Today In Wyoming's History: February 25: The Mineral Leasing Act of 1920

Today In Wyoming's History: February 25:

1920  Woodrow Wilson signed the Minerals Leasing Act of 1920. This act created the modern system of leasing Federal oil and gas  and coal interests, which previously had been subject to claim under the Mining Law of 1872.  

 Grass Creek Wyoming, 1916

The extent to which this revolutionized the oil, gas and coal industries in economic terms can hardly be overestimated.  Prior to 1920, these fossil fuels could be exploited via a simple mining claim, and the land itself could be patented after the claim was "proved up."  The 1920 act ended this practice as to these resources (the 1872 Act continues on for other minerals, in a very modified form, to the present day).  The leasing system meant that the resources never left the public domain in absolute terns, and the payment of the lease was a huge economic boon to the state and Federal government.

Wessels Living History Farm – Farming in the 1940s

Wessels Living History Farm – Farming in the 1940s

Post World War Two Homesteading

I was reading the recent issue of Annals of Wyoming, the journal of the state historical society, and there was an article that somebody had written on cultural geography and Heart Mountain, Wyoming.  Heart Mountain is the location outside of Cody Wyoming, where, during World War Two, there was an Internment Camp for Japanese Americans.

The article was on the relationship of Heart Mountain to the minds of various groups of people, and I wasn't wholly impressed.  Like some academics, the author was overly impressed with the fact that locals put images of Heart Mountain on signs or name things after it. Well, so what?  If you have a business you have to name it something, and a prominent local landscape feature is one of the more obvious choices.  After all, you are unlikely to name a veterinary clinic in Cody something like "The Giant Florida Swamp Vet Clinic."  I did find it interesting that the mountain was somewhat less mentioned by internees than you'd suspect, and that regional Indians didn't seem to mention it at all in their lore.

Anyhow, one of the things the author keeps bringing up again and again is that it featured in the photographs taken by post World War Two homesteaders.  The article suffers from the author's apparent view that everyone knows that there were post wWII homesteaders in the area, even though the Homestead Acts were repealed in in the early 1930s. 

Does anyone know the story of post WWII homesteading?  I know that some lands were opened back up for returning veterans, sort of an agricultural GI Bill, but that's all I know.

Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: The Canadian Cavalry in the Last 100 Days (Part 3)...

Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: The Canadian Cavalry in the Last 100 Days (Part 3)...: One of the Canadians caught up in the 2nd Battle of Le Cateau was S. H. Williams, author of “Stand to Your Horses”. He was temporarily atta...

Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: The Canadian Cavalry in the Last 100 Days (Part 2)...

Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: The Canadian Cavalry in the Last 100 Days (Part 2)...: The Second Battle of Le Cateau In October 1918 Le Cateau was an important transportation hub some eight or ten miles behind the German fro...

Blog Mirror: The Blizzard of 1949

Nebraska report.

Wyoming Storms and Blizzards.

The North Forty News.

Disasters. The Blizzard of 49.

Blizzard traps the City of San Francisco.

Ed Quillen on the Blizzard of 1949.

Today In Wyoming's History: February 19

Entry from Today In Wyoming's History from yesterday.  I've linked it in,a s I think its the first time I've seen a map that detailed Internment camps related to the Exclusion Area during World War Two.

Today In Wyoming's History: February 19: 1864  William F. Cody joined the 7th Volunteer Kansas Cavalry. 1887  The final run of the Black Hills stage left  Cheyenne.  Attribution: ...

1942 Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of any or all people from military areas "as deemed necessary or desirable."  This would lead to internment camps, including Heart Mountain near Cody.

 Map showing interment camps and other aspects of the exclusion of ethnic Japanese from the Pacific Coast during World War Two.

News Release: Independent Attorney to Lead Inquiry of Concerns from Department of Education

News Release: Independent Attorney to Lead Inquiry of Concerns from Department of Education

Goodness, this story just gets odder and odder.

Holscher's Hub: Wake Island, mid 1950s

Holscher's Hub: Wake Island, mid 1950s: My father took this photograph on a stop over on Wake Island in the 1950s. This photo would have been taken either going to Japan, or comi...

Hipster Hadrian Buttons. Who'd have guessed it?

Buttons! | The British History Podcast

German Rye Soda Bread (Brotbacken) from The Joy of Field Rations

I really like rye bread, but I've had a hard time finding a recipe for it.  Indeed, I've had a really hard time finding rye flour for that matter.

Some time ago I managed to find rye flour at "Natural Grocers" and  tried making rye bread in the bread machine.  It was a flop. So when I found a recipe for German army rye bread on The Joy of Field Rations blog, I had to give it a try.

The recipe posted there had two varieties of rye bread.  One was a sourdough bread, and the other a soda bread.  As I don't have the patience for sourdough, I went with the soda bread.  I like soda bread anyway, and occasionally make it with self rising flour.  It's easy to make.

As I lack a Kochgeschirr I just used the Dutch Oven.  It worked fine, and the bread tasted great.  I didn't mix the flour with white flour at all, I just used rye flour.

As is probably evident, mine load was a bit small, and as I probably slightly overcooked it (I was cooking stuffed peppers at the same time), so it does not have the ideal appearance.  Dutch ovens cook very hot on the cast iron, and therefore the bottom of the bread was very crisp, making it a bit hard to cut. And frankly I used a bit more flour than the recipe calls for, as the dough appeared a bit too moist at first.  These problems are easily remedied, and as the bread tasted good, I'll make it again, although next time I'll double the size of the loaf.  Another recipe worth trying.

It's funny that you don't really see that many recipes for rye bread.  I don't know why.  Perhaps my taste here is just a minority taste, and most people don't like it much, although I've seen it in restaurants.  You'd think that somebody would offer it as a bread machine recipe, but nobody does.  I wonder if it was once more common than it is now, or if it's always been sort of a second choice in the US?

Rye itself is a grass, just like wheat, and it does see a variety of uses.  Rye whiskey is one.  I guess at one time Rye Whiskey was regarded as being amongst the very best, and it was quite popular in the US prior to Prohibition.  During Prohibition it came to be associated with being "bad," ironically because it had been so good.  Bootleggers trying to vend their product would attach the tag "Rye" to it hopes of fooling the customer.  That meant that by the end of Prohibition it had a bad reputation, so much so that Bill Mauldin had Joe reporting to Willie that his mother would be pleased as he'd "given up rye whiskey and cheap ciagars."  Apparently, however, Rye Whiskey is making a comeback, or so I've read.  I also believe that Scotch and Irish whiskeys may be rye whiskeys.  Some beer is also brewed with rye.

And then there's rye bread. 

The 1918-1919 Influenza Epidemic

Its flu season in the Unites States, and this one is a bad one.  The worst that I remember for many years, maybe the worst ever during my lifetime.

For probably the last five years or so, or perhaps as long as a decade, people studying the topic of epidemics have been sort of looking toward the 1918 to 1919 Pandemic.  That pandemic is the very model of a horror, in terms of epidemics.  For one thing, it spread completely around the globe, which is what made it a pandemic. For another, it basically made it around the globe twice in some ways, and because the ability of the flu evolve very rapidly, it changed as it went.  Indeed, it got worse.

A killer virus is actually a bad strategy for a virus, survival wise.  Benign viruses, in terms of long term viabiltiy, are the best strategy, but for whatever reason, that doesn't define the flu.  Part of this may be because Influenza lives in a vareity of species.  When it breaks out in a new strain, which it does every year, usually that involves some sort of evolution in one of hte other speicies that hosts it.

The main culprits in this are swine and birds.  Hence, every few years, we get a "Swine Flu" or an "Avian Flu."  Often swine and birds are involved in an evolutionary jump, which is why the flu tends to come out of Asia every year.  Close proximity of swine, birds and people on Asian farms makes the jump through the various species easy for influenza.  It also can explain why one strain may prove to be so deadly in any one speicies.  A flu virus hanging around in a pig might not kill the pig, but it might be really deadly to people.

Nobody is definitively sure what got the 1918 Influenza Epidemic rolling,  but there's some fairly strong evidence that it made its first outbreak at Camp Funston, Kansas. There are some who maintain otherwise, but the evidence is quite strong.  Indeed, the evidence is so strong that it seems the very first victim of the disease there can be identified by name.  An individual soldier who reported to sick call on a day which, by the days end, a major health crisis was fully under way at Camp Funston.

 Sick bay, Camp Funston.  1918.

And the situation was ideal for that.  Camp Funston was an Army training base that spilled out, over the banks, of Ft. Riley Kansas.  Ft. Riley was an old, old Army post by the time the U.S. entered World War One in 1917, but the US hadn't attempted to muster an Army the size of the one it needed for the Great War since 1860.  There just wasn't enough room.  So camps, like Camp Funston, were formed.  Funston housed 26,000 men.

Camp Funston sat just off Ft Riley on the banks of the Republican River.  Mostly a tent city, thousands of men were camped there in primitive conditions.  The Army at that time, for cook's sections, kept livestock, mostly pigs.  The first victim of the flu was Private Albert Gitchell, a mess orderly whose duties included tending to pigs.  He reported to sick call on March 9, 1918, and never made it back out of the sick bay.   A second soldier, Corporal Lee W. Drake, reported right behind him. A steady stream came in after that, with there being over 100 men in sick beds by the end of the first day, a medical nightmare of unimaginable proportions.  The disease broke out to the civilian populatoin almost immediately.  US troops boarding troops ships carried it to Europe, where the years of war, harding living, and terrible conditions introduced it to the European population just as World War One was drawing to a close.

The disease, biazarrely, targeted the section of the population which is normally the least likely to be impacted by the flu, those in their early adult years.  The flu normally is a risk to the elderly, but the 1918 flu was oddly not.  It hit those in their teens and twenties particularly hard.  The reason has never really been understood, in spite of investigation, although it has lead to some slight cluse that the 1918 flu strain may have made its appearance as early as 1916 and then evolved into the lethal strain that isn't well understood even now.  Indeed, there's good evidence that the disease actually may have broken out in the Haskell County Kansas civilian population in January, 1918, in a frightening, but not fully lethal form.  A local Kansas doctor was so concerned that he did warn the U.S. Public Health Service of what he was observing.  British Army doctors noted a disease with much of the same symptoms as the 1918 Flu in 1916, in a British Army camp. What caused it to break out in the fully deadly and highly transmittable 1918 variant isn't really undestood, but what is remarkable is that in March 1918 it became massively communicable and very deadly.  In all likelihood the Haskell County disease was the same one that became the great killer, in a very similar but nto quite evolved form.  It probably was communicated to troops stationed at Camp Funston when they went home on leave, and Funston had the ideal conditions to get the disease really rolling, and perhaps really deadly.  Having hit Camp Funston on March 9, it was in New York by March 11, at which time over 500 troops at Camp Funston had reported ill.  By August 1918, it had become even more deadly and was ripping through France.  By November, it was in Spain, which was not fighting in the war.  Because Spain was as neutral, for the first time the press was able to fully report on it, leading to the misnoomer the Spanish Flu.  

Canadian victims of the flu being buried, 1918.

By 1919, the flue was in Japan, and had virtually circled the globe.  Japanese mortality peaked in July, 1919.  By the summer of 1919, it had hit the entire globe, killing up to 20% of those infected, and leaving many of the survivors permanently weakened or addled.  While the disease disappeared, the deaths did not, as young people who were weakened by it continued to die into the 1920s, including my Great Aunt Ulpha Patricia.

It's regarded as the greatest lethal disease incident of all time, spreading much quicker than the Black Plague and killing more people.  And it's not all that long ago, really.  The impact on the era in which it struck was huge, killing more people than World War One, and perhaps an offshoot of the war itself.  

Could this sort of event return?  It could, but it's unlikely.  Killer flus could indeed reemerge, but this one is freakish in its behavior and lethality.  Normally, less than 1% of those get the flu die from it, which is not to discount it.  The flu kills far more people annually, for example, than much more feared diseases like AIDS do.  But a 20% lethality rate is stunning and weird, and perhaps could only have evolved due to the conditions of the First World War.  Indeed, alternative theories to the Camp Funston origin all tend to have the close proximity of pigs, birds and soldiers as a common set of elements.  And all of this, of course came in an era when medications were few, and the ability to go home and rest either slight, or for many of the young afflicted, nonexistent.

A lesson it does teach us, however, is how life takes its own turns, sometimes huge ones, which we can little predict or little control.  Private Gitchell no doubt didn't join the Army expecting to feed pigs in Kansas.  And if he worried about dying in the war, he probably didn't think that death would come via a virus, which he thought was a "bad cold" when he checked into sick call.  Nobody, in 1918, could have foreseen a virus so virulent and communicable that it would be in New York City, and likely Quebec, within a week.  My great aunt, with a brother serving in France in the Canadian Army could not have foreseen that she'd be one of the victims of a disease that freakishly broke out in part due to wartime conditions.  Her brother, a physician, could have have seen that the family causality in the war would be his sister, back home in Quebec.  For millions life took a similar, and for many, short turn which few could have anticipated.

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - A Punitive Expedition Time Line

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - A Punitive Expedition Time Line

Additions?  Subtractions?

Pope Benedict XVI Announces his resignation and our earlier thread; Lex Anteinternet: A legal Gerontocracy?

I woke up this morning, like everyone else, to the surprising announcement by Pope Benedict XIV's that he will resign the Papacy on February 28.  As I often will do with important news events, I shared some internet correspondence with my good and sage friend Couvi, who made the comment "It takes a wise and brave man to make that kind of decision."

Truer words were never spoken.

In an important office, it must be hard to resign.  Where a person makes important decisions, that impact people's lives, society and even history, that decision must be an extremely hard tone to make.  And that is why, I suspect, that so few choose to make it.  Pope Benedict, who is a remarkable man by all accounts, occupies a position of supreme importance.  It speaks loudly of his courage and wisdom to be able to step down from it.

The impact of age is something that nobody wish to consider, and which the majority of those in the Western world choose to ignore if they can.  That's a luxury, sort of, of our modern societies.  It wasn't always the case by any means.  It is not true that "humans are living longer" as it is often claimed, as we've commented on before.  The upper limits of people's lives have not changed at all over the centuries. What has changed, however, is that more people make it into advanced old age than before, as fewer people die earlier from accidents and disease.

That's a good thing, and there can be no doubt about that, but what it also means is that more people now experience the impacts of advanced old age than they once did.  That's not necessarily bad, but a person should be realistic.

For many people, perhaps most people, that means that they suffer the aches, pains, and infirmities that advanced old age can bring on. A few amazingly lucky people seem to be spared that, but not most.  But, if a person can be so afflicted, but retain a sharp mind, they are blessed.  Others, of course, are afflicted with the diseases and afflictions of memory and thought, which is a scary thing to watch and endure, and which no doubt is hard for a person to experience.  We here are watching that ourselves, as my mother, a person of high intelligence, has been slowly descending into the fog, while her physical abilities slowly decline, all seemingly without her own knowledge of it.

These are things that seem to take us by surprise, and which most people choose to believe that they will never endure.  But many do.

This brings up the post I made recently entitled:  Lex Anteinternet: A legal Gerontocracy?:  In that entry I noted that Wyoming's legislature, putting a rosy face on aging, is looking at ending the statutory retirement age of 70.  Of interest, Pope Benedict, who is the oldest man to have ever been made Pope was 78 when he assumed the Papacy.  A realist, he determined during his Papacy that members of the College of Cardinals over 70 would no longer be able to vote on the question of who would become Pope, and he commented from time to time that if he was unable to effectively occupy the office, he would resign.  He has now determined to do so.

What the Pope understands, but he Legislature seemingly does not, is that people living on in greater numbers to advanced old age does not mean that everyone will be able to physically do the job, and that there needs to be a formal procedure in regards to that.  Contrary to what so many seem to assume, it has not been the case that the Papacy was occupied "old men."  I don't know the median age upon their deaths (which in the first 500 years of the Papacy was often by execution) but I'd guess it to be in their 40s.  A person may ask what that has to do with the judiciary, but I suspect that the average age of Wyoming judge leaving the bench is younger than a person might presume.  In earlier years, judges tended to leave the bench young enough, in many instances, to resume practice or to go on to other offices or their private businesses, if they owned farms and ranches.

In recent years judges have often been staying until their 70, although there are some admirable contrary examples.  Judge Downes, of the Federal District Court in Wyoming, retired at about age 65, even though he was in a position where he had a lifetime appointment.  Just very recently a 7th Judicial District state judge in his mid 60s announced his retirement.  A very long serving 7th Judicial District Judge, Judge Spangler, retired in what seemed to be his 50s, meaning that he must have gone on the bench very young.  The point here is that all of these men exercised the decision to retire while they were still very much an intellectual force.

What the have chosen to do in their retirement and will choose to do is another topic, but I'd also note that one of the longest serving judges at the time he retired, Judge Hartman, went right into critical roles with the state government under Judge Freudenthal. The point being that, here too, Judge Hartman's intellect remained a force, and he wasn't fearful of putting himself into a new role where he'd have to be, essentially, hired.  I suspect, although its' just a guess, that this is what we'll see with Pope Benedict, who remains a very strong intellectual force.  Indeed, the model for this would be Pope Celestine, who came from monastic life but who had a great intellect.  He resigned afters some years hoping to return to the monastery, but he never made, as his successor kept in Rome to consult with.

This all contrasts with the situation in which a person can occupy a position indefinitely simply by occupying it, and that's what removing the age 70 retirement requirement in Wyoming would do.  No doubt proponents of changing the law would note that judges stand for retention, but most people know very little about their local judges and routinely vote to retain them unless there's some criminal case whose outcome they disagree with.  In other words, it would be unlikely that the voters would choose to retire a judge unless things became very bad.  And for those who remain intellectually active, it is not as if there is not other work for them to do.

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Scenes of the U.S. Army in the Punitive Exp. Era

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Scenes of the U.S. Army in the Punitive Exp. Era

One of the themes that we're going to try to explore here is the Punitive Expedition, that event following the raid by Poncho Villa on Columbus New Mexico which saw the U.S. Army enter Mexico in search of Villa.

This SMH thread has a great collection of photos dating to this era, so I'll kick off the exploration of this topic with a link to some of them.

Evolving concepts of economics

Macroeconomics, that is.  The big picture.

The last few years, it seems there's been endless debates about the economy, but little, really, about economics.  It's interesting in that last time this really occurred in a major way, in the early 80s, there was a great deal of debate about economics.  Not so really know, showing, I guess, how successful conservative economists were in the early 80s in establishing their concepts as the predominant ones.  I don't mean that to be a criticism of conservative economics, or of capitalism in general, that's merely an observation, although one that they'd regard as an imperfect one.

Very obviously, although there's a lot of argument about the parameters of it right now, the economic model of the United States is a type of conservative capitalism, based on relatively low taxes (at least on an international scale), relatively low government expenditures, save for defense (again, based on international standards), relatively low government direct government involvement in the economy (international models again) and relatively low regulation (again, compared to other nations)  It's also a model that completely accepts the legitimacy of business organization, i.e., corporations and limited liability companies.  We're having a lot of arguments about the parameters right now, in no small part because the economy has been poor for at least five years or so, and because there's a large gulf between the President and at least the Republican party on many of these points.  Indeed, just recently we saw that gulf become very visible, as in the debate over the "fiscal cliff" the GOP insisted on not having a widespread tax increase while the Democrats wanted one, and the Democrats are loathe to cut social services and spending, while the GOP would like to.

While it would seemingly be a surprise to both sides, particularly given the language that they sometimes use about each other, they're basically arguing about the left and right ends of the same economic model.. And, given the success of the model, it's become the model for much of the rest of the world.  Indeed, some areas of the world are much to the right of the United States on the model, while many others, such as much of Europe, is significantly more to the left. Still, by and large, the competing economic models receive very little attention anymore.  It's an interesting long-term trend.

Looking at the topic from a century long prospective, this is very much contrary to even recent history.  Whether that means all of the other models have been tested and found wanting, or that some weren't tested, or if this is just a temporary hiatus in competing models, needs to be seen. But for a blog that looks at long term trends and history, it's all pretty interesting.

If we go back a century (say 1912), after mercantilism had long died, we'd see that the United States basically had a laissez fair economic model, as did much of the rest of the world.  Still, Socialism was a strong contender at that time, and it had a huge following in Europe.  Communism, the radical expression of Socialism which united Socialism's governmental ownership of the means of production with extremely radical political propositions, was also a gaining force in some regions, typically those that had the most autocratic rule.  In regions where there was democratic expression, Socialism tended to be less radical, but even at that, pre World War One Socialist were more on the Communistic end of things than they would later be, by quite some margin.

Even in the US Socialist, although in a milder form, were gaining traction as a political force.  We've seen that over at the Today In Wyoming's History blog, where Socialists, and even a few Communist, political candidates obtained votes during the Progressive Era.  Communist didn't receive many, but they did receive a few votes.  Socialist, however, did okay in elections in some areas, mostly those with heavy Eastern European populations and a lot of coal mining.  It'd be absolutely inconceivable that a Socialist, let alone a Communist would receive any votes in Wyoming today, although there is one member of Congress presently, from the Northeast, how is a self described Socialist.  Most politicians in the US, however, would run from that description, and that accusation has been levied at President Obama fairly frequently as a condemnation of his policies, rather than a praise.

The Progressive Era also saw the first real homegrown alternatives to pure laissez fair capitalism in the US.  Coming first out of the Populists, and then adopted by the Progressives in the Republican Party, who ended up being the Progressive Party, a modified type of Capitalism was proposed by such luminaries as the Theodore Roosevelt, who went after Trusts in a major way, viewing them as anti competitive.  The Trust Busting efforts of TR are legendary, but much less well known are his later propositions to force large national corporations to exist in sort of a public utility status, subject to extensive regulation, and in which the public would, by statute, own a certain percentage of the shares.  Indeed, this unique approach to regulation of economic activity remains the most radical economic proposition ever suggested by a former President, even today.

 Theodore Roosevelt

Indeed, in current economic news corporations have been discussed a great deal, but never in terms of terminating them or changing their basic nature. That's fairly amazing, if we consider that a century ago TR was basically suggesting altering them enormously.  In the entire Western world people are so completely used to corporations and related business entities that they're regarded as natural.  That really says something about how far the economic model is accepted, as of course corporations and limited liability companies are not natural at all.  The only "business entity" that is natural, would be the partnership, as people naturally join forces to accomplish all sorts of goals, but partnerships generally do not shield people against liability, except where the law has come in to provide that.  Corporations, on the other hand, always do.  A corporation is a "person" in the eyes of the law, even if not in reality, and therefore while the corporation may be liable for its acts, the individual shareholders are generally not.  That's a radical evolution in liability, and only came about as in the late mercantile period it became obvious that for big economic enterprises there was little other choice but to grant such concerns that privilege.  But the concept has become so widespread in the Western world that there are now millions of little corporations.  Indeed, for various reasons, there are corporations made up of one single person, and there are corporations made up of shareholders who are corporations.  Quite a few law firms, for example, are "Professional Corporations' or limited liability companies made up of Professional Corporations which have each have one single shareholder, that being the individual lawyers.

TR's Bull Moose economic platform failed, doomed in part because the Democrats were co-opting the less radical parts of it and because the GOP adopted a conservative approach to economics under Taft, thereby guaranteeing that Woodrow Wilson would become President.  Wilson was a "progressive", but for the most part this didn't reflect itself in economics.  The generally good economy of the teens and twenties meant, for the most part, that people lost their interest in alternative economic theories in the US anyhow, until the Great Depression.  This wasn't the case, however, in Europe.

Before going on to Europe, however, I can't help but note how this entire TR/Woodrow Wilson/Taft era provides an example of  how much American politics have changed, and not necessarily for hte better.  That an election could field such very serious and intellectual men, in one single race, is amazing.  And the nature of their views was so deep, that it makes current politics look rather embarrassingly shallow.  Taft was a traidtional laissez fare type of politician, but he was otherwise a mild reformer and a great intellect.  In modern terms, he would be a middle of the road Republican.  Roosevelt, on the other hand, simply couldn't exist  in a modern American political party, even though he's widely admired to this day.  In some views, particularly those which feel into the category of "Americanism" he'd be regarded as a Tea Party conservative now. Economically, however, he was the most radical national politician we've ever had, far, far, to the left of anyone since him.  Personally, on moral grounds, he was a deep social conservative.  In political terms, however he was on the left on social issues.  On foreign policy he was a hard interventionist.  No party now would have him.  Wilson, on the other hand, is singularly uninspiring in some ways, but politically, and in terms of temperament, I've often thought that he is so like Barack Obama, or rather that Barack Obama like him, that its frightening.  On that, with their similar academic employments, it should be noted that Wilson's temperament and background operated to largely make his second term a failure, something that perhaps President Obama should study.

I also can't help but now that Wyoming's Governor Carey was one of the Republicans who bolted the party and who became a Progressive.  That too is an amazing thought, as I can't imagine a sitting Wyoming governor in recent years bolting a national party to join a third party.  That says something about the era, and also something about how popular Theodore Roosevelt was.

 Republican, and later Progressive Governor of Wyoming, Joseph M. Carey, his family, and Dorthy Knight, daughter of a Wyoming Supreme Court justice.  Ms. Knight appears to be looking in a different direction than the Carey family, but presumably that isn't due to a split in economic views.

Returning to Europe, World War One enormously boosted the fortunes of socialistic parties in Europe everywhere.  In Germany, the largest economy in Europe, the war brought the Social Democratic Party into power, as it was the largest party in the Reichstag when the Kaiser resigned, and that catapulted it into the unenviable position of being the German party that had to negotiate the German surrender, a fact which would contribute enormously to its downfall in 1932.  All over the former Imperial powers of Europe, hard left groups that had been suppressed by autocratic governments came roaring into influence.  In Russia, a host of radical political parties espousing socialism, or the ultimate antithesis of it, anarchy, vied for power.  In the one legitimate election that the Russians had after the Czar abdicated the Socialists won, but they were soon overthrown by the a coalition of Right Radical Socialist, Left Radical Socialists and Communists. The Communist, in turn, quickly did away with their competition, and a civil war ensued.

 The hairy inspiration for the hard left of socialist political thought, which doesn't include all socialist, German Karl Marx.  More people have died due to his political thoughts than due to any other political ideal.

A civil war also erupted in Germany, a fact seemingly forgotten in modern history, as the Socialist government called upon the anti socialist, mostly monarchists, army to put down Communist insurrection everywhere.  Ultimately, unofficial right wing German militias were needed to suppress Communist forces. The Socialist won, but came out of the conflict largely discredited and weak.  And for the first time a Socialist party in power was forced to rely on very conservative elements in orer to put down Communists.  Civil wars or near civil wars also broke out in newly independent Finland and Hungary, but with different results.

 Social Democratic Party leader, and first President of the German republic, socialist Frederich Ebert.

Even the UK saw Socialism spring up, although in the form of the fairly mild Labor Party. Fears of a Communist revolution caused the British to reform their electoral process, however, wisely granting a much wider franchise to the British working man.  It turned out that most British Socialist were ahead of the curve and were solidly democratic,  but that didn't keep the government from worrying about it. At any rate, the expanded British Labor Party quickly became part of the regular British political scene.

Mexico, which few of us today would regard as radical, either politically or economically, actually preceded Russia in these regards, in being the first significant state to fight a civil war in which radical leftist would come out in top.  Many, but not all, of the Mexican revolutionaries were socialist or even basically Communist.  Extreme leftist Mexican politicians would come to power in some regions of the country, which lead to a second civil war in the 1920s.  The United States had good reason to worry about Mexico in those days, as it didn't come out of the war democratic or capitalistic.

 Venustiano Carranza de la Garza, radical left wing ruler of Mexico following the second state of the Mexican Revolution.  Carranza came to power as a "general" of the Mexican Revolution following the assassination  of Modero and the counter coup that overthrew Modero's government.  Carranza, in turn, would face rebellion from Villa and Zapata.

The wars in Mexico, Russia, and effectively Finland, saw a primitive third force come up also, which would develop in the West in a very advanced form, but which is now completely forgotten for the most part, that being Distributism.  Distributist were regarded in Europe, where they had much more influence than in the United States, as a "third way" between Communism and Capitalism, or between Socialism and Capitalism.  Basically agrarian  and anti-corporate in form, the economic theory did not espouse the nationalization of economic resources, but the distributing of them when possible. So, it was essentially anti corporate in nature, and argued that economic resources should, where possible, be distributed down to individual owners.  In parts of the globe, therefore, the Distributist argued in favor of busting up landed estates and distributing it to family farmers.  This saw some early expression, although not in an informed sense, in the Mexican Revolution and the Russian Revolution, where agrarian armies sprang up with that being their principal goal.  The most successful of these was arguably Emiliano Zapata, who was more of an agrarian revolutionary than anything else.  The economic theory did, basically accidentally, take root in post civil war Finland, where the economy became agrarian until after World War Two.  As an experiment, the Finnish example was a success, with Finland not being greatly impacted by the Great Depression due to its agrarian economy, but a mixed success given the basic hard nature of Finnish lives in that period.  A similar accidental employment of the concept occurred in newly independent Ireland, where its being mixed with autarkic  principals made it only a partial success at best.

 Agrarian revolutionary Emiliano Zapata and his staff.  Like Modero before him, Zapata would be assassinated.  His memory lives on in southern Mexico, however, and revolutionaries in the region in the 1990s styled themselves as Zapataistas.

In a highly developed form, Distributism saw its reflection and refinement in the works of individuals like G. K. Chesterton, and it tended not only to rely on economic theory, but also on (Catholic) social justice theories.  In the United States it never seems to have gotten much traction, but agrarian thought did see a revival during the Great Depression, when Distributism hit its high mark in Europe, in the form of the "Southern Agrarians."  The Southern Agrarians were not all southern, although they principally were, and they came out in opposition to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal economic policies, which they felt, correctly, was destroying the agrarian culture of the South. Unfortunatley, however, their close attachment to the rural South seemed to put them in close attachment with the ongoing negative racial and social views of the South as well, which have to be discounted in order to take their major tract, "I'll Take My Stand," (unfortunately a line form the Southern anthem "Dixie") seriously.

 Self portrait by British journalist, philosopher, commentator, novelist and polymath, G. K. Chesterton, with the British Distributist slogan.  Public Domain image in the United States as over 70 years have passed since first publication.

Similar agrarian focused economists likewise sprang up in Europe outside of the immediate Distributist fold, such as the Austrian economist Wilhelm Röpke, who perhaps became the most influential of them all due to his role in the successful post war reconstruction of the German economy.  In economic circles today Röpke is warmly remembered, but it tends to be somewhat overlooked that he was really a Distributist, insisting on the  distribution of land, arguing in favor of some non productive land uses based on quality of life views, a critic of Socialism, but also a critic of Capitalism.  Modern Germany's economy, and the German economic miracle following World War Two, are largely Röpke's work, something that most American capitalist probably miss, and that does mean that the German economic approach, and their strong economy, have some very significant differences when compared to the United States.

The Distributists and their fellow travelers were perhaps unique in some ways as they were so focused on individual families, which conceptually made them the opponent of both Socialists and Capitalists. They did not oppose capitalism in general, but they feared the concentration of wealth in the hands of Capitalist, and felt that in order for an economy to be just, the means of production had to be continually forced down to the individual or family level.  This often saw its expression, in agriculture, in being agrarian centric.  In the UK this took on some interesting philosophical deminensions as agriclture began to mechanize post World War One, as the franchise also expanded, and individual land ownership expanded at the same time.  Some Distributists, such as Chesterton, saw Distributism not only as being the best form of economy, but, reflecting a strong current of Catholic social teaching at the time, they also saw it as the most just.  Chesterton also saw it as the best hope for English Catholics, a minoritiy in their own country, as the thought was that the agrarian unit would leave them able to practice their faith free of pressure from the outside.  Chesterton's slogan at the time was "three acres and a cow," relfecting the small scale apporach that Distributist favored.

In other areas where Distributism or near Distributism was influential, the thinking was similar.  Emiliano Zapata's army sought land distribution but also closely identified itself with the Catholic Church.  Newly independent  Ireland did the same, although it also, under DeValera also came to hold autarkic views which did not suit its economy well.  Finland, on the other hand, seems to have just slipped into being an agrarian state, probably reflecting the basic nature of its economy when it was part of the Russian Empire.

If Distributism was billed, at the time, as the "third way" between Capitalism and Communism, a more accurate analysis would have probably placed it as a contestant in what was really a five way race, as at least two other theories contended mid Century, when Distributism was at its high water mark. The mass economic mobilization of World War Two was the end of Distributism for the most part, as everyone agreed in the Western World that economy had to be mobilized on a grand scale, something that Distributism, that was very small scale by nature, could not provide. Distributist, therefore, put their dreams on hold, and by the war's end that dream deferred was basically permanently denied, although a few Distributist and related Agrarian thinkers exist today, albeit with no national influnce. Perhaps the last economist who was Distributist in outlook to have a seriouis governmental role was Willis Cochran, who served in the Department of Agriculture in the Kennedy Administration, but he soon found that his philosphocial thoughts were ignored by that administration.

Distributism was not tried in any major economy therefore, but Autarky was, with disasterous results.  Autarky was the economic concept of a nation attempting, contrary to Adam Smith's observations, to produce everything within its own borderes, thereby, theoretically, boosting its own employment thereby.  Autarky was the economic philosophy of fascistic states, although it proved to be completely unworkable.

The nation that best exemplified autarky was Nazi Germany.  Many people still believe that Nazi Germany was a capitalistic state, and the Communist emphasized that in their propaganda, but in fact it was not by any means. Autarky was the official economic philosophy of the Third Reich, which makes a great deal of sense as it dovetailed so strongly with that country's whacky racial superiority theories.  Autarky generally breaks down when it becomes evident that no nation can really produce everything within its own borders, and the banning of imports simply leads to deprivation and illegal markets.  But the Germans had a convenient out, in that they felt that they could conquer any raw materials they required, a view which they seemingly shared with Japan of the same period. With ever expanding borders, and a nasty philosophy to justify it, they could come to expand their borders to control what they did not originally contain.  Where that didn't work, in their philosophy, closely controlled client states could provide the rest, which lead the Germans to view, for example, Spain as a future agricultural and mining belt serving Germany.  Spain, under German influence, adopted the theory too, with predictably bad results, not ever realizing that in the eyes of its German ally, it was just a big farm and mine.  As noted, Japan, ruled by its military in this period, tried essentially the same thing, conquering a part of China, and ultimately trying to seize resources all throughout Asia.

Autarky was never workable anywhere it was tried, and some have theorized that had the Germans not gone down in defeat in World War Two that a revolution would have occured in any event, when the economic system completely collapsed.  At any rate, autarky is one economic theory that proved not only wanting, but so very bad that it passed out of existance pretty quickly.  True full scale communism took longer, but ultimately it collapsed too as it was never really consistant with human nature.  No real socialistic system was capable of enduring human beings.

That would lead, of course, to the assumption that Capitalism triumphed in the end, but that assumption would not be correct either, as there's no singular accepted capitalist model.  In the 1930s capitalist countries everywhere heavily modified their systems to allow for a fair amount of government intervention in the economy by one means or another, and truth be known almost every advanced economy interfered in the private sector a bit before that.  In the 1930s the British economy and the American economy was very much impacted by the thinking of John Maynard Keynes, who held that the government had a role to play in Capitalism in spurring and depressing the economy to try to flatten out the business curve via the use of taxing, spending, and borrowing.  Inspired in part by Keynes, but in part just by the need to do something, the American government also came to have, during the 1930s, a great deal of direct involvement in all aspects of the economy, which enormously expanded the size of the government. The extent to which this was a success has been debated, but World War Two effectively converted the experiment into a full scale wartime mobilization effort that likely was successful in ending the Great Depression for a variety of reasons.

British economist and later U.S. government economist, John Maynard Keynes.

The shock of the Great Depression was so vast that basically the economic model it created is with us still to some degree, although it was much more so prior to the Reagan years.  It seemed to be the accepted model in the US at least up through the early 1970s, with a high degree of government involvement in all aspects of the economy at least up through that time.  A general acceptance of the New Deal era changes in the government combined with the ongoing Cold War, which necessitated a large defense structure, made this model the accepted one to most Americans.  The destruction of European infrastructure during World War Two, moreover, meant that the American economy did very well in the 1950s, as it almost would have to have, given that it was the only manufacturing industrial economy left intact.  Booster of the American model, at that time, often conveniently forgot that all of our other major competitors had their industry bombed into oblivion only shortly before.

Starting with the late 1960s, however, serious questions about the existing model began to be raised, and ultimately the economy began to have serious trouble.  The high level of spending of the 1960s and early 1970s combined with major inflationary forces sank the economy into a period of protracted recession with inflation that caused some to seriously question if the economy was sliding into failure.  Conservative economist, however, felt that spending and borrowing were the sources of the problem, and they came into power with Ronald Regan. Very controversial at first, Regan ultimately succeeded in largely putting his economic model into play and, when combined with a forces recession, the long period of stagnation ended.

Since then, the Regan model has been the basic accepted one, although the degree to which it is used has varied over time.  At some points commentators have stated that we've entered a period of permanent conservative economics. At other, they've felt that this was not the case.  But from at least 1980 or so up until recently, this basic model has held sway, which was based at least conceptually on the idea of low taxes and fairly low government involvement in the economy, although the commitment to that concept has waxed and waned depending upon who has been in office.  The same basic idea has been at work in many other economies as well, starting first with the British economy when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister.  The complete collapse of real Communism brought this style of economics into much wider global acceptance as well.

The high level of government involvement, however, appears to be making a marked return since 2008, brought on by the "Great Recession" of 2008.  That event caused Republican President Bush to back a massive infusion of money into the economy which Democratic President Obama followed upon. Since then, Democrats in particular who never really accepted the retreat of the pre 1980 economic theories have been campaigning a bit for a return to an earlier era, and have been receiving some sympathetic treatment on occasion.

Ironically, in Europe, where government involvement has remained stronger, the opposite has been happening since 2008, and various European governments have started austerity programs designed to put their budgets in line.  This has been massively unpopular in some countries, Greece in particular, but Spain also provides an example.  After World War Two, European economies were heavily influenced by Social Democrats, a democratic branch of the socialist economic family, which tended to focus on the government providing services.  Now that they can no longer be paid for those same governments are looking at the unpopular choice of scaling them back during rocky economic times.  Early retirements and great unemployment benefits appear to be going out the window, although here and there votes drag them back in, as they have in France.

Austerity has been a topic in the US as well, even as there's discussion on expanding the government's role.  This has all been playing out in Congress where the fight between the Administration and Congress has been focused on spending vs. taxation, with the Republicans wanting to cut spending, and the Administration wanting to raise taxes.

All of which is no doubt pretty darned dull, but it is interesting how economic thought has actually narrowed over the past century. Either we know a lot more about how the economy must work, or we think a lot less about various aspects of it.  Even with fewer models, it seems that the various parties can't really get along on how much will be spent, and on what. Perhaps that should be no surprise, as what is paid for, and how, really are big deals.