Today In Wyoming's History: January 9, 1918. The last Indian Battle in the United States

Today In Wyoming's History: January 9: 1918 The Battle of Bear Valley, revolutionary Yaqui natives and the United States Army in southern Arizona; the last US v. Indian battle.

 Aftermath of the battle with Yaqui prisoners under guard.

The Army element was from the 10th Cavalry. The Yaqui's opened fire on the approaching 10th Cavalry troopers and the battle lasted approximately 30 minutes, with no US casualties. The Yaquis, however, who were hostile to Mexican forces at the time (which caused the battle to occur, as theYaqui's mistook the approaching 10th Cavalrymen for Mexicans, lost their commander and the capture of nine of their members.

This is an odd side story to the Mexican Revolution as the Yaqui's, by this point in that event, were hoping to establish an independent state in Sonora and were at war in Mexico towards that aim.  At the same time, Yaqui's had been crossing into the United States to work, and supplying their forces with arms from the funds raised towards that goal.  The Mexican government had in turn asked the United States for assistance in preventing this from occurring, while American ranchers in Arizona were finding themselves in conflict themselves with Yaqui parties.  This had resulted in increased American military patrol activity on the border.

Bear Valley itself was a natural border crossing that had seen increased strife prior to this event.  On January 8 a local rancher reported a cow being butchered to an element of the 10th Cavalry, which then deployed to the area.  The following day they saw, from a distance, the Yaqui's crossing into the area mounted.  The unit deployed as dismounted skirmishers in anticipation of action but did not encounter the Yaqui's so they returned to their mounts and proceeded in that fashion, when they were fired upon by the Yaqui force which mistook them for Mexican troops.  The commander of the action later recounted it, in a book he later wrote, as follows:

The Cavalry line maintained its forward movement, checked at times by the hostile fire, but constantly keeping contact with the Indians. Within thirty minutes or so the return shooting lessened. Then the troop concentrated heavy fire on a confined area containing a small group, which had developed into a rear guard for the others. The fire effect soon stopped most of the enemy action. Suddenly a Yaqui stood up waving his arms in surrender. Captain Ryder immediately blew long blasts on his whistle for the order to 'cease fire,' and after some scattered shooting the fight was over. Then upon command the troopers moved forward cautiously and surrounded them. This was a bunch of ten Yaquis, who had slowed the Cavalry advance to enable most of their band to escape. It was a courageous stand by a brave group of Indians; and the Cavalrymen treated them with the respect due to fighting men. Especially astonishing was the discovery that one of the Yaquis was an eleven-year-old boy. The youngster had fought bravely alongside his elders, firing a rifle that was almost as long as he was tall. ...Though time has perhaps dimmed some details, the fact that this was my first experience under fire—and it was a hot one even though they were poor marksmen—most of the action was indelibly imprinted on my mind. After the Yaquis were captured we lined them up with their hands above their heads and searched them. One kept his hands around his middle. Fearing that he might have a knife to use on some trooper, I grabbed his hands and yanked them up. His stomach practically fell out. This was the man who had been hit by my corporal's shot. He was wearing two belts of ammunition around his waist and more over each shoulder. The bullet had hit one of the cartridges in his belt, causing it to be exploded, making the flash of fire I saw. Then the bullet entered one side and came out the other, laying his stomach open. He was the chief of the group. We patched him up with first aid kits, mounted him on a horse, and took him to camp. He was a tough Indian, made hardly a groan and hung onto the saddle. If there were more hit we could not find them. Indians do not leave any wounded behind if they can possibly carry them along. One of my men spoke a mixture of Spanish, and secured the information from a prisoner that about twenty others got away. I immediately sent Lieutenant Scott, who had joined the fight, to take a strong detail and search the country for a few miles. However they did not find anything of the remainder of the band. It was dark when we returned to camp. I sent some soldiers to try and get an automobile or any transportation at the mining camps for the wounded Yaqui, but none could be located until morning. He was sent to the Army hospital at Nogales and died that day. We collected all the packs and arms of the Indians. There were a dozen or more rifles, some .30-30 Winchester carbines and German Mausers, lots of ammunition, powder and lead, and bullet molds. The next day when you [Colonel Wharfield] and Capt. Pink Armstrong with Troop H came in from the squadron camp to relieve us, we pulled out for Nogales. The Yaquis were mounted on some extra animals, and not being horse-Indians were a sorry sight when we arrived in town. Some were actually stuck to the saddles from bloody chafing and raw blisters they had stoically endured during the trip. Those Yaquis were just as good fighting men as any Apache...."

The battle ended with a peculiar result in that the prisoners proved to readily adjust to Army life and confessed that they opened fire only because of the mistaken identify.  They then volunteered for service in the U.S. Army, which was declined. They were then sent to trail for illegally transporting arms and ammunition into the United States, a felony, to which they confessed and were sentenced to a token thirty days in jail.  The sentence was preferable to them to being deported to Mexico for obvious reasons.

And so ended the Indian Wars in the context of the armed forces of the United States engaging in combat with Native Americans.  Strife with Indians in Mexico, however, between Indian bands and Mexican civilians would continue for at least another decade or so.  It's interesting to note that the final battle between soldiers of the United States and Native Americans would involve the 10th Cavalry, whose enlisted men were black.  It's also interesting to note that this final battle in a series of battles and wars stretching back at least to 1675 is almost a forgotten footnote that came as the United States found itself fighting in Europe for the first time in history in a war that would usher in the new era of mechanized warfare.

Woodrow Wilson Delivers his "Fourteen Points" to Congress in a Joint Session. January 8, 1918.

Woodrow Wilson delivered his Fourteen Points to Congress on this day, in which he defined American war aims.

 

 

 The text of the address:

Gentlemen of the Congress:

Once more, as repeatedly before, the spokesmen of the Central Empires have indicated their desire to discuss the objects of the war and the possible basis of a general peace. Parleys have been in progress at Brest-Litovsk between Russsian representatives and representatives of the Central Powers to which the attention of all the belligerents have been invited for the purpose of ascertaining whether it may be possible to extend these parleys into a general conference with regard to terms of peace and settlement.

The Russian representatives presented not only a perfectly definite statement of the principles upon which they would be willing to conclude peace but also an equally definite program of the concrete application of those principles. The representatives of the Central Powers, on their part, presented an outline of settlement which, if much less definite, seemed susceptible of liberal interpretation until their specific program of practical terms was added. That program proposed no concessions at all either to the sovereignty of Russia or to the preferences of the populations with whose fortunes it dealt, but meant, in a word, that the Central Empires were to keep every foot of territory their armed forces had occupied -- every province, every city, every point of vantage -- as a permanent addition to their territories and their power.

It is a reasonable conjecture that the general principles of settlement which they at first suggested originated with the more liberal statesmen of Germany and Austria, the men who have begun to feel the force of their own people's thought and purpose, while the concrete terms of actual settlement came from the military leaders who have no thought but to keep what they have got. The negotiations have been broken off. The Russian representatives were sincere and in earnest. They cannot entertain such proposals of conquest and domination.

The whole incident is full of significances. It is also full of perplexity. With whom are the Russian representatives dealing? For whom are the representatives of the Central Empires speaking? Are they speaking for the majorities of their respective parliaments or for the minority parties, that military and imperialistic minority which has so far dominated their whole policy and controlled the affairs of Turkey and of the Balkan states which have felt obliged to become their associates in this war?

The Russian representatives have insisted, very justly, very wisely, and in the true spirit of modern democracy, that the conferences they have been holding with the Teutonic and Turkish statesmen should be held within open, not closed, doors, and all the world has been audience, as was desired. To whom have we been listening, then? To those who speak the spirit and intention of the resolutions of the German Reichstag of the 9th of July last, the spirit and intention of the Liberal leaders and parties of Germany, or to those who resist and defy that spirit and intention and insist upon conquest and subjugation? Or are we listening, in fact, to both, unreconciled and in open and hopeless contradiction? These are very serious and pregnant questions. Upon the answer to them depends the peace of the world.

But, whatever the results of the parleys at Brest-Litovsk, whatever the confusions of counsel and of purpose in the utterances of the spokesmen of the Central Empires, they have again attempted to acquaint the world with their objects in the war and have again challenged their adversaries to say what their objects are and what sort of settlement they would deem just and satisfactory. There is no good reason why that challenge should not be responded to, and responded to with the utmost candor. We did not wait for it. Not once, but again and again, we have laid our whole thought and purpose before the world, not in general terms only, but each time with sufficient definition to make it clear what sort of definite terms of settlement must necessarily spring out of them. Within the last week Mr. Lloyd George has spoken with admirable candor and in admirable spirit for the people and Government of Great Britain.

There is no confusion of counsel among the adversaries of the Central Powers, no uncertainty of principle, no vagueness of detail. The only secrecy of counsel, the only lack of fearless frankness, the only failure to make definite statement of the objects of the war, lies with Germany and her allies. The issues of life and death hang upon these definitions. No statesman who has the least conception of his responsibility ought for a moment to permit himself to continue this tragical and appalling outpouring of blood and treasure unless he is sure beyond a peradventure that the objects of the vital sacrifice are part and parcel of the very life of Society and that the people for whom he speaks think them right and imperative as he does.

There is, moreover, a voice calling for these definitions of principle and of purpose which is, it seems to me, more thrilling and more compelling than any of the many moving voices with which the troubled air of the world is filled. It is the voice of the Russian people. They are prostrate and all but hopeless, it would seem, before the grim power of Germany, which has hitherto known no relenting and no pity. Their power, apparently, is shattered. And yet their soul is not subservient. They will not yield either in principle or in action. Their conception of what is right, of what is humane and honorable for them to accept, has been stated with a frankness, a largeness of view, a generosity of spirit, and a universal human sympathy which must challenge the admiration of every friend of mankind; and they have refused to compound their ideals or desert others that they themselves may be safe.

They call to us to say what it is that we desire, in what, if in anything, our purpose and our spirit differ from theirs; and I believe that the people of the United States would wish me to respond, with utter simplicity and frankness. Whether their present leaders believe it or not, it is our heartfelt desire and hope that some way may be opened whereby we may be privileged to assist the people of Russia to attain their utmost hope of liberty and ordered peace.

It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when they are begun, shall be absolutely open and that they shall involve and permit henceforth no secret understandings of any kind. The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of secret covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments and likely at some unlooked-for moment to upset the peace of the world. It is this happy fact, now clear to the view of every public man whose thoughts do not still linger in an age that is dead and gone, which makes it possible for every nation whose purposes are consistent with justice and the peace of the world to avow nor or at any other time the objects it has in view.

We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secure once for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our program; and that program, the only possible program, as we see it, is this:

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development.

XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.

XII. The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions of right we feel ourselves to be intimate partners of all the governments and peoples associated together against the Imperialists. We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end. For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved; but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such as can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this program does remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there is nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have made her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish to injure her or to block in any way her legitimate influence or power. We do not wish to fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace- loving nations of the world in covenants of justice and law and fair dealing. We wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the world, -- the new world in which we now live, -- instead of a place of mastery.

Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration or modification of her institutions. But it is necessary, we must frankly say, and necessary as a preliminary to any intelligent dealings with her on our part, that we should know whom her spokesmen speak for when they speak to us, whether for the Reichstag majority or for the military party and the men whose creed is imperial domination.

We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to admit of any further doubt or question. An evident principle runs through the whole program I have outlined. It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak.

Unless this principle be made its foundation no part of the structure of international justice can stand. The people of the United States could act upon no other principle; and to the vindication of this principle they are ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything they possess. The moral climax of this the culminating and final war for human liberty has come, and they are ready to put their own strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity and devotion to the test.

 

Whatever the merits of the Fourteen Points may have been, Wilson hadn't run them past the Allies at the time he delivered them, which was a rather curious thing to do in light of the vast amount of blood that they'd already shed in the war, and in light of the fact that, as noted in one of the newspapers set out above, the Russians were surrendering at the time and victory was far from assured.  It would take the US ten months to secure Allied approval of the Fourteen Points although the British did not accept the freedom of the seas portion.  Nonetheless the Allies widely disseminated them as propaganda.  They did prove to be an incitement to the Central Powers to surrender.

In the US the speech was positively received for the most part except that leaders of the Republican Party immediately renounced the provisions for a League of Nations.

Jeff Sessions allows the U.S. Attorneys to prosecute the Federal Marijuana laws. . .and that's a really good thing. . .

in spite of what all the weedy stoners and now drugy states may state about it.

Sessions didn't write the law.  He's not even requiring that it be enforced.  He's merely withdrawn the Obama era declaration that U.S. Attorneys violate their oath to uphold the laws of the United States and abstain from prosecuting for the violation of a Federal law, at least one of two instances in which President Obama, unable to secure a repeal of a law, mandated that his officers violate their oaths of office and fail to uphold it.

Now, it's no doubt clear from my posts here I'm not in favor of legalizing marijuana.  Frankly, while I'm not a teetotaler, I wouldn't have been in favor of the repeal of Prohibition either.  The evidence is good enough that humans fall into destructive addictions easily, and that taking any drug isn't really a good idea if you can avoid it.  I've already gone into the topic of why alcohol is both destructive and perhaps a bit of an exception from an evolutionary biological prospective, and if people want to read and complain about that in that thread, hey, have at it.

"Radar plot depicting the data presented in Nutt, David, Leslie A King, William Saulsbury, Colin Blakemore. "Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse" The Lancet 2007; 369:1047-1053. PMID:17382831. For more information, see image. It contains not only the physical harm and dependence data like the aforementioned image, but also the mean social harm of each drug. This image was produced with the python plotting library matplotlib"  Note, alcohol is on the high side of social harm in this plot, but then it would be.  It's the only legal drug in the lot and therefore the most used by default.

This topic isn't on any of that.

Having a law on the books breeds contempt for the law, particularly a law which at least a significant minority of a population supports.  If the law is no longer wanted, it should be repealed.

Now, critics will scoff and say this is an exception and it hasn't been enforced for a long time, etc. They're wrong.

And the reason they're wrong is not only that ignoring a law breeds contempt of all law, but it sets a precedent.

Don't think so?

Well, consider this.  This law was ordered to be ignored as the Obama Administration basically is okay with states going their own way on marijuana, but Congress wasn't.  So the order went out, ignore the law.

How many other closely debated topics are there like this?

Plenty.

Some examples.

Some right wing politicians have long argued that Form 4473s which people fill out when they purchase a firearm are excessively intrusive.  I disagree, but they argue it.  Others argue that prohibitions on any type of weapon, such as machineguns, are improper and illegal. What if some administration, say the Trump Administration, ordered the Federal government to cease all prosecution of Federal firearms violations?  Would states like California be cool with that?

 M249 automatic rifle (it's not a machinegun, silly). You'd be okay with the Administration ordering no restrictions be enforced on these. . .right?

In my state there are two Gubernatorial candidates who are already arguing that the Federal government and its nasty regulations are holding the state down, even though the Trump Administration in fact has cut regulations like weeds with a weed whacker. Frankly, the argument isn't credible at this point, if it ever was, but what if Trump simply ordered that no environmental regulation be enforced.  None.  Would that be okay by you?  It wouldn't be with everybody.  If that example sounds extreme, I could frankly easily see him doing that.

And something like that has in fact happened before. At one time, under one GOP Administration, the Federal government simply didn't budget for MSHA (Mine Safety) training.  The regulations said that the training had to take place, and it had to be from a certified MSHA instructor, but the Federal government wouldn't certify anyone as instructors.  Good result?

Or how about this. The entire Federal judiciary only has authority as the Executive Branch carries out their decisions.  If you don't follow a Federal Court's order, all sorts of things can happen to you, but the Court isn't going to do it.  To give an example, if a state ignores Obergefell, and there were some states that seriously gave some thought to that, it isn't as if Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Ginsberg were going to ride into town at the head of the Federal Court Cossacks.  Nope, they have none.

 Justice Anthony Kennedy enforcing one of his more unpopular decisions on the states. . . nah. . .probably not.

So if a President decided that Obergefell was a judicial coup, which it basically was, and he cared not to enforce it, is it okay with everyone that he just says "nah. . . .don't bother with it"?  If that example sounds absurd it has in fact occurred. That's exactly what Andrew Jackson did with the Supreme Court's finding that removing the Cherokees was illegal.  He called their bluff and it happened anyway.

 Cherokee chief during the removal period. . . but  you're okay with that as long as it means the government ignore weed, right?

To a very large extent law works in a democratic society as the Executive Branch has sworn it will enforce it, like it or not. That's its obligation.  When it ceases doing that, and decides to pick and choose what law it will enforce, it's acting illegally.  More than that, it's acting dictatorially. And oddly, in fashion that encourages contempt for the law, and a type of low grade anarchy.

Don't like the law? Argue it be changed.

Judicial decisions are of greater or less authority as precedents . . .

Judicial decisions are of greater or less authority as precedents, according to circumstances. That this should be so, accords both with common sense, and the customary understanding of the legal profession.

Abraham Lincoln, regarding Dred Scott

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.

The Laramie Boomerang, January 3, 1918. An Indian Raid?

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

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.