des bois and his Native American spouse.  This is a famous painting, but we're not supposed to like it now.  One art museum notes about it:  "These words, which shaped how Miller's contemporaries viewed the watercolors, reveal the racism and sexism embedded in 19th-century exploration and colonization of the western part of what is today the United States."  Oh, horse crap.  Most trappers were culturally French, and the French had intermixed with the native population from day one.  This could just as easily be "guy and his wife."  The comment itself imposed an Anglo-American view on a Franco-American and Native American landscape.

Moreover, the introduction date to the Native Americans, at least on the Northern Plains, is much more recent than supposed, and even then, they didn't take them right up.  Indeed, among the Shoshone it produced a big argument, with the arguers, mostly young men, taking off and acquiring the name "The Arguers", i.e., Comanche.

In the 1930s, a lot of farmers in the West droughted out and simply let their horses go, including stocky draft horses, i.e., "chunks". Then again, in the 1970s the numbers of wild horses expanded as recent imports abandoned pasture pets out on the range and went back to their homes in Port Arthur, or wherever, and even now some of that happens.  The majestic broom tail of the range today may have been Little Becky's 4H project before she left for UW, died her hair purple, and started protesting for Hamas.

Okay, so what about cows?

Long horn in a herd of Angus or Black Baldies.  I'm not really sure how this bovine ended up in this herd.

They came in at just about the same time, or earlier.  Cattle were brought to the Caribbean as early as 1493 by Columbus, which is really early.  "In 1492 Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue", but in 1493 the livestock truck, basically, pulled up to the dock.  Cows can and do go wild, but nobody gets very romantic about it, and there isn't a Wild and Free Ranging Cow Act.  Nobody goes by the moniker "Wild Cow Annie".  A wild cow we had went rogue and recruited other cows to her rogue wild cow band, which shows how wild they can get.  A neighboring rancher, caught her and shipped her as a menace. We got the check, and were happy for that end.

There are about 90,000,000 head of cattle in the United States as of this past summer, down from 100,000,000 in 1998.  

Okay, that's a lot of cows.

Which bring back our ignorant protagonist's point.  Before Columbus came and said "let's stock this range and lose some horses doing it", he seems to argue, the rangeland was empty of large ungulates.

Um, nope.

There were something like 50,000,0000 to 75,000,000 buffalo.

But, gee, Yeoman, that would mean that the entire ungulate supporting range of North America has always had a lot of large ungulates on it. . . 

Yep, that's what it means.

Currently, there are about 20,500 Plains bison in wild herds and an additional 420,000 in commercial herds, which we are supposed to pretend are wild herds.

Given our inability to accurately state how many head of anything were on the Pre Columbian landmass, what this basically tells you is the ungulate population hasn't changed very much.  Overall populations of large wild animals, i.e., "big game" are way up, however, due to water projects and farmed fields.

So the entire Cow Bad/Horse Good argument is pretty flawed.

Now, the line of last defense on this is that cows cause global warming. That's because cows fart.

Buffalo don't.

Umm. . . 

Well, buffalo do, but only Febreeze.

Well, no, they fart methane too.

In reality, all mammals fart, but some fart more than they otherwise would due to diet.  You already know this due to your coworker who has, every day, the Lumberjack Special at Hefty Portions for breakfast, followed by the Ejército del Norte special at El Grande Conquistador for lunch, a quart of scotch around 2:00 p.m., and goes home and has his spouse's Roast Wildebeest Surprise for dinner (all Keto approved, of course).  The only real argument here, therefore, is that maybe cattle ought not to be finished off on corn, which they probably wouldn't normally do unless somebody left a gate down. That likely makes them gassy.

Lascaux painting of aurochs, approximately 36,000 years ago.  Note also the deer/roebucks and horse depicted.

Taking this out worldwide, I'd note, cattle are native to the entire rest of the planet in some form, save for Australia.  Wild cattle ranged Europe, Asia and Africa.  They aren't new here, and they've been wondering around chewing their cuts and farting for longer than we've been a species.

So back to environmental destruction.

The first real notable example of it was Cottonwood bottoms in the American West.  During the winter, buffalo hang out in them.  Feral horses took it up.  And mounted Native Americans, who previously had a pretty limited impact on the environment, did too.

But you can't really say anything about that.

Monday, July 16, 1923. Summer session.

Wyoming's second, in its history up to that point, special legislative session convened in Cheyenne to address its state farm loan provisions.

Magnus Johnson of the left-wing Minnesotan Farmer-Labor Party was elected to the U.S. Senate in a special election.  This meant that both of Minnesota's senators were members of the party.

The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party was a hugely successful third party in that state, coming to control the legislature during the Depression, as well as providing the bulk of Minnesota's Congressional representation.  During the Depression, however, the American Farm Bureau became the primary representative for farmers, and it was hostile to the party.  In 1944 Hubert Humphrey took the party into the Democratic Party, and it ceased to exist.  Humphrey, moreover, expelled the Communists from the organization, whose presence showed how radical it actually was.

The Democratic Party in that state is technically the Democratic Farmer Labor Party

The Depression arrived for farmers in the U.S. before the rest of the general public, which likely explains the rise of the Farmers Labor Party in Minnesota, which was heavily agricultural and also heavily influenced by the left wing politics of Scandinavia where many of its residents had roots.

Johnson was Swedish born and had a semi successful political career, winning and losing.  He was also a farmer.

Italy and the UK agreed to call an international conference on German reparations, irrespective of whether France would participate or not.

Fairbanks, Alaska presented President Harding with a special collar for Laddie Boy.

The Steer. 1942.

 Annual agricultural show at the state experimental farm at Presque Isle, Maine. Prizewinning "baby beef", raised by a daughter of a Farm Security Administration client.

Tuesday May 22, 1923. Baldwin rises, Cavalry Bandits caputured, Bryan Anti Evolution Measure voted down, Mark falls, D.C. Golf.

 

Stanley Baldwin became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom following Bonar Law stepping down due to rapidly failing health.

The Distillery Bandits, who were apprehended after a gun battle, were all veterans of the U.S. Army's cavalry branch.

William Jennings's Bryan's motion that the Presbyterian General Assembly cut off financial support for any Presbyterian body teaching evolution was voted down.

The Mark dropped enormously.

The President played in a newspaper golf tournament.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVI . To what extent is that new?

 A short thread just pondering some things in the news, or the zeitgeist, that are portrayed as "new".

1.  A war between Russia and Ukraine?

This is a horrible event, to be sure, but Russia's been trying to shove itself on Ukraine since 1917, or probably well before.

Russia is really like a giant bully in its neighborhood, which is why this is important.  It's not new.  Russia grabbed Ukraine back after the Russian Revolution and Civil War, and then fought its guerrillas in the early 20s. It fought guerrillas again from 1943 into the 1940s.  Ukraine wants to be an independent state. Russia doesn't like any of the neighboring countries to have that status.

2. Adult children living at home.

This is constantly portrayed as new, but it's the historical norm due to limited resources.

It really only began to change in the 1930s, at first due to economic desperation. That trend was amplified by World War Two, and the massive economic boom after the war really changed the situation.

A constructing economy has reversed it, as it has. . . 

3.  Delayed marriage

Marriage ages have traditionally been higher than they were in the1940s to 1970s time frame.  The reason is noted above.

Related Threads:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLV. At War With Nature and the Metaphysical

Blog Mirror: The state of Joe Biden’s union: The return to democratic capitalism

Interesting article by Robert Reich:

The state of Joe Biden’s union: The return to democratic capitalism

Reich claims that Joe Biden has restored the economic paradigm that governed from 1932 until the Reagan Administration.  He's certainly correct that that Democratic Capitalism, or Market Democracy as it is sometimes called, governed American economic thinking in that period, and he's also correct that Reagan attacked it upon coming into office.

And he's also correct that Milton Friedman, when he was head of the Fed, aggressively attacked inflation.  Indeed, Friedman was absolutely correct to have done so, and I wouldn't hold that Reagan's economic policies were wrong at the time.

Of note, some will site to St. Pope John Paul II the Great's encyclical Centesiumus Annus, issued in 1991, as support for a sort of Democratic Capitalism.

Reich's argument, while I'm not wholly convinced by any means, is an interesting one.  In essence he argues that the economic system of 1932 to 1980 was the correct one, and the one we went to since that time is unjust.

Monday, February 5, 1923. Parti libéral du Québec retains its position.

Louis-Alexandre Taschereau retained his position as Premier of Quebec, as he would all the way through 1936.

Taschereau was a member of the Liberal Party (Parti libéral du Québec) and had been elected in 1920 as the Canadian economy started to sink, in advance, into the Great Depression.  He was an opponent of Roosevelt's new Deal, comparing it to fascism and communism, and instead encouraged private enterprise to develop Quebec's forest and hydroelectric potential.  As he did so, his policies challenged Québécois agrarianism, which would begin to lead to its end.

And therefore, I am not a fan.

That may sound silly, but agrarianism is what allowed the Québécois to remain that.  Their agrarian separation and close association with the Catholic Church is what allowed them to remain a people for two centuries of "English" domination.

Taschereau was not a disloyal Francophone or Catholic, but by attacking the agrarian nature of Québécois society he was by default attacking its essence in favor of money.  Ultimately that attack would succeed, leading to the downfall of Québécois agrarianism and ultimately to the undercutting of the culture itself.  It remains, of course, but badly damaged by the experience.

Courthouses of the West: Oklahoma County Courthouse, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Courthouses of the West: Oklahoma County Courthouse, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.: 

Oklahoma County Courthouse, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

This impressive art deco courthouse was built in 1937 and serves Oklahoma County, Oklahoma.  Apparently it was loosely inspired by Mayan temples, which is unusual.

It was a Great Depression works project.

Western Farmers and Ranchers and the GOP? Why the loyalty? Part 1.

Dust Bowl farmers, from an era when the GOP would have done pretty much nothing.

TRIBUTE TO HARRIET HAGEMAN

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, it is fitting that Harriet Hageman will be inducted into the 2011 Wyoming Agriculture Hall of Fame. Harriet is known across Wyoming and across our Nation as a stalwart promoter and defender of agriculture. With this honor, she is following in the footsteps of her father Jim Hageman, who was previously inducted in the Agriculture Hall of fame in 2002.

Harriet comes from a long history of agricultural producers. Her great grandfather homesteaded in Wyoming in 1879 and her parents bought their first ranch near Fort Laramie in 1961.  Harriet grew up on the family’s cattle ranches in the Fort Laramie area. Rather than pursuing a career in agriculture, she earned a law degree from the University of Wyoming. Yet she did not stray from the agriculture industry. Much of her legal practice has been focused on protecting agriculture’s land, water, and natural resources. She uses her Ag background coupled with her fine mind to effectively argue on behalf of Wyoming’s ranchers and farmers in courtrooms at all levels of the judiciary.

A few of her many accomplishments should be noted. Harriet was the lead attorney for the State of Wyoming in protecting its share of the North Platte River. She fought the USDA to protect Wyoming’s access to national forest lands. She successfully defended Wyoming’s Open Range Law before the Wyoming Supreme Court. Her clients include ranchers, farmers, irrigation districts and grazing permitees. Harriet represents them with a passion that can only come from love of agriculture.

I have had the honor of working with Harriet Hageman and have benefitted from her wisdom. I would ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating

 Harriet on this well-deserved honor. 

John Barasso in the Congressional Record, August 2, 2011.¹ 

CHUCK TODD:  You know, you actually vote less with Joe Biden than Kyrsten Sinema does. You're comfortable being a Democrat in Montana. Why is that?

SEN. JON TESTER:  Look, I'm also a farmer. And I can tell you that we would not have the farm today if it was not for the Democratic politics of FDR. And my grandfather and grandmother talked to us about that, my folks talked to me about that. And I will tell you that I am forever grateful for that, because I'm blessed to be a farmer, I love agriculture, and I wouldn't be one without the Democrats.

Meet the Press, December 11, 2022.

I wouldn't be a rancher but for the Democrats.  No Wyoming rancher born in Wyoming would be.

Harriet Hageman, born on a ranch outside of Ft. Laramie, Wyoming, wouldn't have been born on a ranch but for the Democrats.  If Herbert Hoover had won the election of 1932, she'd have been born in a city somewhere else, if she'd been born at all (and likely would not have, given the way twist of fates work).  She sure wouldn't have been born on a ranch/farm.

The Democrats saved agriculture in the 1930s in the West, Midwest and North.  They didn't do it any favors in the South, however.

My wife's grandfather, a World War Two Marine, and born on a ranch, remembered that and voted for the Democrats for the rest of his life.

So why do so many in agriculture vote Republican, even though Republican policies would have destroyed family agriculture in the 1930s and still stand to destroy family agriculture in the US today?

Well, a lot of reasons. But it'd be handy if people quit babbling the myths about it.

Indeed, when a person like Hageman states "I'm a fourth generation rancher", or things that effect, it ought to be in the form of an apology followed by "and yet I'm a Republican. . . "

Let's take a look at the reality of the matter.

Farm Policy from colonization up until the close of the Frontier.

Puritans on their way to church.  Something that's often omitted in depictions of the Puritans is how corporate early English colonization was.  English Colonists may have had individual economic and personal goals, and no doubt did in order to set off on such a risky endeavor, but they were often also sponsored by backers who had distince economic goals and expectations.  They remained heavily dependent upon the United Kingdom in that fashion. They also did not, at first, exist as individualist, but part of a community that featured very strict rules.

Up until January 1, 1863, farmers didn't acquire "virgin lands" by the pure sweat of their brow, as the myth would have everyone seemingly believe.

Let's start with a basic premise.

When the Spanish founded St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565, and the English Jamestown in 1622, there were already people here.

I don't think that's a shocker for anyone, but in recent years, the political right has taken this as a bit of a threat for some reason.  It's simply the truth.  Natives occupied the land.

The concept of the settlers, very loosely, was that the natives didn't have as good of a claim to the land as Europeans did, as essentially their agricultural exploitation, if existent at all, was not as developed as that of the Europeans.  In English colonies, it led to the concept of Aboriginal Title, which recognized that Indian nations did in fact have certain sovereign rights, including title, to land, but that it was inferior to that of the Crown, which was a more developed, civilized, sovereign.  The Crown could and did extinguish aboriginal title.²

After American Independence, this concept endured. The United States, not the states, but the United States Government, held title of lands.  States could hold title, but their title was co-equal with aboriginal title, not superior.  Generally, however up until 1862, the United States extinguished most, but not all, aboriginal title prior to a territory becoming a state, and upon statehood ceded the unoccupied public lands to the states. This gave rise to the wackadoodle concept in recent years that the Federal government retains an obligation to do that and must "turn over" Federal lands to the states, a position which should return the adherents of those asserting it to Kindergarten to start all over again in their educations.

After the Mexican War the United States found itself with a double land title problem. For one thing, it wasn't at all certain how to deal with the titles of New Mexicans and Californios who had title from Mexico or Spain.  That had to be recognized, of course, but the government was troubled by it in part because in defeating Mexico it hadn't acquired all of the Mexican administration along with that.

The other problem, in its view, is that it acquired a big swath of territory that nobody except wild aboriginals and nearly as wild courier du bois wanted to reside in.

The Homestead Act of 1862 was the answer.

It's no mistake that the Homestead Act was a Civil War measure.  In addition to the other problems the US now had a big population of rootless people it wasn't sure what to do with, and this provided a relief valved.  And the Southern States being out of the government temporarily opened up the door for the (then) progressive Republicans to really emphasize their use of the American System, which as a semi managed economy with lots of Federal intervention.  The Democrats, much like the current GOP, opposed government intervention in the economy.

So the GOP backed a new concept in which the US would directly give the public domain to homestead entrants if they put in at least five years of labor.  This too really struck at the South, as the pattern in the South had come to favor large landed interests which destroyed a farm through cotton production agriculture, and then bought new land further west and started again.

Note the essence of this here.  Prior to 1863, a farmer seeking land, or a would be farmer, had to buy it from somebody, or the Federal government, or the state.  Yes, people moved west and cleared land, but they didn't just get it for nothing.

After 1862 they could, by putting in the labor.

That system massively favored small, and poor, farmers, and disfavored large monied interests.  You could still buy the public domain, but entities doing that were in direct competition with those getting it for their labor.  It weighted things in favor of the small operator.

Which gave us, for example, the Johnson County War.

We don't think of the Johnson County War as an economic class struggle, and indeed it makes a person sound like a Marxist if you do, but it was.  Perhaps in Chestertonian terms, it was a contest between production agricultural and agrarians, which would be closer to the mark.  We've discussed the Johnson County War before, and will simply loop that dicussion in:

Sidebar: The Johnson County War

Over the past week, I've been running the events of the Johnson County War on a day by day basis.  This event may be the single most significant event in Wyoming's history, if measured in terms of popularity.  It's been the subject of several books, most recently Davis' "Wyoming Range War", and it's formed the basic plot outline, in a highly developed and adulterated way, for endless novels and movies, including such famous ones as The Virginian (the only one to really take the large stockman's side) and Shane.

The popular concept of the war is that it represented an armed expression of unadulterated greed.  While greed cannot be dismissed as an element, the larger question remains.  What was it all about?

The cattle industry, as we know it, didn't really come about until the conclusion of the Civil War.  Prior to that, the most significant meat livestock in the US was pork.  Swine production produced the basic farm meat for most Americans, which is not to say that they didn't eat cattle, they did, but cattle production was fairly small scale in the East, and much of it was focused on dairy and mixed production.  Meat cattle were more common in the South, and while it's popular to note that American ranching was a development of Mexican ranching, it was also very much a development of Southern ranching practices.  This, in fact, partially gave rise to the Johnson County War, as will be seen.

At any rate, the American Beef Cattle industry was born when the railroads penetrated into Kansas after the Civil War, and returning Texas cattlemen found that the herds in their state had gone wild, and greatly increased.  Cattle in Texas, up until that time, had followed the Mexican practice of being raised principally for their hides, not for meat, but the introduction of rail into Kansas meant that cattle could now be driven, albeit a long ways, to a railhead and then shipped to market.  An explosion in urban centers in the East provided a natural market, and soon the cattle industry in Texas had switched over to being focused on shipping cattle for beef.

The Texas industry spread north as well and by the 1870s it was making inroads into Wyoming, although really only southern Wyoming for the most part.  At the same time, and often forgotten, a dramatic increase in herds in Oregon, the byproduct of early farm herds and pioneer oxen herds, produced a surplus there that caused herds to be driven back east into Wyoming at the very moment that northern Wyoming opened up for ranching.

But what was ranching like here, at the time?

It was dominated by the fact of the Homestead Act, a bill passed during the Civil War in order to encourage western emigration into the vast public domain. But the bill had been written by men familiar only with Eastern farming, and it used the Eastern agricultural unit, 40 acres, as a model. That amount of acreage was perfectly adequate for a yeoman farmer, and indeed after the Civil War "40 acres and a mule" was the dream of the liberated slave, which they hoped to obtain from the Federal government.  But 40 acres wasn't anywhere near adequate for any sort of livestock unit in the West, and most of the West wasn't suitable for farming.  In the West, additionally, the Federal homesteading provisions oddly dovetailed with State and Territorial water law.

Water law was the domain of states or territories exclusively, and evolved in the mining districts of California, which accepted that claiming water in one place and moving it to another was a necessary right.  This type of water law, much different from that existing in the well watered East, spread to the West, and a "first in time, first in right" concept of water law evolved.  This was to be a significant factor in Western homesteading. Additionally, the Federal government allowed open use of unappropriated public lands for grazing.  States and Territories, accepting this system, sought to organize the public grazing by district, and soon an entire legal system evolved which accepted the homesteading of a small acreage, usually for the control of water, and the use of vast surrounding public areas, perhaps collectively, but under the administration of some grazing body, some of which, particularly in Wyoming, were legally recognized.  In the case of Wyoming, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association controlled the public grazing, and had quasi legal status in that livestock detectives, who policed the system, were recognized at law as stock detectives.

This was the system that the large ranching interests accepted, developed and became use to in the 1870s and 1880s.  Large foreign corporations bought into Western ranching accepting that this was, in fact the system.  It had apparent legal status.

But nothing made additional small homesteading illegal.  And the penalty for failing to cooperate in the grazing districts mostly amounted to being shunned, or having no entry into annual roundups.  This continued to encourage some to file small homesteads.  Homesteading was actually extremely expensive, and it was difficult for many to do much more than that.  Ironically, small homesteading was aided by the large ranchers practice of paying good hands partially in livestock, giving them the ability to start up where they otherwise would not have been.  It was the dream of many a top hand, even if it had not been when they first took up employment as a cowboy, to get a large enough, albeit small, herd together and start out on their own.  Indeed, if they hoped to marry, and most men did, they had little other choice, the only other option being to get out of ranch work entirely, as the pay for a cowhand was simply not great enough to allow for very many married men to engage in it.

By the 1880s this was beginning to cause a conflict between the well established ranchers, who tended to be large, and the newer ones, who tended to be small.  The large stockmen were distressed by the carving up of what they regarded as their range, with some justification, and sought to combat it by legal means.  One such method was the exclusion of smaller stockmen from the large regional roundups, which were done collectively at that time, and which were fairly controlled events.  Exclusion for a roundup could be very problematic for a small stockman grazing on the public domain, as they all were, and this forced them into smaller unofficial roundups. Soon this created the idea that they were engaging in theft.  To make matters even more problematic, Wyoming and other areas attempted to combat this through "Maverick" laws, which allowed any unbranded, un-cow attended, calf to be branded with the brand of its discoverer.  This law, it was thought, would allow large stockmen to claim the strays found on their ranges, which they assumed, because of their larger herds, to be most likely to be theirs (a not unreasonable assumption), but in fact the law actually encouraged theft, as it allowed anybody with a brand to brand a calf, unattended or not, as long as nobody was watching.  Soon a situation developed in which large stockmen were convinced that smaller stockmen were acting illegally or semi illegally, and that certain areas of the state were controlled by thieves or near thieves, while the small stockmen rightly regarded their livelihoods as being under siege. Soon, they'd be under defacto  siege.

This forms the backdrop of the Johnson County War.  Yes, it represent ed an effort by the landed and large to preserve what they had against the small entrant.   But their belief that they were acting within the near confines of the law, if not solidly within it, was not wholly irrational.  They convinced themselves that their opponents were all thieves, but their belief that they were protecting a recognized legal system, or nearly protecting it, had some basis in fact.  This is not to excuse their efforts, but from their prospective, the break up by recognized grazing districts by small entrants was not only an obvious threat to its existence (and indeed it would come to and end), but an act protecting what they had conceived of as a legal right.  Their opponents, for that matter, were largely acting within the confines of the law as well, and naturally saw the attack as motivated by greed.

As with many things, the conflict in systems of laws gave each side a basis to see their own acts as fully valid. The small stockmen had the high side of the fight, but the fight itself was more ambiguous in motivations, to some degree, than it is typically portrayed as being.

The fight didn't start with the invasion at all, but actually a campaign of assassinations was started by somebody.   It cannot be assumed that the WGSA had ratified this, but certainly whoever commenced it was on that side of the fight.  It proved unsuccessful, and if anything it made Johnson County residents nervous, but all the more opposed to those aligning against them.  Finally, as we have seen, events transpired to the point where the WSGA actually sponsored an invasion, albeit one of the most ineptly planned and executed ones every conducted by anyone.

The invasion, as we've seen, was a total failure in terms of execution.  It succeeded in taking the lives of two men, with some loss of life on its part as well, but it did nothing to address the perceived problem  it was intended to address.  The invaders were much more successful in avoiding the legal implications of their acts, through brilliant legal maneuvering on the part of their lawyers, but the act of attempting the invasion brought so much attention to their actions that they effectively lost the war by loosing the public relations aspect of it.  For the most part, the men involved in it were able to continue on in their occupations without any ill effect on those careers, a fairly amazing fact under the circumstances, and, outside of Gov. Barber, whose political career was destroyed, even the political impacts of the invasion were only temporary.  Willis Vandevanter was even able to go on to serve on the United States Supreme Court, in spite of the unpopularity of this clinets in the defense of the matter.  Violence continued on for some time, however, with some killings, again engaged in with unknown sponsors, occurring. However, not only a change in public opinion occurred, but soon a change in perceived enemies occurred, and a new range war would erupt against a new enemy, that one being sheep.  The range itself would continue to be broken up unabated until the Taylor Grazing Act was passed early in Franklin Roosevelt's administration, which saved the range from further homesteading, and which ultimately lead to a reconsolidation of much of the range land.

That got ahead or our story a bit, but consider this.

The homestead act brought the small operators in. The big operators kept coming in. When small operators were the beneficiaries of a Federal land program.  When the inevitable contest between the two came, the Federal government sided with the small operators through the intervention of the U.S. Army.

Now let's consider the role of the Army.

All this land was available in the first place as, after the Mexican War, the Federal Government had provided the Army to "deal with" the Indians. Dealing with them meant removing them onto Reservations.  Prior to the Mexican War, Native Americans were mostly "dealt with" by the states or even simply by individuals, which made the Indian Wars prior to the Mexican War ghastly bloody affairs, something amplified by the fact that the invention of the Rifle Musket (not the musket, or a rifle, but the Rifle Musket) gave industrialized Americans a real weapons advantage over the Natives for the very first time.

Now, in complete fairness, the Army didn't enter the West like a German SS Division, and the Army spent a lot of time just trying to keep the age-old warfare between European Americans and the Natives from going on.  But it was a massive Federal intervention with the result of removing the Natives from their lands even if the reality of what occurred wasn't seen that way, fully, or by everyone, at the time.

The net result is that agriculture in the west was the beneficiary of a massive, liberal-progerssives set of agriculture policies that favored poorer agriculturalist, if not necessary poor agriculturalist.

Put another way, it wasn't the rugged pioneer finding unoccupied virgin soil in the west and creating a farm or ranch out of the pure sweat of their brows and dirt on their fingers.  That was involved, but they were given the thing they needed the most, the land, for nothing but that work, and their presence was backed up by the Federal Government, including in an armed fashion if necessary.

The close of the frontier until the 1920s.

The US has always had some sort of farm policy and a lot of it is monetary in nature, and I'm not qualified to really expand on that.   What I can say there I basically already have.

In 1890 Frederick Jackson Turner, the director of the U.S. Census Bureau announced that the frontier was closed.  This was one year after the 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush which had opened up a vast amount of Indian lands to settlement again on the basis that they weren't in productive use, as European Americans saw it.  In 1890, they all were, according to the Census Bureau.

At that point, the Homestead Act should have been repealed, having succeeded in its goal, but its in the nature of Federal programs that they always live on well after they should die.  Guaranteed Student Loans provide a current example.  So nothing changed

Then came World War One.

World War One sparked a global agricultural crisis.

Little noted, by and large, the world's economy had globalized to an extent which was only recently reestablished (and probably surpassed, maybe).  The Great War destroyed that, and part of what it destroyed was global agriculture.  The massive Russian and Ukrainian wheat supply was removed from the market as part of that, and this in turn started a massive American homesteading rush, with people who had little knowledge of farming flooding the prairie's to be dry land farmers, something which boosters insisted couldn't fail.  At first, in fact, it didn't.  The crisis carried on through the war, along with a massively boosted demand for agricultural commodities of all kids.  The 1910s saw the largest number of homesteads filed of any decade, and 1919 saw the last year in which farmers had economic parity with urban dwellers.

And then it collapsed.

The Farm Crisis of the 1920s and the Great Depression

For farmers, the Depression really started in 1920, not 1929.  Farms were failing, and yet homesteading, at a smaller post Great War rate, continued.

Then came 1929. 

Still suffering from a post-war economic crisis, 1929 brought a flood of new homesteaders as desperate town and city dwellers left their homes, having lost their jobs, and sought to try to homestead, not knowing what they were doing.  This was destroying the farm and ranch lands of the West.  Finally, with Franklin Roosevelt's administration having come in, the Federal Government stepped in to save the situation by repealing the Homestead Acts and passing the Taylor Grazing Act.

The Taylor Grazing Act protected the existing farms and ranches against new homestead entrants, meaning that they could keep grazing that part of the Federal domain which they were, in exchange for a reasonable preferential lease. That's the system we've had ever since, and its what keeps real ranchers in business to this day, although here too times have caught up with the system and at least some farming states, like Iowa, have passed laws preventing absentee corporate ownership of farms. Wyoming should do the same, but wedded to a blind concept of property rights that doesn't meet the reality of our history or the situation, it hasn't and likely won't. 

The Roosevelt farm policy went far beyond that.  The Agricultural Adjustment Act dealt directly with prices, although it was ruled unconstitutional at the tail end of the Depression in 1936.  Programs that resulted in some crops being "plowed under" took products off the market that were depressing prices, and price supports for landowners were put in place, which helped farmers in the West and North, but which were devastating to sharecroppers, who didn't own their own land, in the South.

And now today.

The net result of this, once again, is that the Republicans, by now the conservative party, were doing nothing for agriculture and would have let the occupants of the land go under. The Democrats, now the liberal party, saved them.

Since that time, it's been largely the same story, except not that much help has been needed.  The Defense Wool Subsidy was passed in 1954, for defense wool needs, under the Eisenhower Administration, so there was an example of a Republican program that helped farmers, although it was designed to really do so, and it was eliminated in 1993 while Clinton was in office, so a Democrat operated to hurt sheep ranchers.  This gets into the complicated story of subsidies, which are not as extensive as people imagine, and which have been part of a Federal "cheap food" policy that came in after World War Two and which is frankly a little spooky when looked at.  Overall, the policy is unpopular with free marketers, who tend to be Republicans, but it's been kept in place with it sometimes being noted that the overall post-war history of "cheap food" is an historical anomaly.  Anyhow, it gets a bit more complicated at this point.

Which takes us to this.

Looking at the history of it, Progressives and Liberals have kept ranchers and farmers on the land.  When Harriet Hageman notes she's a fourth generation Wyomingite from an agricultural background, she's implying that she's a direct beneficiary of a massive government program that 1) removed the original occupants of the land to open it up to agriculture; 2) opened it up to the poorer agriculturalist and kept its hand on the scale to benefit them; and 3) operated to save them in times of economic distress.

Given that, it's been the Democrats that have really helped that sector since 1914, when they became the liberal party, and Republicans before that, when they were.

But that doesn't comport with the myth people have sold themselves very well.

There are lots of reasons not to be a Democrat.  I'm not arguing that economic self-interest should dictate how a person votes, nor am I stating that the history of a party should control present votes.

But what I am stating is the current Agricultural loyalty to the GOP is misplaced based on its history.  When a person states that they're fourth generation in agriculture, they're stating that they've benefitted from the Democratic Party, and really not so much from the Republicans.  A lot of Republican loyalty is therefore based on something else, including a multi generational grudge against policies that saved them.

What else might be at work?

Footnotes

1.  I don't know the circumstances of the Hageman's purchasing a ranch in 1961, but the date is interesting, as it would put this within a decade of the last era in which average ranchers in Wyoming could still buy land.  This is almost impossible now, something that the current holders of family ranches often completely fail to appreciate.

It's also interesting in that Hageman, who is married but who retains her maiden name, doesn't work on the family farm/ranch, as Sen. Barrasso's accolade noted.  She's followed the path of many younger sons, which of course she is not, in agriculture of entering into a profession as there really was no place else to go.  This has been less true of women, who often marry into another agricultural family.

Hageman started off following an agricultural career, going to Casper College on a meat judging scholarship, something often oddly omitted in the biographies of her that I've seen, although it is occasionally noted.

1879 is a truly early Wyoming homestead entry.

2.  In spite of all the criticism that various European colonist have received, it's worth noting that French and Spanish colonization was quite a bit different than English colonization.

French colonization particularly was.  It was done on the cheap, for one thing, and almost all of the French colonist came from Normandy alone, bringing Norman culture, which was much more independent than English culture, with them.  French colonist, like Spanish colonist, were also devoutly Roman Catholic, and it was emphasized in their faith that the natives were co-equal to them as human beings, endowed with the same rights before God.  For this reason, French colonist mixed much more readily with the Natives than the English did.

This is true of the Spanish as well, who began to take Native brides (and mistresses) almost immediately upon contact.  Spanish colonization is more complicated than the French example, however, as it was not done on the cheap and was part of a massive economic effort.

Christmas, 1941

I've been running events from 21 and 41, as anyone who stops in here knows which unfortunately means that 2021 has more posts than any prior year.  I didn't mean for that to happen.

Anyhow, this post, which was written before December 25 and set to pre post, is one that I thought about not putting up at all. The reason for that is that posts on Christmas during World War Two tend to take on an ultra sappy character, and also tend to yield to the odd recent American trend of turning every day into Veterans Day, something we don't like and wish to avoid.

Be that as it may, as we have been looking at events of eighty years ago fairly regularly here, and as it would be sort of odd, in that context, not to discuss that here, we'll have a post about Christmas, 1941, but it's going to be a little different.

Christmas, Christ's Mass, is a Christian holiday dating back to the early history of the Church. Contrary to the modern net baloney that likes to make un-cited claims to the contrary, it seems to have been celebrated very early on and indeed is based on an early calculation of the date of Christ's birth.  Those who like to cite competing Roman holidays as the source fail to note that in fact the most commonly cited contender was established after Christ's Mass was.  Indeed, there's a term for it which I've forgotten, but if some borrowing went on, it may well be that Roman pagans were borrowing from Roman Christians in this regard, and not the other way around.

Anyhow, Christianity is the largest religion in the world, and it was in 1941, although it's actually larger now than it was then.  Christians were citizens of every single country in the war, including even Japan, which we don't tend to think of in this context, which even had one general officer who was Catholic.  This doesn't mean, by any means, that Christians were well treated in every combatant country. Quite the contrary.

The largest Christian denomination in the world is the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, which was also the largest Christian denomination at the time.  Americans, who live in what is essentially a Protestant country, tend not to realize this, but it's quite true.  Of the nations involved in World War Two in 1941, the nation with the largest single Catholic population under repression was Poland.

Nazi Germany also contrary to what some armchair crabs like to claim, was virulently anti-Christian.  Indeed, by 1941 the Nazi regime had already attempted to co-opt the Lutheran Church and had failed.  It was hostile to Christianity of all types, and in Poland this meant an outright war on the church. The practice of the Catholic faith in Poland was essentially band and the German government was murdering priest.  It's one more black spot on the German people in regard to their conduct during the 1930s and 1940s.

Perhaps the second-largest oppressed Christian population in the warring countries was that of Germany's.  It remains an ultimate irony that in much of Germany Christianity was strong with it being particularly strong in the German Catholic south and west.  In the rest of the country the Lutheran faith predominated and a long history of association with the German monarchy had accordingly weakened it following the fall of the German Empire, but it remained very influential nonetheless.  Its surprising strength, moreover, caused the Nazi regime to hold off on full co-opting of the Lutheran faith which it had planned to do as part of an effort to completely replace Christianity.  Lutheranism reacted so strongly that the government had to back off.

Both Lutheran and Catholic clerics suffered during the war, but the Catholic ones far more as an overall percentage.  Unlike the right wing governments in Spain and France the Nazis did not see Christianity as party of their cultural heritage and sought to wipe it out.  By 1941 this was already causing a struggle in the Catholic regions of the country.  It would come into full fruition in 1944 when the July 20 plot saw an attempt to kill Hitler in which a large percentage of the actors were Catholics motivated by their faith (with this also being true of some of the Protestant participants).

Nazi Germany's hostility to Christianity was second only to Soviet Russia's, which is one of the odd was the extreme right wing government of Germany was similar, if perhaps only superficially, to the extreme left wing government of the Soviet Union.  While the German's liked to repeatedly claim that they were acting to save Europe from Bolshevism, in this aspect of their beliefs they were as hostile as the Communists were to the defining element of European civilization.

This takes us to the millions of people living under Soviet Communism.  In one of the numerous ironies of World War Two, the Allied Soviets were as murderous towards their Christian populations as the Nazi Germans were to theirs.

Russia, of course, was home to the largest population of Orthodox Christians on earth, with the Orthodox being the second-largest body of Christians.  The Soviets had been busy suppressing, often lethally, the Orthodox Church, or in their case Orthodox Churches, since 1917.  Beyond this, substantial bodies of Eastern Catholics lived withing the border of the Soviet Union which were completely suppressed and who were practicing their faith underground.  168,300 Russian Orthodox clergy of the then already heavily suppressed church were arrested in 1937 and 1938. Of these, 106,300 were shot.

In spite of this, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church had asked for Russians to support the war effort almost immediately after the Germans invaded the country.  The Germans in turn lifted the suppression of the Russian and Ukrainian churches on the territory they captured.  This created the supreme irony of the murderous German regime, which was suppressing Catholicism heavily in Poland and also suppressing Catholicism and Lutheranism in Germany, lifting the suppression in the USSR where they occupied portions of it.  Stalin in turn lifted the suppression of the Russian Orthodox Church in September.  So in 1941, Orthodox Christians in Russia, while suffering enormously due to the war, were nonetheless experiencing the freest Christmas in terms of being able to practice their faith since Red victory in the Civil War.  As the Orthodox used the "old calendar", Christmas however fell on a different day of the year.

In the rest of occupied or fascist Europe, Christians were left largely unhindered to practice their faith, although their relationships with their governments varied by country.  Christians were very closely watched, however, in the fascist countries or those which were part of the far right, although their relationship with their governments varied considerably by country.

In the largest Christian country in Asia, the Philippines, the suppression of the Catholic faith that would come under Japanese occupation had not yet arrived.  This would be the last Christmas in which the practice of Christianity would be unhindered by Japanese occupation, with the Japanese strongly associating Christianity with the West, and the Church constantly acting on behalf of the suppressed population.  Next to the Philippines, China had the next largest Christian population in Asia at the time, with that population suffering the hard ravishes of war that Japan had imposed upon all of the Chinese.

In the Allied countries, outside the Soviet Union, freedom of religion was unhindered and Christmas was generally normal, if very much constrained in countries that were at war.  In the United States, the big gift giving Christmas was already a thing, and had been for some time. In more materially constrained regions of North America, such as Canada, which had gone right from the Great Depression into World War Two, this was not nearly the case, with gifts, such as in my mother's family, often limited to one gift, often a book, and fruit, the latter being hard to get in the winter.

For most Americans and Canadians, Christmas meant attending Church. For Catholics and Orthodox it universally did, but it also did for members of most Protestant faiths.  In Mexico suppression of the church was being relaxed, starting in 1940, and the Church was reviving.  In the United Kingdom the Christmas seasons was a major seasonal event, although regular church participation by the British population had declined fairly substantially in the 20th Century.  Nonetheless, England remained strongly Anglican in character and Scotland strongly Presbyterian.  The then very conservative Lutheran churches of the Scandinavian countries had large-scale participation and impacted the celebration of Christmas in those countries.

What might be noted is that while celebration of Christmas was universal, it had strongly regional expressions everywhere at the time.  Everything was much less uniform than it is now, and much less Americanized as well.

For people like my folks, this day would have been a fairly normal Christmas for the regions where they lived.  My father's family would have gone to Mass, if they had not the night before, and would have opened up their presents in the early morning.  My mother's family would have done the same, but with there being less in the way of presents given the material constraints that Canadians were living under.  In both families there would have been a special Christmas dinner, likely consisting of ham or turkey, I suspect, in the case of my father's family even though they were in the beef and lamb industry.  My mother's family would likely have had ham as well, and both would have had a potato side.  My father's mother was a good cook and made candy and fudge, which undoubtedly would have featured in the Christmas meal.  My mother's family lived on the same block as her paternal grandparents and aunts and uncles, and they likely would have had a fairly large family presence at their Christmas celebration.

For the events of the day, on this day in 1941 Bing Crosby's song White Christmas was sung on NBC's Kraft's Music Hall.  Crosby had not yet recorded it as a single as he wasn't impressed with the song.

The North Platte Canteen was formally established in North Platte, Nebraska.

Hong Kong fell to the Japanese, which resluted in a formal British surrender in the afternoon.  Japanese entered St. Stephens Hospital in successive groups, first murdering a two doctors who went out to meet them, then killing wounded British and Canadian soldiers, and then finally raping the nurses and then murdering them.  Such behavior was already common for Japanese soldiers in China and would be repeated by them throughout the war whereever they went.

Hitler relieved Guderian of his command.  Guderian was flat out ignoring his orders in an effort to fight an effective defensive battle.

Sir Alan Brooke became Chief of the British General Staff.