Monday, May 14, 1923. Recalling past sacrifices.

Five "real" daughters of the War of 1812, on May 14, 1923.

 

American Legion at Arlington.

Tuesday, April 17, 1923. Scouting in Casper.

I'm putting this edition of the Casper Daily Tribune up for one reason.

The article on the Boy Scouts.

It notes its explosive growth at the time, and that there was a troop in Mills. There's no troop there today.

Indeed, church troops, which this article notes, have really dwindled, although they still exist.  I know that in the 30s, St. Anthony's Catholic Church and St. Mark's Episcopal Church both had troops. They no longer do, although St. Mark's retains a cub scout troops.

According to the short search of it I did, today the local troops are:

6Units found near this ZIP Code

1

Troop 1035 American Legion George W Vroman Post 2

-1 miles

1868 S Poplar St
Casper WY 82601

Contact: Devin Hutchinson

Phone: (307) 337-1185

Email: devin930@hotmail.com

Boy Troop

Online Registration available for this unit.

Meets on Thursday nights at the church.

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2

Troop 1167 Elks Casper Lodge

17.9 miles

Girl Troop

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3

Troop 1167 Elks Casper Lodge

17.9 miles

108 E 7th St
Casper WY 82601

Contact: Richard Summerton

Phone: (307) 259-8878

Email: rlsummerton@gmail.com

Boy Troop

Online Registration available for this unit.

Meets on Tuesday nights in the basement of the Elks Lodge.

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4

Troop 1094 Casper Five Trails Rotary Club

18 miles

701 S Wolcott St
Casper WY 82601

Contact: Craig Dutcher

Phone: (307) 258-9379

Email: craigdutcher@hotmail.com

Website: http://www.wytroop94.com

Boy Troop

Online Registration available for this unit.

Troop 1094 is dedicated to provide an educational program for boys and young adults to build character, to train in the responsibilities of participating citizenship, and to develop personal fitness. Our Troop camps during most months of the year, participates in several community service projects, and meets every Tuesday evening for regular meetings.

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5

Troop 1113 First Christian Church Of Casper

18.1 miles

Girl Troop

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6

Troop 1013 First Christian Church Of Casper

18.1 miles

520 Cy Ave
Casper WY 82601

Boy Troop

Online Registration available for this unit.

Great Troop! Great fun! Meets on Monday nights at the church.

A few things to note.

Two of these are associated with a church, that being the First Christian Church.  Way back in antiquity when I was briefly a Boy Scout, even though I'm Catholic, that was the troop I was in.  I think this was solely because somebody we knew was in it, and I was invited.  In retrospect, I'm surprised that my parents didn't suggest I look at the St. Anthony's troops, which was still around at the time, although its members were no doubt mostly alumni of St. Anthony's school.

The George Vroman legion troop actually meets at College Heights Baptist Church, based on that address. So is it a church troop?  That's not clear, but probably not.  That Legion post meets at the National Guard armory, so it doesn't have its own meeting site, which might explain it partially.

Two of these troops are associated with service organizations, the Elks and Rotary.  Service organizations are on the decline as well, although both of those seem to be doing well in Casper.

Most of these troops have a girls troops associated with them.  The introduction of girls into what had been the Boys Scouts happened a few years back, and when it occurred it took all the LDS troops out of the organization.  They'd had a big presence in it.  The move also irritated the Girl Scouts, for obvious reasons.

I don't know if It's helped the Boy Scouts or not. They've certainly been in decline, but I suspect that the introduction of girls hasn't helped.  Mostly what it probably has served to do is to create one more way in which it's impossible for boys to be with men in a formal way. Scouting was reeling under homosexual rape/seduction scandals at the time, although I'm sure that some would object to that characterization, even though there really is no other way to accurately describe it given as it was obviously male on male.  I'm not claiming, of course, that male on underage female, and for that matter female on underage male, sexual abuse does not occur.  Indeed, in the last year there's been a host of female on underage male abuse reported nationwide from public schools, school teachers in general being the number one sexual abusers of the underage.  Something, suffice it to say, is really amiss in our society, as it is likely that all of this reflects a big increase in this conduct, not merely the discovery of it.  

At any rate, the introduction of girls into the organization wouldn't seem to be directly related, but in a way it was, designed to show that Scouting was cleaning up its act and becoming inclusive.  It could have addressed that in another way, as it really undercut the basic nature of the organization.

As noted, my connection with Scouting is thin.  I was only briefly a Boy Scout.  I shouldn't, therefore, really care too much about its decline, but still, it says something about the evolution of American society over the past century, and whatever it says, it isn't really a good thing that it's a shadow of its former self.

Scouting no doubt has a lot to compete with these days.  However, the irony of that is that when it was first formed, it did to, and in some ways was formed expressly for those reasons.

Thursday, November 10, 1922. Erskine Childers arrested by the Free State.

Erskine Childers, Ango Irish, English-born, Protestant, Irish Republican, was captured by the Irish Army in a nationwide roundup of IRA members.  

Childers was an Irish revolutionary figure who went from being an ardent supporter of the British Empire who served in the Boer War, into a revolutionary.  He was a member of the Anglo Irish aristocratic class, a lawyer, and a writer, who originally fit into the classic role of the period of English Empire loyalists, a view which he moved away from following the Boer War.

He helped smuggle German rifles into Ireland before the Great War, as he was by that time a supporter of home rule. When World War One came he was recalled into service and served first in the Royal Navy and then in the Royal Air Force.  His nationalism known, he was already a figure in Irish efforts to secure independence, and following the war he ended up the secretary of the delegation which negotiated with the British for independence.  He was an ardent opponent of the treaty with the UK.

He followed De Valera out of the Dail and published a pro-Republican journal following that while being a figure within Irish Republicanism.  He was not popular, however, among the Republican rank and file who regarded him as English, not without some good reasons. He was not trusted with a military role in spite of being vastly experienced in the same.

He was arrested for carrying a .32 handgun and put to death under the Army Emergency Powers Resolution which made carrying a firearm without a license a capital offense, a supremely ironic law for a government that had come into existence through doing just that.  He was executed on November 24, in what should be regarded as a supremely unjust act.  He was 52 years of age 

The Greek city of Saranta Ekklisies ("Forty Churches") in Thrace was turned over to the Turks, who renamed it at first "Kirk Kilise" ("Forty Churches").  Today it is Kirklareli, "The Place of 40"

The Marine Corps League was established.

The US released twenty vessels seized on the seas for carrying alcohol.

Monday, September 10, 1922. UW "kidnapping"

The Soviet Union introduced universal male conscription, starting at age 20.

The Reserve Officers Association was formed in the US.  Originally an organization made up of reserve officers who had served in World War One, it's now an association that includes reservists of all ranks.

Lithuania introduced the Lita as its currency, replacing German currency it had been used.

1922 10 Lita banknote.

A now passed UW tradition was practiced.

Tuesday, September 26, 1922. Young and old, north and south, war and peace.

Penn State, September 26, 1922.

 Confederate Veterans of North Carolina, Grove Park, Asheville

Virginia Ave. playgrounds, September 26, 1922.

September 29, 1920. The American Legion expresses its (1920) view on Japanese immigration . .

and it wasn't welcoming.

The degree to which really strong anti Japanese immigrant views were once not only common, but probably the majority view of the country, is well known but still not always appreciated. We wouldn't think, for example, that the American Legion would have made a statement about it in 1920.  Indeed, it's not even clear why this was a topic for the brand new veterans' organization at the time.

FWIW, a "picture bride" was a mail order bride arranged through a matchmaker, who paired photographs of the prospective bride and groom. In this case, that was done in Japan and then the bride went to be with their husbands. The "gentleman's agreement" referred to here allowed for the immigration of spouses after the Federal Government quit issuing visas to Japanese immigrants and the exception for picture brides had been made illegal in March, 1920.  The elimination of the exception left about 24,000 male Japanese in the United States batchelors.

Japanese picture brides arriving at Angel Island, California.  1919.

For those who may wonder why that was the case, immigration by the Japanese was heavily male.  Before World War Two, Japanese in the United States (or Japan) almost never intermarried with other cultures, although World War Two would change that forever in the United States and briefly in Japan.  The role of women in Japanese marriages, moreover, placed a very heavy emphasis on women being dominant in the households and it would really take acculturation of the Japanese in the United States, which World War Two accelerated for a variety of reasons, to alter that in the US.  So the nest result was lonely lives for a lot of Japanese men, and not a few Japanese women, who were willing to take the risks of marrying somebody they didn't know over a lifelong single status.

It should be noted that not all of the brides were Japanese.  Some were Korean, at a time at which Korea was an unwilling Japanese colony. That also says something about how the male Japanese diaspora was viewed in Japan.  Generally intermarriages with Koreans in Japan, or Korea, was frowned upon, but not in the case of women being shipped across the sea.

The male motivation isn't hard to figure out, but the female one is more so.  Many of the marriages were arranged by the parents of the couple back in Japan and therefore they knew each other a bit.  Some did it as it was regarded as adventuresome in Japan at a time when women's ability to travel abroad in that country was very limited.  Some took it up simply as a means of immigrating to a new country where social restrictions on women were known to be much less restrictive.  Most were apparently shocked by the conditions they lived in at first, and disappointed with their prearranged male matches who were ten to fifteen years older than they were, but they came to adjust to them.

It's really odd to think of the American Legion, which was brand new at the time, even having an opinion on this topic, let alone an anti-Japanese immigrant one in light of Japan having been an Allied power in World War One.

It's also a bit odd to think of Natrona County having less than 15,000 people.  Indeed, I'm envious of that.

September 13, 1920 Nice car and the VFW.

Mr. and Mrs. J.G. Bessori, September 13, 1920.  Note Mr. Bessori's leggings.

I don't know who they were, or why a news photographer felt he had to take their photo, but they had a nice, and shiny car.

And the Veterans of Foreign Wars gathered.