Youth organizations. Their Rise and (near) Fall, or is that a myth? And, did you join?

Granted, we may now have the single most confusing title for an entry on this site, but then this will be a scrambled and confusing thread. So there.

 Boy Scouts writing home from camp, Hunter's Island, New York.  The one guy behind them looks so old that he could have served in the Mexican War.

Recently, I posted this item:

Lex Anteinternet: Military preparedness and World War One. Training ...:  Bayonet Drill. At one time the concept of boys and girls "going to camp" was so common that it was kind of a running joke....

As I noted in that post, although it wasn't the main point of the post, at one time Scouting was huge.  Scouting, that is, in the Boy Scouts sense. Girl Scouts, or Girl Guides, too, although we'll get to those in a moment..

And not just the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts (Guides), but also a host of other similar uniformed, and non uniformed youth organizations, most of which came in during the very late 19th to mid 20th Centuries and most of which, we're told (but is it true?) are now in decline.

Well, we track trends and experiences where.  Let's look at this.  It's an interesting topic.

Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts

And let's start with the Scouts.

 A retired Lord Baden-Powell, dressed in a Scout uniform, with King George,

The Scouts originated due to Lieutenant General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, OM GCMG GCVO.  Powell was a never married British Army officer who rose to prominence in the British Army during the Second Matabele War.  In that war, as a cavalryman, he lead mounted reconnaissance operations and met American adventurer Frederick Russell Burnham DSO.  Burnham was, as noted, from the United States but he fit into a group of Americans who found the concept of adventure in the expanding British Empire to be a huge lure, so after an early life of adventure if the United States he decamped to Africa, ended up in the  British forces there, and ultimately rose to high rank in the British Army, a fairly unusual career.

Now, during that time Burnham met Baden-Powell and taught him a lot about what he'd learned about out back life to Baden-Powell, which the latter then employed in Africa.  It made a deep impression on the British cavalryman who soon came to believe, and deplore the lack of manly outdoor skills possessed by British youth.

The UK was a heavily urbanized country by that time, but we can't help but note that it was surely a bit more agricultural then, as compared to now.  Nonetheless, Baden-Powell was likely observing a real phenomenon.  British youth probably was pretty short on woodcraft and outdoor skills, and hence the Boy Scouts came into being as a means of introducing them to that.  It took off like wildfire, being introduced in the UK in 1908 and crossing the Atlantic in to the United States (1910) and Canada (1909).  As in the UK, there was a deep concern in the US that the country was becoming rapidly urbanized and that, as a result, American youth were loosing these skills.

 Baden Powell late in life.

It was really big.  Nearly any established church had a Boy Scout and Girl Scout "Troop", which made sense as originally Scouting emphasized what was (and is, if used correctly) "muscular Christianity".  That is, it was an organization that not only sought to introduce children to the outdoor life and teach them outdoor skills, but which was further premised on the concept that a vigorous outdoor life complimented the vigorous Christian life, although not in a completely overt and stated fashion.  An early version of the Boy Scout handbook proclaimed:

The Boy Scout Movement has become almost universal, and wherever organized its leaders are glad, as we are, to acknowledge the debt we all owe to Lieut.-Gen. Sir Robert S. S. Baden-Powell, who has done so much to make the movement of interest to boys of all nations.

* * *

In these pages and throughout our organization we have made it obligatory upon our scouts that they cultivate courage, loyalty, patriotism, brotherliness, self-control, courtesy, kindness to animals, usefulness, cheerfulness, cleanliness, thrift, purity and honor. No one can doubt that with such training added to his native gifts, the American boy will in the near future, as a man, be an efficient leader in the paths of civilization and peace.

It has been deemed wise to publish all material especially for the aid of scout masters in a separate volume to be known as "The Scout Masters' Manual."

We send out our "Official Handbook," therefore, with the earnest wish that many boys may find in it new methods for the proper use of their leisure time and fresh inspiration in their efforts to make their hours of recreation contribute to strong, noble manhood in the days to come.

The manual, when defining scouting, specifically related it to war (that is, acting as a scout in military service), and noted in that context:

Wherever there have been heroes, there have been scouts, and to be a scout means to be prepared to do the right thing at the right moment, no matter what the consequences may be.

The way for achievement in big things is the preparing of one's self for doing the big things--by going into training and doing the little things well. It was this characteristic of Livingstone, the great explorer, that made him what he was, and that has marked the career of all good scouts.

Lord Baden Powell himself stated on numerous occasions how he conceived of the movement as a Christian movement. In 1917 he declared in 1917 that:  "Scouting is nothing less than applied Christianity" in his book Scouting & Christianity.  Upon the foundation of the movement he had stated:

..We aim for the practice of Christianity in their everyday life and dealings, and not mearly the profession of theology on Sundays.... The co-operation of tiny sea insects has brought about the formation of coral islands. No enterprise is too big where there is goodwill and co-operation carrying it out. Every day we are turning away boys anxious to join the Movement, because we have no men or women to take them in hand. There is a vast reserve of loyal patriotism and Christian spirit lying dormant in our nation today, mainly because it sees no direct opportunity for expressing itself. Here in this joyous brotherhood there is a vast opportunity open to all in a happy work that shows the results under your hands and a work that is worth while because it gives every man his chance of service for his fellow-men and for God

A modern (there's no such thing  as "post modern, so get over that) might look at this in our current era with a degree of skepticism.  That is, it's unlikely that scouts of the very recently closed Frontier Era were universally "prepared to do the right thing".   That might be true, depending upon how a person looked at it,   Prepared to do the morally virtuous thing probably doesn't quite fit that definition in our view today, but at the time the recently closed Frontier Era wasn't looked at quite the same way.

 Boy Scout, 1918.  This particular scout is in a troop sponsored by the American Red Cross.

Anyhow, Scouting took off like wildfire and became huge in no time. We've seen photographs of early scouts put up here in the context of the Great War and we could do the same with World War Two quite easily.  I don't know what percentage of American boys joined the Boy Scouts, or its companions the Girl Scouts and the Camp Fire Girls but it was pretty big.

 Girl Scouts in camp, 1912.  These girls are dressed in a completely inappropriate fashion for what they are doing.

Oh, I keep mentioning the Girl Scouts, what was up with them?

Well, not long after the foundation of the Boy Scouts the Girl Guides, which became the Girl Scouts in most places, was founded.  Like the Boy Scouts, it focused on outdoorsy stuff but naturally it didn't focus on manly virtues.  Having said that, it's interesting in that it took a principal focus of scouting, the outdoor life, and took a "us too" approach to it in regards to girls.  

Princess Mary, in 1922, on the occasion of her nuptials, with the Girl Guides.

I know a lot less about the Girl Guides or the Girl Scouts than I do about the Boy Scouts simply because I've never been exposed to them, really, except annually during their famous cookie sales. But fairly clearly, they leaned heavily on the Boy Scouts in principal ways, but not in every way.  The founder, who hailed from Scotland, originally focused on female roles in farm families, but upon the arrival of World War One, they did drill, like Boy Scouts, a very military focus.

 Girl Scout garden during the big gardening push of World War One.  While the Girl Scouts also had an outdoor focus, many of its original aims also aimed at traditional female roles.

An odd thing about the Girl Scouts, however, is that it had a rival organization nearly immediately, or at least there were two expressions of the movement almost immediately.  In 1910, the United States, men who had boys in the Boy Scouts felt the need for a companion organization for girls and formed the Camp Fire Girls.  The organization attempted a merger with the Girl Scouts in 1912 but it was rejected by the organization as it was the bigger of the two.

 Camp Fire Girls in 1917.  These girls are all dressed in Indian fashion showing a then current fascination with Indian Tribes in an idealized fashion.

Joining these youth organizations wasn't universal, however, in spite of what some might like to think.  I know, for example, my father, born in 1929, was never  a Boy Scout and I don't think his younger brother ever was either.  My mother, however, was a Girl Guide in Quebec. 

The Scouts, both Girl and Boy, had competition right from the onset.  Sure proof that Lord Baden Powell had tapped into something is provided by the fact that copycat organizations sprung up right away.  Most of these  organizations rose and fell pretty quickly, and most of them were pretty much copies of the Scouts but without the large organization backing it up and the all that went with it. So its' not too surprising that they didn't last all that long.  Some were a little more militaristic than the Scouts, particularly early on, and emphasized things like shooting, although that was an aspect of the Scouts as well.  I won't, therefore, dwell much with them.  I will note, however, that oddly enough the Boy Scouts itself competed a bit against it self in this area when, in 1912, it organized the Sea Scouts, a youth organization that was focused on the sea and seafaring skills, but which very clearly modeled itself on the Navy in uniform and early appearance, showing how close to being a quasi private military training organization the Scouts really were.

Taking this forward the Scouts remained really strong for a really long time.  I don't know what percentage of American youth belonged to the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, etc., but it seems to have been a fairly large percentage.  As recently as the 1950s it seems to me that there was sort of an assumption that boys and girls became Scouts.  Even as recently as the 1970s quite a few were, although I was only a Boy Scout myself for a few months (so few that I usually say I was never a Scout, too few to really count).

 Boy Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, and the United States Forest Service in a joint poster commemorating the 50th anniversary of the youth organizations.  As an aside, this poster demonstrates the change in Boy Scout headgear as, by this time, the Boy Scouts had generally gone to garrison caps, a pretty worthless type of hat for outdoor wear but which had come into U.S. use during World War One and which had increased in use during World War Two.  Some time in the 1970s the Boy Scouts would introduce the equally worthless beret.

Moreover, only one of my close friends was a Scout. And that's remarkable given that of my close friends at least two had fathers who had been very involved in Scouting and all of us were very outdoorsy.  The one of my friends, moreover, who was very involved in Scouting was a Mormon and the LDS faith had a very close relationship with Scouting, fielding their own troops.

Indeed, that latter fact is remarkable as I've heard that in the 1930s and 1940s all the local churches had their own troops. This is no longer true at all.  The one I was very briefly in met in a church, but it had no obvious connection with it.  I've heard that our local Parish still retains a connection with a Boy Scout Troops, but I've never seen any evidence of that (perhaps its really more closely associated with the Parish's school).   Anyhow, I don't see much evidence of a Boy Scout Troop at church.

This would suggest that whatever has been going on with Scouting, at least in our local area, there's been a decline in youth involvement since at least the 1970s, which would be before any of the currently cited reasons for such a decline set in.

That there has been very much a decline in recent years seems very well established by statistics.  And some have analyzed it and claimed a variety of reasons for it.

If I had a more solid grasp on that, I'd take a look at more closely, but I don't.  The loss of closely connected Christian values is one cited source as the organization has undergone an assault from the "tolerance means acceptance" brigade and its Christian message has definitely occurred.  The concept that there must be no place whatsoever where men can gather in an official setting where women can't be let in has been cited as well, and I think there's a little to that.  The Boy Scouts opened up to girls some time ago and frankly a Boy Scout organization that's co-ed, no matter how little its co-ed, isn't going to quite be focusing on "manly virtues" in the same way, but rather will inevitably do it in a washed out meaningless fashion.  The Girl Scouts is also open to boys, but the nature of boys will largely preclude them from joining it very much anyhow.

Having said all of that, at least by way of my personal observation, I"m not so sure Scouting is in as much trouble as some think.    Going back to my own friends, one of my lifelong friends, whom I was in the Cub Scouts with, has two sons who will make Eagle Scout.  Neither of us were Boy Scouts.  Another friend of mine has a son who will make Eagle Scout.  He was never a Boy Scout.  One of my co-workers had two sons stop by here selling Boy Scout popcorn this year (apparently only one was supposed to).  So, at least by way of observation, Boy Scouts around here appear to be rebounding.

As we've seen from above, the early Boy Scouts recalled military scouting pretty strongly. Even the Girl Scouts did to a degree.  But they weren't the only youth organizations at the start of the 20th Century that looked to the military for inspiration.  Let's take a look at them.

Cadets

Recently on this site we discussed JrROTC, which like Scouting, is now just over 100 years old.  Its about a decade younger than Scouting, having gotten rolling with World War One.  As I just posted on this, and I don't want to repeat what I already wrote there, I'm going to quote a fair amount from that recent entry here, which is the one that inspired this post.

The Great War sparked a huge national movement towards preparedness, and not just in the Boy Scout motto "Always Be Prepared" vein.  Republican elements urged the US to enter the war early on and when the US did not, those who backed entry into the war sponsored military training camps for young men.  Men in their 20s and 30s, that is.  These camps were staffed by Regular Officers of the U.S. Army and sought to train men to serve as Army officers should the need arise, which it was suspected that it might.  The most famous of these was at Plattsburg, New York, but it wasn't the only one by any means.  And they weren't limited to men.  Prior to the country's entry into the war there were also camps for women, teaching them field craft and some military skills, such as the use of semaphore flags, skills that would prove to be more militaristic than they'd actually need for service in the Great War given the roles they were given.

 

 Playing the dread, and stupid, mumbly peg knife game.  Note the hat cords on their M1911 Campaign hats.  I wish this was in color so we could get the branch designation.

And by 1916, the Preparedness Movement, having seen the war in Europe spread to Asia and having seen a semi war break out along the border with Mexico, spread to teenage boys.

The Reserve Officer Training Corps was established in 1916 under the National Defense Act of 1916.  With two expressions, ROTC and JrROTC it covered young men in their high school and college ages.  ROTC, the college aged version, sought to train college men to serve as officers should the need arise.  JrROTC, in contrast, sought to teach high school aged boys basic military skills that would give them a jump in serving as enlisted men in the Army, should that need arise.

 July.  Its hot.

The story of JrROTC has remained a confused one, and somewhat under addressed, for years.  One thing about it is that the 1916 start of it in some ways picked up what was already going on.  In some schools, including the one I graduated from in 1981, an organization like JrROTC was already in place.  You can find, for example, photographs of Natrona County High School boys drilling in uniform in 1915, a year prior to the creation of JrROTC, and the school now boast the oldest surviving JrROTC unit in the United States.  I note that here as I don't think the kids in these photographs are in JrROTC (some might have been, or would soon be), but rather a military organization run by the State of New York that was really darned close to it.  Indeed New York's Military Commission was given broad authority to organize the military instruction of youth during its brief existence (it ceased to exist in 1921).  It basically ran what was JrROTC in New York, which was so extensive that its authority extended to young men who were employed outside of schools, ie., who had dropped out.  In Wyoming JrROTC took off so fast that in 1916 there were state drill competitions between different JrROTC unis across the state.  It was a big deal.

Semaphore signals remained a necessary military skill at the time.

I'll pick up with another quote again in a second, but carrying on with this, what you'd expect to have been the case, that JrROTC would have died with the recoiling against the Great War that occurred in the United States after World War One, did not. Now, huge efforts to train every kid in an entire state, like that of New York did pass away. And lots of high schools that had JrROTC did in fact drop it. But it didn't disappear completely by any means.  Indeed, it didn't disappear locally and it remained a  mandatory class at our local high school.  As will be noted, it did until the 1970s.

We continue:

In our kinder and gentler age, JrROTC has undergone quite a century long evolution and so have events like this. When I was in high school JrROTC did have a summer encampment at the National Guard's Camp Guernsey.  Now, I was never in JrROTC and when I was in high school in the late 1970s and early 1980s "Rotcey" didn't have a lot of general student body respect.  The program had gone from being a mandatory one for boys, dating back to at least 1915, to an elective one in around 1976, and even those who had some concept of serving in the military were a bit leery about it.  It was classified as a physical education class, perhaps justifiably, but that meant it was filled with an odd combination of boys who knew that they were entering the service with certainty and those seeking to avoid PE.  Anyhow, the only time I ran across them in their summer camp was when I was a National Guardsmen working at the Armory who went to Guernsey about this time of year, after we'd already done our Annual Training.  We tended not to be impressed if, for no other reason, the uniform liberties they were given meant that they were sporting a lot of late Vietnam War type uniforms and berets and the like, prior to any of that being uniform gear in the Army itself.

Anyhow, over its century of existence JrROTC has undergone quite a transformation.  I guess all organizations for boys have.  In 1917, such as during the same period when these July 16, 1917 photographs were taken, it was real military training with real gear.  The boys doing bayonet drills up above aren't using weapons at all, but still, they're learning to kill in a pretty up close and personal way.  In the 1930s and 1940s I know that the local school drilled with M1917 Enfields and the rifle team, which was excellent, competed across state lines using M1903 Springfields.  In the 1970s it became an elective here but I can still recall their having a few M14 rifles for demonstration purposes and a collection of M1 Garands for the drill team.  Girls came in at some point (I'm not sure when) and now I'm told that the rifle team uses air rifles. When I was in high school the rifle team used .22 target rifles, which are at least a real rifle.  Not that air rifles don't have their virtues, they do.

Picking back up, if you had asked me in 1981, when I graduated from high school, if I would expect to see JrROTC still there nearly forty years later, I'd have said no. At the time, in the post Vietnan War wake, even here in Wyoming where the war was never unpopular, JrROTC seemed to be on its way out.  And during my time in the National Guard JrROTC certainly did nothing to endear itself to me and folks like me, as when were were down in Camp Guernsey after annual AT, and the JrROTC was there, they looked ridiculous, all decked out in Vietnam era camouflage uniforms and sporting, in some instances, berets when only the Special Forces, at that time, wore them.  But JrROTC is still there and, as with the Boy Scouts, I'm not too certain that something hasn't gone around the other way.  I've been really surprised by how many kids I somewhat know that are in it or have been recently.  It's obviously more broadly popular than it was in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

JrROTC isn't the only organization in this category, I'd note.  While the Boy Scouts started moving away from its more military features sometime after World War One (although you wouldn't have known that to look at the Sea Scouts) not only did JrROTC keep on keeping on, but it received a little competition from the Civil Air Patrol.  Here's one organization that I actually do have experience with.

 

Civil Air Patrol members, Bar Harbor Maine, during World War Two.

The Civil Air Patrol got its start during World War Two when the United States Army Air Corps enlisted the service of the nations numerous private pilots.  For the most part, during the Second World War, the CAP is associated with quite successful coastal patrols for submarines where tehy proved to be a real irritant to the Kreigsmarine.  They did a little more than that, however, including some patrols on the border with Mexico.  By the end of World War Two the CAP had located 173 German U-boats, attacked 57 of those, hitting10 and sinking two.  Sixty four CAP pilots lost their lives during the war, no doubt mostly to accidents (if not all to accidents).

Following the war, surprisingly, the Air Force retained the CAP as an "auxiliary" organization, converting its mission to search and rescue.  However, seeing a good recruiting tool at hand, it also created a cadet wing which essentially amounted to a type of Air Force JrROTC.

Now some may note that the Air Force has a JrROTC branch, as does the navy (and even, albeit a very small one, the Marine Corps). But this wasn't the case originally.  At first every JrROTC unit in the country was an Army one. The Air Force apparently saw a way to branch into this and make use of a great inducement for youth, aircraft.  CAP, not surprisingly, is very aircraft centric.

 Civil Air Patrol poster, including a CAP cadet, from 1955.

I was in the Civil Air Patrol in the 1970s and at that time it was in fact very much like Air Force JrROTC.  Drill and Ceremony was a big deal with it, for example.  We wore Air Force uniforms and normally the fatigue version of that.  We focused on aircraft, of course, and on the CAP's mission of search and rescue.  Looking back it seems like I was in it for a long time, but in reality that simply reflects the concept of time possessed by youth.  I was in it while I was in junior high, three years.

Looking back, and I can recall it only dimly, I probably thought when I joined it in 7th Grade, after learning about it at the junior high, of staying in it until I was in high school and could join JrROTC.  However, I enjoyed it in its own right.  For reasons I can't really recall, once I was of high school age I dropped my membership entirely.  Once I walked in the door of NCHS, I didn't walk back in the door of the CAP Wing's building here.  I couldn't tell you why, I just didn't.

CAP still has a youth wing but I don't know anything about it.  It appears to be focused on aircraft still, of course, but also on "leadership", something a lot of youth organizations focus on.  If it resembles the old organization much, I wouldn't know.  It's still around, but how popular it is I don't know.  I don't know of any kids that I know being in it, but here the opposite is true as compared to the Scouts.  I'm often quite surprised by how many people I'll run into that were in the CAP as teens.  I know that two of my best friends were in it when was first in it, although they dropped out (just getting there was an ordeal for one who lived out in the country) and I know adults here and there that were.  Just the other day the Byzantine Catholic priest from the Catholic Stuff You Should Know podcast mentioned having been a CAP cadet.

Down on the farm, sort of.

Going from uniformed service, I suppose, to the field, there's long been a collection of youth organizations centered around rural life, and there still are.  We should look at them as well.

The biggest and most well known of these is 4H.  4H got its start in the late 19th Century at a time in which there was a great deal of interest in expanding education to rural communities and youth.  At the same time the nation's land grant colleges and high schools were being very much focused on and, while less than 50% of all Americans graduated from high school, there was a big emphasis on improving average lives through education.  4H came about as part of that.

 Boys at the 4H Fair in Cimarron Kansas, 1939.  County fairs were done away with in Kansas during the Depression, but 4H stepped in and filled the gap nearly entirely.

As this should perhaps indicate, 4H is a lot broader of program than some might imagine who aren't familiar iwth it.  Over time it's become one of the very rare Congressionally recognized special corporations and its quasi governmental in its organization, being under the United States Department of Agriculture and administered state by state by each state's university programs. Wyoming's is administered by the University of Wyoming, which is a land grant university.

Given this origin its not too surprising that 4H has a semi rural but semi vocational focus.  Many people are familiar with its farm related activities, which have been part of it since the very beginning, but its expanded out a lot and not only retains those but many other programs as well.  Locally, for example, it has many farm related programs but it also has sporting related programs, as it does in every state, and programs that might be called domestic.  It's amazingly broad.  Given that, its trajectory doesn't follow that of other youth organizations.  4H peaked out in membership, for example, in 1974.

 4H member with lamb at 4H fair in Kansas, 1939.  Animal raising and showing remains a big part of 4H, but it's not limited to livestock by any means.

Given that fact it's prehaps no surprise that when I was quite young I was in a 4H program locally, but only for about a year or so (I guess I'm not much of a joiner).  My father never was, even though he lived in a family growing up that was extremely closely associated with agriculture.  I suspect that was because he lived in town, even though associated with agriculture, and, at that time, most 4H members were likely living by farms and ranches.  I can recall, for example, him having a distinct memory of a young woman riding a prized bull into the packing house, which would surely have been a Fair Prize bull and likely a 4H bull.

By the time I was in it, in the early 1970s, it had expanded into town but not terribly effectively in our area.  Now, all that has changed.  The shooting sports program it runs in this county dwarfs that of any other organization by far.  Rifle competitors, for example, in this county alone probably outnumber all the JrROTC competitors for the entire state, and the 4H shooters are using firearms, not air rifles.

 4H Cat Show.

I've been associated with 4H as an adult as my kids were/are both in it.  Quite a few other people I know can tell similar stories. So here too, maybe what I expected to report here I can't honestly report.  4H seems to be doing just fine.

That takes me to FFA, the Future Farmers of America.  I can't say much about the FFA as I don't know anything about it at all.  It's also a youth centered farm organization but a more recent one than most of the ones I've written about here, coming about, apparently, in 1928.  Locally it was always very strongly associated with being in a farm or ranch family and when I a kid it was exclusively associated with that.  By the time my wife was in it, and she was, a decade later this was less true and kids from the edge of town were sometimes in it. This seems to still be the case today.

 FFA members, 1942.

Which brings up a peripheral point that's a bit interesting.  In the late 1970s when I was in high school to dress, shall we say, in an agricultural fashion was something truly limited to kids who lived on farms and ranches. When we saw a kid in the hall with a cowboy hat, we knew for sure he was really a cowboy. There were some there who dressed that way everyday, but that look was definitely honestly maintained.  Something here has changed too in that its pretty common now, meaning only that a person is associated with the agricultural class or perhaps aspires to it.  The membership of FFA, locally, has expanded in that direction a bit too, I believe.

I'm hindered in saying much else about the organization.  I know that they have a big annual convention back east and that livestock judging is part of its range of activities locally.  I also know that public speaking is part of what it requires.  It tended to focus on education and skills as 4H does, but in a more limited fashion, I think.  I'm always really surprised when I meet an adult out of context and find that he was in FFA as that tells me that he must have a more rural background that I'd suppose, something that people are often surprised to learn about me as well.

The other thing I can note about FFA is that when I was in high school FAA students had cool blue corduroy jackets with the big FFA symbol on the back of them. They still do.

Based on Faith

Before closing this out, I should note faith based organizations.

 Young Men's Christian Association magazine. The YMCA is not a youth organization, but it had a young focus originally, and its a partial inspiration for some true youth organizations.

In a way, by doing that, I"m circling back to where I started, albeit in an awkward way.

One of the thing we noted about the Boy Scouts is that they were originally Christian themed and remain somewhat so today.  Not surprisingly, therefore, organizations that are very strongly focused on faith and particular denominations came into being at about the same time, or in some cases a little later in the 20th Century.

Its hard to ignore the YMCA in this context, even though it is not a youth organization by any means.  It was, however, an expression of the Muscular Christianity movement which in part focused on the thought that giving an athletic expression to increasingly urban young men would help to keep them from falling into vice.  The YMCA is famous in these regards but it actually isn't unique.  Indeed, a prior Catholic organization in Germany was likewise focused on the plight of newly urban men, although without the athletic focus.

Anyhow, prior to the early 20th Century it would be my guess, and its just a guess, that the need for youth organizations based on Faith were few, as in that slower more localized world young people were more likely to be incorporated into the faith lives of their community and churches.  By the early 20th Century, however some things had begun to change.

 YMCA youth group, 1967, looking for all the world just like a youth group from 1967.

Here, as with some of the organizations noted above, I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm not all that personally familiar with these organizations.  I do recall that the Catholic one, the Catholic Youth Organization, was pretty active here in town.  What I recall about it is that it had a basketball league and that it sponsored dances.

Looking it up I find that the basketball league was natural, as the CYO had taken its inspiration in part from the YMCA.  In fact a quick search of CYO symbols reveals that a basketball and the basketball hoop are prominently incorporated in a lot of them. Basketball was the original urban indoor sport, so that's not too surprising.

This is one organization that I"m pretty sure has taken a hit in participation over the past thirty or so years and I don't think there is a CYO in this town anymore, which says something as this is the second largest city in the state.  I think Cheyenne may still have one.  I'm  not sure what occurred here but whatever did, this seems to have declined.  This may simply be because CYO organization shave to compete with a plethora of other activities, particularly sports activities, many, indeed most of which, are sponsored by the schools.  School sporting facilities have gotten so good, I'd note, that its hard to image parish basketball courts competing very well with them.

Of course, the local history of the CYO here might not mean much, so I probably can't comment too much, but I would note that there has been a small rise, over the past twenty or so years, in youth programs associated with various religions.  To at least some degree these stand apart  from organizations like the CYO as the CYO, and similar organizations, are informed more by the YMCA than they are by organizations like the Boy Scouts, and the opposite is otherwise true for these revived organizations.

For example, the Mormons had a massive participation in the Boy Scouts after initial hesitancy was overcome.  In recent years the LDS has been the biggest single faith in the Boy Scouts by participation.  However, with Scouting having felt forced to accommodate first girls and then, and more seriously, homosexuality, the LDS have withdrawn their participation in some Scouting activities and it seems pretty up in the air where this will lead.  here this will go is not currently all worked out.

Where's its partially lead is to a revival of Scouting inspired movements that are definitely strongly associated with certain religions, rather than just broadly Christian.  This trend might continue to develop, we'll see, and if it does it might pose a bit of a threat to Scouting in a way, although I think that threat would be simply to weaken it overall.  It also might lead to a bit of a revival of Christian youth organizations that are more local, more CYO like if you will

So, I don't really have a sweeping conclusion here.  Things have changed, but it's hard to define how.

So, were you a member of any youth organization?

And did you go to camp?

Everyone is wrong about American Immigration Policy

This is one of those occasional entries I started months ago, and then put aside.  Frankly, its a topci that can so easily be taken the wrong way, I simply decided not to post it.  However, now, with the new immigration proposal by the administration, its topical again, so I'm reviving it.

When I started this thread it was in the context of the just ordered "Muslim Ban". There's a lot of water under the bridge since then, so a lot of this is no longer exactly on topic, but it'll swing around to being so.

 The unfortunate way we romantically recall immigration.  Ellis Island, 1913.  The Homestead Act was still in effect. The Czar still owned, and I do mean own, all of Russia.  The sun never set on the British Empire. That era is over in every way.

First, let me note, I'm a child of an immigrant.

So, having noted that (and guessing that this probably doesn't lead to where you think, or even what the view of my immigrant mother was in later years), and now starting off where I left off . . . 

 "Everyone is wrong about American Immigration Policy". So I stated when I started this entry.

And I do mean everyone.

Immigration has been a hot topic in politics for years and years.  Seemingly forgotten in the current uproar of President Trump's "Muslim Ban" (and now a new more restrictive legislative immigration proposal) is the fact that its fairly well established that the majority of Americans have felt, for a very long time, that American immigration policies, or frankly the lack of them, were out of control. That's not racist, as those on the Greenwich Village Progressive Left like to imagine.   And it has little to do, additionally, with what we're currently seeing.  Indeed, Trump's recent support of a new immigration statute does demonstrate, to his credit, that he's still trying to satisfy his base.

But let's be honest.

Our entire immigration policy is stupid, as we've never thought it out.

A. Is the Goal Bangladesh?

The United States needs an immigration policy that's coherent for a nation of 360,000,000, not one that has a population of 136,000,000.

And that's a hard thing, seemingly, for politicians to grasp.

So, let's look at what a sane, sensible, just and workable immigration policy would look like.

And let's start with a couple of controversial statements which are true, but none the less fly in the face of American cliches about themselves and immigration.

First of all, the entire "we're a nation of immigrants" bromide is utterly and completely pointless.

 Sitting Bull, whose adult life was basically dedicated to resisting the "nation of immigrants' bromide that people like to drag out during immigration discussions.

Yes, most Americans descend from immigrants.  Not all do.  Indeed, the entire "nation of immigrants" thing has to be a bitter thing to hear if you are Sioux, or Ojibwa, or Arapaho, etc.  That's a lot like "we're a nation of invaders".  Which was, after all, true.  Sure, the invaders were immigrants, but then so were the Vikings. I.e., the Vikings were invaders and immigrants where they invaded. That doesn't put a happy face on it.

 Look!  Danish immigrants. . .ie., Vikings. And what appears to also be halibut underneath them.

On top of it, that "we're a nation of immigrants" item is only sort of remotely true, and less true now than at certain points in our history.  Besides that, as an argument its unthinking and doesn't mean anything at all.  Just because the majority of Americans descend from immigrants doesn't mean that its a good idea for all time.

Indeed, most of the arguments of this type fall pretty flat.  A common related one is that we're a strong nation due to our diverse population.  Probably not.  We've historically been a strong nation as we had a fairly open economy and a continent of unexplored resources, which is the same reason taht Canada has done well or Australia has done well.  Openness to democracy, an English cultural value, a free market economy (also largely an English cultural value at the time) and a continent of unexploited resources. . . well that's going to work every time.

Or rather, that always worked where it existed.  Unexploited resources, at least on this planet, no longer exist.  Indeed, the opposite is quite true.  According to folks who like to worry about such topics the planet actually tipped over the excessive consumption point this year this month.  I'm sure that's debatable, but that there are no unexploited regions, in the European economic sense, is not.

But beyond that, and here's the point, you can't be a population importing nation forever on a large scale, unless your own population is declining on a large scale (a different topic entirely).

But Americans, or at least some Americans, seem to think so, as if the globe was a gigantic expanding ball.

At some point, immigration will have a population increasing impact that's an environmental and economic depressor, assuming it isn't right now.  It is clear that the American population has increased to the destructive level in regards to wildlands and farm ground.  How much further is out goal?

 Aldo Leopold, author of A Sand Country Almanac and the creating of "the land ethic" with Olaus Muire at the 1946 annual meeting of The Wilderness Society Council, Old Rag, Virginia.  We'd be a lot better off if the concepts of Leopold and Murie dictated out immigration policy than those of Schumer, Simpson and Kennedy.

Well, we don't have one.

We ought to think of that.

It's not racist or cruel to believe that, for example, your house is comfortable with four, but you can take in a couple of more and make it six. That doesn't mean, however, that you can take in sixteen.  If you doubt this, try it.

So, as a nation, at what point should we stop taking immigrants if it increases the population, and at what point must we?

We probably ought to figure that out soon, as in about ten years ago.  Maybe twenty.

But in the absence of a decade ago, we ought to figure it out now.

Okay, that's uncomfortable for many, but it's the first think we ought to figure out and consider.

In doing this, we need to be just.  Just because I might like there to be only ten people in the county doesn't mean that it shouldn't have 10,000, or 100,000, or whatever.  But by the same token, it might not work for it to have 1,000,000 people in it either.  We make, however, nearly no effort to figure any of this out.

At some point, rather obviously, we can so densely pack the country that its not pleasant to live in. We can.  Maybe we already have, based on the complaints I hear all the time from people who  live in big cities.  Beyond that, at some point we achieve a negative result economically as well as environmentally.  Were is that point? Not only do we not know, we've never even tried to figure it out. We should.

B.  Protecting the Internal Immigrants

The basic truth of American politicians views on immigration is that every Democrat sees immigrants as Democratic voters and every Republican sees them mowing their lawn, so a quiet little conspiracy of inaction has existed for a really long time on this.  Now people are mad.

Who is mad?

Well, people who lack good work are mad.

This is not the fault of our immigrants, legal or illegal, but rather its the fault of those who are encouraging this to go on and wink at the law in doing it. 

And this really hurts certain sections of our own population.

 Mixed race, white and black, children shucking oysters just before World War One. The original caption notes:  "Scene in canning factory showing a 7-year old girl who shucks 3 pots of oysters a day, and works regularly, and her 6-year old brother who helps some. Also a 11-year old boy who does six pots a day. Several others here under 12 years, but there were more last month. Mostly negro workers. The boss said "We keep only enough whites so we can control the negroes and keep them agoing." Lowden Canning Co. Location: Bluffton, South Carolina"  The children of the white laborers in this photo are doing better today than the children of the black laborers, which immigration policy never seems to take into account.

The late Richard Stroud, of The New Republic, believed that immigration ought to be halted completely until such time as African Americans achieved economic parity with whites.  His concept of halt was absolute, and I'm not arguing for that.  However it is undeniable that we take in economically distressed populations as we know that they will enter the laboring class.  We don't really care about those in our own laboring class as they've been largely silent for years and years, and we particularly don't care about t hem if they are African Americans or Native Americans. We should.

The American myth, for eons, is that all Americans rise up out of the laboring class. Well, they aren't.  Some people don't want to.  Some people, because the skill set they're born with, cannot. But some cannot because of history and demographics.  If you were born of a population that was brought over by force to labor without pay and without rights, and had your family structure destroyed by slavery, chances are that you or your fellows may still be having a hard time overcoming that.  Or if the same is true because you are a conquered people, you are in the same unfortunate boat. And that boat doesn't seem to rise at all with a rising economy.

It's not just, in these circumstances, to import people who compete directly with the native born for entry level occupations.  Particularly those native born who are basically internal immigrants because of their ethnicity.  Until such time as we've managed to truly make color and ethnicity nothing more than that, and not an economic depressant, we ought not to be taking in large numbers of immigrants who take these individuals chances at a better future.  That is not nice or just.

Many nations, Australia and New Zealand for example, strictly consider employment and cultural questions.  Years ago, when I was just out of high school, and thought maybe I could get a livestock operation in New Zealand or Australia I looked into it.  New Zealand in particular, I recall, didn't want you unless you had skills in an area they actually needed.  Otherwise, forget it. That was a sane, not racist, policy.

Which makes our you can come in if you have a lot of money and are going to create work policy a whole lot of bull.  This is how twits like the Vanderpumps, who should be polluting the United Kingdom instead of the United States, get in here.  It must be galling if you have to work nights at an inner city convenience store to put up with stuff like this and feel that the nation truly does not care about you.

C.  You can consider culture and ethnicity

To the extent we do need to take in conventional immigrants (i.e., not refugees, which are different and discussed below) it's not racist or bad to consider if they will fit fairly seamlessly into our culture, and we do have one.

Immigrant children in Boston, early 20th Century.

The one thing that Teddy Kennedy ever seemed to get done in the decades of political occupancy he had was to create an immigration bill that ignored this, and which has afflicted the United States ever since.  It was, truly, noble, and incredibly naive, at the same time.  Kennedy felt that basically all immigration should be economic.

Well, people still live in the real world.

Our immigrants have changed over time, but for the most part, most immigrants to the United States have been from European cultures, which doesn't mean that they are European.  European cultures, in varying degrees, are all subject to the leveling influences that have impacted them in the form of the Roman Empire's concepts of citizenship and the Catholic Church's concepts of the equality of all men. We are a European nation, whether we acknowledge that or not, even though we are not on the continent of Europe.

Not all cultures have those views.

Many have come to have them, over time, due to European influence. And for that reason there are many people in the world today who are far from European but are in culture. Frankly, a lot of African immigrants today from southern Africa hold more deeply traditional European outlooks than many Europeans.  So I am not saying, as some might assume, that all immigrants to the United States must be white European Christians. Indeed, frankly, right now I'd see very little reason, if we must bring in immigrants, to bring in Western Europeans at all. Their economies are fine.  This, indeed, is part of the reason why I wonder why we presently seem to have an endless number of English entertainment personalities polluting the country by their presence here. Go back to the UK.

I guess I should note, in this context, that this would suggest, and correctly, that I'm not hugely impressed, although I can see a basis for, the proposed requirement that an immigrant be able to speak English.  I don't tie cultural concerns to being able to speak English, although I can also see reasons why people might want this requirement.  A lot of it is simply a visceral reaction to the ever expanding presence of Spanish as a nearly second unofficial US language (keeping in mind we have no official language at all).  A better reason for the concern is that it gets expensive having to cater to more than one language, but all of this ultimately goes back to the fact that the US has simply been letting in far too many migrants.

Anyhow, in regards to whats noted above, although I have some to add to it below, that personally I'd likely favor Mexican immigrants over others for the cultural reasons noted above and which will be explored more below.  I  know that the Census Bureau believes that Hispanics are a mysterious entity, but they're a mixed race, European culture and fit in well.

Well, then, if that's the case, what am I saying?

I am saying that there actually is a basis to consider some groups carefully.  That doesn't necessarily mean exclude them all, but economic migrants from regions of the globe that have oppressed women, opposed democracy and have a lack of tolerance culturally for any other cultures are, frankly, suspect. 

 House of Russian immigrants, marked with Orthodox symbol, prior to World War One. There was a great deal of Russian immigration during this period.  Some of the immigrants, like Leon Trotsky, returned to Russia, and not always to good results.

I'd note that other nations do indeed carefully consider such things.  Only very, very recently has this not been the majority rule for most nations.  It ceased to be in the context of the European community just before the big flood of Middle Easter refugees and now is a major topic in many European nations, and not in a good way as a result.

I'm also not saying don't take any in. But being purely blind to this is a problem for them and for us.  Cultures that hold values that are strongly in opposition to our own can be accommodated, but not at such levels that the native culture is imported into our own and then defends itself against our own.  While it largely stems from other reasons, this is what has happened in Europe with recent Islamic immigration.  The migrants are not only not being absorbed, they're forming alien enclaves in European cultures that, in some instances, they become strongly opposed to.  Brought in, in smaller numbers, and this doesn't occur.

Jewish Polish farm girl, a migrant to what was then Palestine. This girl was part of a Zionist migration to what became Israel, something that is still debated in some circles, but which no doubt saved her from the gas chamber at the hands of the Germans just a few years later.

Indeed, one of the dirty little secrets of immigration is that it allows people to escape their cultures.  The American romantic view of immigration is that everyone brings their wonderful, wonderful culture with them and we all benefit from that.  Truth be known, however, plenty of people are seeking to escape their cultures in large and small ways. Some do this intentionally, and for some this will just occur.

By way of an example, a friend of mine descends from a Russian Jewish family that came over to Wyoming, changed their name, and went into ranching.  Chances are good that the immigrant family had some familiarity with Jewish communal farming in Russia, but they didn't do anything like that here.  We don't tend to think of Jewish ranchers in the US, but there were more than we might imagine. They'd escaped, however, a certain mode of life.

I'm not saying that every culture that comes into the US needs to forget its heritage. Far from it. But for some cultures that are really alien as compared to ours, the immigrants can end up going down a fork in the road. They can either end up in enclaves that reinforce their original culture, often to their own detriment, or in communities that completely lack it. When that occurs, they choose what they retain and what they dump.  Btu they can't do that if numbers are so vast that they're compelled by that fact to go into communities made up of people just like themselves, their personal wishes aside.

Indeed, an example of that is provided by the example of some teenage girls in Omaha from about two decades ago.  While people in New York or Los Angeles imagine everyone in Omaha as a hayseed, in fact its a large Midwestern city with a large immigrant population.  Some girls who grew up there, in Muslim families, found themselves being assigned to older men for forced chosen marriages. They bolted.  Islamic immigrants dumping part of their culture, as it were.  That was made easier for them in that they were primarily in a non Islamic society.

D.  You have to make an exception for refugees, no matter where they are from.

As is fairly clear, I'd grossly limit the number of immigrants we take in now down to a smaller number as I think the era of sensible mass migration into the United States is really over. But refugees are different.

Refugees you need to allow in, granted with controls, etc., as they're refugees. Its the humane and right thing to do.  There's just no two ways about it.

Can you make choices in doing that? Sure.  In a huge crisis, such as the one we have going on now, we can't take them all in.  And we shouldn't be doing what we have been doing in regards to Australia, which is having them pass their refugees from the north on to us. Australia needs to man up and take them itself.  After all, we don't pass on Cuban refugees to Australia, which would be immoral and dumb.

E.  You have to consider the situation where they are from.

This is a little harder to describe, but somehow some of the anger about immigrants has attached to where they are from, which is also wrong.

People should not be mad at migrants or where they are from.  It's not the fault of migrants, legal or illegal, that they saw better opportunities elsewhere.  If somebody from Chihuahua saw a better future north of the border, well they did. That doesn't mean we should have an open border, but it does mean that being mad, for example, at Mexico or Mexicans is not right.

We can't fix the reasons people are in bad straights all over the globe.  Indeed, we don't seem to be able to do that even as to ourselves, although we've come a long ways.  But we can fix some of it.

One of the things, for example, we should recognize is that Mexico, where most of our migrants are coming from, is our neighbor and that it has made amazing economic progress over the past 40 years.  Most Mexicans are now in the middle class for the first time in its history. That's absolutely great, and we ought not to mess with it.

Indeed, while I haven't always been fully convinced, by this point I think it would be best for North America if all three of the North American nations were economically integrated.  We darned near are now.  This doesn't mean opening the border, but if we can take final steps to really integrate all three economies, that would be great for everyone. It might complete the process of bringing Mexico into the First World and if that occurred, well, much of our illegal migration problem would evaporate.

Indeed, I'd like to see a Mexico that had to import farm laborers to work its fields and which became as much of a retirement draw to elderly American from New Jersey or Quebec City as Florida.

F. Economic Justice

As noted above, when considering immigration, you need to consider the economic impact on your own country.  You should also consider the economic situation, and development, for potential migrants.

As noted above, that's why I feel that the current policy that lets in folks who are doing okay if they have money is really dumb.  I don't care if the Vanderpumps make jobs.  First, I don't really believe it, but secondly, entertainers, celebrities and monied people can just stay, and should stay, where they are.  We don't need them and they really serve no purpose here. 

That would scale immigration to other classes, which is where it should be.  People in economically distressed regions, keeping in mind additional considerations, should be helped, but should also not be brought in to the detriment of people in the same category in the United States. Both should be helped in ways that really help them.  

This is why, in my view, the old immigration policy before the Kennedy mess made more sense.  It did help the poor, but largely the poor of regions that were at least vaguely assured of eventual assimilation. This wasn't always European cultures, but it often was.  And the rates were at a rate that could be handled.

A Sane Immigration Policy

So taking all of this, what's it mean.

 Mexican refugees entering the United States during the Mexican Revolution.  It was not until the Mexican Revolution that appreciable numbers of Mexicans entered the US, and they did so first as refugees, both economic and political.

Well our current policy is simply stupid. We take in far more migrants than we can absorb and I'd argue we have been doing that at least since the 1980s.  Teddy Kennedy apparently believed the world was a giant balloon and would get bigger and bigger.  It doesn't and it won't.  The era when the US can absorb an infinite number of migrants is now in the distant past.

We ought to figure out, therefore, how many we really need and how many we can actually take and at what point the whole thing works well for everyone. We just don't know what that number is.  We ought to address that.

Which doesn't mean that we can ignore the world.  Refugee crises are crises, and the whole world must react to them.  Refugees are different than other would be migrants and must be addressed with mercy.  If that means they fill the quota, or more than the quota, and nobody else gets in that year, so be it.   But also, the situation in their native lands needs to be addressed.  In other words, you can't address this with hot air and come out with a Justin Trudeau like "it's nice to be nice to the nice" statement and do a darned thing to address the root cause of the problems creating mass refugee migrations.

Finally, there's nothing really wrong with a nation limiting immigration to the people it can absorb both in terms of numbers and in terms of culture.  Many other nations do this.  Flat out ignoring this means that the cultural values of the in-taking nations will in fact be overwhelmed at some point in favor of the values of the nations that are exporting their populations.

Finally, I find myself here, as in other areas, giving credit to the Trump Administration, which I generally hold at arms length, for at least actually trying to take on this topic.  When people like Schumer say the proposal "doesn't make sense" it shows that they are way out of touch with the real world in ways that are disturbing.  Everyone wants to be kind, and should be, but simply pretending all aspect of this can be satisfactory addressed for everyone are erroneous.  That doesn't mean the Trump proposal is the correct one, but I'll give him credit for actually bringing it up and breaking through the quiet Democrat/Republican conspiracy on this one.

As part of that, however, it is also the case that nativist economic policies are the antithesis of sane immigration policies.  We have a duty to people no matter where they are.  Most of the world's migrants are economic migrants.  Making their economies worse, therefore, is directly contrary to what should be our goals.  When we succeed in making other economies ones that we'd wish to migrate to (and we have to some extent) we've achieved what we ought to wish for, assuming that we don't do that by destroying our own economy.

Finally, I think that we ought to consider that not only do we need a sane immigration policy, based on same numbers, and some cultural consideration, but we also ought to acknowledge that we may have a natural immigration/emigration relationship with Mexico that needs to be worked out.  I'm not for opening the border by any means, but it would seem to be fairly obvious that addressing our immigration relationship with Mexico is to both nation's advantage.  Mexicans are, basically, the Italian immigrants of the late 20th Century, early 21st Century.  I.e., they're of a European culture, as are we, but are economically disadvantaged and appear alien to certain groups.  We can't have an open border, but a sane immigration policy would likely be at least partially weighted in favor of Mexico. By the same token, however, we need to assist Mexico in its rapid transition from a poor country into a modern middle class one, and that is occurring.  The sooner that occurs, the better.  Mexico retains some economic policies dating back from before the Mexican Revolution, and those need to go. As part of that, and as much as Mexico probably views a lot of Americans the same way that I view the Vanderpumps, that means opening up the Mexican economy further to outsiders, including Americans.  

Indeed, I hope (truly) for a day in which the Vanderpumps relocate to Baja California.

Child Labor on Connecticut Tobacco Farms, August 6, 1917.

We posted a similar series of these Hines photographs depicting child labor in Connecticut tobacco fields just the other day.  If anything, these photographs  seem to show a younger group of farm laborers at work.

 This depicts a "second picking" of Connecticut tobacco.

While Hines was attempting to document child and teenage labor in an effort to address its abuses, scenes like this were not uncommon in American agriculture at the time.  They would not have come to a surprise as the residents of Connecticut or anywhere in the East at the time.

 Girls "stringing" tobacco.

 Age 10.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Community Federated Church, Thermopolis Wyoming

Churches of the West: Community Federated Church, Thermopolis Wyoming:

This is the Community Federated Church of Thermopolis, Wyoming, which serves a combined Methodist and Presbyterian congregation, the first church serving a combined congregation that I've run across, although something similar exists in regards to an upcoming post for Basin Wyoming.

The Church is a classic modern Gothic style church, but otherwise I know nothing about it.

Best Post of the Week of July 30, 1917

Mid Week At Work: Tobacco; Child and Teenage Labor, August 2, 1917

August 2, 1917: The Green Corn Rebellion of 1917 breaks out.

Today In Wyoming's History: August 5, 1917. National Guardsmen Conscripted.

Today In Wyoming's History: August 5, 1917. National Guardsmen Conscripted.

 Mustered Illinois National Guardsmen, August 4, 1917.

From:  Today In Wyoming's History: August 5: 

1917 The entire National Guard, only recently released from duty due to the crisis with Mexico, and then recalled due to the outbreak of World War One, was conscripted into the U.S. Army. The technicality of conscription was necessary due to an Adjutant General's opinion that the National Guard could not serve overseas.

This is an interesting and in some ways curious event.  Unlike mobilizations that would come subsequent to World War One, how exactly to muster the National Guard into Federal Service wasn't entirely clear.  You would think, the Guard having been recently Federalized for border service, that it would have been, but it wasn't.

The real oddity that developed concerned the deployment of Guardsmen overseas.  It had long been presumed that Federalized militia, then being in Federal service, could serve overseas.  Indeed, Federalized militia had served overseas before.  The militia mobilized for the Mexican War served in Mexico, and militia Federalized for the Spanish American War, including those units then called "National Guard" units, had served in both Cuba and the Philippines.  Indeed, National Guard units had fought in the Philippine Insurrection, our first foreign war against guerilla insurgents.

In practical terms there was no earthly way that the United States could even contemplate fighting in France in the Great War without the National Guard.  Quite a few Regular Army officers hated the idea and resentment against the Guard dating back to the late 19th Century was pretty strong.  But the Guard made up about half of the body of men who were armed, uniformed, and at least theoretically prepared to fight.  Moreover, mobilization for Punitive Expedition had sharpened their abilities. They had to go.

Unfortunately for the Wilson Administration, the Adjutant General of the United States Army didn't think they could.  His opinion, a really questionable one at that, was that Guardsmen were only liable for duty in the Continental United States.  This was based on his reading of "Militia Clause" of the United States Constitution, which noted that state militia's cold be called out to "execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrection and repel invasions."  The war with Germany was not, he reasoned, any of those, and therefore the National Guard could only serve domestically.  This problem had to be solved, and easily was, by conscripting them all. . .which occurred on this date in 1917.

Rural Heritage Economics of Farming with Horses

Rural Heritage Economics of Farming with Horses

An interesting look at the economics of this topic, which is one we don't usually consider.

ROTC TURNS 100: UConn and Military Training, Part One: The Early Years, 1893-1920

ROTC TURNS 100: UConn and Military Training, Part One: The Early Years, 1893-1920

August 2, 1917: The Green Corn Rebellion of 1917 breaks out.

 Oklahoma farm boys, April 1917. These kids are not in school but are tending their father's mules.

On  this date in 1917 a rare, inter-racial rebellion broke out against Conscription.

The rebellion took place in a state which, at that time, was a center of radical politics.

Oklahoma.

 Oklahoma City, just northwest of the location of the rebellion, if a world away, in 1917.

As earlier newspaper entries on this site no doubt make plain, conscription in the United States in 1917, the first "draft" since the Civil War, was largely met with acceptance and even enthusiasm.  Young American men had flocked to join the service prior to conscription being passed and newspapers publicly shamed areas that didn't seem to be rallying around the flag.  When conscription came it was billed, in part, as a means of filling the ranks of the service in an orderly fashion, as "selective service", not the heavy hand of compulsory service in a war to be fought in Europe.  But not everyone bought into that, and it is clear even from the newspaper headlines early on that there were a notable number of men who said "no".

The newspapers billed these men as "shirkers" and went so far as to warn young women that men who shirked would surely keep on shirking and shirk their duties as husbands, and therefore should be avoided as marriage candidates.  Arrests occurred early on.  But in Seminole County, Oklahoma, things went a lot further than that.

 Boy cultivating peas in Oklahoma, 1917.

The Sooner state, at that time, was of course heavily agricultural, as it remains today. But at that time it also had a large population of tenant farmers combined with a large number of poor farmers who had lost their lands in the prior two years when 60% of the mortgaged farms in the state failed and were foreclosed upon.  Farming in the state, contrary to the way we tend to imagine it at the time, was heavily concentrated in commercial farming, such as cotton farming, which made for both situations.  In a time when agriculture was otherwise doing very well, this was no doubt severely galling.  It also made some sense that this was the situation as Oklahoma had only been a state since 1907.  The state had only been open to entry since the late 19th Century and therefore it came into agricultural production quite late, and at a period when industrial farming was expanding.

These men and their families were poor, young, mostly uneducated, migrants from the rural South.  In the teens they were also, interestingly, unionized and radically politicized to a surprising degree, with many of them joining the Working Class Union and the Socialist Party. The Socialist Party in Oklahoma, leading up to World War One, was the largest in the United States, having 57,000 members in 1914.  The Socialist did well in the 1916 election in Oklahoma and the WCU was doing well also, finding large scale membership in a rural expression of the same sentiments that were causing the IWW to do well elsewhere.  The WCU, moreover, took to direct action against its opponents.  Acts of violence were becoming common.  Interestingly, in a true example of economic disadvantage overcoming ethnicity, as the forces surrounding the WCU were interracial, including whites, blacks and Native Americans, and mixtures of all three.

The WCU, like the IWW, opposed conscription on philosophical and economic grounds.  By late July the WCU and its fellow travelers had decided to attempt a march on Washington from Oklahoma, quite a fanciful endeavor really given the distance and the costs of such an action at the time.  Something went badly wrong, however, as on this day people associated with the movement ambushed the Seminole County sheriff and two of his deputies near a tributary of the Canadian River.  The lawmen had been investigating radical activities in the area and were forced to retreat, albeit unharmed.  Almost immediately thereafter raiding parties went out by the movement. These actions were surprisingly successful, with telegraph wires being torn down and railroad bridges being burnt, no mean feats really.

The next day somewhat under 1000 rebels gathered on the banks of the South Canadian River and made plans to march overland to Washington D. C. more or less Sherman style, living off the land as they went.  They gathered at the "old man" Spears farm under the Confederate Stars and Bars banner which Spears had raised several days prior (so maybe they were planing on actually advancing Nathan Bedford Forest style?)  Rather obviously that idea was rather far fetched and when met with local opposition, including traitors in their midst, they disbanded.  Posses did hunt down participants for a period of weeks thereafter and there were shots fired in some of those encounters.  Three people died in the rebellion and about 150 sentenced to short or long prison sentences, many of whom were pardoned.

Farm hands working asparagus field, Oklahoma 1917.

This insurrection is mostly forgotten, but it was not insignificant.  For one thing, it wasn't small.  1,000 or so rebels is a fairly large number.  Additionally, it interestingly fits nearly halfway between the two recalled eras of draft protests in that it was almost equidistant from the Civil War to the protest period of the Vietnam War.  In some ways, it recalls both, while still being unique.  With a strong Southern yeoman element to it, it in some ways recalled the Southern yeoman resistance to the draft in the South during the Civil War which, in some areas, turned to insurrection.  With a strong radicalized tinge to it, it also foreshadowed resistance to involvement in the "foreign war" of Vietnam.  Of course, it was also its own event in history and time.

And for the "Green Corn"? Well, opinions differ. Some claimed that the event came at the end of a Green Corn observance on the part of one of the local Indian Tribes, others claim that it was because the rebels, in their intended march on Washington, intended to live on roasted appropriated beef and green corn.

Mid Week At Work: Tobacco; Child and Teenage Labor, August 2, 1917

Three boys, one of 13 years old and two of 14, picking shade-grown tobacco on Hackett farm, Buckland, Connecticut.

We don't think of Connecticut as "tobacco country" anymore, but it, as well as Maryland, once were.

Indeed, they still are, to those in the know.  Connecticut Shade Tobacco is used for premium cigar wrappers.  It is now, and it was also in 1917.

 Teenage labor on "second picking"

It's a quite crop.  Those who grow it, and its little changed in how its grown in harvested over the past two centuries, tend to keep it quite.  Tobacco growing isn't the "down on the farm" type of crop that engenders a romantic vision.

Twelve year old girl "passing" leaves to stringers, tobacco-shed, Buckland, Connecticut 

Of course, we also don't associate child labor, or teenage labor, with tobacco either. But that was also once common. 

Child and teenage labor, Tobacco shed, Vernon, Connecticut.

Child and teenage tobacco workers.  $1.25 per day.  Connecticut.

Child labor, and some teenage.  Ages 9 to 15.  Connecticut.

Growing the crop hasn't changed much over the past century.  But harvesting it through child labor has.