Clothing

As a collector of odd details for this blog, I'll pick up bits and pieces of something that strike me as worthy of exploration from all over.  One such example is this topic, which occurred to me while listening to Episode 73 of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World, the Mysterious Death of Somerton Man.

The death is mysterious, that's for sure, but I'm not posting on that. Rather, what I'm posting on is that he noted that all of the decedents clothing tags had been cut out.

Clothing tags?

Yes, clothing tags.

Probably most of us don't own clothing with tags with our name written on them.  I don't.  I think perhaps when I was a little kid some of my clothes did, but that was likely that they didn't get lost at school.

But at one time I noticed that my father's old shirts from his Air Force service had them with his name written in them, or in some cases his name was just written inside the collar.  In asking him about it he indicated that was so that when they went to the laundry they'd know whose shirts they were.  I haven't thought about it since.

Now, to add just a bit, I take my work shirts to the dry cleaners, not to have the dry cleaned, but rather to have them laundered. This is very common for people who wear dress shirts every day as the labor of washing, and then starching them, is an inducement to it.  When I was first practicing law I did that, and only after I got married did I start taking them to the laundry in this fashion. To add a bit to that, when we were first married both my wife and I were working and she asked if she should do my laundry.  I told her no, it hadn't even occurred to me until then, as that didn't seem fair to me.  So I did my own, and for a time after that I continued to wash my own dress shirts and then starch them, which I usually did on a weekend day for all of them at one time.

As time went on, that became a pain.  I don't hugely enjoy ironing shirts (although there are still some that I have that I iron and starch myself), if I'm going to wear them to work, so I followed the lead of my coworkers and started taking them in to be laundered, which I still do, although in writing this it occurs to me that now that the kids are gone, and I wake up at some ridiculously early hour, I should perhaps start considering doing them myself once again.

Anyhow, all of this brings up a couple of things to consider, which are: 1) how cheap, and durable, clothes have become and 2) how convenient laundering now is.

Let's do the second one first.  And let's start with the exciting topic of Water Law as it relates to that.

Water law?

Yes, water law.

As anyone who has practiced law in the West knows, water is a critical factor in everything.  The Wyoming Supreme Court noted early in its history that water was vital to the western economy and not too surprisingly, therefore, steam laundries turn out to be one of the preferential uses of the state's water, as set out statutorily:

41-3-102. Preferred uses; defined; order of preference.

(a) Water rights are hereby defined as follows according to use: preferred uses shall include rights for domestic and transportation purposes, steam power plants, and industrial purposes; existing rights not preferred, may be condemned to supply water for such preferred uses in accordance with the provisions of the law relating to condemnation of property for public and semi-public purposes except as hereinafter provided.

(b) Preferred water uses shall have preference rights in the following order:

(i) Water for drinking purposes for both man and beast;

(ii) Water for municipal purposes;

(iii) Water for the use of steam engines and for general railway use, water for culinary, laundry , bathing, refrigerating (including the manufacture of ice), for steam and hot water heating plants, and steam power plants; and

(iv) Industrial purposes.

(c) The use of water for irrigation shall be superior and preferred to any use where water turbines or impulse water wheels are installed for power purposes; provided, however, that the preferred use of steam power plants and industrial purposes herein granted shall not be construed to give the right of condemnation.

As we've been doing this blog for quite a while now, this in fact turns out to be one of those topics I've addressed before, so I'll link that item in, as I'll often do.

The Journal tapped right into the history of the shirt, partially, and that goes where I want to go a bit here as well.  The Journal observed:

Though the breezily incomplete look also enjoyed a vogue in the bohemian 1970s, its roots go back to the era when collars were starchy, detachable things that men fastened to a basic collarless shirt to appear properly dressed. (The advantage: You could just launder the collars while rewearing a shirt a few times.) That so many contemporary designers are now marketing such shirts to be worn on their own speaks to the steady casualization of modern men’s style. First went the tie, now goes the collar. “Guys just aren’t wearing ties as much,” said Mr. Olberding. “And with a band collar, it’s the anti-tie shirt. You just simply can’t wear [a tie].”

Yep, exactly right (but wait, it's a bit more complicated than that actually).  Hence the scarcity of the shirt type as well.

While the thought of rewearing a shirt, rather than a collar, probably would strike a modern audience as gross, the Journal is right on. We've dealt with it at length in another post, but before the invention of the modern washing machine, people re-wore clothes. They had fewer clothes, they wore quite a bit of wool, and they didn't wash things nearly as often. Frankly, people could do that today, it would not raise a might stench like you might suppose, but people generally don't do that.  I, for one, will toss an Oxford cloth work shirt in the laundry pile after I wear it at a work for one day.  I could, I'm sure, get away with hanging it back up and pressing it for a second, or third, go, but I don't.

But if I had to wash it by hand, I might. And therefore, back in the day, it was easier and practical to have a starched collar that I'd launder first.  Collars get dirty.  And the shirt cold keep on keeping on.  When I was home and not wanting to wear the collar I'd detach it, which of course would give the shirt its casual look by default right then.

 Drew Clothing  Company advertisement for collars, April 1913.  Man, who hasn't had these problems?

When I say "I'd launder", I should note that I mean I'd likely send the collars to the laundry.  Indeed, some laundries advertised this very service.  For example, when Lusk Wyoming had a new laundry come in, prior to World War One, it specifically advertised washing and starting collars.

This small building in Wheatland, Wyoming is still in use.  A newer sign above the door says "Coin Operated Laundry", so perhaps its still in its original use, although presumably not as a "steam laundry".  Its location is just off of the rail line, which was likely a good location for a laundry, although this is a surprisingly small structure, much smaller than the laundry in Lusk was. Anyhow, while we think of laudrimats as being the domain of students and apartment dwellers today, prior to the invention of the washing machine they were a big deal for regular people.  From Painted Bricks.

Indeed, that laundries would  advertise such a service says a lot about the state of washing prior to the invention of the household washing machine.  Most people don't send routine washing to the laundry unless they live in an apartment or are students. But at that time, they did quite often, as the alternatives were basically non existent. Today, quite a few businessmen and women still retain the practice of having their shirts laundered, I should note, and indeed I do (something I adopted after I got married for some reason, as I used to launder all my shirts myself, but after we had kids, it seemed to be a chore I was happy to omit. . . maybe some things don't change as much as we think).  Laundries were so important at the time that they are specifically given a priority in the state's laws on water appropriation.

41-3-102. Preferred uses; defined; order of preference.

(a) Water rights are hereby defined as follows according to use: preferred uses shall include rights for domestic and transportation purposes, steam power plants, and industrial purposes; existing rights not preferred, may be condemned to supply water for such preferred uses in accordance with the provisions of the law relating to condemnation of property for public and semi-public purposes except as hereinafter provided.

(b) Preferred water uses shall have preference rights in the following order:
(i) Water for drinking purposes for both man and beast;
(ii) Water for municipal purposes;
(iii) Water for the use of steam engines and for general railway use, water for culinary, laundry, bathing, refrigerating (including the manufacture of ice), for steam and hot water heating plants, and steam power plants; and
(iv) Industrial purposes.
(c) The use of water for irrigation shall be superior and preferred to any use where water turbines or impulse water wheels are installed for power purposes; provided, however, that the preferred use of steam power plants and industrial purposes herein granted shall not be construed to give the right of condemnation

So I'm covering old ground here, but a century ago, "steam laundries" were a big deal as they had hot water and steam.  You could create that in your own home, of course, but it was a chore.  A chore, I might note, that many women (and it was mostly women) endured routinely, but many people, for various reasons, made use of steam laundries when they could.

Women working in a commercial laundry.  Laundry workers were often female or, oddly enough, Chinese immigrants.

Working in a laundry, we'd note, was hard grueling work, but it was also one of the few jobs open to women, all lower class economically women, at the time.

Laundry workers and suffragettes marching, 1914.

Of course, women, and again it was mostly women, did do laundry at home as well, which was also hard, grueling, work.

Pearline, a laundry soap, advertisement from the 1910s which urged parents to "train up" children to use it.

In short, washing clothes, as we've dealt with elsewhere in other contexts, was a pain.  That meant you washed less often, quite frankly.

That might not have been that big of a deal, particularly if you could take your clothes to the steam laundry, if you had a lot of clothes, but people didn't.

We've gone through some of this before in terms of the change in styles over the years, but this brings us back to the Mysterious World podcast.  Clothes were expensive, or at least they were considerably more expensive in real terms than they are today, so people had less of them.

Putting this into current economic figures that make sense today is difficult to do, but the cost of clothing in the United States has been dropping for decades.  And while people like to imagine otherwise, with some justification, over the long term, say a century, a much larger percentage of Americans are now middle middle class, upper middle class, or even moderately wealthy, than in prior generations.  A century ago and well into the middle of the 20th Century, most Americans were middle class, but they were lower middle class and in fact lived in constant threat of slipping into poverty.  With less money to go around, and the average cost of many things higher than today in real terms, or taking up a larger percentage of an already stretched budget, all sorts of things simply demanded more of a person's income.  That's one of the things about the "good old days" that people don't recall very accurately.

Starting in the 1970s clothing manufacture started to dramatically depart the American shores and go overseas.  Just in the period from 1994 to 2005 the US lost 900,000 textile jobs to overseas manufacturing, and that doesn't include the tens of thousands of jobs that were lost before that.  Interestingly, it's slightly rebounded quite recently, but clothing made in the US now is actually fairly rare.  The net result has been a massive depression in price in clothing.

At the same time, the inclusion of synthetics, like it or not, has made clothing incredibly durable, although lots of us (myself included) try to avoid synthetics if we can.  The added durability of synthetics is so pronounced that the military purposely uses a cotton synthetic blend in its field clothing, as it makes it tougher, and it is tough.  On a personal level, while I always try to buy cotton work (i.e., office) shirts if I can, I have one button down blended shirt that my wife bought me either when we were first married or maybe even before that I still wear in my shirt rotational line up.  That means that the shirt is now 25 years old and still in good shape, with sharp colors.  I've gone through a lot of good cotton oxford cloth button down shirts in that time that didn't last as long.

By and large, synthetic clothing aside, clothing is just well made now.  Well made and cheap, for the most part.  That means we tend to have quite a bit more of it than we did in earlier eras, which means that all of it in turn last a lot longer than previously. 

Indeed I've heard some people lament the passing of "bespoke" clothing, but by and large, it isn't really necessary now and it can't compete with ready made clothing.

The problem today is that, like food, we tend to have too much clothing.  It's an irony of modern life, and one that makes our appreciation of conditions of the past a bit difficult to grasp based on our common understanding of our own present lives.

November 21, 2013.

That's when Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used the "nuclear option" to change the judicial approval rules in the Senate such that only a bare majority of U.S. Senators needed to approve a judicial nomination.

Harry Reid

Which is why the GOP now has a record number of judicial appointees under Donald Trump, rivaled only by the same during the Carter Administration when the Democrats had a large majority.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Saratoga Wyoming.

Churches of the West: St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Saratoga Wyoming.:

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Saratoga Wyoming.

A not very good photograph of the St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Saratoga, Wyoming.  The church is obviously an older one, and is in the Prairie Gothic style.

Best Post of the Week of December 22, 2019

The Best Posts of the Week of December 22, 2019

On the WASPs

The 2020 Election, Part 5

Poster Saturday. Back Home.

Poster Saturday. Back Home.

George Washington on agriculture.

Agriculture is the most healthful, most useful and most noble employment of man.

George Washington

December 26, 1919. The Red Sox trade Babe Ruth.

A look at the news in Albany Count, New York, December 26, 1919.

Elsewhere in New York, on this day in 1919 Babe Ruth was sold by the Boston Rod Sox to the New York Yankees.  The price was $125,000, the largest every paid to that date, and an enormous sum in context.

The Red Sox had one five of the first sixteen World Series.  They would not win another one until 1946.

Merry Christmas!

As always, and as it should be, one of the most joyous, and perhaps the most joyous, time of the year.

Christmas is, of course's Christ's Mass, and has been celebrated by Christians on this date from the very earliest days of the Church.  As always, the the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, delivers a homily at the Mass he celebrates.  This year, his homily was as follows, translated into English.

 “Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined” (Is 9:1). 

The prophecy we heard in the first reading was fulfilled in the Gospel: as shepherds kept watch over their flocks by night, “the glory of the Lord shone around them” (Lk 2:9). In the midst of our earthly night, a light appeared from heaven.

What is the meaning of this light that shone in the darkness? Saint Paul tells us: “The grace of God has appeared”. The grace of God, “bringing salvation to all” (Tit 2:11), has shone on our world this night. But what is this grace? It is divine love, the love that changes lives, renews history, liberates from evil, fills hearts with with peace and joy.

Tonight the love of God has been revealed to us: it is Jesus. In Jesus, the Most High made himself tiny, so that we might love him. But we can still ask ourselves: why does Saint Paul describe the coming of God into our world as “grace”? To tell us that it is utterly free. Whereas on earth everything seems to be about giving in order to get, God comes down freely.

His love is non-negotiable: we did nothing to deserve it and we will never be able to repay it. The grace of God has appeared. Tonight we realize that, when we failed to measure up, God became small for our sake; while we were going about our own business, he came into our midst.

Christmas reminds us that God continues to love us all, even the worst of us. To me, to you, to each of us, he says today: “I love you and I will always love you, for you are precious in my eyes”. God does not love you because you think and act the right way. He loves you, plain and simple. His love is unconditional; it does not depend on you. You may have mistaken ideas, you may have made a complete mess of things, but the Lord continues to love you.

How often do we think that God is good if we are good and punishes us if we are bad. Yet that is not how he is. For all our sins, he continues to love us. His love does not change. It is not fickle; it is faithful. It is patient. This is the gift we find at Christmas. We discover to our amazement that the Lord is absolute gratuity, absolute tender love. His glory does not overwhelm us; his presence does not terrify us. He is born in utter poverty in order to win our hearts by the wealth of his love. The grace of God has appeared.

Grace is a synonym of beauty. Tonight, in the beauty of God’s love, we also discover our own beauty, for we are beloved of God. For better or worse, in sickness and in health, whether happy or sad, in his eyes we are beautiful, not for what we do but for what we are. Deep within us, there is an indelible and intangible beauty, an irrepressible beauty, which is the core of our being. Today God reminds us of this. He lovingly takes upon himself our humanity and makes it his own, “espousing” it forever. The “great joy” proclaimed tonight to the shepherds is indeed “for all the people”. We too, with all our weaknesses and failures, are among those shepherds, who were certainly not saints.

And just as God called the shepherds, so too he calls us, for he loves us. In the dark night of life, he says to us as he did to them, “Be not afraid!” (Lk 2:10). Take courage, do not lose confidence, do not lose hope, do not think that to love is a waste of time! Tonight love has conquered fear, new hope has arrived, God’s kindly light has overcome the darkness of human arrogance.

Mankind, God loves you; for your sake he became man. You are no longer alone! Dear brothers and sisters, what are we to do with this grace? Only one thing: accept the gift. Before we go out to seek God, let us allow ourselves to be sought by him.

Let us not begin with our own abilities but with his grace, for he, Jesus, is the Saviour. Let us contemplate the Child and let ourselves be caught up in his tender love. Then we have no further excuse for not letting ourselves be loved by him.

Whatever goes wrong in our lives, whatever doesn’t work in the Church, whatever problems there are in the world, will no longer serve as an excuse. It will become secondary, for faced with Jesus’ extravagant love, a love of utter meekness and closeness, we have no excuse. At Christmas, the question is this: “Do I allow myself to be loved by God? Do I abandon myself to his love that comes to save me?”

So great a gift deserves immense gratitude. To accept this grace means being ready to give thanks in return. Often we live our lives with such little gratitude. Today is the right day to draw near to the tabernacle, the crèche, the manger, and to say thank you. Let us receive the gift that is Jesus, in order then to become gift like Jesus.

To become gift is to give meaning to life. And it is the best way to change the world: we change, the Church changes, history changes, once we stop trying to change others but try to change ourselves and to make of our life a gift. Jesus shows this to us tonight. He did not change history by pressuring anyone or by a flood of words, but by the gift of his life. He did not wait until we were good before he loved us, but gave himself freely to us.

May we not wait for our neighbours to be good before we do good to them, for the Church to be perfect before we love her, for others to respect us before we serve them. Let us begin with ourselves. This is what it means freely to accept the gift of grace. And holiness is nothing other than preserving this freedom.

A charming legend relates that at the birth of Jesus the shepherds hurried to the stable with different gifts. Each brought what he had; some brought the fruits of their labour, others some precious item. But as they were all presenting their gifts, there was one shepherd who had nothing to give. He was extremely poor; he had no gift to present.

As the others were competing to offer their gifts, he stood apart, embarrassed. At a certain point, Saint Joseph and Our Lady found it hard to receive all the gifts, especially Mary, who had to hold the baby. Seeing that shepherd with empty hands, she asked him to draw near. And she put the baby Jesus in his arms.

That shepherd, in accepting him, became aware of having received what he did not deserve, of holding in his arms the greatest gift of all time. He looked at his hands, those hands that seemed to him always empty; they had become the cradle of God. He felt himself loved and, overcoming his embarrassment, began to show Jesus to the others, for he could not keep for himself the gift of gifts.

Dear brother, dear sister, if your hands seem empty, if you think your heart is poor in love, this night is for you. The grace of God has appeared, to shine forth in your life. Accept it and the light of Christmas will shine forth in you.

Christian pilgrims flocked, as always, to Bethlehem to celebrate the day there.  In Parish, no Masses were held at Notre Dame for the first time since the French Revolution, given the terrible fire of 2019.

Christmas, 1919.

And so Christmas, one year out from the end of the Armistice, arrived.

Much of the news had returned to the routine, although one big new event for much of the country, Prohibition, was making the holiday season a bit different this year, which most newspapers were celebrating.

Otherwise, in the US, the season had returned much to normal, and was very recognizable to us today.

Which included the day for foreign residents living in the U.S.

Christmas morning, Ecuadorian legation, 1919.

The Red Cross remained at work in the distressed regions of the world, including in Siberia, where an effort was made to being Christmas joy to Russian orphans.  You have to wonder how the future for these children played out and if they recalled this Christmas in 1919.

Christmas Eve, December 24, 2019. Horses, Missions to Europe, No Arms To Mexico

December 24, 1919. Christmas Eve for that year.

In New York the annual trees for horses was photographed.

 The annual Christmas tree for horses provided by the Animal rescue league in Washington, D.C. In addition to the Christmas tree which was hung with apples, ears of corn and other horse dainties, well filled nose bags were provided.

If this seems odd, keep in mind that Washington D.C, like very major city, had thousands of working horses. This effort was an annual one to take into account the hard work they did in an edible form.

Unfortunately, the prints were heavily damaged at some point.

Also on this day, delegates going to Europe to identify U.S. dead for return were photographed.

Former Sergeant Willie Sandlin of Hyden Ky. who was appointed by Secty. Baker, a special escort for the return of soldier dead from overseas. Sandlin, and Secty. Baker.

By and large, few were returned. Most families chose to leave their family members where they fell, in a tribute to their effort.

Miss Jessie Dell who was appointed take charge of the office to which families of men buried overseas can go to get information regarding their dead.

One nation still at war. . . with itself, was getting cutoff from U.S. Arms. The news hit this day, on Christmas Eve.

The Aerodrome: On the WASPs

The Aerodrome: On the WASPs:

On the WASPs

Elizabeth Gardner, age 22, in the pilot's seat of a B-26, one of the most difficult to fly aircraft of the Second World War.  Gardner would live until age 90 and worked for a time after the war as a test pilot, a role that would require her to bail out from failed aircraft twice.

From Sarah's Blog

75 Years Ago—Dec. 20, 1944: US terminates WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots) program—returning combat airmen will perform their ferrying services; 1037 women served, with 38 fatalities.

Among those who follow World War Two, the WASPs are well known.  But to be frank, I expect for the average person World War Two is at this point known in a general way, highly influenced by movies.  Indeed, at least one such movie, Saving Private Ryan, at least partially caused the boom in focus on World War Two by both the aging Baby Boomer generation and the following Millenials (and others).  That film, and the other popular portrayals that followed, such as The Pacific and Band of Brothers, do a good job of portraying slices of the war, but they're just slices, and the war was so vast that really detailed portrayals can only come through books, and a lot of them.  No one book could possibly do justice to anything but the narrower topics it deals with.

In terms of the air war, two really notable films were done early on, those being Twelve O'Clock High and The Best Years of Our Lives.  People no doubt don't think of that last one as an "air war" film, but the portrayal of returning psychologically distressed bombardier Cpt. Fred Derry to a life that's coming apart at home, certainly should qualify it as such.  More recent efforts, such as Memphis Belle, have been lacking.  Perhaps the best film involving aircraft is Tora! Tora! Tora!, on the attack on Pearl Harbor.  In an odd way, the best one as a tribute to air power might be Battleground, in which not a single airplane is ever seen. Those who have seen the film will know why I'm referencing it here. Those who haven't, should see it.

Anyhow, one of the stories that isn't all that well known by people today is that of the WASPs.  Indeed, the role of women in the service in World War Two isn't that well known in general.

The WASPs were not technically in the service, but rather were civilians employed by the service. This has always occurred, contrary to some more modern commentary.  I.e., there have always been civilian "contractors" in contract to the military.  During the American Revolution heavy transport was normally done by temporary contractors by both sides of the conflict, some of whom had little choice in the matter.  I.e, when artillery, for example, was moved in a country that was surprisingly short of horses, freighters and farmers were called to do it, or sometimes just compelled to do it.  Later on, during the post Civil War frontier era, transportation of all sorts, both freighting and packing, was very often done by military contractors.  Civilian mule packers remained a feature of Army life all the way through the Punitive Expedition.  So its not surprising that civilians were used to ferry aircraft from North America to Europe.

More surprising is that they were women, however.

WASP pilots in front of the notoriously difficult to fly B-26 Marauder.

When women precisely entered established roles in the military is surprisingly difficult to determine.  By and large, however, most historians point to World War One as the conflict that brought that about. The degree of female employment during the Great War was enormous in general, and indeed it was so vast that the entire Rosey The Riveter story of World War Two is really a myth when the full story is considered as the World War Two role of women in industry repeated the experience of the prior war.  Female employment during the First World War would rival that of the Second and in some sectors of the various warring nation's economies, female labor was more important in World War One than it was in World War Two.  Given the near absolute demand for fighting age males to serve in the military during World War One, and the more primitive and less mechanized nature of the economy in the 1910s as compared to the 1930s and 1940s, when machine labor was already accomplishing more, it's not too surprising that women not only entered large numbers of normally male dominated industries but that they further were allowed into some roles in the military more or less for the first time.

Cornelia Fort, who became famous for encountering Japanese aircraft while flying as a flight instructor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941.  She was the first WASP to be killed in service a year later.

Those roles were largely clerical and and near clerical at the time.  Women as clerks in general, including secretaries, was a new and somewhat controversial thing in the 1910s.  By the 1920s, however, it was fully established.  But wasn't established was the presence of women in the service. Following the Great War women were discharged from the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, and their roles once again filled by men.

When this began to change on a more permanent basis I really can't say.  I.e., I don't know, and haven't studied for the purpose of this entry, women women clerks and nurses reappeared in military service, and therefore I don't know if it was in the 20s, 30s, or 40s.  If it was as late as the 1940s, it certainly changed nearly overnight and women once again were recruited for those roles.  Contrary, however, to the common recollection of the period, it wasn't as easy to recruit women to military service as commonly thought, and there remained a quite strong societal prejudice in the United States against female servicemen.  During the war the service studied it and found that a strong deterrent to filling those positions was that there was a common belief in society that female servicemen were "easy" and came from the same class that might otherwise be populating bars and offering favors easily.  This was completely unfair and the service worked hard to combat the myth but it was never really overcome.  Operating against it, however, was that female nurses had been a common and vital feature of the Allied efforts during the Great War and therefore there was a well established female military nursing role already, one that had its origins as far back as the Crimean War.  Perhaps worth noting here, however, is that female nurses in World War One were not in the service but rather usually in the Red Cross, an organization that was highly involved in World War One and whose male members, in the case of the US, had the option of being enrolled in the Army upon the US entering the war.  Female members, who remained critical to its operations, were not enrolled in the service.

Gertrude Tompkins Silver who disappeared in 1944 ferrying a P51 from California to New Jersey.  She and her plane have never been found.

With that being the background, perhaps its not too surprising that women pilots would be contracted with to ferry aircraft in World War Two.  Military age male pilots were in the service, and weren't available, although older pilots who were not of military age were not.  On coastal areas, quite a few of the latter entered Civilian Air Patrol units, however.

Women were not new to aviation in World War Two.  Indeed, aviation, which entered its youth in the Great War, was one of the new things that came about in which women had a rapid appearance in.  There were female aviators prior to the war and at least one notable female pilot attempted to enroll in American military service during World War One, going so far as to purchase her own uniform to be used in what amounted to a publicity campaign in aid of that effort.  It went nowhere, but the point is that aviation wasn't new to women in the Second World War.

Indeed, the early female appearance in aviation continued on after the Great War, and even during it, with some notable female pilots achieving headlines during the 1920s and into the 1930s.  Today best remembered is Amelia Earhart, but she is far from the first and may be best remembered today simply due to her tragic and mysterious disappearance, but she was far from being the only notable pilot.

Bessie Coleman, African American and Native American who held an early pilot's license and who died in a an aviation accident in 1926.

Indeed, there were women barnstormers in the 1920s and women figured well in air racing, a sport that was popular following World War One and prior to World War Two,and which had a role in the development of fighter aircraft.  There were also some women stunt pilots early on.  What was generally absent, however, were female commercial pilots and there were no female military pilots.

Florence Lowe "Pancho" Barnes.

Given this history, perhaps it isn't surprising that the government turned to women flyers to fill certain roles that didn't have to be filled by Army Air Corps pilots, and that is the way it was viewed. The WASPs weren't commissioned, enlisted or enrolled in the military. They were part of more than one civil service organization that came to be under the overall umbrella organization of the WASPs and had varied flying duties. The irony, right from the onset, is that in actuality the aircraft of the late 1930s and the 1940s actually had become in some instances much more physically demanding to fly so, even while women flew every type of aircraft in the American air fleet, some of them were very physically demanding aircraft.

WASP pilot in cockpit of P-51 Mustang.

The WASPs are best remembered for ferrying aircraft, and indeed one of the entities that came into the WASPs was the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, which was formed specifically for that purpose.  In addition to that role, however, they also flew target towing missions and other service flying roles within the United States.  Quite a few of the pilots were from well to do backgrounds which had allowed them to take up flying prior to the war.

WASP pilots and the B-17 Pistol Packin Momma.

The program was disbanded in December 1944 as male Army Air Corps pilots returning from overseas became available for the same roles.  At that time some of them attempted to volunteer for service in the Chinese Nationalist air force but were unsuccessful in that effort. Some, such as Elizabeth Gardner, were able to keep flying.  In 1949 they were offered commissions in the United States Air Force in non flying roles, with 121 taking the offer.  They were accorded veteran status in 1977.


There were 1,074 women who went through WASP training during the war, all of whom were pilots prior to entering the program.  Over 600 applicants failed to make it through that training.  A total of 25,000 women volunteered for the program.  38 women were killed in air accidents while part of the program.  The largest plane flown by WASP crews was the B-29.

Page Updates for 2019

1.  January 1, 2019.  Cast Iron.

2.  January 1, 2019.  They Were Soldiers:  George Deshon.

3.  January 12, 2019.  They Were Soldiers:  Robert Stack, Steve McQueen

4.  January 23, 2019.  They Were Soldiers:  Celedonio Domeco de Jarauta, Frank Sutton

5.  January 23, 2019.  They Were Clerics:  Celedonio Domeco de Jarauta

6.  January 23, 2019.  They Were Lawyers:  Karl Liebknecht.

7.  January 26, 2019.  The Aerodrome reformatted.

8.  April 3, 2019.  The threads on Quotes About Agriculture and Quotes About Lawyers made their own pages.

9.  May 5, 2019.  They Were Lawyers:  Cheslie Kryst, Moe Berg.:

Quotes About Lawyers:  Quote from Moe Berg.

10.  Pages on Dodge 3500 and Jeep TJ added.

11.  The Dodge 3500 Project updated.

12  The Dodge 3500 Project updated.

13.  With the help of reader input, particularly that of Rich, the uploading problem here has been cured by changing the format of the "Labels" gadgets that list topics here from a cloud to a list.

I liked the cloud better as it more easily showed what has been posted on here most often, but apparently it grew too big for Google Chrome.  If Chrome is later able to digest it, I'll go back to it, but it's a simple list now.

While that was going on some other changes were made, mostly detrimental, trying to see if a fix could be found.  I'm trying to unring the bell on those, but restoring the calendar, which links into Today Day In Wyoming's History is proving to be difficult.

14.  The Dodge 3500 Project updated.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Hanna Wyoming.

Churches of the West: St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Hanna Wyoming.:

St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Hanna Wyoming.

This is St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Hanna, Wyoming.  This modern Catholic church is located just on the edge of town where several other churches are located.

Best Posts of the Week of December 15, 2019

The best posts of the week of December 15, 2019

Sunday Morning Scene: Denver Catholic Register, December 1919.

The Impeachment of Donald Trump

December 21, 1919. Radicals booted out, Twins seeking cowboys.

On this day in 1919 a group of radicals, including perpetual sourpuss Emma Goldman, were deported.

Emma Goldman's deportation photograph.  If it seems that she's frowning in the photo due to deportation, Goldman was always frowning.

Goldman is a celebrated figure today, but at the time plenty of people were glad to see her and her fellow travelers go.  Frankly, she was a perpetual malcontent.  In the US she advocated for extremist positions.  Upon returning to Russia (she'd grown into her teen years there, and was born in a town in what is now Lithuania), she grew rapidly discontent with the Soviets and then relocated to Germany, where she wrote two books about her "disillusionment" with Russia.  While living in Germany, she irritated the German left who rapidly grew discontent with her, and then went on to the UK, which seemingly occupied the status of host country for the perpetual malcontent at the time.  During the Spanish Civil War she was at first enthusiastic about the anarchist Republicans but worried they were giving too much over to the Reds, which probably failed to grasp that there was no way that the organized Spanish extremist left wasn't going to dominate over the disorganized Spanish left. Eventually she ended up in Toronto, which ironically was an extremely conservative town at the time.

Emma looking discontent in 1911.

She probably came by her perpetual discontentment honestly and presents what ought to be a case study in the combination of high intelligence with a really messed up early life.  In other words, while she's widely admired today in spite of advocating for really loony ideas, she herself was pretty much a loony.  As we've dealt her story before we won't go into detail here, but she was born into an unhappy family which was her mother's second marriage.  Her mother had two children by her prior husband, to whom she'd been married very young, and the second marriage was basically arranged and never happy.  Goldman's father was strict and potentially abusive.  Goldman herself was raped by a suitor while in her early teens.  Her constant discontent with everything thereafter may well have been due simply being a highly discontented person, which given the nature of her life, a person can't blame her for.

Emma Goldman in 1886, in about the only photograph of her smiling.

She lived a genuinely crappy life in a lot of ways and was in the Eastern European demographic that was attracted to radicalism due to the conditions she was living in.  Smart, difficult and working in manual labor, she was attracted naturally to radical political ideas, even though they were not grounded in any sort of reality.  It says something about the spirit of the times that they gained traction in their own day.

They'd obviously gained enough that the US determined to deport foreign born radicals and on this day in 1919, it did it.

This has been looked back on as a betrayal of American values, but a person, even now, has to pause a bit and wonder if it was.  Goldman was truly a radical and her ideas antithetical to any sort of government at all.  Soviet Russia, while definitely having a government, was nearly the poster child for radicals at the time and she was a Russian.  Some seeing the product of radicalism in their own land might reconsider their own cause but she never did, just finding other left wing movements lacking.

Without going too far it it, it's also notable that a lot of the figures of the radical left were of this era were, quite frankly, messed up, and then adopted lifestyles that guaranteed they'd be even more messed up.  For the 1910s, this is sort of book ended by the perpetually crabby Goldman on one end and the perpetually befuddled looking Rosa Luxemburg on the other, both now heroes with no achievements which keeps their heroism going on, as their adherents can always imagine that the ideas they advocated for were never tested, even if they were.

She died in Toronto in 1940 and her body was brought into the United States for burial.  She's one of the poster children of a certain brand of radicalism from that era even though, in retrospect, she is to be more pitied than celebrated if some degree of rationalism is applied.

One paper that wasn't questioning the deportation was the Cheyenne State Leader, which even suggested that if their ship sank they'd welcome it.  The Leader was never subtle in its views.

The leader also reported the unlikely story that two sixteen year old Texas twins were required to marry six feet tall Wyoming cowboys or forego an inheritance. The Leader often had odd stories like that, and a person has to wonder if the story was accurate.  It reportedly originated by way of a letter to Leader from the aforementioned twins, which sounds fairly dubious.  Hopefully it was.

December 20, 1919. Pershing in race?

No, he wasn't.

A committee in Nebraska was attempting to draft him.  He'd end up declining.

Pershing fits into that group of American military heroes that the public seriously thought about elevating to the nation's highest office.  He fits into the subset of them that declined that invitation when it became serious.

Men, and at that time it was all men, were lining up to be candidates for the 1920 Presidential election, which in our era should give us pause.  It was December of 1919, and the candidates were not yet fully identified by any means.

Doggone these are cool.

1919 Griswold Waffle Iron Advertisement

Has anyone  here ever used one like this?

Meanwhile, in the Senate. . .

eleven Federal judges were approved on December 17.

It is now the case that the Trump Administration has a record number of judicial appointments and its being clear that the Federal judiciary is being made over.  Predicting how these things work out is always extremely difficult, but the nation really hasn't experienced anything like this since the Carter Administration.

Indeed, the Carter Administration provides a lesson as the Administration was largely ineffective, except in this area.  The remaking of the judiciary under Carter has had some lasting effects all the way to the present date. That is now over.  Even if Bernie Sanders is elected President in the Fall, the Trump appointees will mean a conservative court for the next twenty years.  That in turn will be decried by the liberals, but as conservatives in this context are not jurisprudentially conservative, what that really  means is that a large number of issues that the Court has seized as its own over the past forty years will now return to legislatures.  That could be regarded as a triumph for democracy, but generally political liberals have been aware that since the early 1970s many of their positions have been deeply unpopular with the public and won't stand up in legislative debate.  So the irony has been that "left wing" jurists distrust the voting public while "ring wing" jurists don't worry about the voting public one way or another.

As has been noted, what the U.S. actually lacks are jurists who have a "conservative" judicial philosophy.  American conservative jurists have tended to be cut out of the Scalia mold in which they are conservative in that they seek to conserve the original text of the Constitution, rather than conservative in the sense that they bring an underlying conservative notion of what the law consists of. In earlier times there were jurists who did that, and there are still legal philosophers who do that.  However, on the bench, there are not.  The opposite is actually true on the left where "liberal" judges actually do have a "liberal" or "progressive" judicial philosophy.

The change here is really due to Mitch McConnell.  Love him,  like him, or hate him, McConnell appears to have been highly savvy to his time.  Judicial appointments were stalled by McConnell during the Obama Administration and massively accelerated during the Trump Administration.  A stable of well qualified conservatives appears to have been vetted by the Federalist Society and the appointments have been rapid.  Trump has cooperated in this, and this appears to be the one place where some sort of "deal" was in fact made. Based upon what's been occurring, it appears highly likely that McConnell always viewed Trump as a one term President and that the political conservatives one chance to really impact the judiciary.  Indeed, because Republican Presidents have been really unreliable in this area the Trump Administration may ironically have been the one real opportunity that McConnell would ever have, and he's seized it.  By doing this, the country will in fact be hugely impacted in ways that are only just beginning to occur.

Of course, the dream here would be for the Senate to have the opportunity to appoint one or two more justices to replace one or two more liberal justices with conservative ones.  Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who is 86 years old and in poor health is often regarded as the most likely to need to step down (or die) but she clearly has no intention of doing so if she can avoid it.  Should a Democrat be elected in November 2020, it would seem almost certain that she'd then resign.  But as Scalia's death has shown, there's no reason to believe that being a Supreme Court justice guarantees living a long life and so the balance is always in the air.

That balance, however, has been very much tilted rightward in the Federal judiciary as a whole, and therefore a change in the courts approach to many things will be inevitable.  One of those inevitable changes will be the return of major social issues to legislatures, something that they haven't had to deal with in full for decades.

A request of our readers who use Chrome.

If you use Google Chrome on your browser, is this site working well for you?

If it isn't, can you indicate what any problems you are experiencing are?

Lex Anteinternet: Chrome Messing Up Blogger. Time for Lex Anteinternet Part II?

Lex Anteinternet: Chrome Messing Up Blogger: It is, and that's odd, as Chrome is a Google platform and so is Blogger. Anyhow, right now, on Chrome this blog is so slow its unusabl...

I posted on this last week and the problem persists.

Of course, I don't know how limited, or widespread, it may be. 

The page seems to hang up on the labels and never work right after that, and this page certainly has a lot of labels.  I may go in and try to wipe out some duplicative and unnecessary ones.  If that fails, I'm seriously considering starting a Part II of Lex Anteinternet as a second blog.  I hesitate to do so as all the Google stats that go with this one will be lost, as it'll be a brand new blog.  But a blog that's impossible to load is pretty pointless.

Mid Week At Work. Engine block assembly line, December 17, 1919.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 17, 1919. Vernon Baker born in Cheyenne

Today In Wyoming's History: December 17:

1919  Vernon Baker born in Cheyenne.  Baker is a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions in combat in World War Two, with his citation reading as follows:

For extraordinary heroism in action on 5 and 6 April 1945, near Viareggio, Italy. Then Second Lieutenant Baker demonstrated outstanding courage and leadership in destroying enemy installations, personnel, and equipment during his company's attack against a strongly entrenched enemy in mountainous terrain. When his company was stopped by the concentration of fire from several machine gun emplacements, he crawled to one position and destroyed it, killing three Germans. Continuing forward, he attacked an enemy observation post and killed two occupants. With the aid of one of his men, Lieutenant Baker attacked two more machine gun nests, killing or wounding the four enemy soldiers occupying these positions. He then covered the evacuation of the wounded personnel of his company by occupying an exposed position and drawing the enemy's fire. On the following night Lieutenant Baker voluntarily led a battalion advance through enemy mine fields and heavy fire toward the division objective. Second Lieutenant Baker's fighting spirit and daring leadership were an inspiration to his men and exemplify the highest traditions of the Armed Forces.

Baker had a rough start in life when his parents died while he was still young.  Partially raised by his grandparents, he learned how to hunt from his grandfather in order to put meat on the table.  Entering the Army during World War Two, he made the Army a career and retired in 1968 as a First Lieutenant, his rank at that time reflecting force reductions following World War Two.  He retired to Idaho where he chose to live as he was an avid hunter, and he died there in 2010.  Baker is a significant figure from Wyoming not only because he won the Congressional Medal of Honor, but because he was part of Wyoming's small African American community.

It has to be on time, and on target.

That's an artilleryman's phrase, but it's true of a lot of things. 

Including newspapers.

When the local paper closed its internal press and moved to contract in a city 150 miles away, it promised that this would rarely disrupt delivery.

That hasn't been true this year.

Indeed, it's been absent a lot, and for consecutive days.

You can read the on line version, some would point out, if you are a subscriber, but this isn't really true.  Not all of the content is actually capable of being viewed in that fashion.  I'm not sure why, but it appears be related to what's provided by a wire service or a syndication for a column.  The thing is, that's often what you might really want to read.

Indeed, I'm not confident that it's limited even to that.  It seems a bit broader in actuality.

Given all of that, I've given up expecting the paper to arrive early enough to be read on snowy days, and indeed, I've gotten used to not reading it at all.  Yesterday, for example, I didn't get the Sunday paper, something I normally look forward to reading, and ended up reading it this morning, with my Monday paper.

The paper has gotten expensive to subscribe to.  I understand it faces challenges, but in an electronic age a paper that doesn't show up for print subscribers and which can't be fully viewed for paying subscribers is increasing its challenges.  Maybe those challenges are insurmountable.  Not solving them will make them so.