The Punitive Expedition: The Battle of Parral. April 12, 1916

 Corporal Richard Tannous, 13th Cavalry, wounded at Parral.

U.S. cavalry under Major Frank Tompkins, who had been at Columbus the day it was raided and who had first lead U.S. troops across the border, entered Parral Mexico. At this point, the Punitive Expedition reached its deepest point in Mexico.

The entry was met with hostility right from the onset.  Warned by an officer of Carranzas that his Constitutionalist troops fire on American forces, Tompkins immediately started to withdraw them  During the withdraw, with hostile Mexican demonstrators jeering the U.S. forces, Mexican troops fired on the American forces and a battle ensued.  While Mexican forces started the battle, it was lopsided with the Mexicans suffering about sixty deaths to an American two.  Tompkins withdrew his troops from the town under fire and sought to take them to Santa Cruz de Villegas, a fortified town better suited for a defense.  There Tompkins sent dispatch riders for reinforcements which soon arrived in the form of more cavalrymen of the all black 10th Cavalry Regiment. 

This marked the high water mark of the Punitive Expedition.

LoC caption:  "Removing Sgt. Benjamin McGhee of the 13th Cavalry who was badly wounded at Parral, Mexico."

Lex Anteinternet: Marathon, Peabody and the airlines

And the news came today that Marathon has found a buyer for its Wyoming assets, the  topic we first touched upon here:

Lex Anteinternet: Marathon, Peabody and the airlines: This past week the state received the bad news that Marathon Oil Company, formerly Ohio Oil Company, which was once headquartered in Casper...

The buyer is Merit Energy.

All in all, this is good news for the state.  Merit's had along presence here and is a substantial operation, so  this would indicate that they are doing well and banking on the future of the petroleum industry in the state.

Casper Daily Press: April 11, 1916

The British commence to occupy the Sinai: April 11, 1916

On this date in 1916, the British commenced to occupy the Sinai.  The territory was held by the Ottoman Empire, which of course was fighting with the Central Powers in the Great War.

The Sinai is a daunting region today, and was much more so in 1916, given the limitations of technology.

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Old Sweetwater County Courthouse, Green River Wyoming

Courthouses of the West: Old Sweetwater County Courthouse, Green River Wyom...: 

This is the old Sweetwater County Courthouse in Green River Wyoming.  This courthouse, built in 1906, is on the same block as the new courthouse that replaced it. Fortunately, this attractive originalcourthouse was preserved when the new one was built.  I don't know what use this courthouse serves today.

The Punitive Expedition: Howze clashes with Villistas, April 10, 1916.

Cavalry under R. L. Howze engaged Villistas near La Joya de Herrera and dispersed them, killing their commander, a Captain Silva.  The battle happened in the early evening.

In Memorium

My mother.  April 23, 1925-April 9, 2016.

The Laramie Republican: April 10, 1916

Let's take a look at a smaller town paper today, the Laramie daily paper for the day.  Note that even this paper proudly indicated that it was part of the Associated Press. That is, it received news by wire and was up to date.

This paper isn't the surviving one in Laramie today.  The other paper, the Laramie Boomerang, is, even though it was a semi weekly paper in 1916.

Sunday morning Scene: Churches of the West: Church of the Holy Family, Anglican Church, Casper Wyoming

Churches of the West: Church of the Holy Family, Anglican Church, Casper, Wyoming

A Strange fanaticism

A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality.

The Moral Philosophy of Meredith, A Handful of Authors.  G. K. Chesterton

The Best Posts of the Week of April 3, 2016

The Telegraph

 

Sunday State Leader: April 9, 1916

April 9 was a Sunday in 1916.  The Casper papers didn't print an edition on Sundays at that time.  Indeed, the big paper, if we'd call it that, for the Casper Daily Press was the Friday edition, which recapped the news of the week.

The Cheyenne paper, which Casperites would likely not be getting, did print a Sunday edition however.  This is it, for that day.

The Punitive Expedition, Railroads, and the Presidential Election of 1916: The Casper Daily Press of April 8, 1916

Lots of big news in this evening edition.

Theodore Roosevelt announced that he was throwing his hat in the ring, rather late, for the 1916 Presidential election.  Sort of.  He would not really end up being a candidate, and in fact, he was wearing down physically at this time, having never recovered from earlier serious health bouts and injuries.

Locally, the Northwestern Railroad story was indeed big news.  And apparently Frederick Funston was talking about railroads in connection with the expedition in Mexico.

The Punitive Expedition: A near clash with Carranza's troops on April 8, 1916

 Robert Lee Howze, as a Major General.

As reported by Major Robert Lee Howze:

At about l0:30 a.m.,April 8th, at a point about ten miles south of San Borja, my command was charged by the mounted forces of General Cavazos, his platoon in advance was reinforced by 50 or 60 men, and all took up the gallop, yelled and drew their rifles as they approached us. In the meantime our men were promptly being placed in an erroyo which afforded a splendid field of fire and excellent cover. I personally moved between the two lines waving my hat and calling in Spanish that we were Americans.  About 100 of Cavacos' men reached a point within 50 yards of me before they stopped. If one shot had been fired, I feel convinced that we would have destroyed half of Cavacos' 300 men. The control which our officers exercised over their men and the display of splendid judgment by officers and non-commissioned officers in a delicate situation, saved what came near being a serious complication.  Our officers were left generally with the convictions that General Cavazoa was seeking conflict.  His manner and tone were quite offensive.

Broadcast Radio (for the second time).

Quite awhile back, in 2012, I posted this item on Wyoming's first commercial radio station:

Today In Wyoming's History: January 2. It must have been quiet, or at least different, before that.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 2: 1930 First commercial radio station in Wyoming begins operation. KDFN later became KTWO and is still in operation.

Hard to imagine an era with no radio. But Wyoming lacked a commercial radio station until 1930. This was a Central Wyoming station (or is, rather, it still exists). I'd guess Cheyenne could have picked up Denver stations by then, but in Central Wyoming, having an AM radio prior to 1930 must have been pointless.

Since that time, I posted the item about the use of radio by the Army in 1916, and got to rethinking this topic, amongst other communication topics.

In doing that, I went back as I thought I'd posted before on broadcast radio.

And, indeed I did, but what I didn't do is label it, so it was hard to find.  Indeed, that's been a problem with my earlier blogging. By failing to label things correctly, old posts are easy to loose.  In this particular case, not only did I loose it, but I'd forgotten as a result, that I had done a particular post.  Usually I recall my older posts and I was very surprised that I hadn't posted on this topic. Turns out that I did.  I new I had posted on some single episodes of radio shows from the glory days of radio and when I couldn't find them I did a search on the raw data section of this site and found those posts, and my first one on broadcast radio as well.  So I've edited them all and now radio as a label has tripled in frequency here.  Anyhow, at that point, I thought about axing this post, but as it was mostly already done, and as it actually adds content, I have not.  My original post is here:

Radio

When I was young, my father listed to the radio a fair amount. What I really recall about that in particular is that he'd listen to Denver's KOA, which was an all talk radio station, but not like the ones we have now that are all right or left political talk.  It had a lot of different radio programs, and sports.  He particularly listened to the Denver Broncos and Denver Bears (their minor league baseball team at that time) broadcasts, and the radio shows that they had which discussed those teams. That certainly wasn't all they aired, however, and at one time, when I was fairly young, I used to listen to a fair amount of KOA myself.

The first radio tube, circa 1898.

KOA is still around, but those days are really gone, as are the days of all local radio.  We picked up KOA. . . .

Frankly, even when I posted the item above, I didn't really appreciate the rapid onset of radio, or how late it really came into being.  I knew that there weren't home radios in 1916 and that during the Great War people didn't get their news that way. But when did commercial broadcast begin?

Well, 1920. Sort of suddenly and in a lot of places at first.

I referenced Denver above. Denver had a commercial broadcast radio station in 1920. That's' really early if you consider that 1920 was the year that the first commercial broadcast station began operation in the United States.  And for that matter, it was that year for the United Kingdom as well. So that Wyoming wouldn't have a station until 1930 really isn't surprising.  So Colorado had a commercial station the very year that commercial radio started in the United States.

As for Colorado, I was correct in my supposition about it probably having stations prior to Wyoming, as noted, but I am amazed by how quickly radio came on there.  Colorado had 94 stations by 1922.  So, one in 1920, and then 94 in 1922. The first one, KLZ, is still in operation.  For that matter, KTWO is also still in operation.

Still, let's consider that.  Up until 1930, there was no radio in Wyoming, unless of course you could pick up a Denver channel from Cheyenne (and I don't know if you could, or not).  1930 is within the lives of our older citizens, although that's a decreasing number of them given the year.  My late father was born in 1929.  My mother in 1925.  One of the local high schools was built in 1923.  The building I work in was built in 1917.

So, prior to 1930 in Wyoming, as in much of the US, there was no radio.  Now, 1929 is hardly the ancient world.  And important things were happening in the teens and twenties to be sure. World War One, the stock market crash, etc.  People didn't get the news of those things by way of radio.  Newspapers, which often were published twice a day in that era, were the quickest means of news delivery for the average person where radio was not.

And, of course, prior to 1920, there was no commercial radio at all.

And not only is this significant as to news, but entertainment.  Popular music existed, but the knowledge of it came by way of friends and associates, not radio.  You could buy records, but you weren't hearing them on the radio.  There was even a top 100 for years in the teens, but those records didn't get on that list by way of radio play.  Sales, then as now, determined that, but the decision to purchase didn't come from hearing a song played on the radio.  You'd heard that song played on somebody's record player.

When radio came in, in the 1920s in many places, and starting in 1930 in Wyoming, as we've seen, it made a huge change.  People took to home radios really quickly and they became an institution.  It's odd to think, in that context, of how new they really were

Well, there's a lot more about all that on my post Radio.

Oddly, one thing I didn't cover in that first post, was car radios.  Radios have been, as odd as it may seem, a big part of a car my entire life.  Indeed, when I was a teenager and in my early twenties everyone wanted to have a really nice stereo in their cars.  Some pretty junky cars had some pretty nice radios, which of course were also tape player.  That hasn't really changed over the years, although car radios have gotten really good so that the need to change them is smaller than it once was.  The newest ones in a lot of vehicles also play CDs, Itunes libraries and, via Bluetooth, can act as telephone receivers.  It won't be long until every vehicle has, effectively, a car phone, something that was once quite a rarity.

So its odd to realize that early cars didn't have radios.  Indeed, I own one truck made in 1962 that didn't come equipped with a radio.  I added one, but I sort of regret doing that now.  But I was about 20 at t he time.  When I had a 1945 CJ2A I did not equip it with a radio, and it didn't have one.  Anyhow, the first car radios were an add on and were so expensive that they nearly rivaled a fair percentage of the value of a typical average American car itself.  Early Motorola car radios, first offered in 1930, cost $130.  Crossley Motors, a British manufacturer, offered the first car to have a regular factory installed radio in 1933, although Chevrolet offered a radio option in 1922. The Chevrolet radio however, was impractical due to its massive antenna and large speakers.  Contrary to some assertions, there were other cars manufactured in the 1920s with radio options, but they were unusual and not standard on any car.

Radios themselves didn't become suddenly standard in the 1930s for automobiles.  That wouldn't happen until after World War Two, and even then some things that are standard now remained options. The radio in my 1954 Chevrolet Deluxe Sedan, for example, had push buttons. The regular 54 had a radio, but no buttons.

Anyhow, I don't mean to divert this to a discussion about cars and radios, rather than just radio, but this serves to illustrate how new radio really was.  In the 1920s there were a lot of places in the US where having a radio would have been pointless, as there were no stations. By the 1930s, radio was everywhere and radios were coming into automobiles, in spite of the limitations of tube technology.  By the 1950s, when television was starting to come in, radios were a standard feature in cars, but not necessarily trucks.  Now, in an age when we listen to less radio thanks to other forms of audio information and entertainment, radios are still everywhere.

In the 1940s and 1950s one thing that established people had was a really nice home stereo, with radio and turn table.  Now, these big old pieces of furniture seem odd to us.  How things have changed.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Related threads:

Radio

Friday Farming: Women Farmers Band Together To Vent, Seek Support And Exchange Ideas

Women Farmers Band Together To Vent, Seek Support And Exchange Ideas 

Interesting article.

Almost as interesting is the collection of mean snarky comments that follow.

As an observation, it's also interesting to note that the comments on what would generally be regarded as erudite news sources, including the better known major newspapers, are every bit as nasty, egocentric and snarky as on any other source.  Go to the New York Times, for example, and you'll find a collection of self assured snots commenting on news articles as if they possess all the knowledge on the planet.  Same, on occasion, with NPR comments.

It's deflating.  The "liberal" end of the upper echelon readers of American media likes to imagine the conservative mass sources as being silly howling cartoons, but their comments aren't much different.  A person has to presume that most of the thoughtful readers on both ends of the spectrum simply do not comment.

Casper Weekly Press: April 7, 1916

The Casper Weekly Press was apparently the Friday edition of the paper.

What the Crud, is this the Casper Daily Press day by day page or something?

I've been posting, as readers are aware, the century old issues of The Casper Daily Press on the anniversary of their publication.  This probably seemed obviously related to the Punitive Expedition of 1916 up until yesterday, when I ran this one:

The Casper Daily Press for April 6, 1916

This evening issue is inserted here not for what is on the front  page, but for what isn't. 

For the first time since the Columbus Raid, the Punitive Expedition didn't make the front page for the Casper Daily Press.

Well, rest assured, I have been running them due to the entries we've been having on the Punitive Expedition, which as this entry, What the Crud? Is this the Punitive Expedition Day by Day Blog or something? makes clear, we've been marking the centenary  of various events as they occurred.  The newspaper entries are part of that, and are part of our A Day In The Life series, being posted for Wyoming on the 100 year anniversary of their publication on the theory that this is something a local person would have read as they came out.  How they would have received the news.  This squares with the purpose of the blog to explore what life was like in the early 20th Century.  

And it has been really interesting. For one thing, it has shown how a variety of concerns, not just one, expressed themselves day after day.  This is, indeed, how real life is, but it isn't how we typically think of a historical era.  While we're focused on the Punitive Expedition in these posts, at the time the readers of the Casper Daily Press were also focused on World War One, an outbreak of train robbery, the price of gasoline, and the local economy.  The flavor of the times comes across a bit differently than we might have suspected.

For those who are tired of the daily newspaper electronic delivery, a century late, it won't go on forever.  And indeed, I know when it'll stop on a daily basis as these posts are teed up to be posted already, well ahead of when they actually will appear.  As the Punitive Expedition was what brought them to our attention, when the expedition really disappears from an issue of the paper, I'll quit posting them everyday.  Some might might miss them at that time (and some big events will occur before they disappear), but converting them from pdf to jpeg is actually quite a chore so it'd be difficult to keep it up, and of course at some point it would distract from the blog, if it isn't already.

But it has been interesting. And its drawn our attention to a lot of things we've missed.  Papers will continue to appear from time to time and some of the aspects of life that we'd missed from the era that we haven't commented on yet, will be topics of future posts.

The Casper Daily Press for April 6, 1916

This evening issue is inserted here not for what is on the front  page, but for what isn't.

For the first time since the Columbus Raid, the Punitive Expedition didn't make the front page for the Casper Daily Press.

Mid Week at Work: Making the sale, 1916

Chinese merchants and U.S. troops, Casas Grandes Mexico, 1916.

The Punitive Expedition: The Casper Daily Press, April 5, 1916

The Telegraph

Recently I posted this item on Communications during the Punitive Expedition:  The Punitive Expedition and technology. A 20th Century Expedition. Part Two. Radios and Telegraph.

One of the things that this really brought into the forefront of my mind was the state of communications in general in the decades leading up to the Punitive Expedition of 1916, and it relates on top of it, in a synchronicitous fashion the topic I also posted about in More Medieval than Modern?  Indeed, the history of the telegraph argues really powerfully for what George F. Will wrote about in the column that entry references.

Prior to the telegraph, no news traveled any faster than a horse or boat.

None.

On continental landmasses, this made the postal service extremely important and most nations had extremely developed post offices.  The British post office delivered mail all day long in urban areas, so that a letter posted in the morning wold tend to arrive midday, and a reply letter could be there by evening.  In nations with larger masses the post office was a critical governmental entity.  There's a real reason that the drafters of the Constitution provided for the head of the U.S. Post Office to be in the cabinet and there's a real reason that delivering the mail was one of the few duties that the Federal Government was actually charged with.  The mail needed to get through.

But it was carried by a postal rider.  That rider trotted, and indeed he probably "posted the trot", which game him some speed, but it was still horse speed.

In wet areas quite a bit of news went by boat or ship.  For that matter, anything going from North America to Europe, or vice versa, went by ship.  Sailing ship at that.  We wouldn't consider it fast, but the people of the pre telegraph age would have considered that to be what it was.

This only came to an end, and a dramatic and sudden end, with the telegraph and railroad.  And oddly enough, those two changes came at the same time, and were complementary to each other.  Indeed, it was the railroads that first really exploited telegraphs.

The telegraph, or more properly the electrical telegraph was first thought of in the late 18th Century as the properties of electrical transmission started to become known.  The first working telegraph was constructed by an English experimenter in 1816, an experiment that actually used eight miles of wire but which failed to gain much attention.  Various experiments by various individuals followed such that by the 1830s there were a fair number of individuals experimenting with similar concepts.  One such individual was Samuel Morse, whose code was adopted for telegraph transmissions.  By the late 1840s telegraph lines were going up everywhere.

By 1861 a telegraph line had been stretched across the vast expanse of the American West such that telegraph transmission from the Atlantic end of the United States to the Pacific could be achieved rapidly for the first time, replacing the Pony Express mail service, used only for mail that required rapid delivery, in short order.  What formerly took about ten days now took, as a practical matter, hours.

Transcontinental telegraph line.

Three years prior, in 1858 an even more amazing feat was accomplished when the Transatlantic submarine cable was put in. The thought of what was involved, and that it worked, is astounding.  Ships remained partially in the age of sale, and partially in the age of steam, at the time.  And that, in 1858, a cable could be stretched that vast distance, and work, is amazing, seeming to be more of our own age than of that of the Pre Civil War world. 

That it was a monumental achievement was known at the time and could hardly be missed.    The impact on time caused by the cable was massive. What had taken days to achieve in terms of communications could now take place, when it needed to, in hours.

Other submarine cables would soon follow all over the globe, although it would take until 1902-1903 to stretch the vaster distance of the Atlantic and reach significant points therein.  Still, by 1902 Canadians could telegraph to New Zealand and Americans to Hawaii.  The world, in terms of communications, had been connected.

So, by the last couple of decades of the 19th Century, there wasn't a significant region of the Untied States that couldn't be reached by telegraph. That doesn't mean that there was a telegraph office in every town by any means, but telegraphs were extremely widespread.  And if railroad reached a town, telegraph certainly did.  So, in a fairly short expanse of time, news which had once taken days or weeks to travel anywhere now could get there within hours.  A person in New York could send a message to a person in Sacramento.  And nations could exchange information nearly instantly.  The impact of this change was immense.  We think of the second half of the 19th Century, if we think about it at all, as being in an era of slow communications. But it wasn't.  It's part of our own age of rapid communications.  Just not quite as rapid as our own in many ways, but rapid still.

Of course, part of the reason we don't' think about telegraphs is that we don't use them. They've fallen away.

In the late 19th and early 20th Century they were a huge part of the culture in some ways, conveying good and bad news.  They were fairly institutionalized in fashion. Messages went from one telegraph office to another, with the sender usually paying a charged based upon the number of words in a telegram.  On the receiving office, while in some instances a person took the telegram at the telegraph office, usually a runner employed by the telegraph office delivered the message to the address of the recipient.

Western Union telegram delivery personnel, 1943.  Note the man on the right is wearing leggings, something we typically associate with soldiers of that era but which were also worn by people to who rode horses, motorcycles or bicycles.  That individual was probably a bicycle deliveryman for the Western Union telegraph company.

 

By the 20th Century, people were using telegrams to send fairly routine, but important, communications.  Often just to let family know where they were and that they were well.

Marine drafting telegram to his parents, early 1940s.  This Marine had just returned from duty in Cuba.  The telegraph is being sent from a booth owned by the Postal Telegraph Company, one of the major American telegraph companies up until 1943, when it merged with the most famous of telegraph companies, Western Union.

And they were also used by "wire services" to convey important new, about which we will have a subsequent post.

United Press dispatch of a news item to its subscribing news services.

 And they also conveyed tragic news, often officially.

Woman and child receive news of serviceman's death in this war time poster. The U.S. Army and the British Army in fact gave notice to families of soldiers who were killed, wounded or captured in this fashion during World War One and World War Two.

Now, you couldn't send a telegram even for sport.

And no wonder.  Telegrams have become a victim of other forms of rapid communication.  The ended in the United Kingdom, which was really responsible for their creation, in 1982.  Western Union in the US managed to carry on until 2006, which is frankly really amazing.  In India, which had less advanced communications, they carried on until 2013.  By they're gone now.  In an age of Internet communication, texts, and mass use of cell phones, they have no place.  

But they had been revolutionary.

Joe Medicine Crow

Joe Medicine Crow, the last Crow War Chief, has died at age 102.

Medicine Crow was the last person to have accomplished the four requirements necessary to be a Crow War Chief, those being touching an enemy without killing him, taking an enemy's weapon, leading a successful war party and stealing an enemy's horse, as a soldier during World War Two.  On the last item, he actually stole 50 horses from an SS unit in a singular instance, a remarkable achievement in a war as late as World War Two.

Medicine Crow, who had obtained a bachelors degree and a masters degree prior to World War Two, was also the last living person to have received oral history of the Battle of Little Big Horn from those who fought in it.  World War Two interrupted his efforts to obtain a doctorate degree.  With him dies the last direct living link to the most well known battle of the Indian Wars.

And in Wyoming, on this day, in 1916.

Today In Wyoming's History: April 4

1916  Bill Carlisle robs passengers on the UP's Overland Limited as it traveled between Laramie and Cheyenne.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916   Joseph Fallis of Rock Springs granted a patent for a article carrier.

The Punitive Expedition: The Wyoming Tribune, April 4, 1916

We're looking at, I think, a morning newspaper now.  The Wyoming newspaper archive lacked the public domain copy Casper evening paper I was posting for 1916, but it will be back tomorrow night.

The interesting thing here is that quite a few Wyoming papers for this date, including a Casper morning paper, do not have Punitive Expedition entries for this date.  I was curious of the story was just off the front page, but they're also smaller papers that may have simply been running all local news.

Also of interest is the cartoon on the price of gasoline.  Obviously it must have been of real concern to make the front page, but it's something we don't think much about, in the context of 1916, now.  That gasoline would be expensive in the context of a world war is not surprising.

The Big Picture: Whale hunt off Wakayama

Japanese whale hunt print, Edo period.

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Sweetwater County Courthouse, Green River, Wyoming...

Courthouses of the West: Sweetwater County Courthouse, Green River, Wyoming...:

The Punitive Expedtion. Casper Daily Press for April 3, 1916

Seeing what's coming doesn't make it much easier when it arrives.

I've had a couple of experiences in recent weeks of having read the tea leaves really correctly on big issues, only to see them arrive as I said they would, and then come as surprises to most when they do.

Most folks don't analyze stuff all the time, but that's a primary aspect of being a lawyer.  More frustrating that that, a lot of people who do analyze things analyze the with the goal of trying to boost a view they have, rather than find out the truth of a thing.

The recent stories on the demise of coal have had that frustrating nature.  Folks who stop in here are aware that I've been saying coal was on the ropes for months and months.  I've known that for years, indeed now decades.  It wasn't going to be able to keep on keeping on.  The truth of that was there.

Part of that is that, as noted, I try to analyze things for what they are, not for what I hope them to be, and no other conclusion seemed possible to reach.  I think, quite frankly, that a lot of people in government and industry had reached the same conclusion, and I know that at least some major energy players did.  When an outfit like British Petroleum dumped coal a couple of decades ago they were betting on it being a bad bet.  And just because an outfit like Peabody stayed in it doesn't mean that they were convinced .  R. T. Frazier, the successful saddle maker in Pueblo Colorado of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries reportedly told everyone that the thought the age of the horse was over, but that didn't mean that he quit making saddles.

I should note that I have personal experience with this.  I've posted it elsewhere but when I was a geology student my focus was on coal. That was because the petroleum industry fell into what must be regarded as an economic depression and there was hope still for coal.  I was about the only one focusing on it.  No matter, in the downturn of the 80s coal was hit too and some mines were closed.  No jobs.  I spent a year looking for work unsuccessfully and then headed back to school.  So, this is familiar to me personally.

And partially for that reason, I'm pretty sure I know what is going on.

In today's local Tribune a series has started that will focus on the plight of the coal industry. Good for the paper, but quite frankly this is like reporting on the crash after the cars have collided.  Still that should be done.

One thing that should not be done, however, is to give false hopes to people.  The Tribune interviewed all of those running for the open U.S. Congress seat, and that's what motivated this post.

Politicians shouldn't offer false hopes.  Indeed, doing that is the very thing that has caused the rebellion in the GOP and the Democratic Party this year leading two radical candidates to do so well, so far.  Feeding into the hopes of a desperate group of people and a desperate state shouldn't be done, if it can't produce results.   When that blows up, it's a disaster.

Let's be honest.  Everyone who speaks of regulations being the cause of this is flat out wrong.  It isn't.  Coal was able to work around the regulations.

Everyone who is holding out hope for "clean coal technology" to reverse this is pinning their hopes on a long shot.  It's worth looking into, and developing, but it is a long shot.

Everyone who states that climate change isn't real and shouldn't impact coal is swimming against a global tide.  It doesn't matter if it is real or not in this context.  The majority of people in the industrial world feel that way and what Wyomingites feel is really irrelevant given our numbers.  Only in the United States and Australia is there a view questioning this and even if the US and Australian critics are 100% right, the movement of the world opinion in this direction can't be criticized down.  The industry, if any aspect of it is to survive, has to work around and with this.  If the Democrats, moreover, take the White House in the Fall, again, and right now it appears highly likely they will, this argument will be effectively over in the context which it presently exists, even if the GOP retains the Senate.

And finally, people need to be honest about what killed coal.  Natural gas did it.

Gas is cheaper and cleaner in every sense.  It has a market advantage on coal and that's the simple fact of it.  Added to that, a movement towards "green" energy has cut into coal as well.  If nuclear power revived, which it really should as it is efficient and the greenest of them all, the death of coal would become all the more rapid.

When a person states things like this, they're stating the truth.  It's not gloating over the demise of coal to note the reality of what's happening, and it doesn't lessen the human tragedy of the lost jobs to note the truth. Indeed, it's kinder than spinning fantasies about the revival of coal which will not be happening.

So what do our candidates say.  Well, only the Democratic candid date, Ryan Greene, who actually works in the industry, is facing it by looking square into it with open eyes.  According to today's Casper Star Tribune, he stated:

Regulations are a problem but the bigger issue is the lack of demand, he said. To address that, Greene said he will work to curb coal imports from other countries, support federal research into clean coal technologies and support expanding extraction of Wyoming’s lithium deposits to keep mining jobs in the state.

Green believes global climate change is occurring.

The regulations have “been a long time coming,” he said. “This hasn’t just happened overnight. But if we send a talker to Congress, all we’re going to get is more talk. And talk is cheap.”

Talk is cheap, but Greene gets high marks here for facing this honestly with unpopular views.  He has almost no chance of winning, and being pessimistic about coal isn't going to help him, but at least he didn't shy away from unpopular views.

In contrast, Liz Cheney spoke only of regulations and rolling them back.  Well, you can't roll back the power plants converted to gas or the new ones built only for gas.

Tim Stubson, the other GOP candidate who stands a good chance of winning, spoke of clean coal technologies, but Stubson was much more hesitant in his views. He didn't really promise anything, and he probably shouldn't. That suggest to me that Stubson, a Casper lawyer, knows what I've stated here.  In order for coal to survive it has to survive in a market where it competes with gas and it becomes green. Hence his support for "clean coal" technology but hence, also, his reluctance to say he's optimistic.  And hence his lukewarm statement on regulation. Like Greene, I suspect he knows that market and social forces are against a coal revival.

None of the Wyoming candidates are going to oppose "clean coal" technology, nor should they. But we have to accept that there's a good chance they'll come to nothing.  Moreover, we have to also accept that if they do come to something, it might take so long that coal will be dead by then.  And if that technology is ever used, it'll be used somewhere else, not here, or in a future market that we're not in today.  But working on it is worthwhile.

But in doing that, we also have to accept that we're urging something that we claim we oppose. That is, here in free market Wyoming we want the government to fund research to help an industry.  That's pretty socialistic, and that makes a lot of our statements about economies out to be baloney, when it applies to directly to us.  But that's okay too, if we're honest about it.

All this begs the question if we can be angry.  And the answer here, I think, is yes. But unfortunately, that anger is going to have to be directed close to home.  When the oil crash of the 1980s came we vowed to diversify our economy so that when oil came back, as we hoped it would, and it did, we wouldn't be hurt in any future crashes.  We really didn't do that.  And with coal, if we were going to invest in its future, the time to do that was starting in the 1980s, or at least the 1990s, when the situation we are now facing was already becoming evident.  Waiting as late as we did was a mistake.

Oil will stabilize sooner or later at some price that we'll be able to live with, although it's fallen again this past week.  Natural Gas is here to stay.  Uranium is something we should be planning for now, but are ignoring.  The day might just be too late for coal.  But we didn't do much about any of these things when we could have.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Grace Lutheran Church, Casper Wyoming

Churches of the West: Grace Lutheran Church, Casper Wyoming:

The Punitive Expedition and technology. A 20th Century Expedition. Part Two. Radios and Telegraph

 Army Signal Corps recruiting poster for World War One depicting telegraphers.  This same equipment was in use in 1916.

Recently we published a long entry entitled "The Punitive Expedition and technology. A 20th Century Expedition" that dealt with motor vehicles, small arms, aircraft and artillery, making the point that the expedition was a modern military campaign not something that was the last adventure of the Frontier Army.  Here we one on a singular topic.  

Here we look at Communications.  Radios and telegraphs, that is.

I'll confess that this is an item I started on, thinking I knew quite a bit about it, but I had to go back and redo it.  I knew a lot less than I thought I did.  And oddly its is quite related to a topic we just posted, More Medieval than Modern?, which itself was an amplification of Are Robert J. Gordon and George F. Will reading my blog?  The reason for this is that both of those posts related to the rapid expansion of technology in the late 19th and early 20th Century, and this is certainly an example of that.   Although this story really starts in the first half of the 19th Century.  It starts with the telegraph.

I've dealt with communications quite a bit here, but I've never dealt with telegraphs specifically.  It's quite an omission.  And the omission of it, I think, related to how little they are used today. Indeed, they're a dead technology, for all practical purposes. But they played  a huge revolutionary role for nearly a century after their invention and provide an example of a technology that expanded amazingly quickly, and into every area of society. We will have to deal with most of that in some other posts, but the extent to which it is true cannot be denied.

Wire telegraphs (the first "telegraphs" were semaphore signaling towers) were invented in the 1830s.  The technology exploded almost immediately and by the 1850s they were a hugely important technology everywhere where there was civilization.

Prior to the telegraph, no news of any kind traveled any faster than a horse or ship, for all practical purposes.  After telegraph wires were strung up, however, news  could be transmitted nearly instantly.  They were strung everywhere in the inhabited areas of North America and everywhere in Europe.  New York and Washington D.C. were connected by telegraph in 1846.  Western Union was formed in 1856.  The Transatlantic Telegraph line, a submarine line, was laid down in 1858, two years before the American Civil War.  In twenty years the technology had gone from non existent to shrinking the globe.

Not surprisingly, telegraph became militarily important quickly  By the American Civil War it was being used by armies to transmit information whenever it could be used, and conversely telegraph lines were targets for enemy raids.  This was known even on the Frontier where the Army spent a lot of time guarding telegraph stations and lines, and rebuilding them as Indians tore them down and burned the poles.  Guarding the transcontinental telegraph line was just a much a role of troops stationed along the Oregon Trail as guarding the trail was.

Army Telegraph Corps, Civil War.

The U.S. Army introduced the Military Telegraph Corps to its organization in 1861.  A unique military unit, it employed civilian operators and was somewhat outside of the command structure of the Army.  It's role was a dangerous one as it strung wires and posted poles in front line conditions with special equipment, the first time that the US Army had taken on what would become a familiar wire stringing role for soldiers in later years.

The end of the Civil War meant the end of the Telegraph Corps, but ultimately the telegraph would come into the Signal Corps.  The significance of the telegraph was simply too large to be lost.  Prior to the telegraph in military application, and indeed well after it, the news from the front, including the news of enemy troops and movements, came no faster than a man or horse could carry it.  And often that meant it didn't come at all, as for example in the famous case of J.E.B. Stuart's separation from Robert E. Lee prior to Gettysburg, a separation that left Lee blind in the field and which may have ultimately resulted in the Confederate loss in that battle.  Prior to the telegraph, all such scouting news, a prime role of the cavalry that was equally as important as any combat role it had, had to come via dispatch rider.  The telegraph offered new possibilities.

 Army telegrapher, Civil War.

Not new possibilities, however, that were of much use in the field during the Indian Wars, where distances were simply too vast.  Civilian telegraphs were used when available, of course, and by the 1890s they were playing an important role of getting news from town to town, and out of the state.  The military importance of telegraphs at that point may perhaps best be demonstrated by the actions of both sides in the private Johnson County War in tearing telegraph lines down to keep news of what was going on from getting out.  By 1916 the Army had the ability to set up its own lines in the field, which is not surprising.

Prior to 1916, however, a new technology had come on, that being the radio.  Radio, however, didn't come on the way we think.  Now we think of radio in the context of local AM/FM radio broadcasts. Radio quickly developed to allow for voice transmissions, but prior to that, radio really developed for "Wireless Telegraph", or what was later called radio telegraphy.

Telegraphs, that is wire telegraphs, relied upon Morse Code to relay their messages. For technical reasons I'll omit, early radio worked better in that fashion than in voice transmission.  While I'll omit the discussion of that, it's fairly obvious that this would be the case.  Transmitting signals is, by its nature, easier than transmitting voice.  Experiments with this sort of telegraphy go back into the early 19th Century, but it was not until Marconi's pioneering work with the radio that it became practical. It began to expand thereafter.

 Signal Corps telegraphers, 1904, using a very early truck in the field that has been adapted for this support role.

The Army appreciated the meaning of the new technology almost immediately.  By 1906 the Army had incorporated pack radio telegraph and wagon radio telegraph units into its structure. They used quite of bit in the way of resource to operated. According to the manual "The wagon wireless section is normally composed of 18 mounted men, the wagoner and engineer, who ride on the wagon, and one wagon wireless set, drawn by 4 mules."  The mule borne pack set "section normally composed of 10 mounted men and 4 pack mules."

Photograph of a Wireless Telegraph pack set, March 24, 1916.  Mobile by equine transportation, obviously, but not so mobile that it could keep up with the cavalry.

Starting in 1914, the Army began to experiment more extensively with trucks in place of wagons, although the Army was already using trucks in a support role for conventional telegraph, uniting two new technologies in hopes of making both more efficient. These were mobile units entitled the 1914 Radio Tractor, although oddly the trucks that existed in the Army with that designated were not standardized.  I.e, they were not one pattern.  Trucks were built by White, FWD and Thomas B. Jeffrey Company.

1914 Radio Tractor No. 3, built on a White Chassis.

They all carried the same radio, however, a SCR-50, 2 kilowatt spark transmitter with a crystal or vacuum tube detector receiver that operated at 0.15-0.50 Megahertz.

 1914 Radio Tractor No. 2, built on a Thomas B. Jeffrey or FWD four wheel drive (yes, 4x4) chassis.

All of this, that is the pack units and the radio tractor units, went into Mexico with Pershing.

The story of their use, however, is short as the number of radios used, in practical terms, by the U.S. Army in the Punitive Expedition was limited and their impact quite small.  Pack radios were not sufficiently small that cavalry units could carry them and the special radio units simply cold not keep up with the cavalry..  Therefore, those radios, and indeed any radio could not keep up with the cavalry and were of little immediate field use.  The Army did set up two mobile receiver units, one at Pershing's headquarters in Mexico and another at Columbus, which after the raid because a substantial support base for the expedition, but atmospheric conditions made their use spotty.

Indeed, this pioneering effort turned out to be somewhat like that for aircraft.  The mere fact that the Army had radio trucks and radios showed that it new radios were coming on, but they were weren't a success in field operations.  The trucks were too primitive, like most of the trucks used in the expedition, and the radio sets were frequently defeated by the high altitude atmospheric conditions in Mexico in which they were expected to operate.  Nonetheless the Army's Signal Corp ultimately set up nineteen radio stations during the campaign.  They may not have worked well, but they worked well enough that the effort wasn't abandoned.

 World War One Signal Corps poster emphasizing the new technology of radio over the older ones of telegraph and telephone.

As a result of radio's limited utility, the Army Signal Corps constructed miles of telegraph lines in Mexico to support the expedition.  677 miles of telegraph line were set up during operations, running lines as far forward as could be done.  So the "old", if it could be considered that, technology remained important.  But even it wasn't that old. 

Fairly obviously, given the situation, much of the communications during the campaign truly were of the old fashioned variety, word of mouth by dispatch personnel. That would be true, however, all the way through World War One, even though the new technologies were increasingly applied..  It wasn't really until the 1920s that effective field radios started to some into use.  It was really World War Two where they had a real impact, showing again the blinding pace of technological change in the mid 20th Century.  For the Punitive Expedition, as with aircraft, what was introduced showed what clearly would be in terms of communications.  Not what was there yet.

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Related Posts:

The Punitive Expedition and technology. A 20th Century Expedition

Today In Wyoming's History: April 1

Today In Wyoming's History: April 1:

2016  Governor Mead announced the formation of centers to assist displaced mineral industry workers light of the layoffs by Arch Coal and Peabody Coal Company, the two largest coal producers in the United States.  The layoffs came on top of a nearly continual stream of smaller energy sector layoffs over the past several months.  The formation of centers to assist the displaced workers is extraordinary, bringing to mind no other recent examples of anything similar.

The Best Post of the Week of March 27, 2016

The Punitive Expedition and technology. A 20th Century Expedition.

The Punitive Expedition and technology. A 20th Century Expedition. Part Two. Radios and Telegraph

The Punitive Expedition: Sunday State Leader. April 2, 1916

The Punitive Expedition: The Battle of Agua Caliente. April 1, 1916

 Agua Caliente in better times.  The name of the town means "Hot Water".

At 13:15 the 10th Cavalry encountered 150 Villistas under General Beltran at the town of Agua Caliente.  The ensuing battle resulted in a true cavalry charge of Mexican positions.  Mexican forces broke under the charge which resulted in no losses to the Americans.

The unit thereafter pursued retreating Villistas for the next several days. As the unit advanced it ran short of provisions due to being so isolated.  The unit became partially provisioned with the assistance of Constitutionalist officers and through the efforts of their commanding officer, who wrote a personal check to a mining company in exchange for $1,100.00, which was used to purchase provisions.

Weary

We ran this as a Mid Week At Work item recently:

Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week at Work: Resting on the march, 1916:

Weary U.S. soldiers in Mexico, 1916.

This photograph, was taken on this day in 1916.  Note how rough these soldiers look after several weeks in the field.

Infantry in this era walked.  They walked everywhere.  These guys walked into Mexico, probably 400 miles or so, and then walked the same distance back out.

Coal layoffs and Northeast Wyoming

Peabody Coal Company, the world's largest coal producer, and Arch Coal have announced layoffs in the Gillette area which amount to a combined 450 jobs lost.  And the losses won't stop there.  With that many jobs lost the local economy in Campbell County will be undoubtedly impacted.  Additionally, a loss of that many jobs clearly indicates big changes in operations at the mines themselves, and the energy infrastructure in Campbell County, which is what the economy of the county is based on, will be hit.  It's unlikely, therefore that the job losses will stop there.

This is a rim news for the area economy.  And for the state.  School funding is principally based on the coal severance tax.  Without ongoing major coal production, the schools are in big trouble.

Moreover, this may reflect such a major shift in the economics of coal that there may never be a return to its former position in the economy, either nationally or locally.  Wyomingites have been quick, in some quarters, to blame regulation and the current Administration for coal's demise.  One of the interviewed miners blamed the event on regulation and expressed the thought that things wold turn around under a new Presidential administration.  Our Superintendent of Public Instruction mentioned budget problems, in a recent op-ed, as being due to "the war on coal".  But people shouldn't fool themselves.  This likely represents a shift so deep in the economics and culture of coal that current events show an existential change much deeper than merely a current White House discontent with it.  

Indeed, even twenty years ago I was told by an energy company executive that "coal is dead".  I was surprised by his view at the time, but he was quite definite in his views.  But he was expressing an energy sector long term view, at that time, that coal wouldn't survive a switch to other forms of power generation.  Ironically natural gas, of which North America has a vast abundance, has really eaten into the coal market and that's not going to change.  Power plants take years to build and years to permit.  Coal fired plants are being built, they're being retired.  This not only won't change overnight, it won't change at all.  The coal industry itself pinned its hopes on the Chinese market, which uses a lot of coal, but China also has a lot of coal.  The Chinese economy is in the doldrums right now, and that will likely change, but when it does the question is whether China will enter an economic period mirroring Japan's long endured slow economy, or change to a more growth oriented but volatile economy like North America's and Europe's.  And a bigger question is whether China, which is under pressure from much of the rest of the world on emissions, will itself move away from coal.  It hasn't so far, but there's no guaranty that it will not.  Coal, to the extent it retains any popularity (and that's little outside of the coal producing states), is popular only in the US and China.  Indeed, in some areas of the US it is now so unpopular that efforts to ship coal by sea to China were opposed in Pacific maritime states, something that had not been worked out at the time the local coal producers went into this slump.

So chances are high that this is a sea change, not a downturn.  And if it is, it's one that has huge implications for the state.  The state didn't deal with them in the last Legislature, or even really discuss dealing with them. By the next one it will have no choice.

Friday Farming; Lex Anteinternet: Moving Cattle.

Lex Anteinternet: Friday Farming: Moving Cattle.

 

A rerun from several years back on this occasion, in keeping with our numerous recent posts from 1916.  

Farm girl, moving cattle, 1916.

The Punitive Expedition: The 10th Cavalry becomes isolated. March 31, 2016

A blizzard isolates the 10th Cavalry from the rest of the U.S. command.

Anyone who has been around here the past few days, with all the highways closed, could certainly understand how this could occur a century ago, although it would strike many as odd that we would read this in regards to Mexico.  Still, this was in March, and much of the expedition took place in mountainous terrain that was fairly high altitude.  Contemporary photographs often depict soldiers wearing M1911 sweaters early in the campaign, or even fairly heavy coats, providing silent testimony to how cold the weather generally was early on.  A blizzard in the Mexican high country would not have been hugely abnormal for late March.

Blog Mirror: Long distance logistics: The Mexican Expedition

Long distance logistics: The Mexican Expedition 

During the second decade of the 20th century, while most Americans were watching the events in Europe with trepidation, a fire was burning much closer to their homes. A period of almost perpetual revolution and instability, starting in 1913, was wracking the United States' southern neighbor. Many U.S. citizens in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico feared that the violence in Mexico would spill over the border. Tension remained extremely high between the United States and Mexico throughout 1913 and 1914.. .

The Punitive Expedtion: The Casper Daily Press, March 30, 1916

Confessions of a Writer of Westerns: Who Do I Like To Read?

Confessions of a Writer of Westerns: Who Do I Like To Read?: Favorite Author Someone asked me this week who my favorite authors were. Not a tough question, but I stumbled around a bit before comin...

More Medieval than Modern?

 Heavily idealized depiction of farm family, circa 1874.

A couple of days ago I posted this item:

Lex Anteinternet: Are Robert J. Gordon and George F. Will reading my...: Okay, up until this morning I'd never heard of Robert J. Gordon.  I now know that he's a Professor of Social Sciences at Northweste...

This quote is contained with in it:

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

That's a very thought provoking statement.  More medieval than modern. . . in 1870.

Keep in mind that by 1870, we already had trains and heavy industry.  We'd fought the Civil War.  The Industrial Revolution was well on its way.  Newspapers and telegraphs spread the daily news.

Are Will and Gordon right? I'm not saying they are or are not.  Rather, it's an interesting question. What do you think?

Lex Anteinternet: Waiting for the Storm

 The building this morning, I could hardly get here this morning.

Yesterday, I was waiting, and posted the same:

Lex Anteinternet: Waiting for the Storm: We're supposed to be getting a huge storm today and tomorrow. I sure hope so. These photographs were taken on March 20 in the foothi...

Indeed, in a very rare action for me, the day before yesterday I called a court across the state to see if I could appear by video link in a hearing, if I needed to.  They said I could.  Opposing counsel, however, graciously suggested that perhaps we could just move the hearing a couple of weeks and the court agreed.

Yesterday I kept thinking I'd been whining.  I was supposed to leave at about 6:00 am this morning, but even by mid evening there was no snow.  A busted weather report, I thought.

Then is started raining and the neighborhood turned to ice.

This morning there's well over a foot of snow.

I80, rather than going over South Pass, which had been suggested as an alternative route, is closed.

20/26 between Moneta and Waltman, going the regular route, is closed.

South Pass is closed.

And the snow is coming down hard.

Mid Week At Work: The automobile industry, 1916

The Punitive Expedtion: The Casper Daily Press, March 29, 1916

I think one of the most interesting items in this edition was the addition of extra train service, showing how extensive it really was at the time.