But is it theft?

I've already blogged on the topic of the recent internet publication of embarrassing photographs.  An interesting element of this is that the photos were looted, somehow, from Apple's Cloud.

This brings to lgiht an itneresting aspect of taking the property of another.  In this cyber age, there's just a lot of people who feel that if its in the net or the cloud, taking it isn't theft. 

Well, is it?

Property is property, and you have a right to your property. That right is pretty broad, including keeping what is yours no matter where it may be.  Taking that without color or fight, even if you leave it on the street, or in the Cloud, may be theft, if you know it belongs to another.

This is another way, slightly, that the whole story may serve some ironic good.  People take all sorts of things on the net because they can.  Content, both literary and image, is routinely taken and re-posted, just because it's easy to do it.  That doesn't mean it isn't theft.  The current example is notable mostly because so much public attention has been paid to it, but perhaps closer attention should be paid.  If it isn't yours, it isn't yours.  Taking it because it can be taken, doesn't mean its right, even if in the end its only electrons.

Mid Week At Work: Child Teamster, 1916

Caption notes:

Edgar Kitchen 13 yrs. old gets $3.25 a week working for the Bingham Bros. Dairy. Drives dairy wagon from 7 A.M. to noon. Works on farm in afternoon (10 hours a day) seven days a week--half day on Saturday. Thinks he will work steady this year and not go to school. See previous labels in June. Not in Div. 5 or 6. Lives in Bowling Green. Location: Bowling Green [vicinity], Kentucky

I wonder how his life played out?

The illusion of second chances

Today is the first day of school here.  It's also the day after Labor Day (kudos to the School Board, as an aside, for not making kids go back to school right before a three day holiday).  So, the kids are going back to school, and the parents and others back to work.

 

As they do, a lot of the kids are looking forward to a year of new things and new opportunities (while some are also lamenting the start of another school year).  A lot of those parents and other adults, however, don't view the start of the workweek on a Tuesday the same way. There's a cautionary tale here.  Indeed, I meant to post this awhile back, but a question I heard the other day caused me to ponder it again.

Americans love the happy ending story. This is so much the case that Europeans call these type of movie endings "American endings".  Americans usually don't like a story that ends on a sad note, although there are exceptions.  One I can think of off hand is the movie Will Penny, which ends on a bit of a downer, and which sort of taps into the them of this post.. But we don't find too many of these types of endings, however, in American films.

Anyhow, included in these stories, and broadcast on television every year, is the late happy education or career story.  You know, woman who dropped out of school at 16 years old graduates with high school degree in her 50s.  Man who left school at 14 receives honorary high school degree at 90.  These heartwarming stories confirm our belief that "it's never too late" to do this or that.  And indeed, for some things it is never too late.  It's probably never too late to make healthy lifestyle choices, within the confines of a person's present health.  It's never too late to turn from a life of vice or depredation into one that has virtue and meaning.  So, to some extent, this is true.

But with these stories that have economic implications, for most people, there actually is a statute of real limitations, like it or now.  If life is like a river, you might be able to get out and back upstream, but it's more likely that your boat can just be beached, by design or accident, and you have to put back out from where you are.

Getting a person's GED or a college degree, late in life, is often quite pointless.  Worse than that, it often tends to prove nothing whatsoever.  A person, for example, who is obtaining a GED late in life has already had their economic course set, and a GED is going to do nothing for them.  It might validate their sense of self, but that's a purely internal matter.

The same is often true, in my view, to late in life degrees.  News channels like to run stories about people obtaining advanced degrees in their 60s or older, and if a person simply wants to, the more power to them. But if we think that this actually gives them a break in life, forget it.  Obtaining your JD at 60 years old, if you actually want to practice law, is, for example, darned near pointless.  A relative of mine obtained his, after a successful university teaching degree, in his 40s and rapidly discovered that nobody was going to hire him.  He clerked for a year and then returned to academia, grateful for his first career and a bit wiser about the law, lawyers, and the practice of law, but with no hope of a legal career.  Having said that, a couple of my good law school friends were 40 when they graduated with their JDs and went on to successful careers.  One is now retired, and the other about to.

And, in things like the law (but not in everything involving higher education by any means) sometimes the elderly or older occupant of that school chair has bumped out some younger person.  I have no problem with people applying for such spots up into their 40s, although frankly if they're going to be crowding their mid 40s when they graduate they are occupying a space that a younger person might more justly occupy.  Or at least that can be the case (in law schools it probably isn't, given the 50% decline in applications to law school over the past few years).

Moreover, and not so obvious to the young, life has a way of taking over.  I've known and know now kids who are entering the military service.  I don't begrudge them that, but I'll sometimes hear parents hoping that when they get out, they'll go to college.  Maybe they will. Some certainly will.  But if you do four years in the Navy or Marines and find yourself 22 years old, for some they'll imagine (incorrectly) that they're ship has sailed and they best not try it.  One young man I knew who joined the Marines for one hitch found life taking over and is still in nearly a decade or more later.  When his hitch comes up in the next couple of years, he'll have to weigh getting out and into civilian employment (the lack of which kept in him in the Marines) against completing an additional eight years and having a military retirement.

The period from 18 to 30 is one of tremendous change, with the period from 17 to 25, really, being the most significant of that period (yes, I know I dropped a year in there).  People start and stop career paths.  People marry or pass by people they think of marrying.  People go one place for work and leave others.  A lot of these choices, if not irrevocable when made, start to set up like cement in a few years.

There are always exceptions to the rule.  I've known one man who started off a meteorologist, became a geophysicist, became a lawyer, became a teacher, and started practicing law again (after retiring from his school district).  And there are many, many people who started off in one career and chose another.  I'd guess maybe 40% of all lawyers fit that category, including myself.  But those doors, from the moment you see them, are closing, and they don't remain open for ever.

Chose wisely, if you can.

Looking at Labor Past: Child messenger, 1910

The Big Picture: National Women's Trade Union League Convention, 1924

Dr. Walmart?

Fairly recently on this blog we looked at some topics that dealt with Distributist Economics.  Looming large in that discussion was the economic role of outfits like WalMart, which are sort of the antithesis of the Distributist concept at least on the retail end.

Well, this past week we heard on the news that Walmart is considering adding physicians in its lineup, adding to the Opthomologist it already fields.

Folks who worry about economic trends may want to consider what this means. Walmart already pretty much dominates the retail field in North American in many areas, and has expanded into about every niche it can, or maybe not.  By going from retail goods, into health care, it threatens to really impact this area of the service economy.

Well, what of this?  Is this good, or bad?  There's interesting elements to both sides here.

Traditionally health care has been incredibly individual in nature, although that started to die for various reasons about a a decade ago.  That is, the traditional nature of health care is that people had individual doctors, who had individual practices.  

We've blogged on this before, when we discussed health insurance here, a hot topic the past few years. What we'd note again is that up until World War Two, most Americans didn't have health insurance, although some who worked for large industrial concerns worked for employers who had "company doctors", that is full time physicians employed by those companies (now also a thing of the past). The Second World War brought in health insurance in a big way, as when the Federal Government froze wages, it didn't think to freeze benefits. So, employers started competing for workers, in a tight labor market, with offers of additional benefits.  Health insurance, which existed but which was not hugely widespread, really took off.  That gave us the system we have had basically since, in which quite a few people have health insurance, some don't, etc.  In the 1960s the Great Society programs modified that further by extending health insurance at the Federal level for the very poor, and then Richard Nixon extended it to the elderly.

Health care remained very individual, but starting in the 1980s and 1990s, insurance companies started boosting Health Maintenance Organizations, ie., practices with an established relationship with them, in order to control costs. About the same time, doctors themselves, finding their practices more expensive to merely operate, due to advances in medicine, increasingly came to associate themselves in group practices, which are nearly quasi hospitals and clinics. So consolidation has been definitely occurring.  Prices have also been climbing.  And as a result of the latter, a renewed emphasis on national health care came about, as people began to loose their health insurance as companies, which had gotten the whole thing rolling in the 1940s, found that they could no longer afford it in the 2000s.

Now we have Walmart threatening to enter the field. What would that do?

Well, one thing it would probably do is drive prices down.  Walmart doesn't enter anything that it can't compete at, and we can be assured that they'll undercut everyone else.  It'll be less personal, probably, but also a lot cheaper, I suspect.  They must also have studied the Affordable Health Care Act and they must feel that they can operate cheaply and efficiently within it.

In my prior post, I pretty clearly took a shot at Walmart.  When I heard this news, I was tempted to as well. But maybe this is a not so fast sort of thing.  Professionals are going to just hate this trend, and my suspicion is that if it works it won't stop with doctors, but on the other had as prices have climbed and climbed, perhaps this was inevitable and even corrective.

Looking at labor past. A photo for my friend Couvi.

A photo which reminded me of my friend Couvi, on the weekend we celebrate the fruits of labor and working men, including our own past labor.

Caption reads:

Herschel Bonham, Route A, Box 118, an 11-year-old boy cultivating peas. He belongs to a cotton club in school. Father says he can pick 200 pounds of cotton a day. Location: Lawton, Oklahoma

The Best Posts of the Week for the Week of August 24, 2014

Standards of Dress. The police. A semi topical post

The Theodore Roosevelts

10610586_10152219321546879_5172222764660045729_n.jpg (JPEG Image, 764 × 960 pixels) - Scaled (91%)

Theodore Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt, riding.

Insignia identification?

Does anyone here recognize this British insignia?  On British desert disruptive pattern smock, Jax's, Ft. Collins.

Whose weird scheduling idea was that?

The State Bar Convention in Wyoming is always in September.  It's a week long event.

September is also the month that all the hunting seasons start, as the weather turns cool. And after the blistering month (most years) of August, it's the first nice cool weather in awhile.  It's also the last chance for many rational fishermen (as opposed to the wet suit wearing denizens of Colorado) to get in some fishing before winter sets in.

All of which makes a person wonder who ever thought of scheduling the bar convention in September?  It must have been a person so dull and indoorsy that the thought of hanging around breathing in recycled air and drinking mass produced coffee sounded attractive..

And why do they keep on holding it in September?  I can't think of a rational reason to do it? Why not January when there's nothing going on and its really cold outside, or maybe August when its really hot and recycled air conditioning might not seem so bad.

Oh well.  September it is, as the traditional provides for it.  And, by tradition, and because I have other things to do, I shall not be there.

Business travel and communications

Commercial jet engine as viewed from my plane seat on flight from Oklahoma City to Houston.

I travel a fair amount in the context of work. 

So much so, according to my wife, I'm no fun to travel with for short personal travel, as I get tired of traveling all the time so that a hop to Denver, let's say, isn't that much of an adventure as it is something that's a bit routine.  It's an occupational hazard or feature of the type of law I do.

Convair at the Natrona County International Airport outside of Casper Wyoming, in the early 1950s.

But I'm sure that wasn't always the case.

In the context of this blog, travel and things we do while on business travel have struck me in a couple of ways recently, both of which I've noted about and blogged about here recently on individual threads, but which might make for some interesting discussion once again.

  U.S. version of British "Is this trip necessary" poster from World War Two, urging private citizens not to travel, if at all possible.  Trains were the planes of the day, and business commuters might recall small hop flights when looking at this poster

This blog, as the very few people who read it know, is theoretically a research vehicle for a book (or books really) and explores changes over time, to help me more accurately understand and convey the conditions of the past. And on the topics travel bring up, the changes are truly very vast, in a relatively short period of time.  Indeed, as will be noted below, some of the changes have been very pronounced even during my working life.

One of these topics is how routine long travel is now for quite a few occupations.  Recently, for example, I traveled from my home to Oklahoma City, worked a day there, and flew that afternoon to Houston, and then flew back.  This past week I was in Cheyenne for two days and then on to Denver.  While in Denver, I worked on a project that saw other people come in from Wyoming, one person come in from Lincoln Nebraska, and yet another come in from Newark, New Jersey.  Not particularly remarkable, but at one time not all that long ago this would have been frankly impossible.

It certainly would have been impossible during the 20th Century era when railroad transportation was the traveling norm, which was the case up into the 1950s.  Air travel appeared as early as the 1920s in some locations, but it was extremely expensive and most people didn't travel that way until much later.  Even in the 1950s air travel remained somewhat expensive and a bit of an event, with air travelers usually dressing for the occasion.

I don't even know if it would have been possible to go from Casper Wyoming to Oklahoma City in a day in the era of rail transportation.  I'm sure it would have been possible to go from Oklahoma City to Houston in a day, but the entire thing would have probably taken at least a week, overall.  Chances are that it just wouldn't have occurred in this context.  People did travel for business, of course, but in litigation it wasn't common to travel that far.  Most lawyers probably only traveled to neighboring states as a rule, and that only occasionally, depending upon where they lived.  I wouldn't be too surprised, for example, to find a Wyoming lawyer in 1914 traveling to Denver by train, and it wouldn't surprise me if a lawyer in New York City traveled to New Jersey or other local east coast locations frequently.  But a lawyer in Casper would have only traveled to Houston very rarely in this context, if ever.

 Train outside of Chicago.

Even in the early airline era this would have been somewhat unlikely.  I'm sure a person could have gone from Casper to Oklahoma City in a day by air post 1945, but it would have shot most of the day (which it does, as a practical matter, anyway).  And it no doubt was also possible to go the much shorter distance of Oklahoma City to Houston in a day, although it would have taken a lot longer than it does now.  That might have shot the whole day there too.  And getting back from Houston would be a long series of flights.  So, it could have been done, no doubt, but my three day example would, more likely, have been a four or five day example, and also less likely to have occurred.

 Houston, 1949.  I wonder how many of these tall buildings are still standing?

Commercial airliners in Casper Wyoming in the early 1950s, one taking off while another sits on the tarmac.

This week, as already noted, I've made the much shorter trip, by pickup truck (we don't own a true "car", just trucks, assuming a Suburban is a truck), from Casper to Cheyenne.  In Cheyenne I stayed overnight, as I had additional work the next day, and then I drove to Denver, where I again stayed the night.  Not particularly remarkable, and a trip which a person could easily make by automobile at any time since 1930 or so.  And by the 1930s that was pretty common within the state or to a nearby area, like Denver.  I've heard other lawyers speak of travel in that era many times, although one thing to note is that doing it in the winter would have been dicey, and unlike now local people generally traveling that sort of distance would have done it with a sedan, rather than with a pickup truck or 4x4, as is so common here now.

 Denver Colorado, 1898.  This photograph was taken somewhere int eh Capitol Hill District, based upon the few buildings I recognize in the photograph.  The rail line would be in this view, but it is not visible in this photograph.

But what has struck me this trip is the degree to which, even in my own lifetime, I no longer really ever leave the office, even when I'm on the road.

Office of the 1940s, note the lack of any office machinery, other than a telephone, on the desk. No computer, no Dictaphone, no typewriter.  While a Dictaphone wouldn't have been surprising, any other office machinery would have been, which says something not only about the lack of it, but the reliance upon secretaries to process any work at the time.

When I first started practicing law nobody had portable laptop computers and there were few easily transportable cell phones.  Basically, when we were out of the office, we were out of the office.  The only chance of finding out if we had messages was to call back to the office and have somebody read the pink "message" slips we received if we missed a call.

Now, that's all a thing of the very remote past.  On Monday, when I traveled down for a hearing, I had, as always, my Iphone, and I checked and replied to email on it.  That evening I plugged in my computer and worked on work stuff that I emailed off all evening.  The next day I checked my voice mail messages, sent instructions regarding the same, and went on to my next hearing.  When I arrived in Denver, I once again plugged in my computer and picked up and responded to my email, which I did again the following early morning (I woke up about 4:00 am conscious of the fact that I'd failed to reply to an email I'd received the day prior).  During all of this, from time to time, I spoke by cell phone to my office or other lawyers concerning various pending matters.

 Typical hotel scene for me.  Briefcase, book (Street Without Joy), and laptop computer.

At one time, therefore, this trip, which still would have occurred, would be a series of solitary events, mostly uninterrupted, and un-informed, by what was going on elsewhere. The actual amount of work accomplished would have been considerably less than it is now, but on the other hand the hours would have been considerably shorter as well.  The work at night would have not gone on into the evening, and the work during the day would not have commenced at 4:00.

Another thing worth noting, perhaps, is the extent to which some of us hole up in our hotel rooms on business travel.  I guess this hasn't always been the case.

A friend of mine, based upon an observation of mine that hotel rooms in the historic Plains Hotel in Cheyenne are really small, noted that in old hotels the rooms are small but the lobbies were big.  This is, I would note, very much the case, at least as to the vintage hotels I've stayed in here and there.  I frankly don't chose old hotels as a rule, as my luck is really mixed with them, but over time I've stayed, for example, in The Plains, Oklahoma City's Skirven, Tulsa's Ambassador and others.  The Ambassador in Tulsa is the nicest hotel I've ever been in, by far, and I always stay there when I'm in Tulsa.  It's a bit unusual, however, in that the rooms are a decent size, which is not the case for most vintage hotels.

Anyhow, as my friend observed, nobody hung out in their rooms. Why would have they, really, as there were no televisions, no Internet, no radios even if early enough?  You could sit in your room and read, but then you could also go down, get a table in the bar, and do that perhaps.  It hadn't occurred to me, but it makes sense.  Indeed since then I've noticed that every single vintage hotel I've been in has a huge, fairly ornate, lobby.  The Plains does, the Skirven does, the Oxford in Denver (which has little tiny rooms if the one I had is any indication), the Ambassador does, and even the Calvert in Lewistown Montana does, although it was converted from a public girl's school dormitory (distances were too great for parents to bring their girls into school for much of the year at the time it was built).

 

Lobby of the Plains Hotel in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  The vintage hotel has been restored in recent years.

Now hotel rooms are bigger and in some instances quite large.  There's usually a table to work in. The hotel I stayed in near the Denver airport (prices downtown were insane) was equipped with two televisions.  Why, exactly, a room that small needs two televisions isn't clear to me, but at the hotel I was staying at the bedroom, or area with a bed, was slightly separated from the entry way, where a work desk was located.  The second television was in the bedroom.  I've never had a television in a bedroom, save for the one room apartments I had when I was a college student, and I don't want one in my bedroom now.

I hardly actually ever actually watch the television in a hotel room, I'll note, and didn't here other than to flip through the channels.  I'll often do that, which is probably a hold over from my younger years in which hotels were the only places I was ever at where there were the "premium" channels like HBO.  Now, with basic cable, you get a lot more channels that you are ever inclined to view, or at least that's the case for me.  My basic cable comes with channels like the Bolivian Grade School Soccer League Channel, or whatever, and I have a hard time believing that anyone views them, but there they are.

The hotel I was at was part of the Hilton chain and when I noted what movie options were available there was a section, as there always is in a Hilton, for movies a person would be ashamed to watch at home. Weird.  I read somewhere once that one of the hotel chains (not sure which one) was the largest distributor of that kind of junk on Earth, which may or may not be true, but that is a truly odd thing about some business hotels.  These sorts of hotels cater to businessmen, and it's odd to think that a certain section of that clientele uses their trips to view such material.  Hopefully they aren't charging it to their clients.  On the other hand, the odd channels I like to watch with old movies and the like are never offered, so as always, I turned it off and picked up a copy of the book I'm reading, "Street Without Joy".  Had I stayed in old hotels, back in the day, I'd no doubt have stayed in my room with a book.  Pretty much like I do now, except when I'm working, which is often. 

Indeed, I have traditionally done an enormous amount of reading while traveling and still do on airplanes.  The invasion of work into evening hotel time has cut down on my reading in hotels somewhat, however.

Is this an improvement, or not, or neither, over prior conditions?  I can't really say, but I will note that even now I always worry about things while I'm on the road.  I worry about the calls I miss,, the mail, the whole nine yards.  I zealously check these things, so that I'm not worried as much.  Looking back I worried about them when I couldn't check, so maybe this is a personal improvement.  But also, it means that a person is more isolated in travel, and working more when they travel, which probably inspires my wife's observations that I'm not fun to travel with on short trips, as I travel so much.  Indeed, I'd note, if a short trip is a day trip for personal reasons, I'll go ahead and use my computer and cell phone to keep up with work, which probably isn't a good thing.

Case Illustrates Importance of Detailed Lease Provisions in Case of Drought | Texas Agriculture Law

Case Illustrates Importance of Detailed Lease Provisions in Case of Drought | Texas Agriculture Law

Friday Farming: A bull

Standards of Dress. The police. A semi topical post

 

 Chicago Mounted Police, 1907.

I've done threads on standards of dress from time to time, as part of the general them of this page of tracking changes in the last century.  Probably the most specific one I did was on clerical dress, with most being of a more general nature. This is one of the specific ones, police dress.

I had intended to do one on service dress, but it's not really possible as that would include military uniforms which need their own category.  Indeed, that's several threads as the dress of the various services depart from each other, so we'll take up police dress by itself.  We intended to do this for some time now, but this is oddly topical due to the riots going on in Ferguson Missouri, which is reported on the news as being a "town", which it is, but it's a town that's a suburb of St. Louis.

Now, I'm not really going to comment on the Ferguson riots, and couldn't if I wished to as its one of those stories I haven't follows.  Wyoming is a long ways from there, and the news coming out of there is very foreign to us here in many ways. But it does tap into the topic here, and in a way to this topic nationwide, as apparently one of the things that happened in Ferguson is that the police came into the the distressed area with military equipment, and a military appearance, which relfects a nationwide trend that deserves some attention.

So, police uniforms.

I don't know when the first police adopted uniforms actually, but it's much more recent in general than people would suppose.  Indeed, police themselves are a more recent phenomenon that people suppose, and generally if we go back much past the mid 19th Century we tend to find that most policing was done by sheriffs, who have a different relationship to the sovereign than the police do.  Sheriff's are commissioned in a specific manner that really attaches them to the courts, or did, and sheriffs have not uniformly had uniforms at all, up until quite recently.  Policemen, on the overhand, tend to be a uniformed body and they're generally the law enforcement arm of municipal corporations.

American policemen have, traditionally, been dressed in blue uniforms.  The reason is that when New York City, which had one of the earliest and largest police forces in the United States, went to uniform its officers for the first time it relied upon the experiences of its members, who were largely Civil War veterans.

 

 Classic scene of urban policy.  New York mounted policemen, 1905.

New York had a large police force (and still does).  In the 1860s and 70s, a very large number of those men had served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and the police uniform they adopted strongly resembled the last uniform they'd worn.  Indeed, not only did they rely upon the Army's uniform for inspiration, but they relied upon the Army for inspiration for almost everything at that time.  Tack for horses and firearms were also military inspired.  In terms of uniforms, that put New York's police force in blue wool trousers and frock coats, just as the Army's more formal uniform of the same period featured both as well.

Other police forces followed suit, and the blue wool frock coat and blue trousers became the American standard for police forces.  It's important to note that this was and is the American standard.  Other countries which began to uniform police had their own traditions and they tended not to follow the American tradition in regards to police dress.

 

 Typical early 20th Century police uniforms.  For the most part, these officers are dressed in blue wool, although they're wearing a type of coat referred to as a "sack" coat.  The sack coat was also an Army item originally, adopted by the U.S. Army during the Civil War to supplant the frock coat in field conditions, where the sack coat was more practical.  These men also wear a military inspired cap, reflecting the kepi style adopted by the Army in the later period of the 19th Century.  Some urban police forces adopted helmets in this same period, following the U. S. Army which adopted a Prussian style helmet for dress purposes in the 1870s.

While never identical to the uniform worn by the U.S. Army, in the late 19th Century and the early 20th Century, basic items very much followed the Army's patterns. Frock coats and sack coats were uniform standards.  Officers hardly ever appeared without a coat.  For caps, some police forces adopted the Prussian style helmet adopted by the Army in the 1870s, and others wore the late pattern Army kepi in to the early 20th Century.  At the same time, however, police uniforms featured distinctive features identifying the wear as a policeman and not a soldier. Early on, they never featured rank insignia of any kind, unlike the Army's uniforms. And they fairly uniformly featured a large badge identifying the policeman as an officer of the law.

 

New York mounted police in action, anarchist riot, 1908.

That set the standard of American police uniforms for decades, and it was an American pattern.  North of the border the national police, the NWMP which was formed in the 19th Century, based their uniform coloration on that of the early 19th Century British Army.  I.e, red.  South of the border the various Mexican police had their own colors and styles.  In the United Kingdom, when police came to be formed, they also wore blue, but in other locations styles were different, such as in Germany where policemen came to wear green.

 Washington D. C. mounted police, 1925.

In the early 20th Century the police, like the Army, wore coats that buttoned to the collar, and by the early 20th Century most police forces had adopted the Army's wheelhouse cap in blue as a police cap.  Helmets were abandoned.  Still, the large badges remained evident and by that time had come to be the identifier for individual policemen, with the policeman receiving a numbered badge as a rule.

 

Washington D. C. motorcycle policeman, 1932.

In the 1930s, when the Army went to an opened collared coat, with shirt in tie, in one of he worst field uniforms ever thought of for Army field service, police forces generally followed suit.  Most policemen then wore, on a daily basis, a wool coat with an open collar as well as a blue shirt with a blue tie.

Classic police officer uniform, captain of Washington D. C. police in 1930s, in a uniform typical for police from the 1930s through the 1970s in many locations.

Following World War Two the police uniform remained largely unchanged for decades.  One small change was that as most policemen came to be patrol officers, in cars, most forces abandoned the wool opened collared coat for regular officers and they normally wore, in warm weather, simply blue shirt and blue tie.  This was common by the 1950s.  In colder weather they almost all had jackets based on Air Force flight jackets, generally in blue, although some police force's, such as New York's, issued a leather flight jacket for cold weather use.  Here again, I suppose, they were following a trend first developed by the miltiary, although leather jackets came into common civilian use during the 1920s as well.

 Sheriff Of McAlester Oklahoma, 1930s. This sheriff is attired in a fashion typical of this and prior eras.  I.e., no uniform at all.

One thing I haven't noted, in all of this, is the uniform of other U.S. police forces, the most common of which are sheriff's departments.  For much of their history, U.S. sheriff's departments basically didn't have a uniform.  Sheriff's and their deputies were simply armed and carried a badge.  That's about it.  Starting about the turn of the century however, some sheriff's started wearing uniforms closely based on military uniforms, including their coloring.  It wasn't universal, however, and by mid 20th Century you'd often find the actual Sheriff simply wearing a coat and tie.  Deputies started to be issued uniform shirts, and sometimes uniforms, in this time frame, alhtough exactly when I'm not sure.  Post World War Two khaki became the common color for Sheriffs, with most Sheriff's departments adopting a khaki uniform shirt closely based on the World War Two officers khaki shirt.  Flight jacket type jackets also started to come in about this time.

Federal law enforcement officers, on the other hand, have mostly lacked a uniform for most of their history, although their history is fairly short.  There were Federal Marshall in the 19th Century, but their only identifier was a badge.  The FBI of mid 20th Century fame, and even up today for hte most part, dressed in business attire.  In the 1920s and 30s the use of "boaters" for hats was so common amongst FBI agents that the joke was that this was part of their uniform.  In recent years, however, this has changed so that Federal law enforcement officers do have a uniform in some instances, more of which will be mentioned in a moment.  In terms of daily wear, the Federal law enforcement officers most likely to wear a uniform are border agents and officers of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife, both of which wear what we might regards as rural styles, the former somewhat recalling a sheriff's office and the latter one of a type that's common with a game and fish agency.

On game and fish agencies, these officers likewise didn't often have uniforms early on and it seems today there is a fair amount of variety in them.  The Wyoming Game & Fish at some point in the 20th Century adopted a uniform that was to make their officers visible in the game fields, the same being a red shirt in the era when read, rather than blaze orange, was the required color for big game hunters.  Other than that, Wyoming's game wardens simply wore blue jeans and a cowboy hat, both of which were official proscribed for them.

Well, what about now? This is a bland story, right?

Well, to some extent, this has been in the news recently, and the reason for that has to do with the appearance, in part, of the police.

How exactly it happened I can't say, but starting off about some ten or fifteen years ago, police departments started to acquire a lot of military equipment, and when they did, they also acquired a military look.  It really started some time prior to that, when they started to form "special", ie., SWAT, teams of special response groups, for particularly dicey scenarios, but its really gone from there.

These units within police forces, which in some cases seem to constitute entire police forces, bring a very military, i.e., combat troop, appearance to a lot of police forces, and that's not a good thing.

Policemen, like lawyers, or doctors, or teachers, are one of those occupations where people have a certain expectation of appearance, and in turn react accordingly.  If they look professional, but separate, but also part of us, as the classic "Adam 12" type policeman did, they receive a certain response.  On the other hand, soldiers are also a profession where people have a certain expectation of appearance and react accordingly.  If policemen look like combat troops, it's hard not to imagine them that way, and for most people, that creates a certain atmosphere of fear.

On military trends, police forces have gone from having no rank insignia to having the full military range of it, which also strikes me as odd.  Some big city police chiefs now wear the same insignia that Generals in the Army do; four stars. That's a bit much.  At one time, the police chief tended to wear suit and tie, which really sends a better message.

On the flip side of this, I'd note, some police forces have also become very casual in their daily appearance, which also isn't a good thing, in my view.  I've seen polo shirts introduced into policing, which I'm not sure what I think of.  If I were a policeman, I'd probably like it, so I guess I'm not complaining about it.  The Wyoming Game & Fish recently introduced polo shirts, I've noted, for some of its personnel, although I'm not sure if wardens are amongst them or not.  And I've seen blue polos in use for other law enforcement officers.

One thing along these lines I don't like is the adoption of baseball caps, but that seems to be something that is just so pervasive as to be inevitable.  They don't look professional for policeman, although I have less of a problem with them for game wardens and similar officers.

At any rate, while this would seem to be a minor matter, it really isn't for those enforcing the law, and those whose communities are being policed. The militarization of police seems to have gone too far, for example, and perhaps the trend towards casual has a bit as well.

Guernsey Chukars | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Guernsey Chukars | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Mid Week At Work: Railroad Engineer

Johnny Cash Has Been Everywhere (Man)! - Music Hack Day London 2012 - Iain Mullan

Johnny Cash Has Been Everywhere (Man)! - Music Hack Day London 2012 - Iain Mullan

Because some links are too odd not to share.

The Big Picture: Stockyards, Omaha Nebraska 1908

Back To School Checklist Should Include Powers of Attorneys for College Students | Texas Agriculture Law

Back To School Checklist Should Include Powers of Attorneys for College Students | Texas Agriculture Law



This would never have occurred to me, but it is an interesting item.