Lex Anteinternet: Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry. A Timely Rerun

I ran this back in 2017.  It was clear where things were headed then:

Lex Anteinternet: Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry:     

Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry

  
Me, third from right, when I thought I had a career in geology, and probably in coal.

There is a lot of speculation about a revival in the future of coal around here.  I'm skeptical.  This doesn't mean that I come from the outside where coal is simply a freakish oddity.  No, I'm pretty familiar with coal. . . personally.  At one time, coal, I thought, would fuel my career. When other students in the UW geology department of the early 1980s were planning on becoming petroleum geologist, I focused on coal, which wasn't suffering. . . at first, the way oil then was.  Of course, it came to, and I went from the geology department into under employment so my plan failed.

The irony of that is that my choice on coal as a focus was intentional.  I could see the handwriting on the wall in regards to employment in the oil industry.  Others seemingly couldn't, or having entered onto that set of railroad tracks they just couldn't get off.  Coal, on the other hand, was doing fine in the early 1980s. . . at first.  There were coal mines operating at that time which aren't now.  Indeed, there was an underground coal mine in Hanna, a continuation of a situation that had existed well into the early 20th Century.

Well, that didn't work out the way I'd panned and by 1985, when I approached graduation from the University of Wyoming, after five years of effort (five was typical for geologist, that was five full semesters) I graduated into being an . . . .artilleryman.

Yup.  Artillery. The rescuer of my economic fortunes.

I'd joined the National Guard right out of high school and was still in it in 1985 when I graduated.  The Guard basically employed me on a semi full time basis for a year while I tired to find a job.  I couldn't, of course, so I ended up going back to school to obtain a JD.  Indeed, relating back to the Guard, I've felt guilty ever since as I let my enlistment expire in 1986 just before I went back to law school as I believed all the propaganda I'd heard about how hard law school is.  Hah!  It's nothing compared to obtaining a bachelors in geology. 

  

My main employer, right after receiving my bachelor's degree.

Anyhow, in that period of time between my general geology studies at Casper College (during which I really picked up a love of geomorphogy) and my graduation, the first time, at the University of Wyoming by which time I'd picked up a focus on coal, I learned a lot about coal.  At the same time I nearly obtained enough credits for a BA in history, which perhaps reflects a natural interest that reflects itself back here.

 So, perhaps in some ways, I'm uniquely suited to ponder the long decline of coal.   Or at least I have.

And indeed the path of coal, and its long slow decline, is highly relevant to where we find ourselves now.  Lots of people in the coal states believe that the election of Donald Trump is going to revive the fortunes of coal.  Here in Wyoming quite a few people are so acclimated to coal paying the bills that they can't imagine anything else.  Indeed, just this past weekend I was at a public event, wearing my shabby (truly) Carhartt coat and my Stormy Kromer cap, probably looking like a guy who had shoveled a lot of coal (and indeed I have shoveled a little) and was accosted by a person sitting under a banner proclaiming something about a "return" to liberty and the Constitution who started off on a speech about would I like to sign a petition in opposition to any kind of new taxes.  No, I won't sign that as I just don't see coal being able to pay the Wyoming freight in the future anymore.  Maybe some other mineral or minerals can, but coal isn't going to be able to the way it once did (and besides, I'd be unlikely to sign anyway as I tend to find that people are always opposed to new taxes but not bothered by demanding that the things taxes pay for are really good).

I think the path of coal, being familiar with it, might be best illustrated by a few rough dates and illustrations.  Its something that should be considered.

So let's start around 1900.  That was a world fueled by coal (and by wood).  Sure, kerosene was around, and it had replaced whale oil to a large extent.  I have around here a draft post, now months and months old, building on a George F. Will column that noted:

In many ways, the world of 1870 was more medieval than modern. Three necessities — food, clothing, shelter — absorbed almost all consumer spending. No household was wired for electricity. Flickering light came from candles and whale oil, manufacturing power from steam engines, water wheels and horses. Urban horses, alive and dead, complicated urban sanitation. Window screens were rare, so insects commuted to and fro between animal and human waste outdoors and the dinner table. A typical North Carolina housewife in the 1880s carried water into her home eight to 10 times daily, walking 148 miles a year to tote 36 tons of it. Few children were in school after age 12.

As I will note, I don't dispute the details that Will recites here, but I do doubt the "more medieval than modern assertion in a major way.  Indeed, some of these things argue, I think, the other way around and I think that misstates the nature of the Medieval world.

But noting what Will states about lights, we note what he said, and further note that it was accurate.

• "No household was wired for electricity"

This is quite true.

• "Flickering light came from candles and whale oil,"

Whale oil chandelier, photo from the Library of Congress.  Up until the Will entry, I'd never even considered there being such a thing as a whale oil chandelier.

And so, in many places it did.  But coal fueled a lot of other things.

But let's consider coal in 1900.

It fueled the ships.

 USS Ohio, approximately 1898, as the USS Maine, which sank in a coal explosion in 1898, is in the background.

It fueled the trains, the only significant interstate transportation that existed.

New Your central yard, about 1907.

It heated the homes, where wood did not.

And it fueled industry, particularly the steel industry.

Blat furnace, about 1905.

And then things began to change.

It really started with navies in some ways, although some might argue that it started with hydroelectric.  We'll start with navies.

Navies had been powered by sail up until the mid 19th Century but already by the time of the American Civil War that was changing.  The U.S. Navy may have had its grandest ships under sail during that war, but coal fired wheels were being introduced even then.   And the scary smoke belching squat "monitors"  that signaled the end of the age of sail were coal (and perhaps wood) burning beasts.  Slow, hardly seaworthy, but iron clad.  It was pretty clear by 1865 that the age of militarized wind was ending.

And indeed the Naval reformation that occurred after the American Civil War is incredibly stunning.  Everything about navies soon changed.  By the 1890s every major navy in the world was building ships that look odd to our eyes, but which still look familiar .  Big guns on big ships powered by coal replaced sailing vessels, and the general purpose yeoman sailor was replaced by the specialist.  At about this time, in fact, the U.S. Navy started to switching from a navy drawing its recruits mostly from port towns, and which was in fact an integrated navy, to one which was segregated which drew its recruits from the interior of the country.  A wood and sail navy required men who had grown up near, or even on ships, and who knew the ins and outs of sail. That was a multi ethnic, polyglot group of men who in some way resembled the men in every port town around the world more than they did the men in the interior of their own countries.  It's  no accident that the first Congressional Medal of Honor to go to a foreign born serviceman went to a sailor, in action during the American Civil War fighting a naval battle in. . . . .Japan.

The naval battle in Shimonoseki Straits where an English sailor serving on board the USS Wyoming won a Congressional Medal of Honor.  Note that these ships already featured coal fire steam, in addition to sail.

While there was a sail and steam age, i.e., an age that combined both, for navies it wouldn't last long. For commercial shipping it lasted longer, and indeed the age of sail itself lingered on until after World War Two, amazingly enough, in some usages.  But for big ships, coal fired boilers were the norm before the turn of the century.  Sail lingered, but only lingered.

And so we entered the coal fired world. The degree to which coal fired everything, almost, is stunning.  If we take the world of 1900 heavy long distance transportation of all types was coal fired.  Trains and ships, that is.  Local transportation was seeing the beginnings of the Petroleum Age, but only the beginnings.  Locally, it was very much a horse oriented world, and indeed the railroads themselves caused a massive boom in heavy hauler horses around the turn of the prior century which gave us the really big draft horses, rather than farms as we so often imagine.  Something had to hault hat weight from the railhead to the warehouse.

And heat was going the way of coal. Coal fired, well fires, heated homes all around the country everywhere.  Boilers for apartment buildings, furnaces in homes.  Wood remained, but it was coal that was the oncoming fuel.

A World War One vintage poster of the United States Fuel Administration.  This period poster nicely illustrates how coal fit in.  Homeowners were being urged to buy coal early in the year.  That coal wasn't delivered, in this poster, by a truck, but rather by a dump wagon drawn by heavy draft horses.  Given the light dress of the laborer and the depiction of foliage the poster must have been released during the summer.

It is, in short, impossible to overestimate the importance of coal around 1900.  It was called King Coal for a reason.

But things were beginning to slowly change.

For one thing, petroleum was creeping in.  Not in a massive way, but in a way that was clearly predictable.  George Will spoke of whale oil lamps, but by the second half of the 20th Century kerosene lanterns were very common and their advantages very obvious.  Following in their wake came gas lanterns and by necessity, piping for natural gas.  It wasn't long after that in which the first gas stoves were introduced. Already by the early 20th Century, therefore, there was gas lighting and gas stoves.  

And gasoline was already making its appearance in the internal combustion engine by 1900.

Very early internal combustion engine.

We've dealt with automobiles elsewhere, but we've become so acclimated to them that we rarely think of their history.  Automobiles were a 19th Century invention, albeit a very late 19th Century invention, not a 20th Century one.  That doesn't mean that they replaced the horse right away, that would hardly be true, but they do go back aways.  And they were not, and we should not pretend, that they were any sort of a threat to coal at first.  Not at all.  Cars, trucks and motorcycles were competition for the horse, not the train and certainly not the ship or even the barge.

Truck waiting in line with big long line of coal wagons, some time prior to World War One.

Which takes us back to ships.

And, more specifically, the Royal Navy.

For decades, indeed centuries, the world's biggest and best navy was the Royal Navy.  This does not mean, however, that there was ever a day in which some other navy wasn't contending with the Royal Navy for that position.  And given that, the British basically engaged in a naval arms race that lasted well over a century.  And that mean that it needed to always be on the alert for a technological advantage.

And coal had given one.  Steam meant that large steel ships were able to be constructed, fired by coal fueled boilers.  They had two significant disadvantages however.

Smoke and spontaneous ignition.

Let's talk about smoke first, the disadvantage that was always there.

Their smoke was visible all the way over the edge of the horizon.

This is something that people who are more familiar with ships of the World War Two era don't instantly recall about earlier steel ships, but coal fires smoke and hence coal fired boilers likewise smoke, or rather the coal fires smoke

 The Great White Fleet, and great clouds of black smoke, December 16, 1907.

Prior to the advent of air reconnaissance and radar the spotting of enemy fleets, or for that matter friendly forces, was done by the naked eye.  And it was a matter of absolutely vital concern.  In the vastness of the ocean ships at sea had always scoured the horizon for signs of enemy ships, and even clues that seem slight to landlubbers were picked up by trained sailors.  Sailors looked, in prior eras, for sails and masts on the horizon, with the assistance of spyglasses.  By the time of dreadnoughts, however, they were looking for the faintest hints of smoke, and coal fired boilers provided plenty of it.  Teams of sailors searched the horizon with massive binoculars looking for that wisp of smoke, which was often more than a wisp.

The next danger was rarer, but not so rare as to not be a serious problem.  Spontaneous combustion.

Coal has a well known propensity to self heat and to make it worse, the better the coal grade the bigger the problem.  Exposed to air and moisture coal begins to engage in an exothermic reaction and can relatively easily self heat to the point where it ignites.  Moreover, as it self heats and heads towards ignition it drives off highly flammable hydrocarbon gases. Indeed, heating coal intentionally in a controlled environment is a means of producing those gases and has sometimes been thought of as a method of producing them, although its never proven to be an efficient means of doing so.

Coal is so prone to spontaneous combustion that coal self ignition is a natural phenomenon.  It simply happens where coal gets exposed to sufficient oxygen and moisture. Anyone who has ever spent any time in an open pit coal mine has seen coal simply burning on its own, as I have.

There are ways to combat this, of course, but the problem is uniquely acute for ships.  Ships must store coal in large bunkers and must taken on a lot of coal at certain points.  Ships are wet by their very nature. So any coal burning ship has, at some point, a lot of coal with just enough oxygen and moisture to create a problem.

This proved to be a real problem for ships and of course there were extreme catastrophic occurrences, the most famous of which is the explosion of the USS Maine.  The Maine is an extreme example of what could occur, but any coal burning ship could experience what the Maine did.  Basically, in the case of the USS Maine, the coal self ignited and the coal bunkers had sufficient liberated gas to create a massive explosion.  Not quite as dangerous, but still a huge problem, a simple self ignition of the coal without an explosion was a disaster, quite obviously, of the first rate requiring sailors to put the coal fire out under extreme danger.

Coal's detriments on ships would have had to be accepted, and indeed they were, but for the existence of alternatives.  Indeed, coal survived as a naval fuel for an appreciably longer time than a person might actually suppose, so impressive were its advantages in general.  Measures were taken in ship design to try to combat the dangers, such as having the coal bunkers placed near outside ship's hulls such that the coolness of the water would translate to them, and placing sailors bunks along the bunker's walls so that the sailors could tell if heat was building, but the dangers were real and known. Also known was that there was an alternative, oil.

By the turn of the century naval designers were aware that oil could be used to heat boilers just as coal could, and they began to study it in earnest.  Indeed, not only could it be used, but it had numerous advantages.

Unlike coal, petroleum oil for ships fuel did not result in much smoke.  It resulted in some, but not anything like that which coal put out.  The smoke from a single ship was much less visible and suffice it to say the smoke from a fleet of ships was greatly reduced.  Again, there was smoke, but not smoke like that put out by coal fired boilers.  Indeed, it was so much reduced that to a large degree detection of ships over the horizon by the naked eye was approaching becoming a think of the past.

And petroleum does not spontaneously self ignite.  A big vat of petroleum can sit around forever and never touch itself off.  This does not mean, of course, that its free from danger.  It isn't.  But some of the dangers it poses were already posed by coal, but in lesser degrees.  Petroleum burns more freely than coal by quite some measure and once it ignites putting it out is extremely difficult.  Sparks, other fires, etc., all pose increased dangers for petroleum over bunkered coal, but they existed to some degree for bunkered coal already.

And petroleum is more efficient and easier to use for ships.  Coal was basically stoked by hand, a dirty laborious job.  But petroleum wasn't.  Petroleum burning boilers were fueled by what amounts to a plumbing system involving a greater level of technical know how but less physical labor.  And oil had double the thermal content of coal making it a far more efficient fuel which required less refueling.  And on refueling, ships fueled with oil can be refueled at sea.  Ships fueled with coal cannot be.  Indeed, the maintenance of coaling stations in the remote parts of the globe was a critical factor in naval planning prior to the introduction of oil.

Which isn't to say that there weren't some unique problems associated with petroleum for ship.

For one thing, the fact that it spreads out when leaked and can more easily ignite meant that petroleum added a unique and added horror for a stricken ship.  Coal fired ships that were simply damaged and sinking were unlikely to cause a horrific sea top fire.  Petroleum ships are very likely to do that.  And the risk of a munitions caused explosion is increased with petroleum fueled ships.  A torpedo into a coal bunker might blow a coal fired ship to bits with an explosion or might just sink it.  With a petroleum fueled ship the risk of an explosion in such a situation is increased as is the risk that oil on the water will catch on fire or otherwise kill survivors.

A huge factor, however, was supply.

By odd coincidence all of the major naval powers, save for Japan, had more than adequate domestic supplies of coal.  Some had very good supplies of coal, such as the United States, United Kingdom and Imperial Germany, within their own borders.  Japan nearly did in that it obtained it from territories it controlled on the Asian mainland, although that did make its supply more tenuous. At any rate all of the big naval powers of the pre World War One world had coal supplies that htey controlled.  That's a big war fighting consideration.  Of the naval powers of that era, in contrast, only the United States and Imperial Russia had proven petroleum sources they controlled, and Imperial Russia had proven it self to be a second rate naval power during the Russo Japanese War.

Switching from coal to oil did not occur in the Royal Navy, or any navy, all at once. The decision was made somewhat haltingly and it was an expensive proposition to convert an entire navy to oil.  Britain started to convert prior to World War One but it didn't complete the process until after the war.  Still, its decision to start constructing capitol ships as oil burners in 1912 was a huge step for a nation that had the world's largest navy but which had no domestic oil production at all.  The United States followed suit almost immediately, with its first large ship to be converted to oil, the USS Cheyenne, undergoing that process in 1913.

 The USS Cheyenne in 1916 while it was a submarine tender.  The Cheyenne was the first oil burning ship in the U.S. Navy, following the lead that the British had started.

The USS Cheyenne was illustrative of something else that was going on, however, that being the increased presence of heavy internal combustion engines for various uses.  The USS Cheyenne had been built as a monitor, a type of proto battleship (and had been named the USS Wyoming originally) but after its conversion to oil it would become a submarine tender in a few short years.  Submarines of the era were light vessels and, like a lot of light naval fighting ships ,they were diesels.  Marine diesel engines were replacing boilers completely in lighter vessels and of course diesel fuel is a type of oil.

Diesels in that application show that industrial diesel engines had arrived.

By World War Two every navy in the world was an oil burning, not a coal burning, navy.  And it wasn't just navies.  Merchant ships had followed in the navies' wakes.  They were now oil burning too for the most part.  Coal at sea had died.

 Giant marine diesel engine circa 1920.

The demise of coal at sea did not equate, of course, with the universal demise of coal, and this is very important to keep in mind.  Entering into the period of history we've been discussing, roughly 1900 to 1920, coal may have lost its crown at sea, but it remained hugely important, arguably increasingly important, elsewhere.  It continued to be the fuel of heavy transportation, IE., for trains, it continued to heat homes and it fired an ever growing  number of power plants.  Indeed that last application can't be overstated as in this same period the Western world was electrifying.  So whatever position it may have lost on the waves it was likely more than making it up on land.

Still, the trend line had been set.

And it would next show itself with transportation.

At least according to one source written in 1912 coal fueled 9/10s of all locomotive engines at that time.  The other 1/10th would have been fired by wood or, yes,  oil.

This photograph will appear again in a series of photographs on the centennial of their having been first taken, in January 1917, but these teenagers are stealing coal from a rail yard.  They are probably taking it home for heating fuel or are selling it to Bostonian's who probably knew darned well these kids had taken it illegally from the yards.  For that matter, the railroad likely knew they were taking it too.  Even today, decades after the end of the use of coal for locomotives the paths of old railways can be found by the coal ash and coal that the trains dropped as they passed by.  I've walked the path of the old UP here and there down by Laramie doing that.

Wood, I should  note, may seem strange for a locomotive engine of that era, but it really shouldn't.  The goal of any fuel used in a locomotive engine is to produce steam and burning wood will produce steam.  Wood isn't an efficient fuel for that but it was a common one very early on.  Most locomotives were switched to coal after the Civil War, assuming that they were not burning it already, but where wood was locally plentiful and the engine had a local use, as for a small engine associated with a timbering operation, wood was kept in use.  

Indeed, as a total aside, during World War One some small German engines were made that burned trash.  Coal is a military fuel, Germany's (and Poland's) coal is very good, but as a military fuel conservation was the rule of the day.

At any rate, in 1912 less than 1/10th of all steam engines were burning oil, but what is telling there is that some were.  So here too a trend line had started.

In following years more and more steam engines became oil burning engines.  The reasons may not be entirely clear and are somewhat subtle, but some of them have been touched upon already above.  Oil is a more efficient fuel. Not so much so, however, that all locomotives were switched to it. The famous Union Pacific Big Boys, for example, were coal burning to the end.

Union Pacific Big Boy. These were coal burning their entire career.

What did the coal burning locomotive in, in the end, or more properly the steam engine in, was the diesel.

Diesel engine, 1985, outside of Laramie Wyoming.

Diesels Electric trains proved to be a better and more efficient option for train engines in the end. Contrary to what some may think these locomotives do not work like a diesel truck in that the engine does not power the drive wheels. Rather the diesels are big generators and the trains are essentially electric.   By the same token, in the proper settings, trains run from overhead electric lines.  Either way, this type of engine did in the steam engine.

Now then, looking at it, we see that coal went from the main fuel for ships and trains to a remnant fuel for both in a fifty year period. Hardly overnight, but clearly observable.  A person living in the era, if they cared to notice the trend, would have noticed.  Certainly, for example, if you lived in Rawlins Wyoming and looked out towards the Union Pacific Railroad yard over the course of an average life, if you'd lived in this period, you would have seen it gone from a busy smoky and sooty yard to one which had only the blue haze of diesel fuel above it.  And given that Rawlins is just seven miles from Sinclair, where a refinery is located, but also is surrounded by coal deposits and actually had its origin as a coaling location for the Union Pacific, the change would have been pretty obvious.  If you worked in the big underground mines in Hanna you might actually be slightly worried.

Which isn't to say that coal stopped being used.  Not hardly.  It was still heating homes all over, including in Wyoming, and it still was the fuel for power plants.

Let's turn to domestic coal use, as we haven't really touched on that much.

 

Lennox "Torrid Zone" coal furnace

Now, as we've seen above, coal was a basic heating fuel early in the 20th Century, having replaced wood in that role to a large extent.  During World War One Americans were urged to stock up on heating coal early, which meant filling their coal rooms full during the summer rather than waiting until winter.  Coal soot was such a prominent part of big city life that it came to be an accepted part, even contributing to the legendary concept that London was foggy.  It wasn't so much foggy as it was sooty.  This use of coal continued on for a very long time, and indeed here in Wyoming, which switched to gas early, people still ordered coal for heating fuel at least as late as the 1940s. 

 

Coal furnaces in the Library of Congress, 1900.  Shoot, and Washington D. C. isn't even all that cold.

But over time this changed to where heating oil, yes another use of petroleum oil and natural gas began to replace coal.  By the 1970s at least the price of heating oil became a major factor in annual fuel price concerns, but nobody really thought much of coal for the same purpose.  You can still buy a coal furnace today, if you are so inclined, but very few people do.  So yet another use of coal yielded to petroleum. And here, over time, petroleum has yielded to natural gas and electrical generation.

 Workman converting coal furnace to oil during World War Two.  Oil was more plentiful and efficient which sparked a government move to convert home heating to oil

Of course electrical generation also became a major use of coal in the early 20th Century, and it remains one today.  But, as has been seen from the trend line above, coal isn't the only option, and here too its a declining one.  While oil did make an appearance in the electrical generation field oil powered power plants are more or less a thing of the past and coal has outlasted them.  There are no oil fired power plants left in the United States and less than a dozen major ones left on Earth.  They're yielding, however, to natural gas, which powers quite a few power plants and which as been replacing coal.  And there are other means of generations electrical power, including wind power which now is cheaper than other forms of electrical generations in some regions of the United States.

 

Dave Johnston Power Plant, 2015.  U.S. Government photograph. 

Okay, so what's the point of this? Well, just this.  Coal has been on a long, slow, decline for over a century.  It isn't that it doesn't work, it's that it can't compete economically with other fuels that do the same thing in an increasing range of uses.  Only in terms of coking for steel production is it indispensable.  Indeed, perhaps signalling an international increase in manufacturing, high grade coal for coking has experienced a sharp recovery in recent months. That doesn't do anything locally, however, as our coal is Bituminous Coal, not Anthracite, and therefore can't be used for coking.

This isn't the view of some green fanatic world view.  It's dollars and cents, and coal producing regions, such as Wyoming, have to consider this. Without a way to address coal's defects, and soon, its diminished share of the fuel market will be considerably smaller irrespective of any environmental or regulatory concerns.  It's been a long trend running back over a century.

Thursday, November 1, 1923. Walton arraigned, Krupp signs, Baltic treaties, Finnair founded, George Washington Cornerstone laid, the wages of sin.

Oklahoma was impeaching its anti Klan Governor.

Gustav Krupp signed an agreement with the French which established operating conditions for his mines in the Ruhr.  He was released from prison fourteen days later.

Estonia and Latvia signed a mutual defense treaty.

Finnair was founded as "Aero Osakeyhtiö".  It had one airplane at the time, a Junkers F.13 seaplane.

The George Washington Memorial cornerstone was laid.

Recently retired, at age 29, Irish mob gangster Bill Lovett was murdered in his sleep at an abandoned store in Brooklyn.  Lovett was a well-educated man who loved animals, and a distinguished World War One veteran, but a dedicated alcoholic who could be very temperamental when drunk.  He'd been in the Irish mob before and again after World War One, but had recently given up crime and drinking after marrying.  He fell off the wagon on October 31 while downtown for a job interview, and went to sleep in the store with a compatriot.  He was apparently murdered by other Irish mobsters.

Blog Mirror: The Place Where She Only Sleeps

 

The Place Where She Only Sleeps

Blog Mirror: 1923: Hundreds Show Up for the Formal Opening of the Pacific Highway

 

1923: Hundreds Show Up for the Formal Opening of the Pacific Highway

Blog Mirror: 1914: A Key Juncture for an Innovative Camping Trailer

 

1914: A Key Juncture for an Innovative Camping Trailer

The Aerodrome: Challenging airport funding and looking at subsidization of transportation in a different light.

The Aerodrome: Challenging airport funding and looking at subsidi...: 

Challenging airport funding and looking at subsidization of transportation in a different light.

Should this be the fate of most of Wyoming's airports?

In an interview with Wyoming News Now, Casper Mayor Bruce Knell came out against providing subsidies to Sky West and went on to suggest that Wyoming had more airports than it needs.  He specifically stated, regarding SkyWest

SkyWest is a 1.2-billion-dollar company. They absolutely should not receive any of taxpayers’ money … to help them with their business.

Knell also went on to accuse SkyWest of "feasting" off of the revenues and basically threatening the communities by indicating they may pull out. 

And he went on to challenge the Minimum Revenue Guaranty concept, stating, according to Oil City News:

We need to do away with these MRGs statewide. The state needs to quit funding them. We need to do away with the airport in Gillette, in Rock Springs, in Evanston, in Sheridan, in Cody, in Riverton. They all need to go away. We need to have one international airport in Casper, and one airport in Jackson.

Not too surprisingly, the communities which Knell feels should lose an airport reacted. Officials from Sweetwater County wrote a letter in reply which stated.

The Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport is a critical economic driver for Southwest Wyoming, supporting over $36.9 million in annual economic activity including $25.5 million in annual spending and 324 jobs resulting in $11.4 million in annual payroll,” the letter states. “Much like your local airport, our airport provides critical connectivity to the global economy for dozens of commercial and industrial employers in Southwest Wyoming while also providing residents connectivity to healthcare, friends, family and leisure destinations, improving the overall quality of life for our workforce.

While you may be willing to risk your local economy’s vitality, we are not. Our airport and its air service are foundationally critical assets to our community.

Casper's mayor, it should be noted, serves in a different capacity than those of most cities and towns, and accordingly is not elected as mayor, but appointed to that position by other councilmen.  This is not to say that it's wholly influential, however.

As for doing away with airports, it's hard to imagine any of these airports going away. The real question is whether they shall continue to have commercial air service.  Knell's view seems to be that if they didn't have regional service to Denver and Salt Lake, that would mean that the Casper and Jackson airports would succeed by default, something that's not really clear.

FWIW, at one time or another I've been in planes that landed at every one of these airports, although I've only been on regular commercial flights to Casper.  Having said that, I've known people to take commercial flights into Jackson, Cody, Riverton and Rock Springs, and I've never heard any complaints about those flights.  Being able to fly regionally, and with much greater access than currently exists, is something that outside business entities often ask about.

Knell's overall point is that he feels that the free market should take care of all of this.  The truth of the matter is, however, that only rail transportation isn't subsidized in the U.S.  Highway transportation is heavily subsidized by taxes, which fund the roads, various transportation departments, and specialized police forces.  Air transportation is subsidized by the creation and maintenance of airports, and the maintaining of the TSA and FAA.

Given that, we might really wish to ask the question of what transportation we wish to subsidize and in what amounts, assuming we wish to subsidize any, and of course we do.  Nobody is going to suggest we abolish highway funding, for example. So the real question is what is most efficient, socially productive and serves our long term goals.

Towns and Nature: Hydro, OK: 1929 Historic Route 66 Gas Pumps

Towns and Nature: Hydro, OK: 1929 Historic Route 66 Gas Pumps: Historic Gas Station: ( Satellite , 677 photos) Current Gas Station: ( Satellite ) Grain Elevator: ( Satellite ) Street View , Jun 2023 I&#3...

The Work Truck Blog: Not a truck at all.

The Work Truck Blog: Not a truck at all.:  

Not a truck at all.

 A Ural motorcycle with a sidecar.  Urals are Russian knockoffs of the World War Two era BMW, and frequently have sidecars. They were designed for military use.

Tuesday, August 14, 1923. The Kemmerer Mine Explosion.

Today In Wyoming's History: August 14: 1923  An explosion at the Frontier Mine in Kemmerer killed 99 people. 

The explosion was caused, it is believed, by a fire boss attempting to relight his flame on a safety lamp by striking a match.

The death toll was smaller than initially feared due to quite a few workers being out for vacation.

The British Marine Air Navigation Co. Ltd. commenced the world's first flying boat passenger service.  The flight was from Woolston, Southampton to the Channel Islands.

Martial law was declared in Tulsa due to a KKK murder of an accused drug peddlar.

Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part XIV. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

 

June 5, 2023

Saudi Arabia is cutting its petroleum production by 1M barrels a day.

June 6, 2023

Ukrainian wheat prices have jumped.

June 9, 2023

Wyoming will divest itself of investments in China.

June 22, 2023

Ground was broken yesterday, after a decade and a half was expended on permitting on the Trans West Transmission project.  The event took place near Sinclair.\

June 27, 2023

Ford Motors is laying off salaried workers and engineers in order to save costs.

June 28, 2023

WYDOT approved a grant to Jackson to use Federal money to purchase EV buses.

June 29, 2023

Walgreens is closing 150 stores in the U.S.

In a tragedy, National Geographic magazine laid off its last remaining staff writers.

The magazine has been independent of the National Geographic Society since 2015, when it was sold to Fox.

Wyoming and Colorado Sign MOU Regarding Direct Air Capture

MOU outlines commitment to exploring direct air carbon dioxide capture (DAC) industry development

BOULDER, Colo.  – The State of Wyoming and State of Colorado announced today that they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) regarding direct air capture (DAC) activity and development. The bipartisan inter-state agreement will focus on the DAC industry’s potential to complement existing and emerging industries and increase jobs and economic development in both states while simultaneously reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Governors Mark Gordon and Jared Polis announced the news during the Western Governor Association meeting today in Boulder, Colorado.

Direct Air Capture is a method of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in which CO2 is removed from the air and then sequestered and stored to produce high-quality carbon removal credits or used for industrial applications, such as enhanced oil recovery or as a chemical feedstock for other products. The federal government has established several significant incentives and competitive grant opportunities to test and scale direct air capture technologies and projects. The mountain west is uniquely positioned to lead on these efforts, and this bipartisan agreement represents the first such multistate partnership in the county. 

The MOU outlines the partnership between the states through potential collaborations such as: applying for grants, identifying necessary infrastructure, defining carbon removal measurement standards, analyzing atmospheric CDR markets and their growth opportunities, identifying a process for resolving issues with cross-border CO2 sequestration, developing a commercialization pipeline for nascent technologies, and ensuring that local, tribal, and state stakeholders are empowered participants in shaping the future of this innovative technology and its significant economic opportunity. 

“Wyoming is a longtime leader in carbon management practices and policy,” said Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon. “We believe direct air capture could complement efforts for point-source carbon capture and the related infrastructure. Colorado and Wyoming each have pieces of the puzzle necessary to develop a carbon removal market and industry. Together, we have a powerful combination of assets, infrastructure, policy, markets, people, geology and mindsets that are needed to accelerate the development of the industry. This agreement focuses on working together on the most important questions related to DAC, including measurement standards that work to create more transparency in markets and benefits to communities.”

“This exciting bipartisan partnership builds upon our nation-leading work in Colorado to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2040 while adding good-paying jobs. I am proud to partner with Gov. Gordon on this innovative work that benefits both Colorado and Wyoming as we continue to find creative ideas and common-sense solutions in the fight for clean air that won’t just benefit Colorado and Wyoming, but the entire world,” said Colorado Governor Jared Polis. 

The MOU highlights the combined assets, infrastructure, policy, markets, resources and geology that make the region a strong contender for developing a direct air capture industry. Wyoming has world-class carbon capture, use and sequestration (CCUS) assets, including permanent geologic storage – in addition to existing infrastructure, manufacturing and energy workforce. Colorado has been developing a policy environment to evaluate the regulatory, economic, technological, and research opportunities in the carbon dioxide removal and direct air capture area and is home to the world’s second-largest operating DAC facility. 

This agreement builds on further regional collaboration between Wyoming and Colorado with Utah and New Mexico to develop the Western Interstates Hydrogen Hub. This existing partnership will mobilize  billions of dollars of investment in clean hydrogen infrastructure, another emerging technology to reduce pollution and continue the West’s leadership on global energy solutions.  

For more information, read the Memorandum in full.

June 30, 2023

UW is receiving a Federal grant for nuclear chemistry research.  The grant is in the amount of $300,000.

A headline:

Sriracha prices soar amid ongoing supply shortage linked to droughts

July 3, 2023

In an effort to cause prices to rise, Russia is cutting petroleum production by 500,000 bbls per day.

July 12, 2023

Inflation has fallen to 3%.  Historically, while it's perfectly possible to have even lower inflation, or deflation, that's a pretty good rate.

That we allow for government induced inflation through monetary policy is inexcusable, however.

The official aim is for 2%:

Why does the Federal Reserve aim for inflation of 2 percent over the longer run?

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) judges that inflation of 2 percent over the longer run, as measured by the annual change in the price index for personal consumption expenditures, is most consistent with the Federal Reserve’s mandate for maximum employment and price stability. When households and businesses can reasonably expect inflation to remain low and stable, they are able to make sound decisions regarding saving, borrowing, and investment, which contributes to a well-functioning economy.

For many years, inflation in the United States has run below the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent goal. It is understandable that higher prices for essential items, such as food, gasoline, and shelter, add to the burdens faced by many families, especially those struggling with lost jobs and incomes. At the same time, inflation that is too low can weaken the economy. When inflation runs well below its desired level, households and businesses will come to expect this over time, pushing expectations for inflation in the future below the Federal Reserve’s longer-run inflation goal. This can pull actual inflation even lower, resulting in a cycle of ever-lower inflation and inflation expectations.

If inflation expectations fall, interest rates would decline too. In turn, there would be less room to cut interest rates to boost employment during an economic downturn. Evidence from around the world suggests that once this problem sets in, it can be very difficult to overcome. To address this challenge, following periods when inflation has been running persistently below 2 percent, appropriate monetary policy will likely aim to achieve inflation modestly above 2 percent for some time. By seeking inflation that averages 2 percent over time, the FOMC will help to ensure longer-run inflation expectations remain well anchored at 2 percent.

1% would be better.  0 would be even better.  Very difficult to achieve.

And in actuality, with a labor demand that exceeds employment, a slight deflation, over a decade, would be nice.

July 13, 2023

A study published in Joule maintains that ending fossil fuel use will impact the net worth of only the very wealthy.

Swiss voters have voted to reach net carbon zero by 2050.

July 16, 2023

Hollywood actors and writers are on strike, something that could carry on forever as far as I'm concerned, given the overall negative affects the industry has had.

July 19, 2023

Wheat prices have jumped 8% due to Russia pulling out of the Black Sea grain shipment arrangement.

July 20, 2023

NON-ENERGY MINERALS ON PUBLIC LANDS ARE A SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTOR TO ECONOMIC ACTIVITY AND JOBS

July 22, 2023

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles lost its renewed legal battle seeking to keep Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. from selling the redesigned Roxor off-road vehicle in the US.

The lawsuit claimed the designed trespass on protected elements of the Jeep.  I don't know the details of the suit, but the Roxor is pretty clearly a Jeep externally, and more particularly the old CJ-5.

July 28, 2023

Supreme Court rules in favor of Mountain Valley Pipeline  

Or;

Supreme Court rules in favor of Mountain Valley Pipeline

Thumbs Up Emoji Costs Canadian Farmer $82,000

August 3, 2023

Sales of Bud Light have fallen 10%.

August 4, 2023

Saudi Arabia extended production cuts.  U.S. oil prices are at a nine-month-high.

August 8, 2023

Two out of three of the major credit rating entities have downgraded the US rating from AAA+ to AAA. This occured to the lunacy of current American politics and the high U.S. debt.

And, locally:

Environmental Groups Lose Appeal Of Wyoming 3,500 Gas Well Project at Jonah Field

Last prior edition:

Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part XIII. The Economic Doomsday Clock

Towns and Nature: Gillette, WY: 1907 CB&Q Roundhouse and Water Tower

Towns and Nature: Gillette, WY: 1907 CB&Q Roundhouse and Water Tower: ( Satellite , the roundhouse was removed by 1970. There are no obvious remnants.) Note the water tower on the left. The building with the de...

Painted Bricks: Train mural, Casper Wyoming

Painted Bricks: Train mural, Casper Wyoming: 

Train mural, Casper Wyoming

This train mural is on the Platte River Parkway that runs through downtown Casper along a rails to trails easement.   The building is the 321 Art Works building, formerly an industrial warehouse.

Monday, July 2, 1923: Officers behind bars, French seize Krupp factory

President Harding, continuing his Voyage of Understanding, was allowed to take the controls of a locomotive, fulfilling a boyhood ambition.  It was an early electric locomotive.

U.S. President Harding in the cab of a Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad ("Milwaukee Road") boxcab electric locomotive, July 2, 1923. 

The trip took Harding to Spokane, where he addressed a crowd on public lands.  In his address, acknowledging the growing conservation movement that had received a large boost during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, he argued that use of public resources from public lands, rather than locking them up, preserved them.  He also more or less correctly anticipated the size of the US population in 2023.

The sad story of a woman killed by a sheriff's deputy for failure to dim her lights was playing out with officers now behind bars.

And the French seized a Krupp plant.

Pope Pius XI sent a letter to the papal nuncio in Berlin appealing to the Weimar German Republic to try to make its reparations payments and to cease resisting the French.  Basically, an appeal to try to restore the evaporating peace.

On reparations, Allied delegates at the Conference of Lausanne made their final offer to Turkey.

Friday, June 29, 1923. Poincaré replies, The Tribune notices the Klan, Harding in Montana.

Replying to the Pope's letter of earlier that week, but not naming him by name, French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré stated in a speech in the French Senate "the only screw that we have on Germany is her desire to recover the Ruhr. We have no thought of annexation, and we energetically refute all accusations of imperialism. France does not wish to confiscate the Ruhr. We will keep it, however, until Germany has paid her debt."

The Tribune finally got around to reporting on recent events in Glenrock.

Preisdent Harding visited Butte and Helena Montana, delivering this speech in Helena:

My Countrymen:

One of the greatest lessons which the World War taught to society was a realization of its stupendous producing capacity under modern organization. When the war started many of us, probably most of us, believed it could not last very long because we could not conceive that it could be economically and industrially supported for a long time. We had been taught to believe that as a whole the community annually consumed pretty nearly all that it produced, and that in order to maintain this ratio it was necessary to keep all the producers steadily at work. We were convinced that when the most efficient producers were taken by millions away from the fields, the shops, the mines, and the offices, and set at the business of armed destruction, they would very presently pull down upon themselves the whole fabric of our complex industrial system, and that the war would be smothered in the ruins. This view was the basis of what became almost an obsession with many people, indeed with most of the best informed people, during the early stages of the war. It was commonly and freely said that economic exhaustion would compel an end to the struggle before a year, and a much more popular limitation was six months.

The event showed how very little we understood either the tremendous producing capacity of the community as a whole or the strength and solidity of our industrial structure. When the first year of the war had passed, the world was just beginning to realize that in all probability the struggle was only in its larger beginning. Millions of men had been called from the fields, and yet still other men were being trained for it. At the end of two years the war was greater than ever, and after three years it had still further expanded until it actually involved, whether as combatants or as the sources of supply for the combatants, the whole world. The industrial, the agricultural, the financial, the social, and spiritual forces of the world were mobilized at last for the great final test of strength. In the end that test was both military and economic. Victory rested upon the banners which were borne by the side that represented the greatest number of soldiers, of ships, of guns; which represented the greatest capacity to bring together, control, and fabricate the necessaries of war and to maintain great civil populations behind the lines.

It became very early a war of conscription. Governments conscripted their men for service in the field; patriotism and public opinion conscripted everybody else for work at home. A new system of division and dilution of labor was introduced through which men and women, boys and girls, old men and old women—millions of people who under the old order of peace days had been rejected from the realm of skilled production—were quickly trained to the most intricate and technical tasks. So, in the midst of the most destructive storm that mankind had ever invoked upon itself, there was presented the marvelous phenomenon of a world producing at a greater rate than it had ever done before.

How was this gigantic industrial phenomenon wrought? By putting everybody at work. By inducing everybody to work to the limit of strength and capacity. By paying the workers at rates which enlisted their utmost eagerness to produce to the limit. Yes, if you please, by letting labor and capital and management all engage more or less in profiteering at the expense of society as a whole. Unheard-of wages were paid to people who in other times would have been considered quite incapable of earning them, but who, under the stimulus of the emergency, became effective and absolutely necessary factors in the industrial organization. Particularly was this true of the women, young and old, who took up tasks in the shop, the field, the transportation systems, and behind the lines of combatants, such as had never before been assigned to them. And the women made good so emphatically, so impressively, that as to-day we look over the whole field of the world mobilization and the world conflict we realize that something very much like a revolution was effected in the varied relationships of the industrial community.

Viewed in the retrospect we see more clearly than ever the sordid side, of war. I have said before, and I choose to repeat it very deliberately now, that if war must come again—God grant that it shall not!—then we must draft all of the nation in carrying on. It is not enough to draft the young manhood. It is not enough to accept the voluntary service of both women and men whose patriotic devotion impels their enlistment. It will be righteous and just, it will be more effective in war and marked by less regret in the aftermath, if we draft all of capital, all of industry, all of agriculture, all of commerce, all of talent and capacity and energy of every description to make the supreme and united and unselfish fight for the national triumph. When we do that there will be less of war. When we do that the contest will be aglow with unsullied patriotism, untouched by profiteering in any service.

Of course, we are striving to make conditions of foreign relations and so fashion our policies that we may never be involved in war again. If we are committed to universal service—that is, the universal commitment of every American resource and activity—without compensation except the consciousness of service and the exaltations in victory, we will be slower to make war and more swift in bringing it to a triumphant dose. Let us never again make draft on our manhood without as exacting a draft on all we possess in the making of the industrial, financial, commercial, and spiritual life of the republic.

If we had been in a state of mind to philosophize about it all, I think we might have recognized that women have been for a long time preparing themselves for this tremendous incursion into the field of industrial production. For a long time before the war began there had been evidence of a reaction among the women against the old ideals of the Victorian period. For three or four decades, the more venturesome women had been timidly breaking away from the old-fashioned home and its old-fashioned ideals. Even those who viewed the new-woman movement with greatest misgiving and least approval had already been compelled to recognize that a new and revolutionary idea was taking possession of them. We might iterate and reiterate, and theorize and dogmatize, upon the old thesis that the place for woman was in the home; but we will have to admit that despite all our preachments, all our urgings, all our misgivings, woman wasn't staying there. She was teaching in the schools, she was accounting for perhaps a majority of the graduates from the high schools, and a big and increasing minority of the student community in the colleges and universities. She was practicing law and medicine, preaching sermons, working in the shops, the offices, the factories; she was, in short, becoming a competitor with her brother in almost all the departments of productive effort and activity.

Then came the war, and all at once even the most dubious among us realized that the women, everywhere, constituted the first line of industrial reserves upon which society must fall back in its great crisis. They volunteered for every service in which they could be useful, and at once established their right to a new and more important industrial status. They built ships, they operated munition factories, they learned to perform the heaviest and most difficult tasks; they tilled the fields, filled the offices, largely conducted the hospitals, and even served as most useful auxiliaries to forces on the battlefield. Not as a boon, but as a duty, full partnership in the conduct of political affairs was conferred upon them.

All this has inevitably worked a profound change in the relation of woman to the social and political organization. We may approve it or disapprove it, we may view it with satisfaction or with misgiving, but the fact is before us that woman has taken a new place in the community. And just as her participation in the industrial sphere expands, so her relations to the home and its interest is necessarily contracted. Whether we account it wise or otherwise, we must recognize that the tendency is to take the modern mother more and more away from the control, the training, the intellectual guidance and spiritual direction of her children. The day nursery, and after that the kindergarten begins to care for her children in the earliest years; after that come the public school, the high school, the college and the university, taking over from her more and more of the responsibility and influence over the children. We may entertain the old-fashioned prejudices against this development; but we are compelled to recognize that under modem conditions a large and increasing proportion of women are bound to be at the same time mothers in the home and industrial producers or professional workers outside the home, or else they must be denied the service and responsibility of motherhood.

Frankly, I am one of those old-fashioned people who would be glad if the way could be found to maintain the traditional relations of father, mother, children, and home. But very plainly these relations are in process of a great modification. The most we can do, to the utmost possible extent, is to readapt our conditions of industry and of living so as to enable the mothers to make the utmost of their lessened opportunity for shaping the lives and minds of their children. We must hope, and we must make it possible, that mothers will not assume, when their babes of yesterday become the schoolboys and schoolgirls of to-day, that the responsibility of the mother is ended, and that the teacher, the school authorities, the college, the state, will henceforth assume it. Rather, we must recognize that no other influence can possibly be substituted for that of motherhood; and we must make it possible for the mothers to cooperate with these social institutions of the new order, to give the children so far as possible the privileges of a home atmosphere which will supplement the advantages of mere education and training. It must be made possible for the mothers to familiarize themselves with the problems of the people, the school superintendents, the college authorities, the health and sanitation officials. In short, the mothers must be placed in such position that despite their obligations outside the home they shall not have to surrender their domestic responsibility. Rather, means must be found to enable them, through the varied instrumentalities which, society affords, to equip themselves for the better discharge of their responsibility toward the children of the land.

Through such effort as this there will be opportunity for a great service. Those mothers who have the advantage of the best material and intellectual opportunities will, if they make the most of these advantages, help greatly to improve the conditions of children that come from families and homes less fortunately situated. They will be able to help in lifting up the poorer, the less fortunate children, to a higher level. The mother who tirelessly seeks rightly to train her own children, to instill into them that indefinable essence which we know as good breeding, will be performing this service not alone for her own children, but in only less measure for the children who come from homes less blessed with the finer things of life. Herein is the supreme advantage of the public-school system. I have never been able to find much satisfaction in die good fortune of families who, when they are able to do it, prefer to take their children out of the public schools and give them the doubtful advantage of more exclusive educational methods. I think we should cling to the democracy of the public schools.

The teacher, and the authorities back of her, must be equally ready to cooperate with the home and the mother. In the home must still be performed the duty of instilling into the child those fundamental concepts of religion and of faith which are essential to rightly shaping the character of citizens, and therefore of the nation. It would be an irreparable mistake if in surrendering to society a larger responsibility for the child's intellectual and physical well being, we should forget the necessity for proper religious training. That duty must be performed in the home; it will always be peculiarly the duly of a mother.

Mankind never has stood more in need than it does now of the consolations and reassurances which derive from a firm religious faith. We are living in a time of many uncertainties, of weakened faith in the efficiency of institutions, of industrial systems, of economic hypotheses, of dictum and dogma in whatever sphere. Yet we all know that there are certain fundamental truths of life and duty and destiny which will stand eternal, through the evolution and the revolution of systems and societies founded by mankind. There must be no mistake whereby we shall confuse the things which are of eternity with those which are of time. We must not let our engrossment with the things of matter and of mind distract us from a proper concern for those which are of the spirit and the soul.

It must be kept ever in mind that the higher and finer attributes of humanity will rarely be developed from a human seedling planted in a soil adapted chiefly to the production of that which is selfish and sordid, in which it will be forced by special circumstances to struggle unduly for the bare continuance of existence. We will not grow strong minds in unsound bodies, nor may we hope that illuminated souls will often seek habitation in human frames weakened and tortured by disease and malnutrition. To an astounding and alarming certainty it has been demonstrated that a large proportion of school children, and even of adults, suffer from undernourishment. I may congratulate you that there is little of it in the West. Perhaps it is true that as to most of the adults the fault is of the individual rather than society. Whether that be true or not we can at least agree that the children are not to be blamed for their share in such misfortunes. If society has permitted the development of a system under which the citizens, of to-morrow suffer these deprivations to-day, then the obligation is surely upon society to right the wrong and to insure justice to the children who are not responsible for being here.

But we can not expect to bring full justice, full equality of circumstances and opportunity to the children, unless we shall make it possible for the parents. We are all too much given, I suspect, to a rather unthinking admiration for our highly mechanized social system under which we have so abundantly produced wealth and the possibilities of comfort and culture. We have not thought enough about the evils attendant upon the great inequities which mark the distribution of our stupendous product. But we are coming into a time when more and more we are giving thought to these things. Our satisfaction in the material achievements of our industrial age is being qualified as it never was before by our questionings along these lines. We are thinking of the weaker links in the social chain. We believe the equality of opportunity must be attended by a fitness to embrace it.

Here, again, the war was responsible for a great broadening of our social vision. It made its demand upon the highest and the lowest, the proudest and the humblest. It demanded a sacrifice that was just as great in the case of the poor man as the rich man. What was more, it brought a realization of the fact that men and women were of real service to the community just in proportion as they were capable of producing the things that were needed. So the workers, the builders, the producers attained a new sense of their dignity and importance. Contemplating its supreme crisis, the community was willing to render to those who were capable of serving it effectively in this juncture a greater share of their product than they had formerly been accustomed to receive. Wages, the world over, went to new high levels, salaries and fixed incomes shrank to lower levels of actual exchange value. There was a leveling up from the lower strata and downward from the higher. On the whole, despite many instances of injustice and of maladjustment in this process, its results marked a long advance on the road to equity and justice as among all elements of the community. A few years of civilization's desperate grapple with destiny brought to the working masses of the world an aggregate betterment of conditions, a general improvement of circumstances and opportunity, which otherwise would, have been possible only through the slow processes of generations.

We know now that the advances which were thus effected in the direction of social justice and economic equality will not be relinquished without determined opposition. There were those who, regarding the injustices of the old order as inevitable, mistakenly assumed that by a simple process which they called the "deflation of labor" the old relationships would presently be restored. They insisted that "wages must come down"; some of them went so far as to sound the slogan that "organized labor must be crushed." These have forgotten the lesson in organization, in cooperation, in community of sacrifice, by which civilization had been able to rescue itself. They had forgotten that the right of organization, and of cooperative dealings, is not any longer the special prerogative of management and of capital. The right of men, and brains, and skill, and brawn, to organize, to bargain through organizations, to select their own leaders and spokesmen, is no wit less absolute than is the right of management and of capital to form and work through those great concentrations of interests which we call corporations.

Labor, indeed, is fast becoming one of the great builders of capital. Whether it concentrates its savings by depositing them in its own banks, of which the number is rapidly increasing, or pools them with the general savings of society by making its deposits in other banks, the result is the same. Labor is more and more coming to be the financier and backer of its own employment. We shall not go back to the time when considerable elements in the community were wont to assume that a sharp line of demarcation should be drawn between labor and capital. Labor is becoming more and more a capitalist on its own account, and capital is more and more discovering that it must work, must contribute, must give us, through some superiority of method and management, a justification for its existence as a sort of separate estate. Those to whom the management and investment of capital is intrusted must recognize, as I know most of them already do, that the right of organization, and the title to those special efficiencies which come to organization, is not the exclusive prerogative of capital. It is equally the prerogative of labor.

I am quite aware that there were some who imagined, before the present administration was voted into responsibility, that it was going at least to acquiesce if not definitely sympathize with projects for the deflation of labor and the overthrow of labor organizations. Before this time these have come to realize their error. Nothing has been farther from the purpose of the present administration than any thought of destroying the right of either labor or capital to organize, and each to deal in its organized capacity.

We have recognized that there are evils and abuses on both sides of the almost imaginary line which now is presumed to separate labor and capital. We have wished and sought to minimize these abuses, through better organizations and better understanding, without destroying organizations or the right to form them. We have not wished to compel men to work when they did not want to work; we have not wished to compel employers to keep men at work under conditions which were impossible; but we have earnestly sought to lessen the occasions for conflict between the two parties. We have tried to bring to both of them a realization that both owed in this connection an obligation to the great public interest which is always the great sufferer by reason of their conflict.

In this connection let me say quite frankly that I know there were some elements which hoped for a great and decisive conflict between organized employment and organized labor, and that those elements were not all on either side of the imaginary dividing line. On the capital side of the line were those who hoped that the administration would lend itself to their program of breaking down organized labor and sending it back to the era of individual bargaining for the individual job. On the labor side of the line were those who hoped, by exorbitant demands and an attitude of uncompromising insistence, to force the nationalization of some of our most important industries and services. Between these two extreme groups, confident we had behind us the overwhelming public opinion of the nation, we have tried to hold the scales even; to prevent on the one side the destruction of organized labor, and on the other side to frustrate those programs which looked to the ultimate destruction of private capital and the nationalization of all the instrumentalities of production.

How well have we succeeded? At least, we have saved the nation from the extremists of both sides. Those who were sure that our salvation lay in the destruction of organized labor and the precipitated reduction of wages have found -that the national administration was not disposed to Acquiesce in their program. For many months past they have noted that the demand for labor was greater than the supply; that instead of millions of men out of jobs, there were tens of thousands of jobs without workers; that instead of a sharp and progressive reduction of labor's wage, there has been now for a long time a steady; continuing, persistent increase in that wage. On the other side, those who would have been glad to drive the country into an industrial crisis through the stoppage of production, arid to force the nationalization or communization of industry, have been equally disappointed in the outcome.

I believe our policy, and its results, have reflected the sound judgment of the overwhelming majority of the American people. I believe this people is firmly and finally committed to the ideal of preserving the fullest rights of private initiative and private enterprise, together with the right of organization on both sides of the line between capital and labor, and always consistent with the right of the public to be served efficiently and at a reasonable cost.

We have come thus far, and thus fortunately, through the most difficult period of reconstruction that we have ever known. We have been sheltered against the world storm of tendency to social revolution. The best test of policy is by results. By that test, we ask no more than a fair and reasoned verdict on our program; We ask that its results be compared with the showing, in these after-war years, that can be presented by any other country on the face of the earth. We ask that you examine the contrast, thoughtfully and seriously, between the general state of the public weal in this country and in others. For our vindication, we point to a great nation, its credit preserved, its industries crowded to the point of capacity production, its people employed, its wage scales high beyond all comparison with any other in the world, its banking system standing as the final bulwark of sound money and the gold standard, and its average level of comfort and prosperity unexampled among the races of men.

If I could make the fortunate picture stand out by offering contrast, I would speak of Russia and the colossal failure of its mad experiment. The dissatisfied working forces of America, where there are such, and the parlor theorists who have yet to create a single, thing useful to aspiring human kind, will find there less of freedom, much less of reward, and little of hope in much proclaimed emancipation. Royal absolutism has been destroyed, only to be superseded by what appears to be despotism in the name of democracy. To a limited few of democracy's advocates has come vast power. Perhaps wealth attends. Undoubtedly a new Russia is in the making, and there is no doubt the present sponsorship will survive.

Apart from the tragedy of it all, I am glad Russia is making the experiment. If twenty centuries of the Christian era and its great story of human progress and the countless centuries before the light of Christianity flamed have been lived and recorded upon mistaken theories of a righteous social order, then everything is wrong, Christianity a failure, and all of civilization a failure. I think Russia is going to rivet anew our belief in established social order. Meanwhile we know ours is the best the world has revealed, and I preach the gospel of holding fast to that which has proven good, ever trying in good conscience to make it better, and consider and treat as an enemy every man who chooses our land as a haven in which to assail the very institutions which shelter him.

There are two phases of the commitment of the great human family.

It is of little use to advance unless we hold to the advanced position. It is useless to construct unless we preserve. In the recognized test which our civilization is now undergoing America's supreme task is one of preservation. I call upon America to protect and preserve.

His rail route took him through Idaho from Utah the prior day, so this was an example, really of extensive backtracking.