When resources were tight

We live in times which, at least in historical comparison, is resource rich.  It wasn't all that long ago that the opposite was true.  

Here, we look at a few posters demonstrating things related to this.  The era up through the end of World War Two was the golden age of poster art in some ways, and not only do these help demonstrate the point a bit, but they also are very interesitng examples, to a degree, on poster art, a form which has much declined.

A Great Depression era poster for the Farm Resettlement Administration, an agency which resettled displaced farmer.  This Depression Era program was largely unsuccessful.

 This dramatic poster was based on a photograph of French women doing this very thing during World War One.  The photograph was used for a series of American and Canadian posters, some of which were in French, for the French Canadian audience.

 The Woman's Land Army was an effort, started in the United Kingdom, to take volunteer female labor and place it out in the countryside where it was desperately needed to replace male farm labor, which was serving at the front.  During World War One, agriculture remained largely horse, or even bovine, powered, which in turn required additional human labor.  Male labor was desperately short everywhere in the agriculture and forestry sectors during the war, and correspondingly there was a dedicated effort to place women in these roles.

 The same sort of effort as that depicted above, with women, directed at male labor. Here, those men not at the front, and instead in the office, were urged to help with the cotton harvest.

 A Depression Era poster informing the viewer of the nature of markets. As surely everyone at that time was well aware of it, the point of this poster is hard to grasp.  Now, it would make a lot more sense.

 An American poster making the interesting point that it would be a good thing to have to ship less food overseas if at all possible, for dramatic reasons.

 Another Depression poster in the series noted above.

 World War Two era American poster in which a community organization offers to help educate on the topic of food preservation.  Part of a general effort to encourage Victory Gardens during the war, and thereby take the pressure off the agricultural sector.

 Another World War Two era poster, but what exactly motivated I'm not sure.

 Same poster as above, with more details.

 A poster noting the role of Donut Dollies during World War One.

 A blunt point made during WWI.

 An interesting United States Food Administration poster from World War One recalling the importance of ice, in the era before widespread refrigeration of any kind.

 World War Two's Victory Gardens are widely remembered.  World War One's War Gardens less so.  Arguably, however, the effort may have been more important in World War One.

 The Spirit of 1918.

 I believe that this poster may have been done by James Montgomery Flagg, who is most famous for his World War One depiction of Uncle Sam.  It's interesting how he he depicted this female patriotic form, which was a widely used image in a series of posters.  The cap, fwiw, is a "liberty cap", an image strongly associated with the French Revolution.

 The businessman's downtown lunch was exempted form the campaign during World War One.

 An effort was made during World War One to encourage Americans to use grains other than wheat, as wheat was needed for the war effort in Europe.

 Sugar was apparently in short supply during World War One.

 Another poster is a series encouraging Americans to use other grains during World War One.  I can't find rye flour anywhere now, by the way.  If somebody reads this and knows where to get it, post a comment!

 Not only was wheat, and meats, short.  Fats were too during WWI.  Now, you'll hear urgings to use less fat for frying for other reasons. During WWI, it was urged so that fats were available at the front.

 A recruiting poster recruiting. . . farmers.

 Fishing of any kind, including commercial fishing, is simply a species of hunting.  Hunting harvest an animal that feeds itself, the point made by this poster.

 Now, there are those who complain about "Big Corn".  During WWI, American corn production was seen as a solution to wheat shortages.

 After the various posters in this series are viewed, I'd frankly be afraid to see some of the photos.

 Kids weren't exempt form the pitch during World War One.

 A Canadian poster.

 A Canadian poster pitching not only to patriotism, but to the wallet.

 Food hording was apparently illegal in Canada during World War One.  It was not on a Federal basis in the United States, nor was there rationing in the US.  However, some states rationed, such as Montana, which actually made a few prosecutions for violations of their state law of this period.

This one urges the obvious (or hopefully so) but I'm not really sure of its context.

Apparently the Young Women's Christian Association had a land service, just like the Women's Land Army.

A World War Two vintage poster urging you basically to like rationing.

This is a World War Two poster that recalls the Women's Land Army of World War One.  The U.S. Crop Corps was a similar effort, recruiting non farm labor to farm employment for the war.

Curious WWII poster, as surely everything that could be done, was being done.

World War Two poster which urged the planing of Victory Gardens.

This poster romantically depicts a non farm couple working on the farm for the summer during World War Two.

A poster urging canning food during World War Two.

This one is almost frightening, as it somewhat implies that if you don't grow your own, there might not be enough for the upcoming winter.

This poster and the poster above warn about the consequences of working without rest, or proper diet. A bit of a different message from some of the other posters here.

From:  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/INF3-101_Food_Production_Lend_a_hand_with_the_potato_harvest_%28workers_in_basket%29.jpg

See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.  Interesting British poster advertising farming as a wartime holiday.

 From:  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/INF3-102_Food_Production_Lend_a_hand_with_the_potato_harvest_%28workers_in_field%29.jpg

See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/INF3-107_Food_Production_Lend_a_hand_on_the_land_at_an_Agricultural_Camp_Artist_Le_Bon.jpg

By Unknown ("Le Bon") [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/INF3-224_Salvage_We_want_your_kitchen_waste_%28pig_with_dustbin%29_Artist_Gilroy.jpg

John Gilroy [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This British poster is a little scary to think of.  Today, and I'd think to a degree even then, using kitchen waste to feed pigs, on this scale, would not be regarded as a very good idea.

Painted Bricks: Natrona Couty High School, (Iphone photos). Caspe...

Painted Bricks: Natrona Couty High School, (Iphone photos). Caspe...: These are a series of not very good photographs taken of Natrona County High School, one of three high schools in  Casper, Wyoming.  It's...

Foodies, locovores, fishing poles and sychronicity

I've had an odd series of experiences in the general area of "local food", etc., recently.

It started off when I was listening to a podcast from the National Sport Shooting Association. They're pretty short, and sometimes interesting, sometimes very interesting, and occasionally not. What this one noted was the phenomenon of "localvores" in the green movement.

The "local food" movement is  a philosophy of food, more or less, that encourages a person to eat foods that are all local.  The gist of it is that the food is better, and better for the environment.  It has quite a bit of appeal in some localities.

"Insights", the above referenced podcast, amusingly noted that hunters are unsung localvores, and I guess that's really right.  Most hunters hunt locally and they're eating their harvests.  The meat they're taking is in the really healthy category, being really lean (if rabbit, it's beyond lean), it's all FDA Organic, and it's "free range" in the true sense.  I depend on wild game for a fair amount of our family's food, and this line of thinking had somewhat occurred to me, but not in that fully developed sense.  So, I suppose, a shout out to hunters is in order. Green thumbs up!

Indeed, by this definition, I've been an accidental semi-localvore for years, and when I was a college student I was about as localvore as anyone in this state can be, due to the huge garden my father planted.  For awhile, when my kids were young, this was also true, as for meat we went with one of our own cattle, and the garden, which I took over for awhile, produced enough of some things, namely onions and potatoes, to make it nearly through an entire year.  Now, we still rely on wild game and one of our cows for meat, but I no longer plant the garden.  Just didn't have the time.

There's something generally appealing about this notion, but I don't know what it is.  Some people, in other locations, are fanatics about it, and I think perhaps the reason that people here are less so is that you can look out at the terrain and imagine what a limited died it would mean, and must have meant fairly recently.  Foodstuffs that cross the continent, or even beyond that, is a recent phenomenon.  If it was 1912, rather than 2012, when I am writing this, many common items, like fresh vegetables, let alone fruit, would have been a seasonal thing.  Some foodstuffs keep well of course, such as potatoes and onions, but most folks are used to a more varied diet than those a truly local diet would mean here, and did mean at one time.

Which brings me to the next odd item of synchronicity here.  I also heard a podcast by the the Freakanomics folks regarding eating local, and, in economic terms, they report that it almost no beneficial impact in ecological terms at all, as food transportation is an infinitesimally small percentage of greenhouse gases.  A person could probably debate this to some extent, but the number are what they are, so it would have to be a fairly sophisticated debate.  I don't know that the economic analysis is completely correct here, and even listening to it, I could see what I perceive as holes in it, but it us undoubtedly the case that  the diet in the Western World has never been so varied and cheap as it is now.

Which brings me to my last, odd point of synchronicity again.  As noted, I, and a lot of  people around here, have always used the local fauna for part of our diet.  I think sometimes those who are not hunters or rural fisherman fail to appreciate this fact, particularly because so much of what they believe about these activities is skewed by the sporting press that focuses on trophies, which most hunters and fishermen, quite frankly, are not.  I've discussed hunting here already, but in regards to fishing, when I was a kid most men around here seemed to be fishermen, and my father was.  We ate the fish we caught, unless they were so small they weren't worth bothering with.  I still find catch and release to be strange.  Anyhow, I happened to be in a shop selling high end fly-fishing poles  recently and was amazed to see a pole that was priced at $750.00.  Maybe there were a lot of them priced like that, but that so stunned me that I didn't get past it. I'm still using my father's poles, and probably will for the rest of my life.  At $750.00 I'd have to catch a blue whale, in order to make it pay off in my mind.  I'm not saying people shouldn't buy poles like that.  I just didn't realize they existed.

Painted Bricks: Casper Power Box: Buildngs of Interest.

Painted Bricks: Casper Power Box: Buildngs of Interest.:

 Neat display noted on another one of our sites showing how Casper's downtown appeared in 1922.

Today In Wyoming's History: June 15

A bit off topic today, but an item of interest on our companion  Wyoming history blog:

Today In Wyoming's History: June 15: 1215  King John put his seal to the Magna Carta, which in its original version, stated: KNOW THAT BEFORE GOD, for the health of our soul ...

I've reads the Magna Carta before, but what struck me in starting to read it this time is the large number of Churchmen who are mentioned in the opening paragraph, and that independence of the Church from the Crown was the first right noted.

It strikes me that this clause wasn't adhered to. Certainly St. Thomas More and St. Thomas Becket lost their lives over that very point, and King Henry VIII went into a species of rebellion over it.  The Magna Carta is part of the American legal background, due to our country being founded by English colonist, but certainly the colonies didn't always view things that way either, which of course they wouldn't, all having been established after King Henry VIII.  With that in mind, the official prohibition on the creation of state religions by the US Constitution is, perhaps, quite remarkable.  In some ways, the Revolution better reflected the best of English law than the British position during the war did.

Education

 Engineering Building, University of Wyoming, 1950s.

First of all, let me start off by noting that I'm not posting this as a screed advocating dropping out of school, quite the opposite.

Anyhow, this is my second social history post of the day.  The first one, posted just below, concerns weddings, this one concerns education.

Some friends and I were observing how the value of degrees has changed over the past couple of decades. The change is really quite remarkable.

My grandfather, on my father's side, dropped out of school at age 13.  He basically did this, apparently, with his parents permission.  I don't know the whole story, and I don't know if anyone now living does, but what I basically know is that he didn't like the school he was attending and wanted out.  His parents granted him t he permission to do so, and he left Dyersville Iowa, his home, to go to work in San Francisco.  Grossly condensing the story, at the time of his untimely death at the age of 47, he'd worked his way up through the meat packing industry and owned a plant and creamery, etc., of his own.

My mother's parents were both university graduates.  Very unusual for their time. They'd met at McGill University.  But, their parents certainly were not.  Like my grandfather, my great grandfather had not completed high school (or whatever the Canadian equivalent was). Rather than do that, he left home about age 16, again with his parents permission, and traveled out to Western Canada where he was an office boy, and then later an oil man, before returning home to Quebec.  He did very well in life, and I guess part of that must have entailed sending his sons to university.  My grandmother, on my mother's side, studied music in university.  She was the daughter of a jeweler, but I don't otherwise know the circumstances of her attending university.  Anyhow, my mother was actually pulled out of school by her mother, who in spite of her university degree felt that the daughters in the family needed to be employed in order to help the family through tail end of the Great Depression.  My mother's brothers did attend university, save for one who joined the Canadian Army during World War Two.  My father, likewise, was sent to university by his mother, after my grandfather's death, making him the first university graduate in the family.  However, at least two of his siblings also attended university.

My point here is not to trace family history on this topic, which would be pretty dull to anyone other than me, but to note something else.

Here, in my home county, it is frequently noted that the high school graduate rate is "only" about 80%.  "Only".  But in prior decades, and certainly for most of the 20th Century, it was much lower.  And yet that lack of a high school degree did not equate to a doomed economic life.  Rather, it wasn't much of a hindrance for most people.  Like my grandfather, many men (and they were mostly men) who had no university degrees, and often had not completed high school, were able to work their way up to a successful career of one kind or another.  And the educations they had received were seemingly quite advanced, compared in some ways to today.  My grandfather helped his kids with their high school calculus homework when they were in high school.  As he dropped out at age 13, he'd seemingly had that much of a math education by that time, or was a natural mathematician.

And switching career fields was remarkably common at the time.  A university degree of any kind, no matter what it was, tended to equate to an open door with most businesses, so having one was truly an advantage, to be sure.  Notably, however, entire classes of the American population generally did not enter university unless they were pursing a few narrow careers.  Catholics, for example, generally did not go to university until after World War Two, unless they were able to attend a Catholic institution, or if they were pursing medical or legal degrees (medicine and the law were career fields that were otherwise usually open to any one ethnic group, at least within their own ethnicity).

Now, none of this is true.  We live in the age of certification, and not having certificates, including a high school degree, is extremely limiting, it would seem.  Whole classes of technical and industrial work feature certifications that if the worker lacks, he must receive.  And entire career fields that were once open to anyone are now only open to those with degrees.  Law enforcement is one such career.  At one time, most policemen, if they had any pre career training, had probably just been in military service.  Now, in many areas, they at least need to obtain an associates degree.

Conversely, the value of university degrees has remarkably declined.  At least up through the 1970s, simply having a university degree entitled the holder to an open door at most businesses.  So, in that era, having a degree in, say, English, or History, meant you could go to work at Acme Business, or whatever.  Now, those degrees probably only entitle you to pursue another degree.  And career switching is not easy.  In the mid 20th Century you can find some stunning examples of career switches, some of which are nearly baffling. Doctors becoming bankers, and things like that.  Now, and advanced degree entitles the holder to look for work in that field, but not  really anything else.

As earlier noted, the purpose of this blog is to inquire on the topic of history.  So, what, if anything, does this tell us?  I don't really know, other than that it is a big change, to be sure.  But is it good or bad?  Probably some of both.  I can't help but feel that a high school degree should really be worth more than it seems to have become worth, and that it should be necessary for so many to acquire the debt of college, however.