Stripping Tobacco, 1916

LOC Title:  B.F. Howell, Route 4, Bowling Green, Ky. and part of his family stripping tobacco. The 8 and 10-year old boys in photo "tie up waste"; his 12-year old boy and 14-year old girl (not in photo but they lose a good deal of schooling for work) are regular strippers. Photo taken during school hours. Location: Bowling Green, Kentucky.  November 10, 1916.

Ah yes, the good old days. . . missing school to strip tobacco.

Friday Farming: Hauling tobacco. 1916

LOC Title:  Hauling tobacco. Location: Hebbardsville [vicinity], Kentucky / Lewis W. Hine.  Published on September 13, 1916

Lex Anteinternet: The City of Casper Smoking Ballot Issue

Lex Anteinternet: The City of Casper Smoking Ballot Issue: REFERENDUM BALLOT PROPOSITION ON ORDINANCE NO. 15-13:   AN ORDINANCE AMENDING CERTAIN SECTIONS OF CHAPTER 8.16 OF THE CASPER MUNI...

Polling Stations:

County Clerk's election office, and;

Roosevelt High School Gym 140 E K ST	Central Wyoming Fairgrounds Hall of Champions 1700 Fairgrounds Rd
Senior Citizens' Center Activities Room 1831 E 4th ST	Restoration Church 411 S Walsh Dr
Casper Shrine Club 1501 W 39th ST	Community Health Center Second Floor 5000 Blackmore Rd

The City of Casper Smoking Ballot Issue

REFERENDUM BALLOT PROPOSITION ON ORDINANCE NO. 15-13: 

AN ORDINANCE AMENDING CERTAIN SECTIONS OF CHAPTER 8.16 OF THE CASPER MUNICIPAL CODE, PERTAINING TO SMOKING IN PUBLIC PLACES.

Ordinance No. 15-13 of the Casper Municipal Code, captioned “An Ordinance Amending Certain Sections of Chapter 8.16 of the Casper Municipal Code, Smoking in Public Places,” allows smoking in taverns, lounges, or bars, enclosed areas within places of employment or service establishments not open to the public, areas of health care facilities not open to the general public or non-smoking residents or patients, private offices by employees, and private clubs when not open to the public. These locations were previously included in, and subject to, the ban against smoking in public places. 

FOR –           Adopts Ordinance No. 15-13, which results in allowing smoking in taverns, lounges, or bars, enclosed areas within places of employment or service establishments not open to the public, areas of health care facilities not open to the general public or non-smoking residents or patients, private offices by employees, and private clubs when not open to the public. 

AGAINST – Rejects Ordinance No. 15-13, which would reinstate the prohibition of smoking in taverns, lounges, and bars, employment and service establishments, health care facilities, private offices by employees, and private clubs.


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So, voting "FOR" means smoking is allowed back into bars that elect to allow it.

Voting "AGAINST" means the ban stays as is, and smoking in any public place is prohibited.

Is it smokey in here?

I ran this item last week, at the time that the Casper City Council reinstated a complete ban on smoking in public buildings, following the victory of an initiative movement in the Wyoming Supreme Court.  That movement, backed by former city council woman Kim Holloway, achieved the Court's declaration that some signatures had been improperly rejected.

Lex Anteinternet: Today In Wyoming's History: September 8: Today In Wyoming's History: September 8 : 2015  In a controversial move, the Casper City Counsel reinstated a tavern and restau...

Subsequent events have brought to light the truth of Otto Von Bismarck's comment that "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made."

Last night, making the first of three required votes on three readings, the City Council went on to officially repeal the amendment to the City's smoking law which had exempted bars. The thought was that by doing that, and restoring the original ordinance's complete ban, the need to hold the special election the initiative would have required would evaporate, as the goal of the petition was therefore met.  So, we must note, there was a degree of cynicism in the vote, as the councilmen, as shown by their next vote, did not wish to genuinely reinstate a complete ban, as the petitioners did.  Having said that, a couple genuinely supported the restoration of a complete ban.

Next the council voted to completely repeal the ban, thereby allowing smoking everywhere once again.  Only two councilmen voted against that.

The debate heavily focused on property rights and on the plight of tavern owners whose patrons have fled to Mills, Evansville and Bar Nunn, neighboring towns which those from outside of Casper no doubt generally regard as part of Casper, but which have separate legal status and governments. The arguments against repealing a ban were weighted heavily on public health issues.  I saw the council meeting on television, and the sides were well behaved and presented their views quite well.

The instinctively sympathetic view, around here anyway, is that a business owner should be allowed to do what they will, and the patrons can vote with their feet. There's some logic to that, but it does miss the point, raised but often not really well developed, that employees of any one workplace often are in a position where they have to work where there's work.  I know that there's people who really like and aspire to be bar servers and tenders, but there's also a lot of people who find there way into those jobs, often temporarily, but sometimes long term, and have to stick with them for one reason or another.  The "you can always quit" argument doesn't work for most other occupations anymore in recognition of that, but it's a common one for these occupations, which are often occupied by the workplace demographic that's least able to switch employments readily.

It also somewhat applied to patrons of restaurants and bars, although people rarely recognize that.  If you are in business and everyone breaks for lunch and the nearest establishment is Smokey Joe's Bar Grill and Smokapalooza, you're gong there with everyone else working on that big project, as you'll have little other choice.  No matter what your health situation may be.  I well remember, for instance, being on breaks in trials for lunch where the only nearby restaurant, or the one the client recommended, featured smoke and being very conscious that I was now heading back to court smelling like cigarette smoke, something that non smokers are extremely conscious of but which smokers seem not to notice at all.   This doesn't touch on the numerous people who are allergic or have reactions to cigarette smoke in one form or another.  These folks don't really have the option of making a big deal out of their situation in a lot of instances.

I guess that makes it obvious that I wish they keep the smoke ban in place, but then I also feel that they shouldn't have voted to eliminate their compromise position that allowed smoking in bars, not because I want to smoke in a bar (obviously I don't smoke), but because it seemed to be a compromise that was working.  

Which brings to mind the Italian proverb "Le meglio è l'inimico del bene", or "the perfect is the enemy of the good".  It really is.  

Passing a smoking ban was difficult in Casper in the first place.  When it first came up around 2002 it was voted down, but then a decade later the full ban (oddly called the "fully leaded ban" in the debate) was passed, but thereafter shortly amended to exempt bars.  That law was no doubt not perfect from anyone's perspective, but then the perspectives are so radically different that no law could satisfy that.  For those who take the "property rights" position, no ban, perhaps on anything, would be ideal. For those who a radically opposed to cigarettes, I suppose banning cigarettes entirely would be ideal.  No compromise is going to make everyone happy.

Which brings us to a likely ironic result of all of this. When Kim Holloway, a former city councilwoman, took to the streets with her petition to take this to the voters, the goal was to restore a full ban.  But what now appears likely is that her actions have killed off the partial ban, or soon will.  No doubt a new petition drive will start, and I'd guess Holloway will be leading the charge, but just listening to the city council and those who came to speak, I suspect that the tide has turned on this issue and the voters will side with the property rights argument.  That will likely have less of an impact than supposed, as smoking is slowly declining in the population anyhow, and my guess (and hope) is that most of the restaurants aren't going to restore smoking, indeed a lot didn't allow it before the ban, and more than a few busy bars aren't going to allow it again either, now that they know that they can survive without smoking in the premises.  So the hard feeling that we must ban smoking to have an impact is likely gone, and as our local economy declines, the feeling that we shouldn't mess with business owners will increase. But some bars that did allow smoking recently will go back to it, and I'd guess a few small cafes in town will also. The petition backers who sought to fully ban smoking, may have in fact restored it.

Today In Wyoming's History: September 8

Today In Wyoming's History: September 8:

2015  In a controversial move, the Casper City Counsel reinstated a tavern and restaurant smoking ban following the decision of the Wyoming Supreme Court that signatures on an earlier referendum petition had been, in some cases, improperly discarded from counting.  The vote was not unanimous and it certainly set the stage for further debate.

My, what a huge change this has been over a couple of decades ago.

Even a couple of decades ago a person going into a bar simply expected to come back out smelling like cigarettes. Restaurants were the same way.  

Now this is an exceptional occurrence, and you don't expect it. 

Actress, smoking a cigar, in a photo that was probably intended to be shocking at the time as women didn't smoke until the 1920s, for the most part.

Indeed, now smokers are often banished to outdoors.  Just yesterday, in walking a short distance early in the day downtown, I came around a corner and found some woman office worker smoking in the early morning cold.  Looking rather forlorn and even guilty.

In regards to smoking, times have rally changed.

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Related threads:

Smoking It Up.

Smoking it up. . .

The other day, I started to watch the classic film Double Indemnity.  I had never seen it, and there was nothing else on.  It is a great film.

But what I noticed, in spite of myself, is that everyone is really smoking it up in the film.  Big time.  And I wasn't the only one who noticed it, my good friend Todd, living clean across the west from me, happened to be watching it also, and noticed the very same thing (plus the prodigious quantities of booze consumed in the film).  It may be a Film Noir, but the Noir may be caused by all the smoke blocking out the sun.  It's amazing.  Which caused me to recall a topic that should have been posted here long ago, but which I haven't.

Man, mid 20th Century, people really smoked.  A lot.

Oil soaked railroad worker, smoking.

People still smoke, of course. But not like they once did.  Everyone now knows that smoking is lethal, although a few diehards will continue to maintain that it isn't, based on strained arguments.  And everyone not only knows the risk of lung cancer associated with smoking, but all the other health risks it entails.  As much smoking as there is today, it's nothing like the amount there once was.

When smoking really took off in North America, I don't know, but it was no doubt pretty darned early. Tobacco, after all, was one of the first cash crops ever grown in North America.  You can't eat it, and you can't smoke it all yourself, so it was grown for money.  That makes it a bit of a unique crop in some ways, for the early history of the country, although it wasn't the only crop grown for cash.

Children of tenant farmer, working tobacco, circa 1916.

Tobacco actually fueled the early slave trade in the US more than cotton.  At the time of the Revolution, slavery was an economic institution in the South because of tobacco, not because of cotton.  It was partially for that reason that the founders were willing to put up with the horrific evil of slavery, as they presumed that it would decrease in a tobacco farming industry which would become increasingly the province of smaller farmers and demand increasingly fewer chained laborers.  Of course, they were wrong, but that shows that the time, smoking the continent up was already a pretty big deal.

I don't have a clue what percentage of the population smoked, or used tobacco in some other fashion, but by the late 19th Century, it was (still) pretty darned common.  Maybe a majority of men smoked.  They didn't all smoke cigarettes, however.  Indeed, most didn't. Cigarettes were somewhat uncommon. Cigars and Pipes were the norm for smokers at the time.

Banjo playing Union artillerymen during the Civil War.  Contrary to what people might generally expect, this pipe looks surprisingly 1950ish.

Civil War era cavalryman with rather long pipe.

Cigars became an increasingly big deal as time passed, and by the early 20th Century they were a pretty big deal.  In the first decade and a half of the 20th Century, it was really the cigar, not the cigarette, that dominated tobacco consumption.

Cigar workers.  Only children, that kid in the middle isn't smoking that cigar as a prop.

Criminal defendant Daisy Grace being escorted to court. She'd be found innocent of drugging and shooting her husband.  The officers in this pre World War One photo wear the classic summertime detectives outfit of the era, boaters and suits.  The officer on the left found it consistent with his duties to be packing a stogie.

Cigarettes weren't a big deal in this era.  They existed, to be sure, but most smokers opted for cigars, if they were going to light up.  What the appeal of cigarettes was at the time I don't know, but it basically seems to be that they were convenient under the circumstances, or that they were regarded as a bit edgy.

The captain is well dressed, and holding a cigarette that's burned right down to the end.  Why he's smoking a cigarette, and not a cigar, in this pre World War One photograph, is not apparent.

 "Cigarette Girl", that is a girl offering cigarettes for sale, prior to World War One.  Women in this time period did not smoke, and particularly did not smoke cigarettes, unless they wanted to be considered rather risque or avant garde.

 Women may not have smoked much, but they were exploited a great deal, in early cigarette advertisements.  Already sort of edgy, manufacturers appealed to men via women.  Women smokers weren't aimed at, but male ones were, through advertisements of this type..  As an aside, it's unlikely that anyone ever adopted such an unlikely hat in the history of hats.

 What exactly the appeal of this advertisement is, I'm not sure. This is a European advertisement for a brand that I've never heard of. How smoking cigarettes in Europe compares with the US, I have not a clue.

 Cigarettes very early on associated themselves with Turkey and Arabia.  Whether or not the Arabs were every big cigarette smokers I don't know, but of course the Turks are associated with water pipes.  This advertisement uniquely associates itself with "ambition."

It was World War One that really got cigarettes rolling in the United States.  Up until that time, they were relatively uncommon, but the war made them common. Easy to smoke and carry, they were also provided to troops by the manufacturers.  In a situation in which death was always seconds away, cigarettes apparently provided some small relief from a grim situation, at least until that situation revisited itself in  the rise of cancer some 20 years later, which was demonstratively indicated in medical statistics.

Cigarettes head for No Man's Land.

World War One brought cigarettes into the North American mainstream in force.  Thousands, probably millions, of men who would have only smoked the occasional cigar or pipe were pretty dedicated cigarette smokers by the end of World War One. And the Jazz Age of the 1920s only expanded it.  As it expanded, it expanded not only in the male segment of the population, but the female as well.  Starting off as a species of protest, the addictive cigarette crossed over to the female population pretty quickly.

Advertisements like this pre World War One cigarette advertisement were probably originally aimed at men, but by the 1920s they also came to symbolize youth in the Jazz Age. Women joined men as smokers.

By the 1930s, smoking cigarettes was really in.  Everybody was smoking.  A habit that had been male dominated, and centered on a means of conveyance that was somewhat impractical, pipes and cigars, had become common and convenient.  Everyone, male and female, smoked. The 1930s was Tobacco Road. 

By World War Two, this was even more the case.  Cigarettes were even included in C Rations.  But for the fact that the Germans were also smoking it up, and even smoking vile Russian cigarettes, the Allies could probably have been smelled coming over the seas long before the invasion fleet was visible on D-Day.

 Maybe "some smoke", but asbestosis, a fatal disease amongst those exposed to asbestos, is not only a problem that's pronounced amongst those who served in the Navy (where asbestos lining was common in ships) but it's much more pronounced amongst those who smoked.

 Women not only ferried aircraft in World War Two, they were dedicated smokers by the 1940s as well.

 The chance that a person might get shot by the Germans or the Japanese no doubt made concerns about smoking comparatively small to soldiers or, as depicted here, Marines.  As for the "T"Zone, well. . .

 They've "got what it takes", no doubt, but no doubt many later wished that it hadn't included cigarettes.

 During World War Two "Lucky Strike" "went to war" and it package became green.,

All of which, I suppose, just goes to say that by the 1940s people were smoking everywhere.  Every house, every restaurant, every bar, and every office.  It was smokey.

I wonder how many people appreciate that now? Everything must have smelled like smoke. 

My parents didn't smoke.  Neither one.  That was pretty rare really, in their era.  I've never been a smoker either.  I guess that's always made me a bit sensitive to smoke, but I well remember an era when smoke in restaurants was very common.  My parents didn't smoke, but we had ashtrays at home, in case they had a party or gathering, as it would just be expected that people who were invited would smoke.  My kids are so unfamiliar with ashtrays that recently one of them, upon seeing one of the old ones from my folk's house, had to ask what it was.  They'd be surprised to learn that in grade school art one of the project we did was to make a pottery ashtray.

And in the 1980s, when I was a National Guardsmen, smoking amongst solders was extremely common. I well remember hearing the command "smoke 'em if you got 'em."  Certain Army classrooms, while I was in the Guard, were filled with vast quantities of smoke.  The aircraft I flew over to Korea on, in the mid 1980s, was so full of tobacco smoke that it looked like it was on fire, when we looked back down the plane. This was just the norm of the times.  When I first was practicing law, we had one secretary who routinely smoked in her office, as well as a lawyer who did the same.  One lawyer smoked cigars if he was approaching a trial.

Well, no more.  Now, there's no more smoking in office buildings.  No more smoking in cars either.  And even bars are often smoke free, based on the rare occasions when I happen to go in one.  The air smells like, well. . . air, most of the time.  

I don't mean to condemn anyone for smoking in years past.  But, man, what a change.  Now, it's hard to watch something like Double Indemnity and not think; "geez, everything must have reeked of smoke."

Forgetting why things were built that way.

Recently, a series of events has reminded me of how much people have forgotten why certain things were built a certain way, to our occasional detriment.

One of these events happened when I was at Sunday Mass.  A power substation blew out that morning and took power down to at least half the town, including my house, and the Church. When I entered the Church, built in the classic style, the reason for the big stained glass windows was immediately apparent.  The interior was fairly well lighted via the windows alone.

Now this particular church was built in the teens or early twenties; well before audio systems.  At some point within the last 30 to 40 years, an audio system has been put in.  Somebody, used to the audio system, must have thought that we'd be unable to hear the Mass as everyone was seated as close to the front of the Church as possible, given a pretty compact feeling to the the pews.

That was completely unnecessary.  In actuality, traditionally built churches require no audio system at all.

 St. Luke's Church, Forest Hills, New York, circa 1940s.  This church has electric lights, clearly, but it wouldn't be hard to see inside without them. And it wouldn't have had a PA system at the time this photograph was taken.

The large vaulted interiors of traditional churches are more than ample to naturally amplify a person's voice, at least if they are speaking in a manner which projects their voice, which not all people do, of course. But for those who know how to do that, and it's an easy thing for at least most men to do, the mere design of a church is all the amplification enhancement that they'll require.  Indeed, the first speaker of the morning, prior to the audio coming back on, was plenty loud enough simply through his own voice.  We've just forgotten that churches were designed that way for a reason.

So were courtrooms.

The only people who really need to hear in a courtroom are the lawyers, the witnesses, the judge and the jury.  And just about any courtroom fulfills that requirement just as is.  Be that as it may, in recent years courthouses have been almost completely retrofitted to give everyone a microphone.  It isn't necessary, and I don't like it.  My voice is plenty loud enough without amplification, and I often find myself brushing the microphone aside or walking away from it, as I don't need it, and it's just an irritating distraction. But nobody else needs it either.  In those instances in which a person is extremely soft spoken, the microphone actually doesn't help much anyhow, so they aren't really achieving anything.   None the less, all the new courthouses have audio (and visual) systems and by this point in time, probably nearly all the old ones do as well.

 This is the photograph we use as a flag on this site.  It depicts the original Federal Courthouse in Cheyenne, now no longer standing.  Note the extremely high ceiling.  This room was built for natural audio, and natural cooling as well.

Just as older churches and courthouses have been retrofitted with audio systems, older office buildings have been retrofitted with new windows and air conditioning systems.  The two don't always work well, or even work together.

I work most days in a century old office building.  It's a nicely preserved building, but it was clearly built before any kind of air conditioning.  It was also basically framed up while in progress, which was very skillfully done, but which also meant that the windows were set by workers in a less standard way than today.  Indeed, only the front of the building really has a uniform window pattern, as the original thought was that the sides would probably not need them long, as it was anticipated other buildings would be built of a similar five story height along side of it.

None of that is a problem, but some years ago, quite a few now, the decision was made, and wisely, to put in a set of nice new windows. They look great, but they're modern office windows.  I.e., they seal up very nicely but they aren't really made to open.  Indeed, they take a key to open them, and when we first had the windows in, we never opened them up.

The problem there is that the building wasn't built with an air conditioning system in mind.  The air conditioning system was the windows.  As noted, an air conditioning system was put in, years ago, but its always fighting the basic design of the building.  At first, we would try to assist it by not opening the new windows, but over time, everyone has given up on that and we've unlocked some of them, although they don't open wide like the original, not very attractive, windows did.  The other day the air conditioning system was down and we actually had a very warm day. By the time I went home in the afternoon, I was sick from the hot, still, air.  It isn't that high heat actually bothers me, it does not.  But dead still air trapped in a building does.

I'm not suggesting that we do away with the air conditioning and put old style windows back in.  But what I do think is interesting is that it's been forgotten in most buildings of this type that when they were built, they worked in hot weather.  The east and west facing windows were opened, and the ceilings were high.  Probably a decent breeze flowed through them on such days.

Indeed, the 19th Century buildings at Ft. Laramie remain very cool even on blistering hot days.  I've been in them when the temperature was over 100F outside, and they were cool. The reason has to do with the construction.  They were built with very high ceilings. The builders knew that if the windows and doors were left open there'd actually be a nice cooling breeze flowing through them.  I'm sure today, if they were in private ownership, somebody would be trying to put in air conditioning.

 Old Bedlam, the oldest building in Wyoming, on the grounds of Ft. Laramie.

In the southwest there are very old, very stout, buildings also built with cooling in mind.  Thick adobe buildings were common in the Southwest, and quite a few still stand.  They do not get hot, in spite of very hot weather.  People just knew how to build them.

For that matter, when I was a kid here people generally did not have air conditioning.  A few people did, but it was uncommon.  For the most part, people just opened windows.  My parents house, before some additions were made to it, stayed uniformly comfortable in very hot weather.  An addition of a glassed back porch partially defeated that, but even then, comfortable areas of the house could be found.  Basically, you didn't need air conditioning.  When people did have it, at first, they tended to have a window mounted unit or a swamp cooler.

The schools here didn't even have air conditioning when I attended them.  Granted, school gets out here in May, before the weather generally gets really hot.  Some of the schools are pretty hot in the summer, based upon the limited number of times I've been in them. But I'll bet they're all built today with an air conditioning system.  When we attended them, if it was warm, they just opened the windows.

We have, at home, a swamp cooler.  Truth be known, I hate it.  It may be just me, but I always find about any setting on air conditioning in houses to be annoying, or even arctic.  I never turn ours on, but my wife, who likes air conditioning, and who is always hot, does.  I tend to be always cold, so I'm not keen on it.  It'd be different, no doubt, if we lived in a really hot climate.  And, indeed, a person needs to be careful what they complaint about.  While it was blistering hot in her recently, now the air conditioning is on line and it's absolutely freezing, in my view, in the building.  The system may be old, but it sure works.

Another thing that people have forgotten the purpose of is the strip of land, found in some areas of this town, and in many towns, that runs between the sidewalk and the city streets.  This feature is a thing of the past for the most part. The feature existed so the city could expand the streets if it needed to. It's nice for property owners, and pedestrians, as it allows people to walk away from the street.  But it's really just a convenience and that small strip of land actually belongs to the city.

This presents no sort of problem at all for the most part, but one somewhat bad thing is that in older neighborhoods people planted trees in these strips, which is again, perfectly find, unless they're obstructing vision on busy corners, which on some here they really do.  Nobody seems to recall that the strip actually belongs to the city, and perhaps the city ought to take those trees down when they obstruct vision at busy corners.  Of course, they aren't going to, and people would be upset, as the trees are nice. But, as with the other day when the traffic lights were out, some of those corners are really scary.

Traffic lights themselves are something that they city seems to have forgotten the purpose of.  In recent years the City, to save fuel, has changed the setting on traffic lights on weekends so that some of them, on very busy streets, just flash red (or yellow), rather than turn green.  Well, saving fuel isn't their purpose.  Stopping traffic on really busy intersections is. The weekend streets are really now a little scary.

Here's one that takes younger people completely off guard:

That's an ash tray.

More specifically, it's a nice stainless steel ashtray affixed to the wall by our elevator.  Nobody every uses it, but at one time people did. That's because at one time smoking was so common, and so accepted, that it could be anticipated that people would need an ash tray just standing there, waiting for the elevator.  Now, if you got on the elevator smoking, people wouldn't be happy, and smoking isn't allowed anywhere in this building. The very few smokers who work in the building have to go outside to smoke. But even when I started work here (which, granted, is a quarter century ago) people smoked in the building. Some smoked at work.  And just a little earlier than that, people smoked in waiting rooms and lobbies.  A thing like this was then needed.  Now, it's just a weird stainless steel oddity.

Speaking of weird oddities, how about this:

There's one of these on every floor of this building, in the stairwells.  What are they?  Little access panels for banks of phone connections. . .long since out of operation and disconnected, and totally inadequate for a modern phone system.  Indeed, updating a building, such has been done, is not easy, but one oddball thing it does is leave the entire old phone system there, just not connected.

Here's one that we were using up until just a couple of years ago, but which I've still heard people wonder about.  It's a mail box. That is, an official U.S. Mail drop box.  The post office doesn't let us use it anymore, however.

The reason that we can't use it is that the lobby of this building isn't open 24 hours a day, and there's a postal regulation that requires 24 hour, seven day a week, access to mail boxes.  That is, they must be open for people to drop mail in, 24 hours a day, and this one isn't.  But, at one time, every office in this building dropped its mail here, and the Postal carrier picked it up.  Pretty handy.  It's still here, of course, but it's blocked so that we cannot use it, and they don't pick the mail up from it anymore.  My guess is that people occasionally forget, and some mail will be in it forever.

From the obscure to the ultra obscure, this is a display case for cigars.  At one time some small scale merchant had his small shop here in this lobby.  It probably was that way from day one, up until maybe the 50s or 60s.  A little cigar shop that also sold newspapers and magazines.  No doubt a lot of businessmen bought their newspapers, and cigarettes and cigars, in the lobby everyday. There's still a cigar shop up the block, which also sells malts, but not newspapers.  Even when I first practiced law that cigar shop did a thriving business, in a space about the size of a closet, selling newspapers, cigars, cigarettes, candy and, oddly enough, pornography.  It was bizarre.  Now it's returned, under a new owner in a much cleaner fashion, selling only malts, cigars and, oddly enough, history magazines.

Wednesday, April 14, 1909. The Adana Massacre continues.

The slaughter of Armenian Christians by Ottoman soldier began in earnest in Adana, Ottoman Empire.

Tuesday, April 13, 1909. The Aadna Massacre.

The Adna Massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, which would kill over 20,000 people, commenced.  Ottoman troops would participate in it.

Armenian orphans from the massacre.

The Armenians had the first Christian kingdom in the world, and have had a state of one kind or another since 860 BC.  Since the conquest of Anatolia by the Turks, they've been subject to repeated atrocities.

The Anglo Persian Oil Company was incorporated.  The company became a power in its own right, and extensively exploited what became Iran, setting the stage for what we have today, unfortunately.

Minnesota passed a law banning cigarettes, effective August 1.  Too bad that didn't stick.

Punch, April 14, 1909.

Sheep yards, Kirkland, Ill, April 14, 1909.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, April 13, 1909. The Aadna Massacre.

1900s, 1909, Adana Massacre, Armenian Genocide, Education, North Carolina, Ottoman Empire, panoramic, The Big Picture