Today In Wyoming's History: January 7, 1918. Conscription deemed to be Constitutional

Today In Wyoming's History: January 7: 1918  In Arver v. United States the U.S. Supreme Court held that conscription during wartime was authorized under the Constitutions power to to declare war and to raise armies.  Conscription had been challenged in spite of the prior Civil War era conscription and a long 18th and 19th Century history of mandatory militia duty.  While this may seem surprising at the time, there were serious questions and supporters of the opposite view, even in high office, at the time.

United States Supreme Court
ARVER v. U.S., (1918)
No. 663

Mr. T. E. Latimer, of Minneapolis, Minn., for plaintiffs in error Arver, Grahl, Otto Wangerin, and Walter Wangerin.
Mr. Harry Weinberger, of New York City, for plaintiff in error Kramer.
Mr. Edwin T. Taliaferro, of New York City, for plaintiff in error Graubard.  Mr. Solicitor General Davis, of Washington, D. C., for the United States

Mr. Chief Justice WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.

We are here concerned with some of the provisions of the Act of May 18, 1917 (Public No. 12, 65th Congress, c. 15, 40 Stat. 76), entitled 'An act to authorize the President to increase temporarily the military establishment of the United States.' The law, as its opening sentence declares, was intended to supply temporarily the increased military force which was required by the existing emergency, the war then and now flagrant. The clauses we must pass upon and those which will throw light on their significance are briefly summarized.

The act proposed to raise a national army, first, by increasing the regular force to its maximum strength and there maintaining it; second, by incorporating into such army the members of the National Guard and National Guard Reserve already in the service of the United States (Act of Congress of June 5, 1916, c. 134, 39 Stat. 211) and maintaining their organizations to their full strength; third, by giving the President power in his discretion to organize by volunteer enlistment four divisions of infantry; fourth, by subjecting all male citizens between the ages of twenty-one and thirty to duty in the national army for the period of the existing emergency after the proclamation of the President announcing the necessity for their service; and fifth, by providing for selecting from the body so called, on the further proclamation of the President, 500,000 enlisted men, and a second body of the same number should the President in his discretion deem it necessary. To carry out its purposes the act made it the duty of those liable to the call to present themselves for registration on the proclamation of the President so as to subject themselves to the terms of the act and provided full federal means for carrying out the selective draft. It gave the President in his discretion power to create local boards to consider claims for exemption for physical disability or otherwise made by those called. The act exempted from subjection to the draft designated United States and state officials as well as those already in the military or naval service of the United States, regular or duly ordained ministers of religion and theological students under the conditions provided for, and while relieving from military service in the strict sense the members of religious sects as enumerated whose tenets excluded the moral right to engage in war, nevertheless subjected such persons to the performance of service of a noncombatant character to be defined by the President.

The proclamation of the President calling the persons designated within the ages described in the statute was made and the plaintiffs in error who were in the class and under the statute were obliged to present themselves for registration and subject themselves to the law failed to do so and were prosecuted under the statute for the penalties for which it provided. They all defended by denying that there had been conferred by the Constitution upon Congress the power to compel military service by a selective draft and if such power had been given by the Constitution to Congress, the terms of the particular act for various reasons caused it to be beyond the power and repugnant to the Constitution. The cases are here for review because of the constitutional questions thus raised, convictions having resulted from instructions of the courts that the legal defences were without merit and that the statute was constitutional.

The possession of authority to enact the statute must be found in the clauses of the Constitution giving Congress power 'to declare war; ... to raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years; ... to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces.' Article 1, 8. And of course the powers conferred by these provisions like all other powers given carry with them as provided by the Constitution the authority 'to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers.' Article 1, 8.

As the mind cannot conceive an army without the men to compose it, on the face of the Constitution the objection that it does not give power to provide for such men would seem to be too frivolous for further notice. It is said, however, that since under the Constitution as originally framed state citizenship was primary and United States citizenship but derivative and dependent thereon, therefore the power conferred upon Congress to raise armies was only coterminous with United States citizenship and could not be exerted so as to cause that citizenship to lose its dependent character and dominate state citizenship. But the proposition simply denies to Congress the power to raise armies which the Constitution gives. That power by the very terms of the Constitution, being delegated, is supreme. Article 6. In truth the contention simply assails the wisdom of the framers of the Constitution in conferring authority on Congress and in not retaining it as it was under the Confederation in the several states. Further it is said, the right to provide is not denied by calling for volunteer enlistments, but it does not and cannot include the power to exact enforced military duty by the citizen. This however but challenges the existence of all power, for a governmental power which has no sanction to it and which therefore can only be exercised provided the citizen consents to its exertion is in no substantial sense a power. It is argued, however, that although this is abstractly true, it is not concretely so because as compelled military service is repugnant to a free government and in conflict with all the great guarantees of the Constitution as to individual liberty, it must be assumed that the authority to raise armies was intended to be limited to the right to call an army into existence counting alone upon the willingness of the citizen to do his duty in time of public need, that is, in time of war. But the premise of this proposition is so devoid of foundation that it leaves not even a shadow of ground upon which to base the conclusion. Let us see if this is not at once demonstrable. It may not be doubted that the very conception of a just government and its duty to the citizen includes the reciprocal obligation of the citizen to render military service in case of need, and the right to compel it. Vattel, Law of Nations, book III, cc. 1 and 2. To do more than state the proposition is absolutely unnecessary in view of the practical illustration afforded by the almost universal legislation to that effect now in force. 1 In England it is certain that before the Norman Conquest the duty of the great militant body of the citizens was recognized and enforceable. Blackstone, book I, c. 13. It is unnecessary to follow the long controversy between Crown and Parliament as to the branch of the government in which the power resided, since there never was any doubt that it somewhere resided. So also it is wholly unnecessary to explore the situation for the purpose of fixing the sources whence in England it came to be understood that the citizen or the force organized from the militia as such could not without their consent be compelled to render service in a foreign country, since there is no room to contend that such principle ever rested upon any challenge of the right of Parliament to impose compulsory duty upon the citizen to perform military duty wherever the public exigency exacted whether at home or abroad. This is exemplified by the present English Service Act. 2

In the Colonies before the separation from England there cannot be the slightest doubt that the right to enforce military service was unquestioned and that practical effect was given to the power in many cases. Indeed  the brief of the government contains a list of Colonial Acts manifesting the power and its enforcement in more than two hundred cases. And this exact situation existed also after the separation. Under the Articles of Confederation it is true Congress had no such power, as its authority was absolutely limited to making calls upon the states for the military forces needed to create and maintain the army, each state being bound for its quota as called. But it is indisputable that the states in response to the calls made upon them met the situation when they deemed it necessary by directing enforced military service on the part of the citizens. In fact the duty of the citizen to render military service and the power to compel him against his consent to do so was expressly sanctioned by the Constitutions of at least nine of the states, an illustration being afforded by the following provision of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776:

'That every member of society hath a right to be protected in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and therefore is bound to contribute his proportion toward the expense of that protection, and yield his personal service when necessary, or an equivalent thereto.' Article 8 (Thorpe, American Charters, Constitutions and Organic Laws, vol. 5, pp. 3081, 3083).3

While it is true that the states were sometimes slow in exerting the power in order to fill their quotas-a condition shown by resolutions of Congress calling upon them to comply by exerting their compulsory power to draft and by earnest requests by Washington to Congress that a demand be made upon the states to resort sort to drafts to fill their quotas-that fact serves to demonstrate instead of to challenge the existence of the authority. A default in exercising a duty may not be resorted to as a reason for denying its existence.

When the Constitution came to be formed it may not be disputed that one of the recognized necessities for its adoption was the want of power in Congress to raise an army and the dependence upon the states for their quotas. In supplying the power it was manifestly intended to give it all and leave none to the states, since besides the delegation to Congress of authority to raise armies the Constitution prohibited the states, without the consent of Congress, form keeping troops in time of peace or engaging in war. Article 1, 10.

To argue that as the state authority over the militia prior to the Constitution embraced every citizen, the right of Congress to raise an army should not be considered as granting authority to compel the citizen's service in the army, is but to express in a different form the denial of the right to call any citizen to the army. Nor is this met by saying that it does not exclude the right of Congress to organize an army by voluntary enlistments, that is, by the consent of the citizens, for if the proposition be true, the right of the citizen to give consent would be controlled by the same prohibition which would deprive Congress of the right to compel unless it can be said that although Congress had not the right to call because of state authority, the citizen had a right to obey the call and set aside state authority if he pleased to do so. And a like conclusion demonstrates the want of foundation for the contention that although it be within the power to call the citizen into the army without his consent, the army into which he enters after the call is to be limited in some respects to services for which the militia it is assumed may only be used, since this admits the appropriateness of the call to military service in the army and the power to make it and yet destroys the purpose for which the call is authorized-the raising of armies to be under the control of the United States.

The fallacy of the argument results from confounding the constitutional provisions concerning the militia with that conferring upon Congress the power to raise armies. It treats them as one while they are different. This is the militia clause:

'The Congress shall have power: ... To provide for calling for h the militia to execute the laws of the nation, suppress insurrections and repel invasions; to provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states, respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.' Article 1, 8.

The line which separates it from the army power is not only inherently plainly marked by the text of the two clauses, but will stand out in bolder relief by considering the condition before the Constitution was adopted and the remedy which it provided for the military situation with which it dealt. The right on the one hand of Congress under the Confederation to call on the states for forces and the duty on the other of the states to furnish when called, embraced the complete power of government over the subject. When the two were combined and were delegated to Congress all governmental power on that subject was conferred, a result manifested not only by the grant made but by the limitation expressly put upon the states on the subject. The army sphere therefore embraces such complete authority. But the duty of exerting the power thus conferred in all its plenitude was not made at once obligatory but was wisely left to depend upon the discretion of Congress as to the arising of the exigencies which would call it in part or in whole into play. There was left therefore under the sway of the states undelegated the control of the militia to the extent that such control was not taken away by the exercise by Congress of its power to raise armies. This did not diminish the military power or curb the full potentiality of the right to exert it but left an area of authority requiring to be provided for (the militia area) unless and until by the exertion of the military power of Congress that area had been circumscribed or totally disappeared. This, therefore, is what was dealt with by the militia provision. It diminished the occasion for the exertion by Congress of its military power beyond the strict necessities for its exercise by giving the power to Congress to direct the organization and training of the militia (evidently to prepare such militia in the event of the exercise of the army power) although leaving the carrying out of such command to the states. It further conduced to the same result by delegating to Congress the right to call on occasions which were specified for the militia force, thus again obviating the necessity for exercising the army power to the extent of being ready for every conceivable contingency. This purpose is made manifest by the provision preserving the organization of the militia so far as formed when called for such special purposes although subjecting the militia when so called to the paramount authority of the United States. Tarble's Case, 13 Wall. 397, 408. But because under the express regulations the power was given to call for specified purposes without exerting the army power, it cannot follow that the latter power when exerted was not complete to the extent of its exertion and dominant. Because the power of Congress to raise armies was not required to be exerted to its full limit but only as in the discretion of Congress it was deemed the public interest required, furnishes no ground for supposing that the complete power was lost by its partial exertion. Because, moreover, the power granted to Congress to raise armies in its potentiality was susceptible of narrowing the area over which the militia clause operated, affords no ground for confounding the two areas which were distinct and separate to the end of confusing both the powers and thus weakening or destroying both.

And upon this understanding of the two powers the legislative and executive authority has been exerted from the beginning. From the act of the first session of Congress carrying over the army of the government under the Confederation to the United States under the Constitution (Act of September 29, 1789, c. 25, 1 Stat. 95) down to 1812 the authority to raise armies was regularly exerted as a distinct and substantive power, the force being raised and recruited by enlistment. Except for one act formulating a plan by which the entire body of citizens (the militia) subject to military duty was to be organized in every state (Act of May 8, 1792, c. 33, 1 Stat. 271) which was never carried into effect, Congress confined itself to providing for the organization of a specified number distributed among the states according to their quota to be trained as directed by Congress and to be called by the President as need might require. 5 When the War of 1812 came the result of these two forces composed the army to be relied upon by Congress to carry on the war. Either because it proved to be weak in numbers or because of insubordination developed among the forces called and manifested by their refusal to cross the border,6  the government determined that the exercise of the power to organize an army by compulsory draft was necessary and Mr. Monroe, the Secretary of War (Mr. Madison being President), in a letter to Congress recommended several plans of legislation on that subject. It suffices to say that by each of them it was proposed that the United States deal directly with the body of citizens subject to military duty and call a designated number out of the population between the ages of 18 and 45 for service in the army. The power which it was recommended be exerted was clearly an unmixed federal power dealing with the subject from the sphere of the authority given to Congress to raise armies and not from the sphere of the right to deal with the militia as such, whether organized or unorganized. A bill was introduced giving effect to the plan. Opposition developed, but we need nor stop to consider it because it substantially rested upon the incompatibility of compulsory military service with free government, a subject which from what we have said has been disposed of. Peace came before the bill was enacted.

Down to the Mexican War the legislation exactly portrayed the same condition of mind which we have previously stated. In that war, however, no draft was suggested, because the army created by the United States immediately resulting from the exercise by Congress of its power to raise armies, that organized under its direction from the militia and the volunteer commands which were furnished, proved adequate to carry the war to a successful conclusion.

So the course of legislation from that date to 1861 affords no ground for any other than the same conception of legislative power which we have already stated. In that year when the mutterings of the dread conflict which was to come began to be heard and the proclamation of the President calling a force into existence was issued it was addressed to the body organized out of the militia and trained by the states in accordance with the previous acts of Congress. Proclamation of April 15, 1861, 12 Stat. 1258. That force being inadequate to meet the situation, an act was passed authorizing the acceptance of 500,000 volunteers by the President to be by him organized into a national army. Act of July 22, 1861, c. 9, 12 Stat. 268. This was soon followed by another act increasing the force of the militia to be organized by the states for the purpose of being drawn upon when trained under the direction of Congress (Act of July 29, 1861, c. 25, 12 Stat. 281), the two acts when considered together presenting in the clearest possible form the distinction between the power of Congress to raise armies and its authority under the militia clause. But it soon became manifest that more men were required. As a result the Act of March 3, 1863 (c. 75, 12 Stat. 731), was adopted entitled 'An act for enrolling and calling out the national forces and for other purposes.' By that act which was clearly intended to directly exert upon all the citizens of t e United States the national power which it had been proposed to exert in 1814 on the recommendation of the then Secretary of War, Mr. Monroe, every male citizen of the United States between the ages of 20 and 45 was made subject by the direct action of Congress to be called by compulsory draft to service in a national army at such time and in such numbers as the President in his discretion might find necessary. In that act, as in the one of 1814, and in this one, the means by which the act was to be enforced were directly federal and the force to be raised as a result of the draft was therefore typically national as distinct from the call into active service of the militia as such. And under the power thus exerted four separate calls for draft were made by the President and enforced, that of July, 1863, of February and March, 1864, of July and December, 1864, producing a force of about a quarter of a million men. 7 It is undoubted that the men thus raised by draft were treated as subject to direct national authority and were used either in filling the gaps occasioned by the vicissitudes of war in the ranks of the existing national forces or for the purpose of organizing such new units as were deemed to be required. It would be childish to deny the value of the added strength which was thus afforded. Indeed in the official report of the Provost Marshal General, just previously referred to in the margin, reviewing the whole subject it was stated that it was the efficient aid resulting from the forces created by the draft at a very critical moment of the civil strife which obviated a disaster which seemed impending and carried that struggle to a complete and successful conclusion.

Brevity prevents doing more than to call attention to the fact that the organized body of militia within the states as trained by the states under the direction of Congress became known as the National Guard. Act of January 21, 1903, c. 196, 32 Stat. 775; National Defense Act of June 5, 1916, c. 134, 39 Stat. 211. And to make further preparation from among the great body of the citizens, an additional number to be determined by the President was directed to be organized and trained by the states as the National Guard Reserve. National Defense Act, supra.

Thus sanctioned as is the act before us by the text of the Constitution, and by its significance as read in the light of the fundamental principles with which the subject is concerned, by the power recognized and carried into effect in many civilized countries, by the authority and practice of the colonies before the Revolution, of the states under the Confederation and of the government since the formation of the Constitution, the want of merit in the contentions that the act in the particulars which we have been previously called upon to consider was beyond the constitutional power of Congress, is manifest. Cogency, however, if possible, is added to the demonstration by pointing out that in the only case to which we have been referred where the constitutionality of the act of 1863 was contemporaneously challenged on grounds akin to, if not absolutely identical with, those here urged, the validity of the act was maintained for reasons not different from those which control our judgment. Kneedler v. Lane, 45 Pa. 238. And as further evidence that the conclusion we reach is but the inevitable consequence of the provisions of the Constitution as effect follows cause, we briefly recur to events in another environment. The seceding states wrote into the Constitution which was adopted to regulate the government which they sought to establish, in identical words the provisions of the Constitution of the United States which we here have under consideration. And when the right to enforce under that instrument a selective draft law which was enacted not differing in principle from the one here in question was challenged, its validity was upheld evidently after great consideration by the courts of Virginia, of Georgia, of Texas, of Alabama, of Mississippi and of North Carolina, the opinions in some of the cases copiously and critically reviewing the whole grounds which we have stated. Burroughs v. Peyton, 16 Grat. (Va.) 470; Jeffers v. Fair, 33 Ga. 347; Daly and Fitzgerald v. Harris, 33 Ga. Supp. 38, 54; Barber v. Irwin, 34 Ga. 27; Parker v. Kaughman, 34 Ga. 136; Ex parte Coupland, 26 Tex. 386; Ex parte Hill, 38 Ala. 429; In re Emerson, 39 Ala. 437; In re Pille, 39 Ala. 459; Simmons v. Miller, 40 Miss. 19; Gatlin v. Walton, 60 N. C. 333, 408.

In reviewing the subject we have hitherto considered it as it has been argued from the point of view of the Constitution as it stood prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. But to avoid all misapprehension we briefly direct attention to that amendment for the purpose of pointing out, as has been frequently done in the past,8 how completely it broadened the national scope of the government under the Constitution by causing citizenship of the United States to be paramount and dominant instead of being subordinate and derivative, and therefore operating as it does upon all the powers conferred by the Constitution leaves no possible support for the contentions made if their want of merit was otherwise not so clearly made manifest.

It remains only to consider contentions which, while not disputing power, challenge the act because of the repugnancy to the Constitution supposed to result from some of its provisions. First, we are of opinion that the contention that the act is void as a delegation of federal power to state officials because of some of its administrative features is too wanting in merit to require further notice. Second, we think that the contention that the statute is void because vesting administrative officers with legislative discretion has been so completely adversely settled as to require reference only to some of the decided cases. Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649 , 12 Sup. Ct. 495; Buttfield v. Stranahan, 192 U.S. 470 , 24 Sup. Ct. 349; Intermountain Rate Cases, 234 U.S. 476 , 34 Sup. Ct. 986; First National Bank v. Union Trust Co., 244 U.S. 416 , 37 Sup. Ct. 734. A like conclusion also adversely disposes of a similar claim concerning the conferring of judicial power. Buttfield v. Stranahan, 192 U.S. 470, 497 , 24 S. Sup. Ct. 349; West v. Hitchcock, 205 U.S. 80 , 27 Sup. Ct. 423; Ocean Navigation Co. v. Stranahan, 214 U.S. 320 , 338-340, 29 Sup. Ct. 671; Zakonaite v. Wolf, 226 U.S. 272, 275 , 33 S. Sup. Ct. 31. And we pass without anything but statement the proposition that an establishment of a religion or an interference with the free exercise thereof repugnant to the First Amendment resulted from the exemption clauses of the act to which we at the outset referred because we think its unsoundness is too apparent to require us to do more.

Finally, as we are unable to conceive upon what theory the exaction by government from the citizen of the performance of his supreme and noble duty of contributing to the defense of the rights and honor of the nation as the result of a war declared by the great representative body of the people can be said to be the imposition of involuntary servitude in violation of the prohibitions of the Thirteenth Amendment, we are constrained to the conclusion that the contention to that effect is refuted by its mere statement.
Affirmed.

Footnotes

[ Footnote 1 ] In the argument of the government it is stated: 'The Statesman's Yearbook for 1917 cites the following governments as enforcing military service: Argentine Republic, p. 656; Austria-Hungary, p. 667; Belgium, p. 712; Brazil, p. 738; Bulgaria, p. 747; Bolivia, p. 728; Columbia, p. 790; Chili, p. 754; China, p. 770; Denmark, p. 811; Ecuador, p. 820; France, p. 841; Greece, p. 1001; Germany, p. 914; Guatemala, p. 1009; Honduras, p. 1018; Italy, p. 1036; Japan, p. 1064; Mexico, p. 1090; Montenegro, p. 1098; Netherlands, p. 1191; Nicaragua, p. 1142 Norway, p. 1152; Peru, p. 1191; Portugal, p. 1201; Roumania, p. 1220; Russia, p. 1240; Serbia, p. 1281; Siam, p. 1288; Spain, p. 1300; Switzerland, p. 1337; Salvador, p. 1270; Turkey, p. 1353.' See also the recent Canadian conscription act, entitled, 'Military Service Act' of August 27, 1917, expressly providing for service abroad (printed in the Congressional Record of September 20, 1917, 55th Cong. Rec., p. 7959); the Conscription Law of the Orange Free State, Law No. 10, 1899; Military Service and Commando Law, sections 10 and 28; Laws of Orange River Colony, 1901, p. 855; of the South African Republic, 'De Locale Wetten en Volks-raadsbesluiten der Zuid Afr. Republick,' 1898, Law No. 20, pp. 230, 233, article 6, 28; Constitution, German Empire, April 16, 1871, Art. 57, 59; Dodd, 1 Modern Constitutions, p. 344; Gesetz, betreffend Aenderungen der Wehrpflicht, vom 11 Feb. 1888, No. 1767, Reichs- Gesetzblatt, p. 11, amended by law of July 22, 1913, No. 4264, RGBl., p. 593; Loi sur de recrutement de l'armee of 15 July, 1889 (Duvergier, vol. 89, p. 440), modified by act of 21 March, 1905 (Duvergier, vol. 105, p. 133).

[ Footnote 2 ] Military Service Act, January 27, 1916, 5 and 6 George V, c. 104, p. 367, amended by the Military Service Act of May 25, 1916, 2d session 6 and 7 George V, c. 15, p. 33.

[ Footnote 3 ] See also Constitution of Vermont, 1777, c. 1, art. 9 (Thorpe, vol. 6, pp. 3737, 3740); New York, 1777, art. 40 (Id. vol. 5, p. 2637); Massachusetts Bill of Rights, 1780, art. 10 (Id. vol. 3, p. 1891); New Hampshire, 1784, pt. 1, Bill of Rights, art, 12 (Id. vol. 4, p. 2455); Delaware, 1776, art. 9 (Id. vol. 1, pp. 563, 564); Maryland, 1776, art. 33 ( Id. vol. 3, pp. 1686, 1696); Virginia, 1776, Militia (Id. vol. 7, p. 3817); Georgia, 1777, arts. 33, 35 (Id. vol. 2, pp. 777, 782).

[ Footnote 4 ] Journals of Congress, Ford's Ed., Library of Congress, vol. 7, pp. 262, 263; vol. 10, pp. 199, 200; vol. 13, p. 299. 7 Sparks, Writings of Washington, pp. 162, 167, 442, 444.

[ Footnote 5 ] Act of May 9, 1794, c. 27, 1 Stat. 367; Act of February 28, 1795, c. 36, 1 Stat. 424; Act of June 24, 1797, c. 4, 1 Stat. 522; Act of March 3, 1803, c. 32, 2 Stat. 241; Act of April 18, 1806, c. 32, 2 Stat. 383; Act of March 30, 1808, c. 39, 2 Stat. 478; Act of April 10, 1812, c. 55, 2 Stat. 705.

[ Footnote 6 ] Upton, Military Policy of the United States, p. 99 et seq.

[ Footnote 7 ] Historical Report, Enrollment Branch, Provost Marshal General's Bureau, March 17, 1866.

[ Footnote 8 ] Slaughter House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 72-74, 94, 95, 112, 113; United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 , 549; Boyd v. Thayer, 143 U.S. 135, 140 , 12 S. Sup. Ct. 375; McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1 , 37 13 Sup. Ct. 3.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Lex Anteinternet: The Flying V Cambria Inn, Weston County Wyoming

Churches of the West: Lex Anteinternet: The Flying V Cambria Inn, Weston County Wyoming.

Today we have a rare double blog mirror, including just a snipped of the old entry here; Lex Anteinternet: The Flying V Cambria Inn, Weston County Wyoming.: in the form it was linked into Churches of the West.

We're only including a brief part of it.  For the full thing, follow either of the two links.

This building, built as a resort in Weston County Wyoming, is included here as it has a substantial attached chapel.

 The inn was built with a chapel, the side of which you see here.

 Chapel at the Cambria Inn.

Chapel.

Stained glass windows in chapel.  The window includes variants of the State Seal in two locations.

Some sort of propeller.

Balcony in chapel.

Window dedicated to fraternal organizations.

The Photographer

Panem et Circenses?

(Note. I started this entry prior to Jeff Sessions announcing that he's allowing the various U.S. Attorneys leeway whether to prosecute Federal laws in regard to marijuana or not, so this wasn't a reaction to Sessions announcement, although I do plan to post on that topic.)

The United States has approximately 45,000 homeless people.

Of that tragic figure, 26,000 of them live in Los Angeles.

That's right, over half of the nation's homeless live in a single city in California.  Expanded out logically, as we should do, this means well over half of the nation's homeless live in the state of California.  Homeless people live, of course, everywhere. And there's more than one explanation, I suppose, for why half of the nation's homeless live in one warm state. . . but there's no good reason why over half of the nation's homeless live in one single Californian city.

This figure, by the way, has climbed dramatically in recent years, but it stretches back at least over both of the recent administrations. . .so I don't want to hear "it's all Trump's fault" or "it'a all Obama's fault".  I'm not sure whose fault it is, and its probably a lot of people's fault.  Having said that, out of a country of over 325,000,000 people, about 45,000 isn't actually as many as I would have expected. . . not that its a good figure.

Whatever the reason for that figure is, it pretty much disqualifies California from constantly lecturing the rest of the country on anything.  Indeed, California, for that reason alone, should qualify as a failed state.  If there was  a way to revoke a state's statehood, like there was once a way to revoke a dominion's status in the British Empire, California would deserve it.  And no, I'm not kidding.  With the state as messed up as it is, it would make more sense to simply revoke its statehood and return it to territory status, but for one thing.  There's no good reason to believe that the Federal Government would do a much better job at it.  Oh well.

But that does mean that California's politicians probably ought to stick to local topics.  California more messed up now than it has ever been, and it needs to fix that.  Advertisements on television about how nifty it is, in order to draw tourists, don't cut it.

Of course California would likely point out that it may be on the receiving end of the homeless, rather than the creation end. And that would almost certainly be true.  In that case, the US is creating the problem and California merely enduring it.  There's no doubt there's something to that.

Anyhow, the one thing that California definitely doesn't really need right now it so go down the same road as Stoned Colorado and make a bad situation worse, but it's going to.

Colorado, following the oilfield slump of the 1980s, saw Denver, its capitol, go from Big Dump to Super Dump.  However, some clever urban planning based on downtown renewal centered around Coors Stadium managed to pull it back out of that status, much to their credit.

Then Colorado legalized weed and the once hip and cool district down by the river became a Stoner tent city.  Denver stoners will deny it, but the city is receding back into a dump, although this time its a Stinking Stoner Dump.

Clearly, California, which already has so many troubles that it defies description, needs to follow the lyrics of the old Bob Dylan song, "Everyone Must Get Stoned".

The thesis is no doubt that California, the Tarnished Golden State, must be on the forefront of liberty and freedom. . . unless it involves certain constitutional rights in which case it must the in the forefront of retrogression. And the money will be flowing in.

But the practical effect is a lot of desperate people, a fair number of whom are already addicts, are going to be much worse off. And that's not a good thing at all.

Poster Saturday: Workeres, lend your strength

Best Post of the Week of December 31, 2017

A mirror strongly reflected back.

New Years Resolutions For Other People

The State Of The Blogs

Attrition and Saving the Bacon. The United States and World War One

The Evolution and Rise of theTattoo.

Tokyo, January 4, 1918.

Friday Farming: The implement

The implement

Colliers, January 5, 1918.

Tokyo, January 4, 1918.

The Evolution and Rise of theTattoo.

Kid with ink drawing mimicking tattoos.  Bad tattoos like that were pretty common on servicemen with I was young.  It wasn't the art of it, they were badges of a sort.

Allow me to be frank.  I'm not keen on tattoos.

And that being the case, of course, I've had to accommodate myself to a massive societal shift concerning them.

When I was a boy, teenager and young adult, only men had tattoos, and only certain men.  I can distinctly recall the first time I saw a woman with a tattoo.  It was actually at Mass on a Saturday night, and there was a Hispanic woman with a rose tattooed on her shoulder.  It was quite a surprise, frankly, as I'd never seen a tattooed woman before, and by that time I'd been in college for several years and had been in the National Guard for several years as well.  It wasn't as if I hadn't been around a bit.  But I'd never seen that.

FWIW, she was quite stunning and rather strongly resembled Linda Rondstadt.

Anyhow, I've obviously seen a lot more tattoos on women since then and it doesn't shock me anymore.  I still don't like it.

Back in my youth only certain men had tattoos.  The most common tattooed men were men who had acquired tattoos in the service during World War Two, followed by men who had otherwise acquired them in the service.  Marine Corps bulldogs wearing Brodie helmets, for example, were pretty common.  Or just U.S.M.C.  But for those men. I.e., if you saw on one of those tattoos you didn't ask about it, you could be pretty certain that fellow had really seen some awful stuff.

You also saw other service tattoos, like tigers on the forearm, on younger men.  That didn't mean as much.  I recall at Ft. Sill a medical Specialist gave us a canned lecture about things to watch out for in Lawton Oklahoma, one of being tattoo parlors.  He had a fresh patch on his forearm from a fresh tattoo. . .

The other group of men you saw with tattoos were characters who had some rough association.  Guys who were in gangs.  Guys who'd been to prison. That sort of thing.

The long and the short of it is that they were badges of a type, and the type of badges they were indicated some pretty tough guys as a rule.  Most servicemen didn't have tattoos no matter what service they'd seen.  So to have a tattoo was, well, an indication that the wearer had really seen the elephant.

And maybe been stomped by it.

Indeed, certain tattoos could be read, including service tattoos.  Blue birds on the chest are the property of the 25th Infantry Division, or where.  Bulldogs with Brodie helmets are a Marine Corps tattoo.  Tigers on the forearm were an Army tattoo for some reason.

Tough guys, in other words.

Somehow this all changed.

And I don't really know how.  

It started, it seems to me, about fifteen or so years ago.  Tattoos started spreading with the college crowd at that time and, frankly, their quality improved considerably.  A lot of the older tattoos were, quite frankly, hideous.  I can recall, for example, seeing a really nice friendly guy come into a barber shop I was in with a hideous naked Statute of Liberty tattoo. Absolutely ghastly.  Nobody would get a tattoo like that now.  Todays' are much more artful.

And with the spread of the artful quality, they spread to women.

I wish they hadn't.  No beautiful women is going to be more attractive with a tattoo and no woman who feels that she needs to be adorned will be well adorned in that fashion.  Indeed, the opposite is true.  It's a detraction, for male and female, but particularly for female.  "You look beautiful just the way you are" is true. The tattoos aren't going to add to it.

Not that it matters what I think.  This trend shows no sign of abating.  Indeed, its spreading.  Classes of people who would never have gotten a tattoo earlier now routinely do.

When I was first practicing law there would have been no earthly way a lawyer would have gotten a tattoo. If he had one, I could almost guarantee he'd seen military service, and probably of the screaming horror variety, and before he became a lawyer.  Now, however, I know at least one younger, really good, lawyer who has an extensive arm tattoo.  You can't see it when he's practicing law, as he wears a long sleeve shirt, as we do. But after hours, it can't be missed.

And even one lawyer about my age that I went to law school with has one.  I don't know what the symbolism behind it is, but he became extremely involved in athletics of the iron man type and then one showed up.  My presumption is that its related to that somehow.  It's on an ankle.

And all the younger paralegals seem to have them now.  I can hardly run into one that doesn't. At one time we hoped that if they had them they weren't visible to jurors.  Now I don't worry about that as its spread so far.

And lots of women I know express an admiration and desire for them.  And indeed lots of the women I know and like now have them.

What's it all mean?  This sort of development indicates something.

Tattoos really went from an underclass thing in the 19th Century to something else in the 20th.  It entered the military from seafarers who had picked it up from the cultures they encountered.  The old association of sailors with tattoos wasn't bogus, it was a real thing.  That it went from merchant seamen to sailors and marines, to soldiers stationed in the Pacific, to soldiers in general makes quite a bit of sense. 

But how did they make the jump from men who'd been shot at, or who might get shot at, to the general public?

I don't know, but what I do know is that there's been a death of a sense of belonging in the late 20th Century that's really carried on into the 21st.  I think that explains it.

Tattoos have always been badges of a sort, along with other sorts of closely related identifiers like tribal scars.  They have always said, "I'm a member of this . . . " tribe, group or society.  Soldiers who had the bluebird tattoos, which you will still occasionally see, declared not only that they were or had been in the Army, but that they'd been in the 25th Infantry Division.  Anchors, Marine Corps bulldogs, and the like, all symbolized similar things.  At some level, I think they all do.  They all express some sort of devotion.

I think they all also express, on some subtle level, an widespread and deep dissatisfaction with modern urban life.  People don't get Walmart tattoos, for example, even if they spend a lifetime working there.  They're a cry back towards a more primitive age.

Some of that age was with us fairly recently, and indeed still is.  It wasn't all that long ago that people very strongly identified with ethnicity and culture in a way that they tend not to now.  Indeed, the irony of modern life is that the culture of American elites has worked hard in the past thirty or so years to wipe out the concept that there's really deep distinctions between individual groups of Americans, even as they've celebrated "diversity". But in celebrating "diversity", they've argued that it doesn't exist.  The diversity imagined is a shallow one with a "we're all the same in the end" solvent being washed over all of it.

In the end, however, we really aren't all the same and, moreover, we don't want to be.  We still want our group or, as a recent British historian has termed it, our "network".  Indeed, he sees networks, which are simply a group, on the rise.  I think he's likely right.  At any rate, the desire to be part of a group and not part of the urban cubicle mass is pretty strong.  The rise of tattoos in the general middle class seems to me to be part of that.

Tattooed blacksmith by illustrator F. X. Leyendecker.  F. X. Leyendecker, like his brother, was a popular illustrator of the early 20th Century before his addiction to drugs lead to suicide.  I suspect that a lot of people identify more with the figure portrayed, a blue collar working man of an earlier generation, than with their own stations in life. . . and who can blame them really?

The Wyoming Tribune for January 4, 1918. Bad day for Casper Electricity

As if there wasn't enough bad news around those days, a local power plant went up in flames.

I'm not sure which early Casper power plant that was, but I suspect it was the one that used diesel engines, believe it or not, which had been in operation at that time.  It had a limited number of customers, as the article makes plane, as a lot of Casperites in the then booming Casper likely weren't utility subscribers at the time, as odd as that may seem to us know.  When electricity became nearly universal in homes is something I've addressed before, and I don't know when it would have become universal in a place like Casper.

Does anyone who stops in here know when it became universal in smaller western and mid western towns and cities?

Electricty was introduced for customers in Casper in 1900, so it had been around that long, but the means and methods of generating it were still in a state of flux.  This article reports that the entire business district was out of power.

In other news, the Wyo Trib was accusing Nebraska of being frigid, which is odd.  The Tribune was predicting permanent nationalization of the railroads, which is something we know the unions would later ask for but would not receive.  And there seemed to be a boom in marrying young going on.  I haven't tracked the entire article all the way through, but I suspect that was one of the interesting marriage related events tied to World War One.  Chances are that couples were rushing to marry before the grooms deployed to France.  Fifteen is quite young indeed, and the author of the article seemed to take that view as well, but of course less than 50% of all Americans graduated from high school at that time.  This trend, however, can't be taken to mean too much, as we also earlier explored.  The odd thing about this article (which doesn't actually appear to mention the war) is that it seemed to take the tone that it was nifty if a girl received a proposal that young, which would horrify most of us now (for good reason).  That may reflect a true change in views, even if the marriage age really hasn't changed that much over time.

Thursday, January 3, 1918. An Indian Raid?

This issue of the Boomerang is particularly hard to read. But something was going on near Nogales.

Last edition:

Padre Pio in a letter to Antonietta Vona, January 2, 1918

Labels: Catholic, Christianity, religion, The written word

Padre Pio in a letter to Antonietta Vona, January 2, 1918

Take concern to have your heart be more pleasing to our Master day by day.

Padre Pio in a letter to Antonietta Vona, January 2, 1918

All things, at all times, are connected in some fashion.

This is why it is never really the case that a positive answer can be accorded to the question, "what does it matter, it's only hurting me?", or "what does it matter to you, it's my business?"

Now, nonetheless, the degree to which something is "only hurting" the actor, or "my business" does indeed vary according to the impact.  Somethings my be harmful, but the greater harm would be in seeking to address them, or perhaps seeking to prevent them by overreach.  

But, it's also the case that some thing that may seem deeply personal to the actor, or "only the business" of the class doing the act, may have deep harmful impacts far beyond the person undertaking the act or asking the question.  Small leeway may lead to enormous erosion.  Large leeway may have little erosive impact at all. 

Attrition and Saving the Bacon. The United States and World War One

 January 1918 Coke calendar.  Soon, soft drinks would be about your only option.  World War One gave a big boost to the Prohibition movement, but a lot of the days after reading the days news you'd probably feel like you needed a drink.

If you've occasionally read the headlines of the newspapers from 1915, 16 and 17 (and now 18) we've put up here, there's something that should probably be obvious from reading them.

The Allies were loosing the war.

Okay, maybe not loosing. But the Allies sure weren't clearly winning.

Let's take a look at that, at this point, the beginning of 1918.

And to start off on that, let's take a look at it as an observant reader of one of the newspapers we've been putting up might have read it.  I think such a reader, observing the news of the prior day over his cup of morning coffee, or the news of the day over his soon to be banished glass of evening beer, would have been worried. And particularly so if they had a son in the service (and let's face it, while there were women volunteering to serve in various roles, the services were overwhelmingly male at the time. . . and in fact they still are).

 

Women did serve of course, and I don't mean to suggest otherwise, in a variety of ways.  Indeed, if you subscribe to Reddit's 100 Years Ago Today subreddit you'll frequently find the photographs of British nurses and war workers who died as a result of the war.  Pretty poignant.
 

So, what would such a person have absorbed before they went to work after that cup of Joe. . . or after they came home and poured that glass of beer?

Well let's go back to 1914, as nobody reads a newspaper or absorbs the news in a vacuum.

 Readers of the Cheyenne July 28, 1914 morning paper were greeted with the news that Europe was on the brink of war.  If they got the evening paper, and many did, they'd next read that Europe was in fact at war.  Another name already familiar to Wyomingites which would be followed the next few years, that of "General Villa", was also on the front page that morning.

Readers of the Casper Record in then tiny Casper would have been less disturbed that morning.  And keep in mind there was no commercial radio at the time either.

Starting in August of 1914 they'd have been reading about the horrific outbreak of a titanic war in Europe. And in that war, the Central Powers, Germany and the Austro Hungarian Empire, gained ground, and a fair amount of it in the East, in 1914.  Their progress was arrested in the west, but not before they'd shown a willingness to trample over the neutrality of a small nation, Belgium, and to have come frighteningly close to breaking through and overwhelming France. . .something they had done last time they'd fought the French in 1870.

Then things seemed to stabilize in the West while bloody huge battles continued on in the East.  Chances are our reader would have vaguely sympathized with the Allies, but only to a degree.  Ethnic feelings about the war were strong and some German Americans were less than keen about the Allies while Irish Americans had mixed feelings about the English. Generally, however, that war was "over there" and we weren't in it, and we were glad.

All along, and so commonly forgotten in histories about the war, our reader would be worrying at least a bit about the situation on the American border with Mexico.  The Mexican Revolution had been going on in one form or another since 1910 and things just refused to stabilize. The US, moreover had demonstrated a feeling that intervening in Mexico, as necessary (in our view) was justified.  Chances are that our reader might have been more concerned, in 1914, about Mexico than Europe.  Indeed, the United States had intervened in the Mexican Revolution by landing troops in Vera Cruz in April, 1914.

Marines and Sailors raising the Stars and Stripes in Vera Cruz, April 1914.

We occupied the town until November.

 

 Sailor searches Mexican man in Vera Cruz.

And so we go to 1915. The war in Europe just keeps on keeping on, but the war south of the border is really ramping up.  Mexico is in a full scale civil war, and its bloody indeed.  American eyes, to a large extent, and for good reason, were looking south and worrying. The US government was keeping a watchful eye and getting involved.  In the background, some men like Theodore Roosevelt were demanding that the US enter the war in Europe, but most Americans were keeping Europe on the distant horizon and worrying about Mexico in the not so distant foreground.

Nonetheless, the war in Europe was making an appearance in Wyoming. In June of that year British Remount agents started purchasing horses in the state.  By the wars end they'd be purchasing them all over the globe, and indeed they already were.  An economic boom in the state, fueled by the war, was on.

Things were getting scary.

And the changes going on couldn't be missed.

So then arrived 1916.  And the U.S. was attacked.  By the rebel Mexican Division del Norte commanded Pancho Villa.  Now the US was in a conflict, although a low grade one as the US retaliated by entering Mexico in pursuit of Villa.

 March 9, 1916 evening edition of the Casper Daily Press detailing the raid on Columbus and the US entry into Mexico. The paper termed it an "invasion", which must have been jarring to the newspaper's readers.  The US didn't view it that way, but the Mexicans more or less did.

The entire time it threatened to break out into a general war with Mexico in which the US would be at war with the Carranza government in Mexico City.  Troop needs required the calling up of the National Guard to man the border in very short order, with the entire National Guard ultimately rotating through border posts over the 1916-1917.

The US actually did end up exchanging some shots with the de facto federal army of Mexico at Carrizal while still trying to hunt down and wipe out the insurgent Pancho Villa. Finally, at that point, with a full scale war looming, it seemed, we backed down and entered into an uneasy occupation of Chihuahua while we negotiated for an exit.  As we were negotiating, the war in Europe started to become more and more of a problem.

The U.S. Army set back at Carrizal hit the press in full force by June 24.  On the same day the press reported that the Germans had one another victory at Verdun, while stopping the "Slavs", when in fact the Russian offensive had terminated the German's hopes at Verdun.

In early 1917 we left Mexico under an arrangement with Carranza's government.  The whole thing had been very inconclusive and far from a victory of any sort.  Carranaza, whose government we had been aiding in the civil war in Mexico before we were attacked by Villa, and indeed, that likely caused Villa to attack us, had shown us contempt.  Villa was on the rise once again.  Tension on the border had not gone away and US troops were not out of danger.  Indeed, cross border action, both ways, continued.

The smile on the soldier to the left's face was likely quite genuine.  The 6th and the 16th Infantry crossing back into the United States, February 1917.

There were big headlines going in, coming out was still on the front page, but not nearly as big in the headlines. 

And then came the Spring of 1917.

Even as we were struggling to find a way out of Mexico, with that struggle being in the newspaper nearly every day, we were starting to worry more and more about the war in Europe, which was now drawing nearer and nearer. And then, just as we were getting out of Mexico, getting into the war in Europe suddenly looked inevitable, as it was. February 1917 saw the US finally take its troops out of Mexico and the National Guard was finally allowed to stand down, but that same month saw the Germans resume unrestricted submarine warfare, something that would cost American lives.  Also in that same month the Zimmerman Note, a German diplomatic effort to coax Mexico and Japan into an alliance with the US in the event of war, was revealed. National Guards men were finding themselves called back up in anticipation of war just weeks after the last of them had gone home.  The cycle was so fast that many National Guardsmen would likely have been better off in every sense if they hadn't gone home at all.

 

Starting in February 1917 the hypothetical reader of the news we imagine here would have seen one thing after another rushing the US towards war.  By April the war had arrived.

The war news after that was confusing. At first the US talked as if it was only going to raise a Navy. But soon thereafter it had enacted mass conscription.  It was obviously going to raise a huge Army, but how huge wasn't evident at first.  By late summer it was pretty clear it was going to be really big, and the Navy wasn't going to be the primary fighting arm of the nation.  At the same time both the British and the French launched huge offensives, with the British ones featuring the first use of tanks. There was reason for our reader to hope that the war might even end before the US really got committed in Europe.

That hope was soon dashed. The offensives rapidly stalled and by Fall revolution had broken out in giant Russia.

We don't often think how that news must have read to the average person.  In many histories written later its often noted that this meant that Americans could accept that the war was really one "to make the world safe for democracy".  I'll bet that at the time, at least for a savvy reader, the news of the fall of Russia was unbelievably grim.

Imperial Russia in the war meant that the Central Powers tied up on a two, or really three, front war with one of those fronts involving a combatant with a much larger population and fast resources and territory.  Never mind how primitive Imperial Russia was and how inept.  I think this would have been at least obvious to a savvy reader.  And then, right after that, a massive Austrian offensive through Italy back on its heals. To most readers, it would have appeared, rightly, that Italy was about to be knocked out of the war.  And it would have been hard not to conclude that the extra defensive front that would have opened up against France would have been disastrous.

And that's about where you are right now. 

According to the Wyoming Tribune, the Kaiser was saying he was going to win.  Readers of the paper would have to wonder if he was right.

So, at this point, New Years Day, 1918, you'd know that the first American troops had arrived in France, and indeed some had already been killed in action.  You'd also know that Russia was descending into chaos and its giant army had dissolved.  And you'd know that Italy had nearly been defeated in the past few weeks.  You'd also know that the French and the British had mounted successful offensives in late 1917, but they hadn't succeeded in gaining a breakthrough.  You'd know that the British had taken Jerusalem in the Middle East but the Turks were trying to take it back. You'd know that U-Boats were ranging the seas, and indeed they'd sunk a British ship with large loss of life just a couple of days prior.  And you'd know that Pancho Villa was fully resurgent and a force again in Northern Mexico, and there were renewed Mexican raids, from somebody, going on along the border.

It would have been hard to have been optimistic.

Of course, you'd also be aware that there were persistent rumors that there were serious foods shortages in Germany.  And you'd know that US troops were arriving in France.

And locally, no matter what you might think of it, a major economic boom was going on.  Indeed, it had changed the entire town.  That would have been impossible not to notice.

Okay, so that's what you know. And what would you have thought of all of that?

Well, that depends, I suppose, on how much you deduce for yourself and how much you accept what others are saying.  Personally, I think in my own case, as I have a little military experience, and I would have had at the time, and assuming that I would have been in Casper on a frigid January 1918 rather than in the service (it was easier to get in, if overage, at the time), I would have been pretty concerned.

It would have seem obvious to me that the German defeat of Russia would mean that the Germans would now be free to move hundreds of thousands of troops to the Western Front and they would have also have had all the resources available to them that Western Russia has, and that's a lot.  My guess would have been that that would take a few months, but once they did it, they'd be ready to launch a major offensive to knock France out of the war, and end it.

Of course, that's based on what I would have known. What I wouldn't have known is that the food crisis in Germany was now at the true crisis level and starvation was starting to set in.  I would also not have know that the revolutionary spirit that was haunting Imperial Russia was now also setting in, inside of Germany, and revolution was becoming a real possibility, particularly in the radicalized German Navy's enlisted ranks.  And I would never have guessed that Imperial German avarice and incompetence would lead it to keep advancing in Russia even as the country surrendered and descended into civil war such that Germany was unable to move substantial numbers of men to the West after all.

I also would not have guessed that the Germans had so depleted their horse stocks that they were now incapable of mobile warfare.  And I wouldn't have guessed that the Germans proved unable to exploit Russian resources which could have addressed that, and their food, situation.

I would also not have known that moral was so low in some units of the French army that they could no longer be used for offensive warfare.  Obviously that wasn't true of the entire French army, but it was true of some of it and it was a serous problem.  And I would not have realized that British and French manpower resources were now so stretched that they were importing Chinese labor in order to relieve service troops.

So, I would have been legitimately worried. 

Which gets to a topic that we'll likely look at more later.  The U.S. role in the First World War.  

It's always been somewhat controversial in a way. The way we view it has been, for a long time, significantly different than the way at least the British view it.  But viewed in context, a century past, while the British retained the ability to launch offensives, and the French somewhat did, their manpower situation was now desperate.  Italy was barely hanging on, and while Germany was facing severe problems of its own, only its own greed and incompetence kept it from working through those problems and solving them in time to win the war in the spring of 1918.  Without the commitment of U.S. troops to the defense against that 1918 spring offensive, as we'll see in a few months, the Germans may well have prevailed that spring.  And certainly without the increasing number of American troops in action, brief though that period of action was in the spring, summer and fall of 1918, its doubtful that the Allies could have overcome the increasing German manpower advantages. They likely would have gotten their act together sooner or later.

So, while we will look at the situation in greater depth later, did the entry of the United States into the war in 1917 win it for the Allies?  Nobody can say for sure. But a good case for that can be made.

And I would have been skeptical that U.S. troops would arrive in time.

Booze was on its way out, temporarily. But cigars were still in, temporarily.  The war was bringing in cigarettes in a major way.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 1. New Years Day

Today In Wyoming's History: January 1. New Years Day:

1918  Oil and gas pipeline commences operation from the Salt Creek field to Casper.  The first such pipeline in the Casper region.  Attribution:  On This Day .com

I've been told, and indeed I've seen the photos, that my father in law's great grandfather worked on hauling material to the Salt Creek fields during their construction. And this by mule team.  Photographs of locals hauling equipment from Casper to Salt Creek by mule are really impressive.  It's interesting to note that early on, it was mule power, not heavy truck power, that supported the petroleum industry.

The Salt Creek field remains in production today.