Unsolicted career advice for the student No. 6: Stress and the law, know your mind.

Quite some time ago I wrote a couple of posts that are basically directed at people pondering the law as a career; one being a Caveat Auctor thread and the other on getting a useful prelaw education.  I'm sure that absolutely nobody who is pondering law school reads this blog, as hardly anyone does, but I recalled those when I read the most recent issue of The Wyoming Lawyer.  Then I forgot about it until this week.

 

Enigmatic message on a marble bench on the Byron White Courthouse in Denver Colorado originally penned by Francis Quarles, who also stated "No Cross, No Crown". I've never been too sure what this message actually was intended to counsel, but Quarles did not seem to be an advocate of idleness.  I suppose its supposed to inspire a person to strive on, forsaking rest, but in a life that's not long anyhow, maybe it really should be read to counsel the opposite, as some entire cultures do.*

On Monday last, I had a telephonic hearing with a lawyer I've been working against in a case. A really nice guy, we'd gotten along well in the case, which certainly isn't always the situation with opposing counsel  Some lawyers can be real jerks, but this guy wasn't.  Just prior to the hearing he asked me for a continuance of the schedule.  He'd already asked the other defense counsel in the case the same thing, and he'd agreed to it.  I had my reservations, but I agreed to it too. They both wanted one, and while I didn't need one, there were things I could do with the extra time.  All went well, counsel were friendly, the court cooperative, and everyone parted, it seemed, in good spirits.

Then, that night, that lawyer went home and killed himself.  I didn't see it coming.  I wish I hadn't agreed to the extension. With trial right around the corner, I feel he would have hung on out of loyalty to the client.  Maybe the crisis would have passed.

Back to the magazine.  The Wyoming Lawyer is the monthly magazine that members of the Wyoming State Bar receive. It's nicely done and has pretty good production values, which is more than I can say for a lot of career journals. This month's is mostly about psychological well being.  Then the ABA Journal came out, and it had an article on the same thing, maybe more than one (I didn't keep the journal around long, as it didn't appear to be that interesting of an issue).

I'm not really going to comment on the psychological well being context, but it does raise an interesting point for those pondering entering the law, that being, are you up for it?

That may seem like a silly question, but apparently the statistics are alarming for lawyers.  The depression rate is really high, apparently twice that of the general public, and that manifests itself in all sort of terrible ways, from consuming gallons upon gallons of alcohol, to taking illegal drugs, to dicey behavior.  Indeed, I think I've known lawyers, over time, who fell into all of these vices.  Additionally, apparently, the suicide rate is high for lawyers, although the statistics vary on that.  Dentists may or may not have a high rate as well.  Lawyers come out something like second or third in that grim area.  I've known quite a few dentists, but I've never known one who harmed himself.  I can't say that about lawyers, however.  Definitely not now, sadly.  Indeed, after the tragic event mentioned above occurred, another lawyer told me about a fellow that we know of, who died quite awhile back, who also took his own life.  I didn't know him that well, and I don't think that this was widely known (or if it was, I didn't know it).  And it occurred to me that I know of at least one other instance, which in that case was apparently mixed with the resort to illegal drugs, which no doubt made the situation even worse.  And in further pondering I realized I know if yet another lawyer who fell into some sort of weird situation, in another state, and ended up in an armed standoff with the authorities.  Guess I hadn't really pondered any of this until now, but it occurs.

All of this, or at least most of it, seems to be due to people's inability to deal with stress, although in the recent example I mentioned, the lawyer had suffered a horrible psychological trauma as a young man, and my guess is that is what caused his grim frame of mind, not the law.  Various state bar organizations, including our state bar, have set up programs to deal with lawyers falling into the vices noted above, and attempt to help their members, but I wonder how much of this really can be proactively dealt with.

One reason that I doubt it is that lawyers like to repeat the propaganda that our adversarial system is the best in the world.  I think there's real reasons to doubt that, and the less adversarial systems of France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, and so on, are at least as good as ours.  At any rate, a system which encourages adversarial conduct is going to be stressful in and of itself.  No doubt about it.  Beyond that, a legal education system that has flooded the market with young lawyers is also going to whack them upside the head with stress.  Most traditional legal education systems tended to weed a lot of people out, and the American system itself did at one time, but this is no longer so much the case. The schools produce the graduates and state bars are moving towards systems that let most of them in.

All that means you have a lot of people who may have entered for one reason or another but now find themselves fighting for work and fighting for a living. That sounds pretty stressful.  This would, however, seemingly be uniquely the case in litigation work, which is fighting.  I wouldn't think transactional work, for example, should be as stressful.

Having said that, one other added element of that, I suspect, is that at the end of the day, the law is about solving problems.  And that means people transfer their problems to the lawyer.  It's easy to think of lawyers as guys with expensive suits engaging in witty banter all day long, but in reality for almost every single lawyer the day is filled with attempting to solve other people's problems.  In litigation, of course, that means advancing a point that they desire, one way or another, which may be all the more stressful as the solution may not really be tailor made for their actual problem, whatever that is.

Recently I ran a series of letter snippets here between my grandmother and grandfather, on my mother's side, all of which related to either World War One or riding horses.  I didn't, by any means, put up all those letters.  But I know, from family stories and what not, how things were and went.  My grandmother, at the time she wrote those letters, was 26 years old and hoping to get married to my grandfather, who was struggling to get a start in business.  They did get married, but about five years later, when he'd returned home to Montreal.  I note that, as if you read the letters in their entirety, you can see that he was frequently ill in his 20s and obviously very stressed out. The family well knew that.  At the time those letters were written he'd already received a discharge from Canadian service due to ill health, which was mostly due to a very nervous disposition, and he'd struggle with that his entire life.  Indeed, he ultimately turned to drinking himself, until my grandmother told him to knock it off, and he did, simply quitting.

My point here is not to condemn him.  By all accounts, his children loved him greatly and the family was a very noted family.  But rather something that was noted at the time, and was noted later, is that he was an extremely intelligent man whose constitution just couldn't endure high stress.  He would probably have been better off as an academic or something. But, coming from a family of very high achievers, and being uniquely afflicted in this sense, nobody really understood that and he followed along the well trodden family path of business.  Ultimately, it did work out okay, but it was hard on him.

I wonder how many other people find themselves in situations like that.  From groups of high achievers, and uniquely oppressed by such a condition.  Now, there's all sorts of things that can be prescribed for such people, although I'm personally bothered by the degree to which Americans resort to pharmaceuticals for everything now days.  I wonder if a person should take something like this into account. 

Over the past year or so I've run across lawyers who were drinking too heavily, one who was engaged in an improper relationship with a female employee which resulted in the end of his marriage, one who seems to be on the constant edge of a nervous breakdown (assuming that's still regarded as a real condition), one who writes nasty letters but who won't answer his phone, one who quit law work, went into policing, and then had an improper relationship with another policeman while at work, and now one who killed himself.  I can't say that all of these are reactions to stress, but all but the last one are so common in this line of work, I wonder.

Some lines of work require psychological testing before entering them, I'm told.  Law enforcement now does, I guess.  I know that American submariners and missile crewmen do.  I kind of wonder if law schools ought to at least require some sort of testing to inform the student of if their makeup is suitable for the law, before they invest in their education.  But then law schools generally aren't very good about informing students about the practice of law in general, and have low interest in discouraging people from entering law school.

Be that as it may, a person whose prone to bad reactions to stress maybe ought to think twice about some aspects of the law, assuming that they know that they have that character trait, which I suspect few people do, until their really under stress.

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 Postscript

On this topic, because I think its significant, and because  I recently saw an example of how this is true that brings it to mind, I thought I'd amplify something that's mentioned above, but which wasn't expanded on much when I noted it.  That's the element of responsibility in the law.

I hear all the time, from people contemplating a legal career, that "they like to argue", as if that somehow qualified anyone to be anything.  Make no mistake, it isn't whether you like to argue or not that makes you qualified to be a lawyer, or makes the law an ideal career for you. If you truly like to argue, that may just make you a jerk.

The bigger question is whether you like to take on the responsibilities of others.

That's the key aspect of a legal career and legal personality.  Everything else is ancillary.

Most people don't, quite frankly, like to take on the hopes, dreams and burdens of others, and carry the full weight of them.  Some do, but most do not. But that's what an awful lot of lawyers do, and that's what all lawyers do to some extent.

That, for litigators, this is done in an adversarial setting doesn't change that.  A lawyer arguing in court his hoping to win something for somebody else, and that person is depending on them.

That's the key thing, I think, that causes stress in the law.  A lot of people who have entered the law because they were smart, analytical, etc., may not have realized that what they were signing up for was to be completely devoted to the causes and hopes of other people. And that can wear on a person.  It wears on some more than others.

And it's something that people don't understand at all.  For that reason, there's little relief from it at any stage.  Family, which should be the primary refuge from this, provides one of the main areas where it doesn't occur.  The lawyer, being a person who solves problems for others all day, is expected to keep on doing that at night.  Men and women who travel weary hours for others are asked to turn around and do it for those at home. All that is reasonable enough.

But that gets to some very much, and that's something that a person entering this field should be aware of.

The paradox of it is that if a person is motivated by a "desire to help others", in my view, this is also the wrong career. That suits a person for social work, or perhaps for the seminary, but not really for the law.  That's a greater type of calling, and this is a more narrow one. The work of the lawyer is more at the pick and shovel end of things, but none the less the work is often desperate and important, and a lot of weight if carried on that person's shoulders.  Just because a person liked to compete in high school or college debate doesn't mean that they want to take on the desperate causes of other people. That's something that at least all lawyers do a little, and some lawyers do a lot of, and that's something to consider.

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*On the other side of the building are the words "Alternate rest and labor long endure."

Writing inspirations – imagining life for settlers in days gone by « M J Wright

Writing inspirations – imagining life for settlers in days gone by « M J Wright

This Day in US History… 1865: Good Friday | Wyoming Postscripts

This Day in US History… 1865: Good Friday | Wyoming Postscripts

Ineffective Point of Argument III: I came to (fill in blank here) and won't come back unless. . .

Some what related to number II, just posted, is the argument we see around here from somebody disgruntled with Wyoming politics, as they read it in their paper back east. These will read something like "I went to your wonderful Yellowstone National Park last summer and have now read that your state is in litigation with the Federal government over wolves in your state.  If you don't give up this dastardly action I shall never return to Wyoming with my family and you won't have my tourist dollars.  Joe Urban, Manhattan. . "

A similar one we sometimes see is "how would you like it if we New Yorkers decided to hunt whales near the Statue of Liberty, huh?"

Well, see the prior note about this being a provincial area.

Tourism is one of the three pillars of the state's economy, but it's the poorest paying and the one whose impact is most perceived by the hotel industry and retail business, so most of us don't notice it.  The impact of agriculture and the mineral industry is obvious, tourism not so much, other than that tourist seem to get in the way of a lot of us locals at various points in the year.  Threatening not to come here has about zero impact as an argument as a result, and as it threatens a type of extortion, sort of, the impact is actually the opposite.

A closely related one to this is "I have come out to your lovely state every year since 1976 to fish on your lovely rivers and plan to soon retire there, after working a lifetime at Giant Amalgamated Widget here in Delaware.  I hate my native state of Delaware with the burning passion of a thousand red hot suns and enjoy the fact that there aren't zillions of fishermen on the river, but unless you . . . ."

For us locals, there are zillions of fishermen on the river, and a lot of them are out of state fishermen.  We cringe at the thought of you moving here from Delaware, and the threat that you won't do it, isn't a threat.

Closely related to that is:  "I left my beautiful hometown of Casper when I graduated from high school in 1965 but plan on returning when I retire from my job at Super High Paying Industry in Sacramento, but if the city proceeds to rip down the old Funky Junky Pile building, I"ll pout and never come home."  This argument is very similar to the Delaware one mentioned just above. For the many who graduated from school and stayed here and struggled by all those years, the thought that you've done well elsewhere makes us happy, but it doesn't mean that we think you should tell us how to run the place if you aren't here, and we aren't necessarily thrilled with a long expatriate returning (probably to the Casper of their 1965 memory) and trying to tell us how to run it now.  Come back if you wish, but those intervening decades weren't on the push pause button.

Dread

Oh no, the dreaded Iphone operating system update is in progress. . . .

More, where you have to hike in.

More, where you have to hike in.

Old Picture of the Day: Pony

Old Picture of the Day: Pony: One of the greatest possible pets has to be a pony. Back in the day, every boy dreamed of having a pony. Not sure how much kids think ...

Cowboy Ethics Hooey

I commented on this eons ago on our Today In Wyoming's History Blog, here:

Today In Wyoming's History: July 21:

2010  The State Code adopted by the Legislature.

Wyoming, like most states has a set of state symbols.  I think I've listed them all over time, including now this one, the most recent to be adopted.

I've generally abstained from commenting on the symbols, even though a few of them strike me as a bit odd. For example, we have a State Insect, which I don't know that we need.  But so be it.

Here, however, I can't help but comment.

The State Code I guess, is okay enough.  Here's the statute that sets it out:

 8-3-123. State code.

(a) The code of the west, as derived from the book Cowboy Ethics by
James P. Owen, and summarized as follows  is the official state code of
Wyoming. The code includes:

(i) Live each day with courage;

(ii) Take pride in your work;

(iii) Always finish what you start;

(iv) Do what has to be done;

(v) Be tough, but fair;

(vi) When you make a promise, keep it; 

(vii) Ride for the brand; 

(viii) Talk less, say more; 

(ix) Remember that some things are not for sale; 

(x) Know where to draw the line.

There's nothing in here in particular that I disagree with, although that "ride for the brand" item doesn't really reflect a lot of Wyoming's history very accurately.  The central conflict in the state from the 1876 to 1900 time frame really centered around individuals who started out riding for one brand, and then acquired their own brand and quit riding for the Brand No. 1.  Indeed, it might justifiably be argued that Individuals, rather than Ride For The Brand, is the true mark of a Wyomingite.

My greater problem, or perhaps irritation, with the State Code is, I suppose, similar to my comments regarding "state" authors, in that in supposedly finding a "code" that identifies us, we had to copy it from a Wall Street figure and not a Wyomingite.  The code comes from a book that Owens wrote in which he identified what he though were "Cowboy Ethics" and argued that this simple Code of the West could teach the nation something.  I'm not arguing that it couldn't, but I tend to doubt that a Wall Street figures is really capable of capturing the ethics of a class and group so very foreign to his own.

Again, as noted, having been around a lot of cowboys and rural workers, one thing I think is totally missing is that they all tend to have a high degree of independence and its not unusual at all to find actual working cowboys who switch employers a lot.  Perhaps they "ride for the brand", but often only briefly.  The "talk less, say more" item is a nice toss to a certain Gary Cooper view of the cowboy (and Gary Cooper was raised on a Montana ranch) but truth be told, being an isolated group, quite a few cowhands like to talk quite a bit, if given the opportunity to.  One Wyoming politician, the former Senator Simpson, is widely celebrated in Wyoming for his gift of gab at that, which has occasionally gotten him into trouble.  But the general list is not a bad one.  I only think it a bit sad that in order to define what our ethics are, we had to borrow them from a Wall Street figure who wrote what he thinks ours our.  It would seem that we could have defined them ourselves.

I would have thought by now that the bolt would have been shot on this entire Cowboy Ethics as defined by Wall Street guy, but nope, I see where this speaker will present at the 14th Annual Doornbos Agriculture Lecture Series at Casper College later this month.

I've noted in some recent posts here that this locality is a very provincial one, and it is.  But, provincialism is a two sided coin, and the flip side of it is the odd crediting of an outside "expert' in one thing or another.  It's almost like a type of poor self esteem type of problem.

I don't know much, or anything really, about Jim Owens, the author of the State Code, other than that he's not from here.  And yet, he's oddly had a big impact here in the form of the book he wrote.  I have a copy of it myself that was given to me as a gift (I'd never have bought it), and I see it cited here and there as an exemplar of us.

My real problem with this is noted above, in part, but it's somehow galling that a person who has really made his living elsewhere is now thought to have tapped into part of our souls. The simple truth of the matter is that just electing to live here, if you are from here, is normally electing to make considerably less money than you would have elsewhere. We tend to be blisteringly independent here, for good or ill, and many in the state approach libertarian concepts of politics and economics when a dose of distributist ones might actually make more sense in some circumstances.  Anyway you look at it, however, those decisions were ares, and we actually tend to be a bit different from others elsewhere.  Looking towards an outsider, as we so often do, for clues on what we are or are to be, may not be that wise of an approach.

Ineffective Point of Argument I: The Wrong Side of History

"The wrong side of history".

Recently, a really popular statement in arguments is that something or somebody is "on the wrong side of history".

You don't know that.

There are any number of movements or trends that people thought were inevitable that turned out not to be.  All of these things were thought to be on the "right side of history" at one time.  In the 1930s plenty of people in the Western world, including the United States, believed that fascism was on the right side of history. The same is true of Communism in the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s.  Shoot, I even saw an argument quite recently that Communism actually was "on the right side of history", made by somebody who was centered on the Third World and just wouldn't give up the argument.

Something being on "the wrong side of history" is meant to be an argument stopper by somebody who is supporting a popular trend and who doesn't want the other side argued.  The suggestion is that "this is inevitable and you should just accept it".  It's an intellectually anemic argument for a variety of reasons.

For one thing, nobody knows how history comes out on anything until quite some time has passed on the topic.  Fascism went down as being on the "wrong side of history", in this context, when teh major fascists powers were defeated in 1945.  Up until then, nobody was really sure.  Communism didn't go down as being on the wrong side of history, in this context, until some time in the 1990s.

The other thing people hint at meaning when they say this is that somebody is on the morally wrong side of something.  A trend line however, doesn't determine that.  The Nazis and the Stalinist were always on the morally wrong side of history even when they were on the rise.  A trend line doesn't determine right or wrong. Right and wrong determines that.  Guys like Thomas Becket and Thomas More died being on the right side of history, but they were bucking a trend when that happened.

Points of Argument

I see a fair number of arguments in print, and others set out orally, that include catch phrases or just blunders that a thinking person ought to omit. Some are common assertions, others not, and some are aggravating and irritating. All ought to be omitted, as they're bad arguments or just plain wrong.  Given that we're entering an election season, and hence the season of debate, I thought I might note a few as we go along, in a series of threads.  They'll start appearing here soon.

Courthouses of the West: Denver City and County Building, Denver Colorado

Courthouses of the West: Denver City and County Building, Denver Colorado:

These photographs depict the Denver City and County Building. This building was built to contain courtrooms, and at one time included city and county courtrooms. I do not know which, if any, courtrooms remain in the building.

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: A Trip Back In Time

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: A Trip Back In Time

Why does everything taste of chicken, except chicken? « M J Wright

Why does everything taste of chicken, except chicken? « M J Wright

Churches of the West: St. Louis Roman Catholic Church, Glenrock Wyoming

Churches of the West: St. Louis Roman Catholic Church, Glenrock Wyoming:

The weird nature of our current Presidential elections.

I just read that this Sunday, Hillary Clinton will make it official that she's running for President.

I'd actually forgotten that she hadn't already done that.  It's been obvious forever that she's running for President.

Which brings me to this.  It's still 2015.  The election isn't until 2016. Wouldn't it just be better if the race began around March, 2016?  Nobody even knows what issues are going to be around in 2016.

Rural Electrification Changed Farm Life Forever in Wyoming | WyoHistory.org

Rural Electrification Changed Farm Life Forever in Wyoming | WyoHistory.org

Interesting article on the process of bringing electricity to farms and ranches in Wyoming.

This certainly reflects a major change from the way things had been prior to rural electrification.

The Big Speech: The Stenuous LIfe

Theodore Roosevelt

April 10, 1899, at The Hamilton Club, Chicago, Illinois.

In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the State which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. I ask only that which every self-respecting American demands from himself and from his sons shall be demanded of the American nation as a whole. Who among you would teach your boys that ease, that peace, is to be the first consideration in their eyes — to be the ultimate goal after which they strive? You men of Chicago have made this city great, you men of Illinois have done your share, and more than your share, in making America great, because you neither preach nor practice such a doctrine. You work yourselves, and you bring up your sons to work. If you are rich and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research — work of the type we most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt tohelp a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past. A man can be freed from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to good purpose. If the freedom thus purchased is used aright, and the man still does actual work, though of a different kind, whether as a writer or a general, whether in the field of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure, he shows he deserves his good fortune. But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labor as a period, not of preparation, but of mere enjoyment, even though perhaps not of vicious enjoyment, he shows that he is simply a cumberer of the earth’s surface, and he surely unfits himself to hold his own with his fellows if the need to do so should again arise. A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world.

In the last analysis a healthy state can exist only when the men and women who make it up lead clean, vigorous, healthy lives; when the children are so trained that they shall endeavor, not to shirk difficulties, but to overcome them; not to seek ease, but to know how to wrest triumph from toil and risk. The man must be glad to do a man’s work, to dare and endure and to labor; to keep himself, and to keep those dependent upon him. The woman must be the housewife, the helpmeet of the homemaker, the wise and fearless mother of many healthy children. In one of Daudet’s powerful and melancholy books he speaks of “the fear of maternity, the haunting terror of the young wife of the present day.” When such words can be truthfully written of a nation, that nation is rotten to the heart’s core. When men fear work or fear righteous war, when women fear motherhood, they tremble on the brink of doom; and well it is that they should vanish from the earth, where they are fit subjects for the scorn of all men and women who are themselves strong and brave and high-minded.

As it is with the individual, so it is with the nation. It is a base untruth to say that happy is the nation that has no history. Thrice happy is the nation that has a glorious history. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. If in 1861 the men who loved the Union had believed that peace was the end of all things, and war and strife the worst of all things, and had acted up to their belief, we would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, we would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars. Moreover, besides saving all the blood and treasure we then lavished, we would have prevented the heartbreak of many women, the dissolution of many homes, and we would have spared the country those months of gloom and shame when it seemed as if our armies marched only to defeat. We could have avoided all this suffering simply by shrinking from strife. And if we had thus avoided it, we would have shown that we were weaklings, and that we were unfit to stand among the great nations of the earth. Thank God for the iron in the blood of our fathers, the men who upheld the wisdom of Lincoln, and bore sword or rifle in the armies of Grant! Let us, the children of the men who proved themselves equal to the mighty days, let us, the children of the men who carried the great Civil War to a triumphant conclusion, praise the God of our fathers that the ignoble counsels of peace were rejected; that the suffering and loss, the blackness of sorrow and despair, were unflinchingly faced, and the years of strife endured; for in the end the slave was freed, the Union restored, and the mighty American republic placed once more as a helmeted queen among nations. We of this generation do not have to face a task such as that our fathers faced, but we have our tasks, and woe to us if we fail to perform them! We cannot, if we would, play the part of China, and be content to rot by inches in ignoble ease within our borders, taking no interest in what goes on beyond them, sunk in a scrambling commercialism; heedless of the higher life, the life of aspiration, of toil and risk, busying ourselves only with the wants of our bodies for the day, until suddenly we should find, beyond a shadow of question, what China has already found, that in this world the nation that has trained itself to a career of unwarlike and isolated ease is bound, in the end, to go down before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities. If we are to be a really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world. We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill. In 1898 we could not help being brought face to face with the problem of war with Spain. All we could decide was whether we should shrink like cowards from the contest, or enter into it as beseemed a brave and high-spirited people; and, once in, whether failure or success should crown our banners. So it is now. We cannot avoid the responsibilities that confront us in Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines. All we can decide is whether we shall meet them in a way that will redound to the national credit, or whether we shall make of our dealings with these new problems a dark and shameful page in our history. To refuse to deal with them at all merely amounts to dealing with them badly. We have a given problem to solve. If we undertake the solution, there is, of course, always danger that we may not solve it aright; but to refuse to undertake the solution simply renders it certain that we cannot possibly solve it aright. The timid man, the lazy man, the man who distrusts his country, the over-civilized man, who has lost the great fighting, masterful virtues, the ignorant man, and the man of dull mind, whose soul is incapable of feeling the mighty lift that thrills “stern men with empires in their brains” — all these, of course, shrink from seeing the nation undertake its new duties; shrink from seeing us build a navy and an army adequate to our needs; shrink from seeing us do our share of the world’s work, by bringing order out of chaos in the great, fair tropic islands from which the valor of our soldiers and sailors has driven the Spanish flag. These are the men who fear the strenuous life, who fear the only national life which is really worth leading. They believe in that cloistered life which saps the hardy virtues in a nation, as it saps them in the individual; or else they are wedded to that base spirit of gain and greed which recognizes in commercialism the be-all and end-all of national life, instead of realizing that, though an indispensable element, it is, after all, but one of the many elements that go to make up true national greatness. No country can long endure if its foundations are not laid deep in the material prosperity which comes from thrift, from business energy and enterprise, from hard, unsparing effort in the fields of industrial activity; but neither was any nation ever yet truly great if it relied upon material prosperity alone. All honor must be paid to the architects of our material prosperity, to the great captains of industry who have built our factories and our rail- roads, to the strong men who toil for wealth with brain or hand; for great is the debt of the nation to these and their kind. But our debt is yet greater to the men whose highest type is to be found in a statesman like Lincoln, a soldier like Grant. They showed by their lives that they recognized the law of work, the law of strife; they toiled to win a competence for themselves and those dependent upon them; but they recognized that there were yet other and even loftier duties — duties to the nation and duties to the race.

We cannot sit huddled within our own borders and avow ourselves merely an assemblage of well-to-do hucksters who care nothing for what happens beyond. Such a policy would defeat even its own end; for as the nations grow to have ever wider and wider interests, and are brought into closer and closer contact, if we are to hold our own in the struggle for naval and commercial supremacy, we must build up our power without our own borders. We must build the isthmian canal, and we must grasp the points of vantage which will enable us to have our say in deciding the destiny of the oceans of the East and the West.
So much for the commercial side. From the standpoint of international honor the argument is even stronger. The guns that thundered off Manila and Santiago left us echoes of glory, but they also left us a legacy of duty. If we drove out a medieval tyranny only to make room for savage anarchy, we had better not have begun the task at all. It is worse than idle to say that we have no duty to perform, and can leave to their fates the islands we have conquered. Such a course would be the course of infamy. It would be followed at once by utter chaos in the wretched islands themselves. Some stronger, manlier power would have to step in and do the work, and we would have shown ourselves weaklings, unable to carry to successful completion the labors that great and high-spirited nations are eager to undertake.

The work must be done; we cannot escape our responsibility; and if we are worth our salt, we shall be glad of the chance to do the work — glad of the chance to show ourselves equal to one of the great tasks set modern civilization. But let us not deceive ourselves as to the importance of the task. Let us not be misled by vainglory into underestimating the strain it will put on our powers. Above all, let us, as we value our own self-respect, face the responsibilities with proper seriousness, courage, and high resolve. We must demand the highest order of integrity and ability in our public men who are to grapple with these new problems. We must hold to a rigid accountability those public servants who show unfaithfulness to the interests of the nation or inability to rise to the high level of the new demands upon our strength and our resources.

Of course we must remember not to judge any public servant by any one act, and especially should we beware of attacking the men who are merely the occasions and not the causes of disaster. Let me illustrate what I mean by the army and the navy. If twenty years ago we had gone to war, we should have found the navy as absolutely unprepared as the army. At that time our ships could not have encountered with success the fleets of Spain any more than nowadays we can put untrained soldiers, no matter how brave, who are armed with archaic black-powder weapons, against well-drilled regulars armed with the highest type of modern repeating rifle. But in the early eighties the attention of the nation became directed to our naval needs. Congress most wisely made a series of appropriations to build up a new navy, and under a succession of able and patriotic secretaries, of both political parties, the navy was gradually built up, until its material became equal to its splendid personnel, with the result that in the summer of 1898 it leaped to its proper place as one of the most brilliant and formidable fighting navies in the entire world. We rightly pay all honor to the men controlling the navy at the time it won these great deeds, honor to Secretary Long and Admiral Dewey, to the captains who handled the ships in action, to the daring lieutenants who braved death in the smaller craft, and to the heads of bureaus at Washington who saw that the ships were so commanded, so armed, so equipped, so well engined, as to insure the best results. But let us also keep ever in mind that all of this would not have availed if it had not been for the wisdom of the men who during the preceding fifteen years had built up the navy. Keep in mind the secretaries of the navy during those years; keep in mind the senators and congressmen who by their votes gave the money necessary to build and to armor the ships, to construct the great guns, and to train the crews; remember also those who actually did build the ships, the armor, and the guns; and remember the admirals and captains who handled battle-ship, cruiser, and torpedo-boat on the high seas, alone and in squadrons, developing the seamanship, the gunnery, and the power of acting together, which their successors utilized so gloriously at Manila and off Santiago. And, gentlemen, remember the converse, too. Remember that justice has two sides. Be just to those who built up the navy, and, for the sake of the future of the country, keep in mind those who opposed its building up. Read the “Congressional Record.” Find out the senators and congressmen who opposed the grants for building the new ships; who opposed the purchase of armor, without which the ships were worthless; who opposed any adequate maintenance for the Navy Department, and strove to cut down the number of men necessary to man our fleets. The men who did these things were one and all working to bring disaster on the country. They have no share in the glory of Manila, in the honor of Santiago. They have no cause to feel proud of the valor of our sea- captains, of the renown of our flag. Their motives may or may not have been good, but their acts were heavily fraught with evil. They did ill for the national honor, and we won in spite of their sinister opposition.

Now, apply all this to our public men of to-day. Our army has never been built up as it should be built up. I shall not discuss with an audience like this the puerile suggestion that a nation of seventy millions of freemen is in danger of losing its liberties from the existence of an army of one hundred thousand men, three fourths of whom will be employed in certain foreign islands, in certain coast fortresses, and on Island reservations. No man of good sense and stout heart can take such a proposition seriously. If we are such weaklings as the proposition implies, then we are unworthy of freedom in any event. To no body of men in the United States is the country so much indebted as to the splendid officers and enlisted men of the regular army and navy. There is no body from which the country has less to fear, and none of which it should be prouder, none which it should be more anxious to upbuild.

Our army needs complete reorganization, — not merely enlarging, — and the reorganization can only come as the result of legislation. A proper general staff should be established, and the positions of ordinance, commissary, and quartermaster officers should be filled by detail from the line. Above all, the army must be given the chance to exercise in large bodies. Never again should we see, as we saw in the Spanish war, major-generals in command of divisions who had never before commanded three companies together in the field. Yet, incredible to relate, Congress has shown a queer inability to learn some of the lessons of the war. There were large bodies of men in both branches who opposed the declaration of war, who opposed the ratification of peace, who opposed the upbuilding of the army, and who even opposed the purchase of armor at a reasonable price for the battle-ships and cruisers, thereby putting an absolute stop to the building of any new fighting-ships for the navy. If, during the years to come, any disaster should befall our arms, afloat or ashore, and thereby any shame come to the United States, remember that the blame will lie upon the men whose names appear upon the roll-calls of Congress on the wrong side of these great questions. On them will lie the burden of any loss of our soldiers and sailors, of any dishonor to the flag; and upon you and the people of this country will lie the blame if you do not repudiate, in no unmistakable way, what these men have done. The blame will not rest upon the untrained commander of untried troops, upon the civil officers of a department the organization of which has been left utterly inadequate, or upon the admiral with an insufficient number of ships; but upon the public men who have so lamentably failed in forethought as to refuse to remedy these evils long in advance, and upon the nation that stands behind those public men.

So, at the present hour, no small share of the responsibility for the blood shed in the Philippines, the blood of our brothers, and the blood of their wild and ignorant foes, lies at the thresholds of those who so long delayed the adoption of the treaty of peace, and of those who by their worse than foolish words deliberately invited a savage people to plunge into a war fraught with sure disaster for them — a war, too, in which our own brave men who follow the flag must pay with their blood for the silly, mock humanitarianism of the prattlers who sit at home in peace.

The army and the navy are the sword and the shield which this nation must carry if she is to do her duty among the nations of the earth — if she is not to stand merely as the China of the western hemisphere. Our proper conduct toward the tropic islands we have wrested from Spain is merely the form which our duty has taken at the moment. Of course we are bound to handle the affairs of our own household well. We must see that there is civic honesty, civic cleanliness, civic good sense in our home administration of city, State, and nation. We must strive for honesty in office, for honesty toward the creditors of the nation and of the individual; for the widest freedom of individual initiative where possible, and for the wisest control of individual initiative where it is hostile to the welfare of the many. But because we set our own household in order we are not thereby excused from playing our part in the great affairs of the world. A man’s first duty is to his own home, but he is not thereby excused from doing his duty to the State; for if he fails in this second duty it is under the penalty of ceasing to be a freeman. In the same way, while a nation’s first duty is within its own borders, it is not thereby absolved from facing its duties in the world as a whole; and if it refuses to do so, it merely forfeits its right to struggle for a place among the peoples that shape the destiny of mankind.
In the West Indies and the Philippines alike we are confronted by most difficult problems. It is cowardly to shrink from solving them in the proper way; for solved they must be, if not by us, then by some stronger and more manful race. If we are too weak, too selfish, or too foolish to solve them, some bolder and abler people must undertake the solution. Personally, I am far too firm a believer in the greatness of my country and the power of my countrymen to admit for one moment that we shall ever be driven to the ignoble alternative.

The problems are different for the different islands. Porto Rico is not large enough to stand alone. We must govern it wisely and well, primarily in the interest of its own people. Cuba is, in my judgment, entitled ultimately to settle for itself whether it shall be an independent state or an integral portion of the mightiest of republics. But until order and stable liberty are secured, we must remain in the island to insure them, and infinite tact, judgment, moderation, and courage must be shown by our military and civil representatives in keeping the island pacified, in relentlessly stamping out brigandage, in protecting all alike, and yet in showing proper recognition to the men who have fought for Cuban liberty. The Philippines offer a yet graver problem. Their population includes half-caste and native Christians, warlike Moslems, and wild pagans. Many of their people are utterly unfit for self-government, and show no signs of becoming fit. Others may in time become fit but at present can only take part in self- government under a wise supervision, at once firm and beneficent. We have driven Spanish tyranny from the islands. If we now let it be replaced by savage anarchy, our work has been for harm and not for good. I have scant patience with those who fear to undertake the task of governing the Philippines, and who openly avow that they do fear to undertake it, or that they shrink from it because of the expense and trouble; but I have even scanter patience with those who make a pretense of humanitarianism to hide and cover their timidity, and who can about “liberty” and the “consent of the governed,” in order to excuse themselves for their unwillingness to play the part of men. Their doctrines, if carried out, would make it incumbent upon us to leave the Apaches of Arizona to work out their own salvation, and to decline to interfere in a single Indian reservation. Their doctrines condemn your forefathers and mine for ever having settled in these United States.
England’s rule in India and Egypt has been of great benefit to England, for it has trained up generations of men accustomed to look at the larger and loftier side of public life. It has been of even greater benefit to India and Egypt. And finally, and most of all, it has advanced the cause of civilization. So, if we do our duty aright in the Philippines, we will add to that national renown which is the highest and finest part of national life, will greatly benefit the people of the Philippine Islands, and, above all, we will play our part well in the great work of uplifting mankind. But to do this work, keep ever in mind that we must show in a very high degree the qualities of courage, of honesty, and of good judgment. Resistance must be stamped out. The first and all-important work to be done is to establish the supremacy of our flag. We must put down armed resistance before we can accomplish anything else, and there should be no parleying, no faltering, in dealing with our foe. As for those in our own country who encourage the foe, we can afford contemptuously to disregard them; but it must be remembered that their utterances are not saved from being treasonable merely by the fact that they are despicable.

When once we have put down armed resistance, when once our rule is acknowledged, then an even more difficult task will begin, for then we must see to it that the islands are administered with absolute honesty and with good judgment. If we let the public service of the islands be turned into the prey of the spoils politician, we shall have begun to tread the path which Spain trod to her own destruction. We must send out there only good and able men, chosen for their fitness, and not because of their partizan service, and these men must not only administer impartial justice to the natives and serve their own government with honesty and fidelity, but must show the utmost tact and firmness, remembering that, with such people as those with whom we are to deal, weakness is the greatest of crimes, and that next to weakness comes lack of consideration for their principles and prejudices.

I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for the life of ease but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.

Californians who don't "get it" about their drought and water rationing.

 

 Imperial Valley, California, 1940s.

As those following the news are aware of, California has imposed water rationing in light of the severe drought they are suffering.

 

Some are now wondering why farmers haven't been subject to the same strict rationing.

 

Well, because that's where the food comes from.

 

At the end of they day, you can't eat your lawn, and in terms of economic importance, agriculture may be only 2% of California's economy, but its the percentage of that economy that people eat.  And not just people in California.  You can't eat a semiconductor, or intellectual property.

 

Not that there aren't problems of all sorts that this is exhibiting, one being that California in general takes more water to sustain its population than it actual has.  Of course, California's agriculture built that population in the first place, for good or ill, and it feeds more than California.

This Day in US History… 1865: General Robert E. Lee Surrenders, ending the Civil War | Wyoming Postscripts

This Day in US History… 1865: General Robert E. Lee Surrenders, ending the Civil War | Wyoming Postscripts

Lex Anteinternet: Protesting Too Much: Lex Antein...

There's clearly something going on in conservative circles in which a general animosity towards the Federal government has started to translate into a goal to transfer Federal lands to the states.  I wrote about that last here, in regards to a bill in the State Legislature:

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Protesting Too Much: Lex Antein...: Well the bill discussed here: Lex Anteinternet: Protesting Too Much: Lex Anteinternet: The return... :   I've commented several tim...

That bill passed the Wyoming legislature, but of course, in spite of what Wyoming may think, the Federal government isn't going to pay much attention to a bill of this type from us.  More signficantly, similar bills died in Colorado and Idaho, and they've now become deeply unpopular with Westerners and sportsmen.  65% of the Western population opposes this idea.

But apparently what ever is going on is strong enough that the U.S. Senate feels that it can ignore the feelings of the country.  They recently passed an amendment to a budget bill supporting such a proposal.

Supposedly the passage of the bill, introduced by a comittee chairman from Alaska, is non binding, but this almost surely signals that such an attempt will be made later in the year in an actual bill. The bill passed the Senate on a straight party vote, with one Republican voting against it.

It's already had repercussions.  Idaho sportsmen blasted their Senator who is now trying to defend his action and residents of Montana likewise did the same to one of their Senators.  No outcry has been heard in Wyoming yet, but in a state where the majority of the residents use the public lands, they will.   I know that I am strongly displeased with at least Mike Enzi, one of our two Senators, whom I formerly held a generally favorable view of.  I imagine I'm not alone, and I know that our other Senator already had a dedicated body of some who didn't think much of him.  Senators in the West that thought they had safe seats might find that this will not sit well with some who traditionally supported them.  The other Senator, who seems to be perpetually on the same flight back to Casper that I routinely am, is going to get an earful from me next time I see him, if I have the chance to talk to him.  I'm not pleased.

The excuse for this nonsense is that  the Federal government is slow to permit oil exploration, and that's hindering the oil producing state's economies. That's nonsense.  There was never a time during the recent boom with oil exploration was occurring on all of the leased lands.  There was always a backlog, and the hold ups in drilling were largely attributable to infrastructure and lack of equipment, not leasing.  Now, with oil down consistently around $50 bbl, the hold up is that American oil can not be produced at a profit, and with Saudi Arabia dedicated to keeping it that way, and with some suggestion that the price might decline to half of the present price, giving leases away wouldn't make a difference.

A broader thesis is that Westerners are oppressed by Federal regulations and actions, and in some ways that is somewhat true, but a land transfer will not impact that at all.  Focusing in on the land aspect of this focuses attention in the wrong area, where regional complaints are not really found.  Indeed, the one thing that Westerners really like about the Federal government is the free access to the public domain, something states have not been quite as generous with, at least as concerns our state.

Indeed, something that people miss here, if they're worried about government, is that a state government can be just as burdensome as a national one, and there are plenty of examples of the Federal government being the entity that imposes freedom on an area, rather than a state.  States react to their population more directly, to be sure, and part of that reaction is pushing certain sections of that population around from time to time.

People should make no mistake.  What such a transfer would do is fairly simple.  It would transfer land to the States, no doubt for gratis or nearly so, and the states would transfer it to existing lease holders sooner or later, who would then find themselves selling to out of state interests, and the entire culture that has existed here for over a century will be gone.

Critics of Wyoming's economy, and there are quite a few, have long held that Wyoming has a third world economy.  I dispute that, but those who maintain that hold that the land is agricultural and the industry is both foreign and exploitative. Again, I think that's a bit much, but I do think that the effect of this bill would be to give us a colonial economy.  The land will belong to somebody else  and all the wealth derived from it will go either to the government our out of state interests.  Locals will be mere landless peasants, not even able to go on what was formerly theirs.

Enough is enough on this idea.  It's time to let our leadership, or rather our representation, know we're not having it.

Painted Bricks: A Casper Wyoming Plaza?

Painted Bricks is the oldest of our blogs, as we created it for a specific purpose.  Like most of our blogs, it's evolved somewhat, but stayed pretty close to its original purpose.  Having said that, we depart from that today with our commentary here:

Painted Bricks: A Casper Wyoming Plaza?: As reported this past week in the Tribune and in an article in the Journal , the Casper city counsel has given provisional approval to dedi...

We've never done commentary on that blog before, and are unlikely to much. But it seemed warranted for that topic.

Writing inspirations – posing answers to the questions left by an abandoned trailer « M J Wright

Writing inspirations – posing answers to the questions left by an abandoned trailer « M J Wright

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: And the pumps ...

Our most recent look at the state of the oilfield was posted several days ago, here:

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: And the pumps ...: This past weekend, the week after I posted this Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: And the pumps kept on. : And following on this: Lex...

At the time I posted that entry, Chesapeake energy was the regional bright spot, having announced a few weeks prior that it was keeping on with its oil exploration program in the state.

Well, now its reversed course and is scaling back, like everyone else.  If there's a bright spot in the oil economy, therefore, this isn't it.

We still here that some exploration is going on in North Dakota, in shallow fields (I'm told, but which I somewhat doubt).  As I don't get the North Dakota news readily, I don't know the full state of things up there, but I wonder.

Postscript

And, also today, Noble Energy has announced that its cutting employees in Colorado, Texas and Pennsylvania. 

At the end of the road.

Holscher's Hub: Where you have to hike in.

 

These are all photographs, taken from a long distance away, of an old ranch house.

The location of the house isn't a bad one.  In a valley, near a stream that runs year around. The house is a two story house. I'd guess it was built somewhere in the 1900 to 1920 time frame.

Now it's abandoned.  I have to wonder why, but I can't help but note that a newer house is within eyesight of the highway.  Perhaps that provided the incentive?  This house would have truly been out at the end of the road, the only thing on the road at that.  I wouldn't have abandoned this location, and I don't really know why the owners did, but it's interesting to speculate on.

The Rise and Decline of the "SUV".

 Some time ago, on this transportation obsessed blog, I published this item:

Lex Anteinternet: SUVs before SUVs: 

A 1962 Dodge Power Giant Carryall.  Not mine, I saw it for sale the other day while driving through town.  It appears in nice shape, and still features bias ply tires.  This is a D100 Carryall, which means its rated at 1/2 ton, although it has a two speed rear axle.  Of course, I don't know anything about it or what is, or isn't original.  It looks pretty original, however.

Anyhow, it's interesting how SUVs are supposed to be a modern concept, with the Chevrolet Suburban supposedly sort of ushering them in. But Suburban's themselves go way back, and before them were vehicles like this Dodge Carryall.  Carryalls, in fact, go all the way back to World War Two.

Of course, these aren't easy to drive.  It has a manual transmission and armstrong steering.  And, of course, conventional hydraulic brakes.  Not something a soccer mom, or dad, would probably drive.  Still, it's interesting to note how far back the concept of a full sized 4x4, built on a truck frame, goes.  About as far back as 4x4 trucks themselves.

Since that time, I posted a comment on trucks or SUVs on the M K Wright blog, and Jenny, who has a couple of excellent blogs herself, including the 1870-1918 blog, noted that she'd be interested on how SUVS became the sort of bloated light duty vehicles that they've become. To a fan of 4x4s, which I obviously am, that question struck a chord and so I'm back on the topic.

I guess to start off on this, we'd have to define what an SUV actually is. The term isn't really that old in comparison to the vehicles that arguable fit the definition.  SUV, as we know, stands for Sport Utility  Vehicle.  But what's that?

It's a bit hard to say. When the term first was used, it seemed to fit any 4x4 that was a light carryall, but over time it expanded to include all the traditional carryalls and perhaps even things like Jeeps. So, here we'll take a look at that class of vehicle, that being the 4x4 that isn't a pickup, but is designed to carry multiple passengers.

 

M151A1 Jeep in the foreground, with self propelled artillery in the background, South Korea, 1987.  The M151 was the last of the US military Jeeps.  Today, the Jeep is basically almost back to a single manufacturer after having had as wider run at one time.

If we look at it that way, I suppose the Jeep, which we've discussed here before several times.  Probably the last time I looked at them at length was in this post:

Jeep

I've owned Jeeps twice.

 

My first car, a 1958 M38A1 Army Jeep.  In the words of Iris Dement, "it turned over once, but never went far."*

My very first vehicle was a Jeep.  I bought it for $500 with money I had earned from a summer job.  I was 15 at the time, and not old enough to actually drive, but I still had it when I turned 16.  

The engine was a mess, in need of rebuilding or replacement, and as you can see, the prior owner had hit a tree with it.  As the engine was so worn out, it burned nearly as much oil as gasoline, and I sold it when I was 16 and bought a Ford F100 to replace it.

My second Jeep was a 1946 CJ2A, the very first model of civilian Jeep.  I kept it for awhile, but ultimately when my son was small, I sold it too.  The CJ2A, particularly ones made in the first couple of years of production, was nearly unchanged from the World War Two Army 1/4 ton truck that gave rise to the species, and indeed, the model I had, had some parts commonality otherwise unique to the Army Jeeps of the Second World War.

Depiction of Jeep in use on Guadalcanal, bringing in a KIA.

Jeeps got their start in that role, as a military vehicle, a 1/4 ton truck, entering service just prior to World War Two.  Bantam, a now extinct motor vehicle manufacturer, gets a lot of credit for the basic design, and indeed the Bantam Jeep did enter U.S. and British service.

Bantam Jeep being serviced by Army mechanic. The Bantam was actually lighter than the Willys Jeep.

But it was Willys, with larger manufacturing capacity, that really gets credit for the design.  It was their design that became the Jeep, although Ford made a huge number of Jeeps during the Second World War as well.

Coast Guard patrol with Jeep.  The Coast Guard also had mounted patrols during the Second World War, acquiring horses and tack from the Army.

American and Australian troops with Jeep serving as a field ambulance.

Jeeps became synonymous with U.S. troops during World War Two.  Indeed, there's a story, probably just a fable, of a French sentry shooting a party of Germans who tried to pass themselves off as Americans, simply because the sentry knew that a walking party of men could not be Americans, they "came in Jeeps."  A story, probably, but one that reflected how common Jeeps were and how much they were admired by U.S. forces at the time.  It's commonly claimed by some that Jeeps replaced the horse in the U.S. Army, but that's only slightly true, and only in a very limited sense.  It might be more accurate to say that the Jeep replaced the mule and the horse in a limited role, but it was really the American 6x6 truck that did the heavy lifting of the war, and which was truly a revolutionary weapon.  

None the less, the fame of the Jeep was won, and after the war Jeeps went right into civilian production.  For a time, Willys was confused over what the market would be for the little (uncomfortable) car, and marketed to farmers and rural workers, who never really saw the utility of the vehicle over other options.  Indeed, for farmers and ranchers who needed a 4x4, it was really the Dodge Power Wagon that took off.  The market for Jeeps was with civilian outdoorsmen, who rapidly adopted it in spite of the fact that it's very small, quite uncomfortable, and actually, in its original form, a very dangerous vehicle prone to rolling.  Still, the light truck's 4x4 utility allowed sportsmen to go places all year around that earlier civilian cars and trucks simply did not. The back country, and certain seasons of the year, were suddenly opened up to them.  For that reason, Jeeps were an integral part of the Revolution In Rural Transportation we've otherwise written about.  You can't really keep a horse and a pack mule in your backyard in town, but you can keep a Jeep out on the driveway.

Not surprisingly, Willys (and its successor in the line, Kaiser) soon had a lot of competition in the field.  The British entered it nearly immediately with the Land Rover, a light 4x4 designed for the British army originally that's gone on to have a cult following, in spite of being expensive and, at least early on, prone to the faults of British vehicles.  Nissan entered the field with the Nissan Patrol, a vehicle featuring the British boxiness but already demonstrating the fine traits that Japanese vehicles would come to be known for. Toyota entered the field with its legendary Land Cruiser, the stretched version of which I once owned one of, and which was an absolutely great 4x4.  Indeed, their smaller Jeep sized vehicle, in my opinion, was the best in this vehicle class.   Ford even entered the field with the original Bronco.  Over time, even Suzuki would introduce its diminutive Samurai.

So, what's happened here to this class of vehicles anyway?

Recently, for reason that are hard to discern, I decided to start looking once again for a vehicle in this class.  I know their defects.  They are unstable compared to trucks, and they don't carry much either.  But there is something about them.  Last time I looked around there were a lot of options, and costs were reasonable for a used one. Well, not anymore.

I don't know if its the urbanized SUV that's taken over everything.  But whereas once a fellow looking for a Jeep like vehicle could look for Jeeps, Land Cruisers, Land Rovers, Samurais, Broncos and International Scouts, now you are down to Jeeps, the Toyota FJ Cruiser or the soon to be extinct Land Rover Defender.  The Defender is insanely expensive, but the Jeep and Cruiser sure aren't cheap.  Even used vehicles in this class now command a crazy price.  I'm actually amazed I see so many around, given that most people don't use them for what they are designed for, and they're so darned expensive.

The Jeep  was the first of the SUVs, although only barely so.  The Jeep came about just prior to World War Two, as the U.S. Army, which had quite a bit of experience all read with front and rear axle drive vehicles, sought to have a really light car, or truck developed for military use. Being light weight was a requirement for the vehicle, as was it being four wheel drive, a revolutionary requirement at the time.  Jeeps were the result, with there being two Jeeps to see U.S. service during the war, the Bantam Jeep and the Willys type Jeep, which was also made by Ford.  The Willys type Jeep was made in much larger numbers.  By the wars end, the Soviet Union was making its own version of the Jeep, based on the Willys and Bantam examples they'd acquired via Lend Lease.  The Germans, who loved all things mechanical, had also experimented with light weight 4x4s after being exposed to the Jeep, and came up with 4x4s based on the Kubelwagen. The Germans, however, never made the full switch to 4x4s so their examples are much less common that their 2x4 vehicles.

Civilian Jeep fans would tend to identify this as a CJ5, but it's actually a M38A1, in service with the South Korean Army in 1987.

I've addressed at length before, but Jeeps have had a long run as a popular civilian 4x4, and have actually outlasted their use by Americans in the civilian role, the Army no longer using Jeeps at all.  Those armies that do use a Jeep like vehicle today, use Toyota, Land, Steyr or Mercedes trucks, not American ones.  But the Jeep lives on as an American 4x4, but only made by Jeep.  A small close cousin, but much lighter, does exists in the form of the Suzuiki Samauri and the General Motors equivalent of it, but that vehicle seems to be an example of what generally seems to have occurred here.  Starting out a sub Bantam type Jeep, but made for the outdoors, it's evolved into a little 4x4 car.  As we'll see, that seems to have been the general trend.

The Jeep wasn't the only 4x4 passenger vehilce (ie., I'm omitting trucks) introduced by the military during World War Two.  Just as the Army sought to introduce 4x4 trucks and the Jeep, it also introduced, during the war, a class of vehicles we'd later know as Travelalls or Carryalls, and which like the Jeep, we find that there was explosion of types, but that we're now down to a singular example.

I've posted an example of a Dodge Carryall above, so we know what the type is, but we can probably define it as a 4x4 panel truck with seating.  Indeed, the first vehicles to carry that name were in fact 4x2 panel trucks.  Just before the Second World War, however, the Army decided to introduce a Dodge variant of the panel truck for passengers, just as Dodge was also producing a 4x4 heavy duty pickup truck for the Army. And, in addition to that, Dodge also introduced a vehicle called a "command car" that went under a variety of WC designations.

We'll take a quick look at two of these vehicles, before going on to the third, as it's interesting how Detroit sort of missed the boat on these early on, although that's true of nearly all of the early 4x4 vehicles.  Truth be known, they just didn't see much of a post war use for any of them.

 

One of the WC Command Cars

Command cars were a Dodge product based on at first the 1/2 ton Dodge military pickup chassis, and later the 3/4 ton chassis. They were a great vehicle, and were very popular with the service at the time.  Sometimes called a "weapons carrier", they were basically the first true SUV.  Senior officers with access to them, such as George Patton, frequently used them rather than the Jeep, as they were just big enough to be a bit more useful, and small enough to remain really maneuverable.  When we see the later SUVs of the 80s and 90s, we're really seeing something that's pretty darned close to these, conceptually.  Oddly, however, not only did the automobile manufacturers basically fail to appreciate that there's be a post war market for them, the Army phased them out after the war in favor of the Jeep, which isn't quite as useful.

Dodge 4x4 military ambulance, essentially a panel truck.

Also based on the Dodge truck frame was the Dodge military ambulance. This vehicle was hugely successful and a nearly identical model was put into production after the war when the Army adopted the M35, an updated version of the World War Two 3/4 ton Dodge military truck.  Again, however, this didn't seem to inspire the manufacturers to produce a civilian model, and perhaps that's understandable as these were, after all, military ambulances. They did find some favor with civilian users, however, post war as a surplus rugged panel truck.  Here two, however, we can see something that would come back into favor later in another form.

Dodge military carreyalls.

Dodge also produced true carryalls for the Army during the war, and it's hear that we really see the beginnings of something that would find widespread post war use.  The least significant of Dodge's wartime vehicles, it's almost hard t find a picture of them actually being used overseas.  But they set a pattern, along with the Dodge 4x4 truck, that would soon find expression in post war vehicles.

Wartime manufacture.

After the Second World War, Dodge kept its military truck in production, in a civilian variant, as the Power Wagon, vending the heavy 4x4 to commercial and agricultural customers as being "job rated".  Willys kept the Jeep in production as well, struggling to vend it to a market it didn't quite understand.  Soon, sportsmen proved to be the market for Jeeps, while Power Wagons were bought by the anticipated market.  Nobody kept a 4x4 panel truck in manufacture except for Willys, which alone made one in this class, based on its small frame 4x4 pickup truck.  This vehicle, termed by Willys a "station wagon", also very much anticipated the later size of common SUVs, although the car, nicknamed the "rumble wagon", was very much a truck.

In 1954, however that suddenly changed.  Dodge came back out with the vehicle depicted above, the Town Wagon.  But they were late by a year. The prior year, International Harvester, the heavy truck and implement company, came in with the Travelall, a vehicle built on the same concept.  Chevrolet was already making its panel truck, the Suburban, but in 1957 it entered the 4x4 market with the panel truck as well.  As odd as it may be to think of the "family truckster" starting off as a fairly heavy 4x4, they all were.

So, by the late 1950s three American manufacturers were making heavy 4x4 panel trucks for passenger use.  The Carryall, the Travelall and the Suburban all vied for the same, fairly off road, passenger market. A fourth, the Jeep, was a smaller vehicle nearly alone in its class. None of these vehicles was  the plush type vehicle that the Suburban is today, but they are all recognizable as being in that class.  

That class took a new turn in 1963 when Jeep took a huge leap and abandoned its station wagon in favor of a luxury carryall, that vehicle being the Jeep Wagoneer.  There was nothing really like it.  Dumping all pretensions of commercial use, the Wagoneer was the luxury vehicle in the suburban or carryall class, and it did really well. While Jeep vehicles, save for the Jeep itself, have been somewhat forgotten as being pioneering, this one clearly was. 

Just a few years thereafter Chevrolet ramped up the competition by taking it in another direction, when it introduced the Blazer.  Based on a half ton, short box, pickup truck frame, the Blazer took the carryall one notch down in size, marketing its vehicle to the smaller family size now emerging in the US and the weekend sportsman. The Blazer was a huge success.

1972 Chevrolet Blazer.  This type of Blazer (without the lifted suspension and large wheels) was the first model of the popular 1/2 ton SUV.

The Blazer was such a successful vehicle that soon there were others in its class.  Ford, which had a contender in the Jeep market which was very much loved, the Bronco, dumped it in favor of a larger Blazer sized vehicle, still called the Bronco. Dodge, which of course had a military vehicle in this class as long ago as 1940, came back out with one based on its 1/2 ton short box pickup frame, calling it the Ram Charger.  By the early 1980s, Ford, Chevrolet and Chrysler were all competing in this class, and International and Chevrolet were still competing in the carryall class, Dodge having dropped out.

In the meantime, other manufacturers had not been idle.  Toyota had come out with a stretched Land Cruiser, and entered the field, by the 1960s.  Land Cruiser had as well, but it's temperamental expensive 4x4 was never really popular in the US, so that variant was rarely seen.  International Harvester, which had competed in the Jeep class with its Scout, came out with a new larger variant of the Scout which also competed in this smaller, but not Jeep sized, class.  Jeep itself would attempt to enter it from time to time, but was never successful in really figuring it out.

 
 Chevrolet Blazer in use by the U.S. Army, in this case the 3d Bn, 49th FA, Wyoming Army National Guard, in South Korea.  It's odd to think that this class of vehicle, which basically started off as a military vehicle, had a return, albeit a not too successful one, to military service.

By the late 1980s, this latter class, the smaller, but not 1/4 ton, 4x4 market really took off.  Nissan entered the class with its rugged Pathfinder.  Toyota, already in the class, came out with an additional vehicle in it called the Four Runner.  Mazda entered it as well.  Seeing what was going on, Chevrolet abandoned its trailblazing full size Blazer in favor of a smaller model in this class, also called the Blazer.

And then, something happened.

Somehow these vehicles quite being what they were, which was offroad vehicles, and simply became panel trucks, with 4x4, once again.

How it happened isn't clear, but whole class of rugged personal 4x4s began to evaporate.  The Bronco disappeared.  International quit making personal vehicles.  And the small SUVs increasingly became large 4x4 cars, but not really trucks.  

Some of these vehicles are still around in one form or another, but only some.  The Jeep class is principally occupied by Jeep, unless a person is so well off they can afford a Mercedes or Land Rover.  The mid sized SUV still sees a rugged Toyota class vehicles, and Jeep has finally figured it out, virtually dominating the field now with its four door Jeep.  General Motors still makes a Suburban class vehicle and a Blazer sized vehicle, but both vehicles now are nearly luxury vehicles, not the field vehicles they once were, although they can still do the back country and come with off road options.

People will buy, of course, what they want.So the manufacturers can't be blamed for producing what they do. But the evolution is an interesting one.

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Bill Barlow and his Sagebrush Philosophy

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Bill Barlow and his Sagebrush Philosophy

World War One Division Patches

This is a topic which likely interests only me, but these photos depict World War One U.S. service coats, for the most part.  The photo immediately above also depicts some leather jerkins, a type of long vest that's almost Medieval in appearance, but which made a reappearnce in the Allies forces during World War One, due to their utility.

Anyhow, these photos show a lot of divisional patches from the Great War.

The U.S. Army hadn't assembled on this level since the Civil War, which was also the last time the Army had been large enough to use large unit symbols and badges.  That had fallen completely by the wayside after the Civil War, but during World War One, it came back in.  In the Army, it's remained the norm ever since.  In the Marine Corps, which was in the 2nd Division during World War One, it disappeared, reappeared during World War Two, and disappeared again thereafter.

I frankly don't recognize all of these patches, although I do a fair number.  Fans of U.S. uniforms, or those who have been in the service, will also recognize quite a few, sometimes in a bit of a surprising way. The "AA", ie., All American, division patch of the can be seen above, but before that unit was airborne and therefore before it had an airborne tab.  Quite a few other patches are recognizable, others not.

I"m unfortunately not familiar enough with the other patches to recall what they symbolize.  Some are obvious, like the small machinegun patch on the 82nd uniform above.  Others I generally don't recognize. Some may be wound badges, and some represent months overseas.  Why the private stripes on so many of these service coats are red, I don't recall, as generally at least World War One enlisted stripes were the same olive color as the coat, so that they were not easy to spot by enemy troops.

Courthouses of the West: Federal District Courthouse, Denver Colorado

Courthouses of the West: Federal District Courthouse, Denver Colorado: