April 9, 1920. Spring in Washington D.C.

In  Washington D.C., equestrians participated in a paper chase on this day in 1920.

Elsewhere, Germany informed France that it would be responsible for property loss and the loss of life in the regions France had moved in to occupy, an ironic statement in light of the fact that the Germany government wasn't shy about the use of force on its own soil.

January 5, 1920. The first Monday of the year. Ice, Raids, Long and Bobbed Hair, and Fighting the Reds

It was the first Monday of the New Year, and the New Decade, the date, being the first of a full work week, when the new year really begins, at least for adults.  

So how did it start off?

Joseph and Thomas Leiter skating on the basin, Joseph takes a fall.  Washington D. C., 1/5/20.

Washington D.C. was apparently having a cold snap, as the Tidal Basin was frozen and children were taking advantage of it for ice skating.

 Miss Betty Baker, daughter of the Secty. of War and Miss Annie Kittleson skating on the Tidal Basin, Washington D. C., 1/5/20.

Admiral Jellicoe was still making the rounds.

Admiral Jellicoe photographed in Secty. Daniels office at the Navy Dept.  1/5/20.

The Supreme Court upheld the Volstead Act thereby wiping out booze for good, or so it would seem, right down to the ultra light beer level.

At the same time, things were developing and heating up in Ireland, where separatists Republicans were fighting the British in their effort to form a separate republic.  A familiar map was beginning to take place there.

Closer to home the Palmer Raids were still being celebrated and a new effort was underway for a sedition act designed to take on home grown Reds, described by the Casper headline writer as "long haired men and short cropped women". That headline actually did catch a hair style trend in radical women, albeit on that was about to spread.  As described by Whitaker Chambers in Witness, radical women of the time bobbed their hair.  Soon, that style, perhaps boosted by the daring radicalism, would spread to the female population in general.

By 1924, bobbed hair would be a flapper thing.  In 1920, it was a Red thing.

Reds and their opponents were at it tooth and nail elsewhere.

In Poland the Battle of Daugavpils concluded with the Soviets retreating into Latvia and being taken into custody there. That was possible as Poland and Latvia, which had been fighting, had concluded an armistice in the struggle between them and had asked the Poles for help. The anti Red forces were approximately half Pole and half Latvian, and fought successfully under Polish command.

Mustered Polish armor in the form of French tanks at Daugavpils.

Scenes from September 20, 1919.

Veterans, Chilton, Wisconsin, Sept. 20, 1919

Potomac Boat Club, September 20, 1919.

Burk-northwest extension, September 20, 1919.

Movies In History: A River Runs Through It.

A River Runs Through It

This movie is set in Montana in the teens and twenties of the 20th Century, based on a book that was a series of memories by the author who experienced the same.  Perhaps because of that, or perhaps because it was filmed by Robert Redford who lives in the West and who has a good feel for Western topics, it's a good look at the northern plains, and Montana in particular, in that era.

Or even later eras. The close association the protagonists have with the land and rural activities strongly reminds me of my youth in the 1970s.  The way people were part of rural activities, and they were part of them, is really accurately portrayed.  It also does an excellent job of capturing the northern plains of the teens and twenties, at which point they were fully part of American life and distinct at the same time.

Material details of this film are excellent.  The film well depicts the early automobile era and shows why vehicles were adopted so rapidly.  The tightness of communities in the era is well depicted. Clothing and style of dress, even haircuts, are correct.  About my only complaint is that the fly fishing style isn't the one that I'm familiar with, and given as I was taught by people who had learned in the 1930s and 1940s, I wonder if the local style I see here, used by locals, more accurately reflects fishing of this era than that in the film.

August 2, 2014

Addendum.

One of the things I've been surprised about, when I occasionally look at my own reviews, is how short they were, the longer ago they were written.  I don't know if that's good or bad, but its the truth.  Anyhow, I finally got around to reading the novella this film was based on, and I just noted that in another thread here:

September 5, 2019

A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
Norman Maclean

Most people are familiar with the really excellent movie based on this semi autobiographical novella by Norman Maclean which was made into an excellent movie by Robert Redford.  I just started reading it a few days ago and I'm already well into it.  I'll give, of course, a review of it when I've completed reading it.

_________________________________________________________________________________

September 8, 2019

I finished A River Runs Through It and Other Stories yesterday.

The novella A River Runs Through It has achieved almost mystical status in certain quarters, with it being particularly highly regarded among those who like "western" literature, or perhaps I should say literature of the modern west, although all of these stories are set in the period prior to World War Two.  The reputation is well deserved.

Various reviews attempt to compare the work to other well known authors who wrote in the same genera, with Hemingway being noted.  Well, it's much better than any work of Hemingway's, even if we consider that the Hemingway outdoor works set in the West actually are good, as compared to the rest of his writing which is not all that great, frankly.  A River Runs Through it, the longest of the novellas, is truly a masterpiece.

Maclean describes the West of the 1910s through the 1930s in a way that would be highly recognizable to anyone whose grown up in the real West even today.  The novella is hugely interior, and for that reason the task of putting it on film must have been really difficult to say the least.  To anyone wanting a real grasp of how Westerners see the West and themselves, this novella is the work to read.

One question that a person whose seen the excellent movie may have is how much does the novella depart from the film?  Not much, but it does some, and the film adds some elements that are lacking in the novella.  The novella does not deal with how Norman meets Jessie, his wife, in any fashion.  Jessie Maclean really was from Wolf Point Montana, but the story of their early relationship is completely omitted.  Indeed, throughout much of the novella Norman is already married, including those parts dealing with Jessie's brother.

It's hard to describe the writing of a novel, although this is barely a novel and close to a memoir and that also raises the question here on how much of the story is fiction and how much is fact.  I'm not familiar with Maclean's life enough to know how much of the story is fictionalized, but I suspect its not all that much.  By way of a plot spoiler, one thing that's definitely true, but somewhat fictionalized, is that Paul Davidson (Paul Maclean's actual nom de plum) did indeed die from being beat up in an alley in the late 1930s, just as described, and the murder remains an unsolved murder.  It was a Chicago murder, however, as Norman Maclean had convinced Paul to come to Chicago where he worked as a reporter and for the press office of the University of Chicago.  This wouldn't really fit the Montana centric story line however, as would the fact that Paul was a Dartmouth graduate.

The novella is, I feel, a must read.

As noted, this book contains three stories, not one, although A River Runs Through It is the longest and best known.

The second one is Logging and Pimping and You're Pal, Jim.

Maclean worked as a logger while attending college.  The precise details of that I don't know, but it was for at least two seasons. This novella deals with that and I suspect, and indeed I'm certain, that it's much more fictionalized than A River Runs Through It.  It's also of uneven quality.

In this novella Maclean sought to describe loggers but I suspect that he ended up, as is so often done, by fairly grossly exaggerating his depiction as he went on, which is unfortunate. Some elements of the description, in particular his description of clothing, are really excellent. But it decays as it the novella goes on and this one may be said to have almost no real point, other than being an odd character study.

The third one is USFS 1919, which deals as with Norman's work on a Forest Service crew in 1919.

This one is excellent, and again not only is the story worthwhile, but the descriptions of life at the time, and particularly a very distinct rural occupation of the time, are superb.  Descriptions of horses, packing and Forest Service work in a now bygone era are extremely well done.   This story is also probably mostly fiction, but his work for the Forest Service at a very young age (Norman is 17 when this story takes place, and he'd already worked for the Forest Service for two years) is not.  This novella is well worth reading.

On a couple of other observations, knowing that the movie was from a novella, I've wondered if the plot details of the film were filled out from the other novellas in the book. They are not.  As noted, the film includes story lines, such as Norman meeting Jessie, that aren't in the book at all.  About the only added details provided is that Norman worked as a logger and for the Forest Service, and his work as a logger is mentioned in the film.

Anyhow, the stories included in A River Runs Through It and Other Stories are first rate stories in the modern Western genre and much better than many, maybe most. The stories due have an earthy element to them, and all three have some references to illicit unions of one kind or another, but they aren't graphic and they don't get down in the mud as much as later works of Larry McMurtry.  

I don't have a great deal to add to my earlier movie review that the current novella review doesn't touch on, so my main point here, in adding this addenda, was just to note what was noted.  The film follows the novella pretty closely, but it does add a major story line, the romance between Norman and Jessie, which Norman doesn't touch on in these works at all. She was actually from Montana, as the film portrays, however.  He really did take a teaching position at the University of Chicago.  There are some departures, although they are really minor.  The minor character Mabel, Paul's Indian girlfriend, is much more richly described in the novella than the film, and is a much rougher character as well.  But all in all, it's pretty close.  Indeed, the film is amazingly well done.

One minor thing I'd note is that its surprising how this film seems to be the high water mark (no pun intended) for some of the actors in it, but not others. Brad Pitt went on to fame, but frankly nothing he's done since this film has been as good.  Craig Sheffer continues to act, but he's not anywhere nearly as well known as Pitt and his portrayal of Norman does seem likely to stand as the role he'll be remembered for.  The same will be true for Emily Lloyd's portrayal of Jessie Maclean.  Tom Skerritt, on the other hand, will recalled for having a large number of excellent roles as a character actor, his role as the father of Paul and Norman being one of them.  Nicole Burdette, who portrayed the Indian girlfriend Mabel, has done very little film acting since this movie and the suspicion must be that she doesn't want to.

September 8, 2019.

Back to the future.

Poster urging the consumption of fish over beef during World War One.

I happened to see an article on fishing as the cradle of civilization in the current, on line, issue of the Saturday Evening Post. I don't normally read the post, and never have, and I'm admittedly one of those people who, when they look at it, are usually looking for the cover illustrations that the magazine featured prior to the mid 1960s, which are often fantastic.  This is not to say that it's a bad magazine by any means, but rather to say I'm not all that familiar with it in its current form.

The short article, and it was very short, that I read starts off with this statement:

Of the three ancient ways of obtaining food — hunting, plant foraging, and fishing — only the last remained important after the development of agriculture and livestock raising in Southwest Asia some 12,000 years ago.

I got to thinking about that, and while there's some truth to that statement, it's not completely accurate by any means whatsoever and to the extent it is, it's an accuracy that's much more recent than we might suppose. And frankly, it's a symptom of why modern people, frankly, hate their existence to the extent that they do. More on that last comment in a moment.

Fishing is fish hunting.*  Let's make no mistake about it, that's what it is.  I like fishing, aquatic hunting, but I like terrestrial hunting more. Still, fishing is probably my second favorite thing to do, right after hunting.

It's ingrained deep into our DNAs and people who claim they have a distaste for either activity are simply denying part of their human nature.  But humans are in huge denial about much of their nature today in every conceivable way.  The reaction to that is universally negative.  In spite of the improvement in nearly every aspect of our lives in some ways, people often hate the modern world in a really deep down and profound way.  The closer they remain to some early element of it, and frankly that includes small scale agriculture, i.e., gardening,  as well as hunting and fishing, generally the happier they are.  Even outdoor activities that seem to have nothing to do with these activities, if closely studied, really do.  Hiking, camping, etc., are all auxiliary to them and part of them, in a deep overall sense.

Anyhow, in reality when humans took up agriculture, as we've already explored here, it turns out that in reality they continued hunting as a primary activity for many, many years.  Indeed, for centuries.  And even in highly developed modern cultures hunting provided meat for the table in most of them up until extremely recently.  Indeed, even in the Western world, in those regions that are not heavily urban, it still does.  Urban people don't realize that, but it is the case.

Market hunting is gone, but only fairly recently, and indeed not even completely.  Even in the western world there'd some market hunting outside of North America.  If there is none in North America, that's due to regulations and laws that sought to preserve game for all, in  keeping with the egalitarian  nature of late 19th and 20th Century American culture, something that we're slowly losing, egalitarianism that is, in the 21st.  Anyhow, the introductory statement, the more you look at it, is wrong.

What is correct is that individual fishermen making their living from the sea does continue to exist in a form that's surprisingly recognizable over the eons.

Yet ancient fisher folk and their communities have almost entirely escaped scholarly study. Why? Such communities held their knowledge close to their chests and seldom gave birth to powerful monarchs or divine rulers. And they conveyed knowledge from one generation to the next by word of mouth, not writing.

This is an interesting question.  I don't fully know the answer to that question, but it's well worth looking at

That knowledge remains highly relevant today. Fishers are people who draw their living from a hard, uncontrollable world that is perfectly indifferent to their fortunes or suffering. Many of them still fish with hooks, lines, nets, and spears that are virtually unchanged since the Ice Age.

Again, that's correct, and it is interesting in the extreme.  

I'm not going to comment paragraph by paragraph on the article following that, but it makes a really good case for studying the culture of small scale, but professional, fishing.

Centuries ago, urban populations numbered in the thousands, but the demand for fish was insatiable. Today, the silent elephant in the fishing room is an exploding global population that considers ocean fish a staple. Deep-water trawls, diesel trawlers, electronic fish finders, and factory ships with deep freezes have turned the most ancient of our ways of obtaining food into an industrial behemoth. Even remote fisheries are being decimated.

Despite large-scale fish farming, humans face the specter of losing our most ancient practice of food gathering — and thus leaving behind an ocean that is almost fishless.

I"m going to pick up again here.  And in doing so, I'm going to swim against the tide (yes, I know that will be seen as a pun.

That the "oceans are in peril" is well known.  However, even though I'm not really an optimistic person anymore, my occupation doesn't allow for it and experience counsels me against it, I'm not pessimistic here.  In actuality, over my half century of life many fisheries have come roaring back, including ocean fisheries.  When I was a kid you didn't swim in the Great Lakes and nobody pulled fish from it.  On a trip to Ontario as a kid we crossed into New York to swim in Lake Ontario as it was so polluted on the Canadian side you didn't swim there.  And just recently it's been reported that sharks are present in numbers on the East Coast this year as seals are as well, and the seals are as the fish they feed on are back as well, back from the edge of extinction.

Not that there's not reason to be concerned, but here's actually a topic where I'm pretty optimistic.

As part of that, the statement about the "exploding global population" is one that's really jumped the shark (yes, another pun).  It's seemingly missed repeatedly by nearly everyone that we're now at or near peak human population.  Every demographer concedes that in this century, which we're now 20% of the way into, the human population will start to decline.

It already is declining in Europe.  It would be declining in the United States but for an odd American belief that it's always 1862 and the frontier is always open and expanding.  The United States, where such comments are always written, does have an expanding population, but only because the U.S. has massive immigration rates.

Now, this isn't an article on the topic of immigration, but simple math demonstrates that the U.S. population would be declining, as the U.S. birth rate is largely below replacement, but for immigration.  Proponents of large scale immigration, which is unique to the United States, have ironically begun to cite that as the reason that it must be kept up.  So, at the same time that its common to read about the "exploding global population" the same quarter argues that the collapsing Western world birth rate means that a high level of immigration must be maintained.**

This is largely based on some false demographic and economic concepts.  Immigration isn't a bad thing in and of itself by any means, and in some instances justice and morality demand that immigrants be allowed into countries that can absorb them.  But the concept that the economy depends upon it is incorrect as that ignores the wage depression aspects of it.  Further arguments about needing to have lots of (low paid) immigrant laborers to pay for the retirements of (formerly  much better paid) retirees is also based on a false premise.  In reality, in the age of work place automation, which is coming in at a blistering level, those arguments are a house of cards.

Population growth does damage the environment, to be sure.  But that growth is slowing or reversing in the entire northern hemisphere and it will be everywhere else, fairly soon.***Only, once again, in the US and Canada, in the opposite really true, and in at least the US there's been some massively impacted areas due to internal emigration, as well as immigration, the two not being the same.  This has to do, however, once again with the American belief that this sort of thing doesn't matter as the country is always somehow expanding.  But even in the US there are regions in which the trend has been in the other direction, while there are also those where the opposite is very true.  What's significant, however, is that for political reasons, rather than the economic ones we tend to cite, this has been the choice of the country, or at least of its leaders, and not simply something that occurred.

Irrespective of all of that, what is clear is that in advanced societies, setting aside whatever it may mean and the morality or immortality of what may be causing it, the population is going down, save for the United States, and Canada, where immigration alone is causing it to go up.****  This trend crosses cultures and regions, and is true of advanced nations in the East, such as Japan, as well as advanced nations of various cultures in the West.  It's known that it applies to all cultures everywhere. So, while right now there are serious articles about a demographic collapse in Japan (which isn't really the disaster its portrayed to be), in the foreseeable future there will be such articles about the more advanced nations of South America.

As this occurs demands on resources decline and we're seeing the "rewilding" of places, such as the "rewilding of Europe".

Which takes me to the next point.

Whether every aspect of all of this is good or bad can be left for discussion elsewhere or to another time if discussed here.  But with rewilding we should  hope for the rewilding of people.  That is, not turning people into absurd pseudo pagans or something, but getting them back out there. Back to the streams, back to the beach, and back to the fields.


_______________________________________________________________________________

*Ironically, this article includes an image of an ancient Egpytian couple in a marsh. They're not fishing, however, they're hunting, as the caption demonstates:

Featured image: Menna and Family Hunting in the Marshes (c. 1400–1352 B.C.); Metropolitan Museum of Art.

**As we've discussed elsewhere, there's an odd human tendency to believe that we live in the worst of all possible eras, which is far from true.  This inclination causes us to exaggerate the risks of many things and to believe that the news fo the past remains the news of the day.

I'm constantly hearing about how the whole world is at war.  It isn't.  Likewise, I'll hear how the current era is the most violent of all time.  That's the polar opposite of the truth.

I'm not going to get into the many environmental issues that are frequently in the news today in any form.  So I'm not going to argue one way or another about them. But I'll note that today there's a panicky article in our local newspaper about the absolute the need to eschew lead bullets in hunting.  The real message should be get out hunting. Sitting around in the house worrying about lead bullets is a lot more damaging that the lead could ever be.

***There are real moral issues to this. The means of achieving the slow down aren't being endorsed here.  I'm merely observing the actual trends.

****Once again, note the footnote above.

August 25, 1919. Ely to Pinto House, Nevada with the Motor Transport Convoy, London to Parish with Aircraft Transport & Travel, back to Texas with the 8th Cavalry, north to the Stampede in Alberta.

American cemetery at Belleau Wood, photograph taken on August 25, 1919.

On this day in 1919, a photographer was at work taking photographs of the recent American battle ground of Belleau Wood.

View of Chateau Thierry and the famous bridge where the Marine stopped the Hun hoards on their march on Paris, taken on August 25, 1919.

Things picked up a bit on this Monday, August 25, 1919, for the Motor Transport Convoy, although they now suffered a mechanical failure beyond their ability to address.

Other soldiers, much further south, had come back across the border.  The most significant US incursion into Mexico since the Punitive Expedition had come to an end.

As with the last, this incursion had featured the use of aircraft fairly extensively.  In this case, the press was reporting that aircraft had proven decisive by resulting in the deaths from a strafing run by U.S. planes.  The expedition had also started, of course, due to aircraft when U.S. airmen had been held hostage by Mexican bandits.

Also occurring on this day was another significant aircraft related event.  The predecessor to British Airways, Aircraft Transport & Travel Ltd., commenced the first regularly scheduled commercial channel hopping flight.  That early ride between London and Paris must have been a bit frightening to the passengers, but clearly pointed the direction of the future.

The flight was made in an Airco DH16, an plane that was converted from the wartime DH9.  It could hold four passengers.

North of the border, in Alberta, the 1919 Calgary Stampede commenced, but this year it was termed "The Victory Stampede".    The artwork of Charles Russell played a part in the big event that year.

If that seems surprising, Russell painted quite a few paintings with Alberta themes or for Alberta ranchers.  The ranch culture of Montana and Alberta were closely connected.

The first Calgary Stampede had been held in 1912. This was only the second. So it was not only first post war Stampede, but a real resumption and continuation of something that may not have become the big rodeo event that it did.

Maps and governments continued to change in Eastern Europe.  Today, the first Lithuanian Soviet Republic came to an end due to Polish occupation of the principal portions of its territory.  The USSR would reestablish it as a puppet state in 1939.

Harry Houdini was performing, but on film, in a movie featuring him that was released on this Monday.

Poster Saturday: Motor, April 1919

The cover of Motor magazine for April, 1919. 

There's a lot going on with this cover, more than the causal viewer might suppose now. While today we might think she's rather overdressed for what she's doing, at the time this was a revolutionary image.  She's dressed in the new style, free of corsets and the like, engaging in an outdoor activity as, apparently a town woman, and making use of the automobile to do it.  No man is to be seen in the image anywhere.

A Bill in the Legislature to allow Camping on State Land.

In looking at various bills in the legislature I frankly tend to find the bills introduced by Natrona County Democrat Chuck Gray to be on the unlikely to pass often extreme side.  I note that, as here's one that he introduced this session that I hope passes.

Gray's bill would allow overnight camping on State of Wyoming owned lands.

A lot, probably most, Wyomingites don't realize that the lands owned by the State of Wyoming are much more restrictive in use than lands owned by the Federal Government.  You can't camp overnight on them, for example.  You also can't hunt on them without permission from the state.

By and large most people ignore these restrictions and aren't even aware of them.  But some are, and to my surprise this past year I was speaking with a rancher who had called a Game Warden as he found some hunters camping on state land near a county road.  I would have ignored it, but he didn't, and the Game Warden required the campers to pick up and move on.

This would fix what I feel is something that needs to be fixed.

I'll give Gray credit for this, but I'll be frank that due to his prior positions in the legislature I can't help but feel that this is preparatory to another effort to grab the Federal domain from the U.S. and vest it in Wyoming.  Savvy Wyomingites raised issues like this when the bad idea came up last session and I suspect that this is an effort to address one of those complaints in the hopes of making land grabbing less objectionable, which it won't do.

But maybe I'll be surprised.  Maybe the proponent is just a camper.

2019

STATE OF WYOMING

19LSO-0579

HOUSE BILL NO. HB0217

Wyoming camping act.

Sponsored by: Representative(s) Gray, Jennings, Miller and Pelkey and Senator(s) Biteman and James

A BILL

for

AN ACT relating to state lands; repealing the prohibition against camping overnight on state lands; and providing for an effective date.

Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:

Section 1.  W.S. 36‑2‑107(b)(v) is repealed.

Section 2.  This act is effective July 1, 2019.

(END)

1

HB0217

Poster Saturday: Good Housekeeping, November 1913.

Norway's Pilgrim Way

Oh man, having recently finish Kristen Lavransdatter, the Great Norwegian novel set in Medieval Norway, something like strikes me as really cool:

You are here: Home / Travel / Hiking / Hiking Norway’s Pilgrim Way

Hiking Norway’s Pilgrim Way

Not that I'll do it or anything like it.

Sigh.

Mid Week At Work: Charlie Blackmon's Secret Fishing Spot | Rock Your Routine | UCHealth

The Muzzle Loaders - Our Wyoming

Sad News. The Passing of Patrick F. McManus

BOISE, Idaho – Patrick F. McManus, a prolific writer best known for his humor columns in fishing and hunting magazines who also wrote mystery novels and one-man comedy plays, has died. He was 84.

One of my absolute favorite writers. . . 

The first indoor species.

Now that's a scary thought.

Not REI advertising.  No, that we're the "first indoor species", as their advertisement, set out below, in part, notes:

LEARN ABOUT DIVIDEND

Remington Arms Manufacturing Company's bankruptcy. A Distributist Economic Lesson and a National Tragedy. And Chrysler Too.

Remington Arms Manufacturing Company filed for bankruptcy the Sunday before last.*

It's a national tragedy, truly.  The fact that some will rejoice in this shows how effete and pathetic the society has become, indeed to such an extent that its truly a crisis in our own society.

There's a lot of analysis out on this right now, some of which is correct, but much of which is quite shallow. The common commentary, correct in so far as it goes, is that Remington is a victim of the Trump Slump.  An irony of the recent history of firearms sales in the US is that Barack Obama was the, as wags had it, the greatest gun salesman in the nation's history, and indeed, starting with Hillary Clinton's first run against Obama in the primaries there was an over eight year boom in firearms sales.  A lot of those sales were of things that people thought would soon be banned, but it was nonetheless simply amazing in extent.  Ammunition cleared the shelves out of fear that laws restricting ammunition sales would come in make ammo hard to get.  Sales of AR type rifles when through the roof.  The NRA, which of course is the primary organization that campaigns to protect the rights of gun owners, frankly grossly overplayed their hand, to the long term determent of companies like Remington, by keeping up an eight year panic educing campaign against President Obama when in fact he did nothing at all in regard to firearms for almost the entire eight years.

 Remington's advertising has always focused on Remington being a manufacturer of sporting, primarily hunting arms. This stands in contrast with some other companies, such as Colt, who emphasized other roles of their arms.  Even today Remington strives to set apart its AR type sporting rifles from those manufactured by other companies on this basis, if they are sold under the Remington name.

But after Trump won the sales slumped, and indeed to some degree went into a tailspin.  People haven't been afraid that there would be bans.  Trump was endorsed by the NRA in a way that no other President ever has been, further alleviating the fears of gun owners.  Indeed, even with all the recent talk of gun control, including some suggestions by Trump that he'd support some of it, there hasn't been a huge national reaction on the part of gun owners, although there has apparently been a bit of a one on the demand side that has a national impact.

This, we are told, hurt Remington as Remington is a major manufacturer of AR type rifles, and indeed it is.  Remington has manufactured M4 carbines for the military, starting in 2012, but it also owns Bushmaster, one of the better manufacturers of AR type rifles including some really fine competition versions of the rifle in the M16A4/A5 style.  At any rate, Remington was heavily into the AR platform and now, the story goes, is really suffering for it.

And that's partially correct.

But only partially.

What Remington is also suffering from, in a major way, is corporate conglomeration.  Remington could frankly benefit from some Distributism, but then, so could the entire nation for that matter.  Too bad that this hasn't been a recent policy of the United States such that what happened to Remington, would not have.

 Remington has made a semi automatic sporting rifle since 1908.  It's had a sporting semi automatic rifle almost continually since then, but its association with Bushmaster ended up causing Remington to fully adopt the AR type rifle into its lineup, in the guise of being a modern hunting rifle, and that in turn meant that Remington was competing against itself.

Remington has been in existence since 1816.  It was founded Eliphalet Remington in that year (indeed the "ERA" on World War One Eddystone M1917 Remington stands for E. Remington Arms, not Eddystone).  It's had its up and downs.  It almost went bankrupt in fact, immediately after World War One.  Remington was a major manufacturer of Mosin Nagant Rifles for the Imperial Russian Army, P14 rifles for the British Army and M1917 rifles for the U.S. Army during the Great War, dedicating two plants to that latter task (Winchester also had one).   The collapse of Imperial Russia put it under severe stress, but that was relieved when the United States purchased the existing stocks of Russian rifles, which it did in turn use for the American commitment to Russia during the war. Remington switched its P14 production over to M1917 production, the two rifles being the same design distinguished only by cartridge, shortly after the US declared war and found itself short of M1903 Springfields. 

When the war suddenly ended in November 1918, the contracts were cancelled virtually overnight.  That nearly drove Remington under, although it struggled by and picked up the pieces, literally, converting them into the fine sporting rifle, the Remington Model 30.  Even at that, the company struggled. The lesson was so stout that when World War Two Remington was very reluctant to enter into military contracts, although it did, ultimately producing the M1903s that were used by the Army during the Second World War, albeit on equipment that had come form the government itself.  It also manufactured other weapons during Second World War and was positioned, unlike Winchester, to exploit that in the post war economy, which unlike the post Great War economy, did not slump.

Nonetheless following World War Two Remington, as an independent company, did not seek nor desire military sales.  It didn't seek to make M1 Garands during World War Two or the Korean War.  When the service sought outside suppliers, early on, for some components of the M14, it didn't seek to acquire those contracts.  It didn't introduce a 5.56 rifle for consideration even though it was the company that had developed the round, for sporting use (the 5.56 is the .223 which was developed from the .222 Remington) , that was basically under consideration even though its manufacturing was every bit as advanced as Armalites.  It didn't seek to acquire M16 contracts during the 60s, 70s, and 80s when many such contracts were entered into.  It never sought foreign military sales.  The only military rifle it offered for decades was the sniper variant of the Remington Model 700 hunting rifle, which is something that was only made in small numbers and which, by its very nature, said a lot more about Remington as a supplier of sporting rifles than it did anything else.

Indeed, while its counter-intuitive, firearms manufacturers do best when not basing their sales on military contracts, and at least to an extent the civilian versions of them.  Colt's heavy dependence on the M16 for sales came at a time when it was having real problems and it can be argued that its reliance on the AR to carry it through in fact failed.  Going all the way back to the immediate post Civil War period, manufacturers that heavily depended on military sales, such as Spencer, tended to fail when the crisis was over even if they tried to translate those sales into a civilian market.  The big exception to the rule is in handguns, but the oddity of that is that handgun manufacturers have tended to lead military designs by years, and so when the service purchases a new handgun, it is frequently acquiring something that was already developed or partially developed for the civilian market, in the United States.

 Colt is a real exception to the rule in traditional American firearms manufacturing advertising.  While it is not the only example, Colt advertised on the basis of its military contracts on occasion, such as here.  Colt also emphasized that its handguns provided solid protection, anticipating (but not wholly uniquely) the modern carry movement.  In contrast, nearly every longarm manufacturer, Remington included, completely avoided military themes in their advertising and relied instead on depicting their sporting and hunting uses.

So Remington survived two centuries without going bankrupt.

And then entered Cerberus.  Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. is a private equity firm, specializing in "distressed investing".  If the name sounds familiar to you and you aren't a student of economics, that may be because you recall the hideous three headed dog that haunts Hell in various works, such as Dante's Divine Comedy, where he eats the tortured souls of gluttons.

Now, to be fair, Remington ceased to be a family owned company in 1888, when the Remington family sold it to a holding company that also owned, at that time, Winchester, ironically enough.  During the Great Depression it was purchased, along with United Metallic Cartridge, by Dupont, the gunpowder manufacturing company.  Real disaster started to set in, however, in 1993, when Dupont sold it to the investment firm of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice.  In June 2007 Cerberus Capital Management bought the company from Clayton, Dubilier & Rice for $370,000,000 and thereby acquired $252,000,000 in assumed debt.  

Prior to Cerberus purchasing Remington, it had already purchased Bushmaster and put it into a moronically named entity it called "Freedom Group", which was formed as a firearm's manufacturing holding company.  The founder of Bushmaster, which as noted simply specialized in AR platform rifles, took $70,000,000 in that 2006 sale.

Cerberus folded Remington also into Freedom  Group, but since that time that dumb ass name has been changed to Remington Arms Company, with Cerberus thereby choosing to keep the name of the most well known entity as the name of the holding group..  Somewhere along the way, since Cerberus took over, Remington picked up Advanced Armament (silencers), Marlin Firearms  (which already owned H&R Firearms) and Para USA, a Canadian company, originally, that specializes in M1911 pistols.  Para USA has ceased to exist entirely with its M1911s being made under the Remington name.  H&R has ceased to exist entirely.

And hence the current disaster. 

Due to Cerberus' swallowing up of assets what had been five firearms manufacturing companies, all occupying separate and distinct niches, and of which only two competed against each other (Marlin and Remington) has become effectively one, with three major brand names.  Marlin, which had a distinct product line, continues to.  H&R is dead.  Para Ordinance, which became Para USA, is now fully absorbed by Remington, in a move that absorbed its product line into Remington but which may not have absorbed its fan base at the same time and, because M1911s are past any patent restrictions, only gave Remington a minor advantage, if any at all, through the acquisition.  Bushmaster, which Cerberus claimed it was going to divest itself of, still is owned by Remington and Remington has gone whole hog into the AR product line including having secured, as noted, a contract for M4 carbines.

All of which suggest that Cerberus knew nothing about the firearms industry and nothing about the companies it was acquiring.

So what is Cerberus?

Well something can be discerned about it simply because its named for the three headed hound that in mythology guards the gates of Hades. It's an acquisition company, which virtually by definition, and filtered through my cynicism, exists to acquire, and divest when necessary or advantageous, companies.  It owns or has owned the following, or has acted in concert with the following:

• Cerberus entered into a financing deal with satellite imagery company GeoEye to the tune of $215,000,000 in March 2010.
• That same month Cerberus acquired an ownership stake in Panavision as part of a debt restructuring agreement with shareholder MacAndrews & Forbes.
• Also that same month Cerberus agreed to buy Caritas Christi Health Care, now Steward Health Care for $830,000,000. Caritas Christi was rebranded Steward Health Care^.
• In April 12, 2010 Cerberus acquired private government services contractor DynCorp International for approximately $1,000,000,000 and the assumption of $500,000,000 million of debt.
• In November 19, 2010, Cerberus and Drago Capital acquired a a real estate portfolio consisting of 97 bank branches from Spain’s Caja Madrid in a 25-year lease back transaction.
• On March 17, 2011, Cerberus acquired the senior bank debt and completed a debt restructuring of Maxim Office Park, a one million square foot office and logistics complex in Scotland
• On March 31, 2011, Cerberus acquired a real estate portfolio of 45 Metro Cash & Carry properties in Germany^.
  
• On May 16, 2011, Cerberus completed the acquisition of Silverleaf Resorts^.
• On May 16, 2011, an affiliate of Cerberus agreed to acquire the U.S.-based global billing and payments unit of 3i Infotech Ltd. for $137,000,000
• On October 4, 2011, Cerberus and Garanti Securities formed a joint initiative to pursue investments in Turkey with an initial commitment of $400,000,000
• On October 19, 2011, Cerberus chose J.P. Morgan Worldwide Securities Services to provide fund administration and related securities services for Cerberus investment funds.
• On October 27, 2011 Cerberus and Chatham Lodging Trust purchaseed Innkeepers USA Trust for $1,002,000,000. Innkeepers operates various hotel,s including the Marriott, Hyatt, and Hilton
• On December 22, 2011, Covis Pharma, a specialty pharmaceutical company owned by affiliates of Cerberus, aquired full commercial rights for Fortaz (ceftazidime), Zinacef (cefuroxime), Lanoxin (digoxin), Parnate (tranylcypromine sulfate), and Zantac Injection (ranitidine hydrochloride) in the United States and Puerto Rico from GlaxoSmithKline.
• On March 8, 2012, an affiliate of Cerberus acquired a controlling interest in AT&T Advertising Solutions and AT&T Interactive, which were then combined into a new entity YP Holdings LLC. AT&T received approximately $750,000,000 million in cash, a $200 million note and a 47-percent equity interest in YP Holdings LLC.
• In January 2013, Cerberus acquired 877 stores in the Albertson's, Acme, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's, and Star Market chains from SuperValu for $100,000,000 and the assumption of $3,200,000,000 of SuperValu debt.  On March 6, 2014, Cerberus followed by announcin a Definitive Merger Agreement with already owned Albertsons and Safeway.
• On December 17, 2015, Cerberus Capital Management announced a $605,000,000 strategic partnership with Avon Products, Inc. in which Cerberus acquired 80% of Avon North America and a nearly 17% stake in Avon Products, Inc.
• On January 26, 2016, Cerberus owned Keane, a well completion services company agreed to acquire the majority of Canada-based Trican Well Services Ltd.’s (TSX: TWC) U.S. assets for $247,000,000
• On June 23, 2016, Cerberus aqcuired, GE Money Bank, to an affiliate of Cerberus Capital Management^.
• On July 1, 2016, Cerberus Capital Management acquired ABC Group
• In February 2018, Cerberus acquired HSH Nordbank.

And this isn't all.  Cerberus has its hands, or paws, in everything.  It bought Bayer's plasma products business.  It acquired a paper business and Georgia Pacific's distribution and building products division.  It has an interest in Portuguese airlines.  It's a large government services contractor to the U.S. government. As noted above, its in the grocery business..

And its It's in the transportation industry.

In fact, and instructive in this story, it and 100 other investors purchased an 80% interest in Chrysler in 2007 for $7,400,000,000.  Of course, Chrysler, along with General Motors, went bankrupt in 2009.  As part of that bankruptcy, Cerberus, in exchange for the government buyout that then occurred, gave up its interest in Chrysler.  Don't cry for them, however, they ultimately recovered nearly all they had invested in the company through various financial arrangements.

So what do these things have to do with Remington?

Well, quite a lot in my view.

A quite a lot with the American economy as well.

Cerberus doesn't make anything, in a definitive sense.  It buys and sells other entities that make things.  Cerberus has no interest in the firearms industry, or the automobile industry, in a concrete fashion. They're interested in the money those entities make and they buy them in hopes of maximizing on that, or sell them for the same reason.

And that's wrong.

Cerberus is a type of entity that really shouldn't exist. They don't exist in order to manufacture anything, they exist in the hopes that what they buy will do well and they'll make money that way, or they hope to sell when its advantageous. They're all about money.

And they're into everything that seems likely to make money. The three headed dog is at the grocery store and in the sporting goods store.

And that's the problem with what the American economy has become.  It's all about making money.

Oh, John Sherman, where are you now?

John Sherman, author of the Sherman Anti Trust Act and lesser known brother of William Tecumseh Sherman.

John Sherman?  

Yes, John Sherman, who gave the country the Sherman Anti Trust Act.   A powerful bill that seems to have fallen into disuse recently and which, in my view, ought to be sued to chop two of Cerberus' three heads off and pull all the teeth out of the remaining one.

Oh my.  How anti business.

No, not so much. Pro business really.

Now making money is fine. But the truth of the matters is that, except for a really sick person, making money to make money isn't very satisfying.  Being poor is bad, but all the data suggest that being really rich doesn't make a person that much happier after a certain point is reached in the Middle Class.  Being free from want is one thing. Being obsessed with money is quite another. And an outfit like Cerberus is about nothing but money.

But companies actually tend to be about something else.

Remington Firearms was about sporting arms for the most part.  Yes, it made military arms, but that was never its focus and it sometimes actually avoided making them. But in the hands of those who lost sight of that it lost its way.  By acquiring Bushmaster and folding Bushmaster into it, a specialty AR manufacturer took over and started to taint Remington.  Remington began to incorporate AR type rifles into its sporting line and thereby actually compete against itself and damage its own product line. By picking up Para Ordinance it entered the field of pistol production with a pistol that was already widely manufactures (just like the AR was) by other competitors.  By picking up Marlin it acquired a manufacturer whose reputation, which was very good, was based in no small part on a rifle whose design had long been in the public domain and which they could have made without acquiring Marlin, if they really needed. All adding Marlin really did was to give it another production line to compete against itself in a certain area of centerfire hunting rifle and also against itself in the .22 LR product line.

So the story is, it would seem, that once companies become nothing more than trinkets for investment holding companies, they are doomed.  

Or at least they are doomed if they occupy a distinct place in the economy.

And what are these holding companies anyhow?  It's perfectly obvious that a company like Cerberus plays no really useful role in our economy, for the most part, and operates sort of like a pack of ravens, circling above the economic highway and coming down to feast on things that get hit there.

Or maybe an analogy to wolves would be better.

At any rate, no company can possibly have that much of an informed interest in anything, and for that reason, their role is ultimately always destructive to the larger economy in general. No economy really needs outfits like Cerberus.  An economy needs investors, but it doesn't need that kind or anything even approaching that kind. What Remington needed was ownership that knew the product.  Cerberus thought it knew the market, and it apparently thought, or allowed the management of Remington to think, that market was ARs. But it wasn't.

So, Remington is bankruptcy. Let's hope a result of that its that Cerberus has to shed Remington, but without the soft pillow that was there when it shed Chrysler.  And let's hope that Remington and Marline are separated.  Maybe even H&R can come back.  Bushmaster should continue on, but as its own company as well, just as it was back in the day.

So let's talk about Chrysler.

Eh?  I thought this was about Remington?

It is, but also about economics and outfits like Cerberus.  And so that takes  us to Chrysler.  

 Dodge Brothers trucks. Dodge didn't become part of Chrysler until 1928, after this 1920 photographs was taken.

Now, consolidation in the automobile industry is nothing new.  In the 1920s there were a zillion American automobile manufacturers.  Even during the Great Depression, which drove a lot of them out of business, there were more than there are now.  And every current automobile manufacturer is a conglomeration of several prior companies. Every single one.  

But what they were, for a long time, is a conglomeration of automobile manufacturing companies, just like I said.  Chrysler, however, has had a unique recently history.   In the 1980s and 1990s it both bought and was bought by European automobile manufacturers and it ended up being owned by Daimler, the giant German manufacturer.  Daimler, famous for Mercedes amongst other things, seemed like an ideal owners given its long history of manufacturing diesel vehicles, a Chrysler strong point, but in fact Daimler could never figure out what to do with Chrysler.  

In 2007 Daimler sold Chrysler to Cerberus, while retaining a 20% ownership in the company.  It didn't own it long, however, as the 2008 economic crisis pushed General Motors and Chrysler to the edge of bankruptcy and special bankruptcies ended up being crated for both.  Chrysler, in that process, shed a lot of its debt and emerged as a new company, free of Cerberus and Daimler.  In the process Fiat bought the company, and like Daimler, has been struggling to figure out what to do with it.  In the whole process Cerberus voluntarily gave up its share of Chrysler to the Federal government but retained its auto financing division.

Now, a person wouldn't think that was a big deal, but it really is.  Cerberus went on to sell that to another entity and made up all the money that it otherwise would have lost. They came out, therefore, okay.

Well, so what.

Well, just this.  Cerberus is good at making money, it seems, but it doesn't make anything.  Big finance is a necessary part of industry, but is this sort of finance really good for the economy?  Would lending from large banks and financial institutions make more sense?  I submit that it would.  Buying and selling these entities for profit generates that, but it doesn't necessarily generate longevity the same way that industries concerned about their industry would.

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*How odd to think that a company can file for bankruptcy on a Sunday.  You'd think that you'd have to wait until the weekday to do that.