Blog Mirror: Horses for War: A Market for Wyoming Stockmen

Horses for War: A Market for Wyoming Stockmen

Horses for War: A Market for Wyoming Stockmen

Horses for War: A Market for Wyoming Stockmen

The bronc, "a keen-lookin' bay wild as a rabbit," began bucking as soon as Floyd Bard mounted. It bucked its way up a Sheridan, Wyo. alley by the Bucket of Blood Saloon, then across Main Street and up to the O'Mare grocery store, which had a big glass door. - See more at: http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/horses-war-market-wyoming-stockmen#sthash.PZWmkntx.dpuf

he bronc, "a keen-lookin' bay wild as a rabbit," began bucking as soon as Floyd Bard mounted. It bucked its way up a Sheridan, Wyo. alley by the Bucket of Blood Saloon, then across Main Street and up to the O'Mare grocery store, which had a big glass door. - See more at: http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/horses-war-market-wyoming-stockmen#sthash.PZWmkntx.dpuf

Horses for War: A Market for Wyoming Stockmen

Rebecca Hein

Horses for War: A Market for Wyoming Stockmen

The bronc, "a keen-lookin' bay wild as a rabbit," began bucking as soon as Floyd Bard mounted. It bucked its way up a Sheridan, Wyo. alley by the Bucket of Blood Saloon, then across Main Street and up to the O'Mare grocery store, which had a big glass door.

- See more at: http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/horses-war-market-wyoming-stockmen#sthash.PZWmkntx.dpuf

Horses for War: A Market for Wyoming Stockmen

Rebecca Hein

Horses for War: A Market for Wyoming Stockmen

The bronc, "a keen-lookin' bay wild as a rabbit," began bucking as soon as Floyd Bard mounted. It bucked its way up a Sheridan, Wyo. alley by the Bucket of Blood Saloon, then across Main Street and up to the O'Mare grocery store, which had a big glass door.

- See more at: http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/horses-war-market-wyoming-stockmen#sthash.PZWmkntx.dpuf

Horses for War: A Market for Wyoming Stockmen

Rebecca Hein

Horses for War: A Market for Wyoming Stockmen

The bronc, "a keen-lookin' bay wild as a rabbit," began bucking as soon as Floyd Bard mounted. It bucked its way up a Sheridan, Wyo. alley by the Bucket of Blood Saloon, then across Main Street and up to the O'Mare grocery store, which had a big glass door.

- See more at: http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/horses-war-market-wyoming-stockmen#sthash.PZWmkntx.dpuf

Casper Daily Press for April 18, 1916

The following evening, the paper was doubting the news of Villa's demise the day prior, and in a whimsical fashion.

A civil war in China, amazingly enough, managed to make the front page, in spite of the nearer strife.

Yikes! More scary petrol news

The Tribune reported yesterday that Ultra, Wyoming's largest gas producer, missed a $26,000,000 interest payment.  Clearly, that's not good.  The article went on to explore how Wyoming gas is below the profitable rate right now.  And, for those inclined to blame the Federal government for pricing woes in coal, the natural question is that if gas is so cheap its being sold at a loss, what hope is there of boosting the price of coal domestically?

And to compound woes, a meeting of the petroleum producing nations in Doha failed to come up with a production agreement, causing oil prices to drop 6% on the Asian market yesterday.  Oil prices had rebounded a bit lately, including at the pump.  We'll see if they can even remain stable at the current price now.

Monday at the bar: Judge Posner takes shots at the entire legal system (and the ABA notes the Blue Book)

Judge Posner, the well known Federal appellate jurist, has been taking shots at the entire legal profession, including the judiciary, recently.  Given his stature and prominence, it's worth noting what he's saying.

Most recently  he's doing this in a series of articles in something called The Green Bag.  I have no idea what the Green Bag is, and what the source of its odd name is, but the article really lights from fires.  He starts off taking on the much repeated pablum about our system being the envy of the world.

Another way to characterize the legal profession in all three of its major branches the academy, the judiciary, and the bar is that it is complacent,self satisfied. Chief Justice Roberts in his annual reports likes to describe the American legal system as the envy of the world. Nonsense. The system has proved itself ineffectual in dealing with a host of problems, ranging from providing useful (as distinct from abstract theoretical) legal training at bearable cost to curbing crime and meting out rational punishment, providing representation for and protection of the vast number of Americans who are impecunious or commercially unsophisticated (so prey to sharpies), incorporating the insights of the social and natural sciences (with the notable exception of economics, however), curbing incompetent regulatory agencies such as the immigration and social security disability agencies, and limiting the role of partisan politics in the appointment of judges. The system is also immensely costly (more than $400 billion a year), with its million lawyers, many overpaid, many deficient in training and experience, some of questionable ethics.

Wow.

That lays it on pretty thick, but in so far as our system being the "envy" of the world, Posner is right.  It might have been when much of the world didn't have a truly independent judiciary, but there's no reason to believe it is now.  He goes on to take on the entire adversarial system.  That's really amazing from an American legal writer, and he does a good job of describing the system in other countries.

Here's the comment that the ABA noticed and linked into their listserve:

There are changes at once desirable and feasible to be made at the federal court of appeals level too, some of form and some of substance.  At the level of form, the first thing to do is burn all copies of the Bluebook, in its latest edition 560 pages of rubbish, a terrible time waster for law clerks employed by judges who insist as many do that the citations in their opinions conform to the Bluebook; also for students at the Yale Law School who aspire to be selected for the staff of the Yale Law Journal they must pass a five hour exam on the Bluebook. Yet no serious reader pays attention to citation format; all the reader cares about is that the citation enable him or her to find the cited material. Just by reading judicial opinions law students learn how to cite cases, statutes, books, and articles; they don’t need a citation treatise. In the office manual that I give my law clerks only two pages are devoted to citation format.

Oh my.

And he goes on from there.

Casper Daily Press for April 17, 1916

The Casper paper, printing on Monday after a Sunday off, reports a rumor that turns out, as we know, to be in error.

If this seems odd, let's consider all the similar rumors about Osama Bin Laden  before he was ultimately killed in Pakistan.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Casper Wyoming.

Churches of the West: First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Casper Wyoming.

They could get by without electricity

 Snoqualmie Falls Hydroelectric Plant, built in 1899.

Some time ago I posted this item:

I've been breaking it down since, although my speed in doing that has been arrested a bit by the number of posts I've been putting up on the Punitive Expedition of 1916.  Even there, however, some daily living items have crept into the posts

Lex Anteinternet: Ancestry.com: 9 Reasons Your Great-Great-Grandpar...: An interesting item from Ancestry.com: 9 Reasons Your Great-Great-Grandparents Were More Awesome Than You As 21st-century adults, it...

Here's another one of the interesting items.

3. They could get by without electricity.

Very true.  And a topic I haven't directly covered.  I'll have to add this one to the hopper.

So here we'll cover it, maybe.  And indeed, we'll combine it a bit with a second thread I was riffing off of, from a recent George F. Will column.  Zapping two birds with one birds with one bolt, so to speak.  I've been obliviously fascinated by the following quote from a recent George F. Will column:

In many ways, the world of 1870 was more medieval than modern. Three necessities — food, clothing, shelter — absorbed almost all consumer spending. No household was wired for electricity. Flickering light came from candles and whale oil, manufacturing power from steam engines, water wheels and horses. Urban horses, alive and dead, complicated urban sanitation. Window screens were rare, so insects commuted to and fro between animal and human waste outdoors and the dinner table. A typical North Carolina housewife in the 1880s carried water into her home eight to 10 times daily, walking 148 miles a year to tote 36 tons of it. Few children were in school after age 12.

It turns out that this topic, however, is something that's surprisingly hard to get good information on.

I thought it would be relatively easy to discover when houses were first commonly wired for electricity.  My suspicion was the 1920s, and indeed the 1920s might be right but it might have actually been a bit earlier, particularly depending upon a person's location. There's some suggestions to that effect out on the web, but unfortunately none of them are backed up by anything.  Be that as it may, it's clear that electrical generating was going on as a business proposition earlier than that.  Indeed, WyoHistory.org states that electrical lighting came to Casper on June 12, 1900, with electricity coming from a power plant near one of the refineries.  Indeed, the Natrona County Tribune reported the event on its June 14 front page, without really ever explaining where the electric lights were going to be.  Presumably that electricity was used for industrial and street lighting purposes, and not for average homes but, based upon what I read, I honestly can't say who had the first electric lights around here.  Clearly on June 12, 1900, there was probably not a single house in Casper that had electricity, and that would be true for almost every house in the United States.  But it wouldn't be that way long and even then it wasn't true everywhere.

Absolutely frightening electric toaster from 1908.

Starting around 1900 the amount of electrical power generated in the US expanded enormously.  The original power plants were small affairs, by modern standards, and were often petroleum fired generator affairs.  That sort of power generation still exists, of course, but not for domestic and large scale industrial use.  But soon more substantial generation facilities came into existance.  Electrical output from utility companies in the US went from 5.9 million kWh in 1907 to 75.4 million kWh in 1927 while the price of electricity declined 55%.  Not just lighting, but other electrical appliances began to appear in homes.  In 1903 the electric iron ws introduced, shwoing tghat there was indeed domestic power use at that time, and apparently electricity was trusted enough to be used in that fashion.  The electric toaster was introduced in 1909, followed by the popup toaster ten years later.  The electric vacuum was introduced in 1907.  The electric refrigerator was introduced in 1913.  The washing machine came on in 1930 and the dryer in 1935.

 Electric iron, 1908.  Note the outlet is a lamp.

Indeed, while we tend to think, for some reason, of electric lighting when we first think of electricity, we probably ought to think of the plethora of electrical appliances that came on after 1900.  Earlier in this blog, in our post Women in the Workplace: It was Maytag that took Rosie the Riveter out of the domestic arena, not World War Two, I've argued that it was domestic machinery, not the Second World War, that created the social change that altered the role of women in society, and I probably ought to expand on that to suggest that it was electricity that powered that social change.

Photograph from our earlier post about domestic machinery.  Woman in Montana vacuuming in her home, about 1940.  Of note, the book case on the right is a barristers case, something normally associated with lawyers.  She's vacuuming a large rug on a wooden floor.  What she isn't doing is packing that rug outside, probably with assistance, to beat it with a broom, which was in fact the time honored method of cleaning them.

Not that lighting is a minor matter.  And this taps into something I was going to make into a separate thread, but which is so close to the topic here I'll instead address it here, the thread I started as a draft first. I've quoted it above, and one of the things that Will stated was "No household was wired for electricity.  He also stated that "Flickering light came from candles and whale oil"  Perhaps, to set it in context, we should look at the quote again.

In many ways, the world of 1870 was more medieval than modern. Three necessities — food, clothing, shelter — absorbed almost all consumer spending. No household was wired for electricity. Flickering light came from candles and whale oil, manufacturing power from steam engines, water wheels and horses. Urban horses, alive and dead, complicated urban sanitation. Window screens were rare, so insects commuted to and fro between animal and human waste outdoors and the dinner table. A typical North Carolina housewife in the 1880s carried water into her home eight to 10 times daily, walking 148 miles a year to tote 36 tons of it. Few children were in school after age 12.

I don't dispute the details that Will recites here, but I do doubt the "more medieval than modern assertion.  Indeed, some of these things argue, I think, the other way around.  Still, it taps into what we're discussing here.  This is just the sort of thing that this blog exists to explore, particularly given that the time frame that Will is discussing, 1870 to 1970, fits right in with the time frame, sort of, that this blog is looking at, as earlier noted. 

Whale oil chandelier, photo from the Library of Congress.  Up until the Will entry, I'd never even considered there being such a thing as a whale oil chandelier.

What Will noted was quite true, but was this Medieval in character?  I'd assert not.  I don't really know, however.  Whaling has taken place to some extent since ancient times, but the widespread use of whale oil, I suspect, didn't come about until well after the Medieval period.  Indeed, it doesn't seem to have been done in an appreciably large manner until maybe the 17th Century, although whaling itself does go back much further than that.  Whale oil, once it became a common commodity, did see use in lamps in candles in an appreciable manner.   Starting in the 19th Century, however, kerosene began to come in.  Whale oil reached its peak in 1845 and then began to fairly rapidly decline thereafter as kerosene became more common, although whale oil would continue to see some use up until electrical generation replaced it in the early 20th Century, a fairly remarkable fact.

As a total aside, just as it is surprising, whale fat was also used for whale margarine, a truly odd thought now.

Electrical generation came first to towns and cities, and obviously first to one that had the means of generating electricity.  Coal, oil and hydroelectric generation all started to some in, in force, in the early 20th Century and even in the late 19th Century.  So, even though we haven't been able to really pin down a year for which most Americans in towns would have been using electricity domestically,  it does seem safe to say that it was no later than the 1920s, and maybe even a decade prior.  In the countryside, however, it took the Great Depression to bring electricity to the rural homes, farms and ranches.

Indeed, electricity is so common now that it probably doesn't seem as big of deal to us as it really was.  But it was a big deal to the nation.  Electricity hadn't been marketable enough to cause lines to be run to farms and ranches prior to the Depression, but by the Depression it was obvious to the administration that this was one of the areas where it seemed to be the case that rural Americans were falling behind urban ones in the standard of living.  How that would relate to a depression isn't instantly obvious, but you can make the case that extending electricity to rural homes would have a collateral economic impact.

Not all rural homes, it should be noted, lacked electricity.  Lots of rural homes, farms and ranches across the US had put in electricity on an "off the grid" basis by using wind power.  Now, electrical generation in that fashion always has some quirks, to be sure, and this would have been all the more the case at the time. Generators used for this purpose tended to be adapted from some other use and a lot of the on the spot electrification at the time would have been scary from our current prospective.  Added to that, wind isn't really reliable unless you have a lot of it, and a way to store the electricity that it generates. So, rural Americans using it were using it on a spotty basis. That was probably quasi adequate for their needs at the time but by the early 1930s it was becoming obviously less so. Still, it can't help but be noted that this is an aspect of the past that sort of oddly foreshadowed the future, as "off the grid" electricity is in vogue again.

The answer was a couple of government programs, including the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rural Electric Administration, which brought power to the hinterlands.  REA was a big deal.

So, basically, going into World War Two, as the film Oh Brother Where Art Thou? would have it, "Everything's gonna be put on electricity and run on a payin' basis.", which is what occurred. The REA and other Federal agencies worked towards providing the rural areas of the nation with electricity and the entire country, pretty much, has been electrified ever since.  So much so that we are running something on electricity nearly all the time.

And that's the point really.  If we go back far enough, let's say 1896, we'd be in a recognizable time with recognizable people, but a tremendous amount of what we take for granted would not be, given the absence of electricity.  Even if we go only as far back to 1916, the year we've been focusing on a lot here, that would be true.  For average people in much of the United States what light you'd have at night would come from a lamp burning a fossil fuel.  And all that stuff we plug in for entertainment or convenience, just wouldn't be.

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Thoughts on the Impending Spring Blizzard

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Thoughts on the Impending Spring Blizzard: If the weather man is correct, it looks like we are in for another spring storm starting this evening. Prediction for 8-14 inches of heav...

The Casper Daily Press: April 15, 1916

In this edition we're reminded that Easter of 1916 was in mid April, unlike this year when it was in mid March.

Friday Farming: Alternative Energy

A deeper trail system well. 

Quite a bit different from the old windmill, of which I see fewer and fewer.  Solar panels, on the other hand, are increasingly common.

Casper Weekly Press: April 14, 1916

The Friday Casper paper, oil taking its place besides the Punitive Expedition and the slow march of the US towards entering World War One.

And now Peabody

In the 1970s John Prine released a song that continued to irritate the giant Peabody Coal Company ever after.  It's chorus lamented the disappearance of a town due to mining, laying that at the feet of Peabody in the chorus:

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away.

Well, now it's Peabody that seems to be disappearing, at least in terms of being the giant it once was.  Yesterday it took Chapter 11 (reorganization) bankruptcy.

Peabody is the largest coal producer in the world.  And yet its fortunes have fallen so far and so quickly that over just a few years its value has been estimated to have declined from billions to millions, and now its in bankruptcy. It's coal trains, or rather those of railroads serving Wyoming, heavily laden with Campbell County coal were a common site in parts of Wyoming, but now I'm told that you can find idled locomotives reflecting the decline and a once proposed rail line has now been dropped.  Signs that are hard to ignore.

Blog Mirror: Matthew Wright; Spring Offensive: how Germany nearly won the First World War in 1918

Matthew Wright Spring Offensive: how Germany nearly won the First World War in 1918 

Posted on April 14, 2016 by Matthew Wright

It struck me the other day that amid all the ‘what if’ stories about Hitler winning the Second World War, there has been little speculation about the Kaiser winning the first one – which he very nearly did. Twice.

The Wyoming Tribune: April 13, 1916

Back to a Cheyenne morning paper for today, lacking the Casper paper.

The Punitivie Expedition: Advance back into Parral. April 13, 1916

U.S. cavalry reenters Parral to recover the body of cavalryman Pvt. Ledford.  The entry was under truce.  The US demanded an explanation for the Constitutionalist attack, demanded the body of Sgt. Richley, and presented a list of required provisions. The Mexican forces denied having fired first.

Mid Week at Work: Combat photographer.

"William Fox of the Underwood Photo News Service, official photographer with the U.S. Expeditionary Force in Mexico. Mexican-U.S. campaign after Villa, 1916"  Library of Congress

Casper Daily Press: April 12, 1916

The Punitive Expedition: The Battle of Parral. April 12, 1916

 Corporal Richard Tannous, 13th Cavalry, wounded at Parral.

U.S. cavalry under Major Frank Tompkins, who had been at Columbus the day it was raided and who had first lead U.S. troops across the border, entered Parral Mexico. At this point, the Punitive Expedition reached its deepest point in Mexico.

The entry was met with hostility right from the onset.  Warned by an officer of Carranzas that his Constitutionalist troops fire on American forces, Tompkins immediately started to withdraw them  During the withdraw, with hostile Mexican demonstrators jeering the U.S. forces, Mexican troops fired on the American forces and a battle ensued.  While Mexican forces started the battle, it was lopsided with the Mexicans suffering about sixty deaths to an American two.  Tompkins withdrew his troops from the town under fire and sought to take them to Santa Cruz de Villegas, a fortified town better suited for a defense.  There Tompkins sent dispatch riders for reinforcements which soon arrived in the form of more cavalrymen of the all black 10th Cavalry Regiment. 

This marked the high water mark of the Punitive Expedition.

LoC caption:  "Removing Sgt. Benjamin McGhee of the 13th Cavalry who was badly wounded at Parral, Mexico."

Lex Anteinternet: Marathon, Peabody and the airlines

And the news came today that Marathon has found a buyer for its Wyoming assets, the  topic we first touched upon here:

Lex Anteinternet: Marathon, Peabody and the airlines: This past week the state received the bad news that Marathon Oil Company, formerly Ohio Oil Company, which was once headquartered in Casper...

The buyer is Merit Energy.

All in all, this is good news for the state.  Merit's had along presence here and is a substantial operation, so  this would indicate that they are doing well and banking on the future of the petroleum industry in the state.

Casper Daily Press: April 11, 1916

The British commence to occupy the Sinai: April 11, 1916

On this date in 1916, the British commenced to occupy the Sinai.  The territory was held by the Ottoman Empire, which of course was fighting with the Central Powers in the Great War.

The Sinai is a daunting region today, and was much more so in 1916, given the limitations of technology.

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Old Sweetwater County Courthouse, Green River Wyoming

Courthouses of the West: Old Sweetwater County Courthouse, Green River Wyom...: 

This is the old Sweetwater County Courthouse in Green River Wyoming.  This courthouse, built in 1906, is on the same block as the new courthouse that replaced it. Fortunately, this attractive originalcourthouse was preserved when the new one was built.  I don't know what use this courthouse serves today.

The Punitive Expedition: Howze clashes with Villistas, April 10, 1916.

Cavalry under R. L. Howze engaged Villistas near La Joya de Herrera and dispersed them, killing their commander, a Captain Silva.  The battle happened in the early evening.

In Memorium

My mother.  April 23, 1925-April 9, 2016.

The Laramie Republican: April 10, 1916

Let's take a look at a smaller town paper today, the Laramie daily paper for the day.  Note that even this paper proudly indicated that it was part of the Associated Press. That is, it received news by wire and was up to date.

This paper isn't the surviving one in Laramie today.  The other paper, the Laramie Boomerang, is, even though it was a semi weekly paper in 1916.

Sunday morning Scene: Churches of the West: Church of the Holy Family, Anglican Church, Casper Wyoming

Churches of the West: Church of the Holy Family, Anglican Church, Casper, Wyoming

A Strange fanaticism

A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality.

The Moral Philosophy of Meredith, A Handful of Authors.  G. K. Chesterton

The Best Posts of the Week of April 3, 2016

The Telegraph

 

Sunday State Leader: April 9, 1916

April 9 was a Sunday in 1916.  The Casper papers didn't print an edition on Sundays at that time.  Indeed, the big paper, if we'd call it that, for the Casper Daily Press was the Friday edition, which recapped the news of the week.

The Cheyenne paper, which Casperites would likely not be getting, did print a Sunday edition however.  This is it, for that day.

The Punitive Expedition, Railroads, and the Presidential Election of 1916: The Casper Daily Press of April 8, 1916

Lots of big news in this evening edition.

Theodore Roosevelt announced that he was throwing his hat in the ring, rather late, for the 1916 Presidential election.  Sort of.  He would not really end up being a candidate, and in fact, he was wearing down physically at this time, having never recovered from earlier serious health bouts and injuries.

Locally, the Northwestern Railroad story was indeed big news.  And apparently Frederick Funston was talking about railroads in connection with the expedition in Mexico.

The Punitive Expedition: A near clash with Carranza's troops on April 8, 1916

 Robert Lee Howze, as a Major General.

As reported by Major Robert Lee Howze:

At about l0:30 a.m.,April 8th, at a point about ten miles south of San Borja, my command was charged by the mounted forces of General Cavazos, his platoon in advance was reinforced by 50 or 60 men, and all took up the gallop, yelled and drew their rifles as they approached us. In the meantime our men were promptly being placed in an erroyo which afforded a splendid field of fire and excellent cover. I personally moved between the two lines waving my hat and calling in Spanish that we were Americans.  About 100 of Cavacos' men reached a point within 50 yards of me before they stopped. If one shot had been fired, I feel convinced that we would have destroyed half of Cavacos' 300 men. The control which our officers exercised over their men and the display of splendid judgment by officers and non-commissioned officers in a delicate situation, saved what came near being a serious complication.  Our officers were left generally with the convictions that General Cavazoa was seeking conflict.  His manner and tone were quite offensive.

Broadcast Radio (for the second time).

Quite awhile back, in 2012, I posted this item on Wyoming's first commercial radio station:

Today In Wyoming's History: January 2. It must have been quiet, or at least different, before that.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 2: 1930 First commercial radio station in Wyoming begins operation. KDFN later became KTWO and is still in operation.

Hard to imagine an era with no radio. But Wyoming lacked a commercial radio station until 1930. This was a Central Wyoming station (or is, rather, it still exists). I'd guess Cheyenne could have picked up Denver stations by then, but in Central Wyoming, having an AM radio prior to 1930 must have been pointless.

Since that time, I posted the item about the use of radio by the Army in 1916, and got to rethinking this topic, amongst other communication topics.

In doing that, I went back as I thought I'd posted before on broadcast radio.

And, indeed I did, but what I didn't do is label it, so it was hard to find.  Indeed, that's been a problem with my earlier blogging. By failing to label things correctly, old posts are easy to loose.  In this particular case, not only did I loose it, but I'd forgotten as a result, that I had done a particular post.  Usually I recall my older posts and I was very surprised that I hadn't posted on this topic. Turns out that I did.  I new I had posted on some single episodes of radio shows from the glory days of radio and when I couldn't find them I did a search on the raw data section of this site and found those posts, and my first one on broadcast radio as well.  So I've edited them all and now radio as a label has tripled in frequency here.  Anyhow, at that point, I thought about axing this post, but as it was mostly already done, and as it actually adds content, I have not.  My original post is here:

Radio

When I was young, my father listed to the radio a fair amount. What I really recall about that in particular is that he'd listen to Denver's KOA, which was an all talk radio station, but not like the ones we have now that are all right or left political talk.  It had a lot of different radio programs, and sports.  He particularly listened to the Denver Broncos and Denver Bears (their minor league baseball team at that time) broadcasts, and the radio shows that they had which discussed those teams. That certainly wasn't all they aired, however, and at one time, when I was fairly young, I used to listen to a fair amount of KOA myself.

The first radio tube, circa 1898.

KOA is still around, but those days are really gone, as are the days of all local radio.  We picked up KOA. . . .

Frankly, even when I posted the item above, I didn't really appreciate the rapid onset of radio, or how late it really came into being.  I knew that there weren't home radios in 1916 and that during the Great War people didn't get their news that way. But when did commercial broadcast begin?

Well, 1920. Sort of suddenly and in a lot of places at first.

I referenced Denver above. Denver had a commercial broadcast radio station in 1920. That's' really early if you consider that 1920 was the year that the first commercial broadcast station began operation in the United States.  And for that matter, it was that year for the United Kingdom as well. So that Wyoming wouldn't have a station until 1930 really isn't surprising.  So Colorado had a commercial station the very year that commercial radio started in the United States.

As for Colorado, I was correct in my supposition about it probably having stations prior to Wyoming, as noted, but I am amazed by how quickly radio came on there.  Colorado had 94 stations by 1922.  So, one in 1920, and then 94 in 1922. The first one, KLZ, is still in operation.  For that matter, KTWO is also still in operation.

Still, let's consider that.  Up until 1930, there was no radio in Wyoming, unless of course you could pick up a Denver channel from Cheyenne (and I don't know if you could, or not).  1930 is within the lives of our older citizens, although that's a decreasing number of them given the year.  My late father was born in 1929.  My mother in 1925.  One of the local high schools was built in 1923.  The building I work in was built in 1917.

So, prior to 1930 in Wyoming, as in much of the US, there was no radio.  Now, 1929 is hardly the ancient world.  And important things were happening in the teens and twenties to be sure. World War One, the stock market crash, etc.  People didn't get the news of those things by way of radio.  Newspapers, which often were published twice a day in that era, were the quickest means of news delivery for the average person where radio was not.

And, of course, prior to 1920, there was no commercial radio at all.

And not only is this significant as to news, but entertainment.  Popular music existed, but the knowledge of it came by way of friends and associates, not radio.  You could buy records, but you weren't hearing them on the radio.  There was even a top 100 for years in the teens, but those records didn't get on that list by way of radio play.  Sales, then as now, determined that, but the decision to purchase didn't come from hearing a song played on the radio.  You'd heard that song played on somebody's record player.

When radio came in, in the 1920s in many places, and starting in 1930 in Wyoming, as we've seen, it made a huge change.  People took to home radios really quickly and they became an institution.  It's odd to think, in that context, of how new they really were

Well, there's a lot more about all that on my post Radio.

Oddly, one thing I didn't cover in that first post, was car radios.  Radios have been, as odd as it may seem, a big part of a car my entire life.  Indeed, when I was a teenager and in my early twenties everyone wanted to have a really nice stereo in their cars.  Some pretty junky cars had some pretty nice radios, which of course were also tape player.  That hasn't really changed over the years, although car radios have gotten really good so that the need to change them is smaller than it once was.  The newest ones in a lot of vehicles also play CDs, Itunes libraries and, via Bluetooth, can act as telephone receivers.  It won't be long until every vehicle has, effectively, a car phone, something that was once quite a rarity.

So its odd to realize that early cars didn't have radios.  Indeed, I own one truck made in 1962 that didn't come equipped with a radio.  I added one, but I sort of regret doing that now.  But I was about 20 at t he time.  When I had a 1945 CJ2A I did not equip it with a radio, and it didn't have one.  Anyhow, the first car radios were an add on and were so expensive that they nearly rivaled a fair percentage of the value of a typical average American car itself.  Early Motorola car radios, first offered in 1930, cost $130.  Crossley Motors, a British manufacturer, offered the first car to have a regular factory installed radio in 1933, although Chevrolet offered a radio option in 1922. The Chevrolet radio however, was impractical due to its massive antenna and large speakers.  Contrary to some assertions, there were other cars manufactured in the 1920s with radio options, but they were unusual and not standard on any car.

Radios themselves didn't become suddenly standard in the 1930s for automobiles.  That wouldn't happen until after World War Two, and even then some things that are standard now remained options. The radio in my 1954 Chevrolet Deluxe Sedan, for example, had push buttons. The regular 54 had a radio, but no buttons.

Anyhow, I don't mean to divert this to a discussion about cars and radios, rather than just radio, but this serves to illustrate how new radio really was.  In the 1920s there were a lot of places in the US where having a radio would have been pointless, as there were no stations. By the 1930s, radio was everywhere and radios were coming into automobiles, in spite of the limitations of tube technology.  By the 1950s, when television was starting to come in, radios were a standard feature in cars, but not necessarily trucks.  Now, in an age when we listen to less radio thanks to other forms of audio information and entertainment, radios are still everywhere.

In the 1940s and 1950s one thing that established people had was a really nice home stereo, with radio and turn table.  Now, these big old pieces of furniture seem odd to us.  How things have changed.

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Related threads:

Radio

Friday Farming: Women Farmers Band Together To Vent, Seek Support And Exchange Ideas

Women Farmers Band Together To Vent, Seek Support And Exchange Ideas 

Interesting article.

Almost as interesting is the collection of mean snarky comments that follow.

As an observation, it's also interesting to note that the comments on what would generally be regarded as erudite news sources, including the better known major newspapers, are every bit as nasty, egocentric and snarky as on any other source.  Go to the New York Times, for example, and you'll find a collection of self assured snots commenting on news articles as if they possess all the knowledge on the planet.  Same, on occasion, with NPR comments.

It's deflating.  The "liberal" end of the upper echelon readers of American media likes to imagine the conservative mass sources as being silly howling cartoons, but their comments aren't much different.  A person has to presume that most of the thoughtful readers on both ends of the spectrum simply do not comment.

Casper Weekly Press: April 7, 1916

The Casper Weekly Press was apparently the Friday edition of the paper.

What the Crud, is this the Casper Daily Press day by day page or something?

I've been posting, as readers are aware, the century old issues of The Casper Daily Press on the anniversary of their publication.  This probably seemed obviously related to the Punitive Expedition of 1916 up until yesterday, when I ran this one:

The Casper Daily Press for April 6, 1916

This evening issue is inserted here not for what is on the front  page, but for what isn't. 

For the first time since the Columbus Raid, the Punitive Expedition didn't make the front page for the Casper Daily Press.

Well, rest assured, I have been running them due to the entries we've been having on the Punitive Expedition, which as this entry, What the Crud? Is this the Punitive Expedition Day by Day Blog or something? makes clear, we've been marking the centenary  of various events as they occurred.  The newspaper entries are part of that, and are part of our A Day In The Life series, being posted for Wyoming on the 100 year anniversary of their publication on the theory that this is something a local person would have read as they came out.  How they would have received the news.  This squares with the purpose of the blog to explore what life was like in the early 20th Century.  

And it has been really interesting. For one thing, it has shown how a variety of concerns, not just one, expressed themselves day after day.  This is, indeed, how real life is, but it isn't how we typically think of a historical era.  While we're focused on the Punitive Expedition in these posts, at the time the readers of the Casper Daily Press were also focused on World War One, an outbreak of train robbery, the price of gasoline, and the local economy.  The flavor of the times comes across a bit differently than we might have suspected.

For those who are tired of the daily newspaper electronic delivery, a century late, it won't go on forever.  And indeed, I know when it'll stop on a daily basis as these posts are teed up to be posted already, well ahead of when they actually will appear.  As the Punitive Expedition was what brought them to our attention, when the expedition really disappears from an issue of the paper, I'll quit posting them everyday.  Some might might miss them at that time (and some big events will occur before they disappear), but converting them from pdf to jpeg is actually quite a chore so it'd be difficult to keep it up, and of course at some point it would distract from the blog, if it isn't already.

But it has been interesting. And its drawn our attention to a lot of things we've missed.  Papers will continue to appear from time to time and some of the aspects of life that we'd missed from the era that we haven't commented on yet, will be topics of future posts.

The Casper Daily Press for April 6, 1916

This evening issue is inserted here not for what is on the front  page, but for what isn't.

For the first time since the Columbus Raid, the Punitive Expedition didn't make the front page for the Casper Daily Press.

Mid Week at Work: Making the sale, 1916

Chinese merchants and U.S. troops, Casas Grandes Mexico, 1916.

The Punitive Expedition: The Casper Daily Press, April 5, 1916

The Telegraph

Recently I posted this item on Communications during the Punitive Expedition:  The Punitive Expedition and technology. A 20th Century Expedition. Part Two. Radios and Telegraph.

One of the things that this really brought into the forefront of my mind was the state of communications in general in the decades leading up to the Punitive Expedition of 1916, and it relates on top of it, in a synchronicitous fashion the topic I also posted about in More Medieval than Modern?  Indeed, the history of the telegraph argues really powerfully for what George F. Will wrote about in the column that entry references.

Prior to the telegraph, no news traveled any faster than a horse or boat.

None.

On continental landmasses, this made the postal service extremely important and most nations had extremely developed post offices.  The British post office delivered mail all day long in urban areas, so that a letter posted in the morning wold tend to arrive midday, and a reply letter could be there by evening.  In nations with larger masses the post office was a critical governmental entity.  There's a real reason that the drafters of the Constitution provided for the head of the U.S. Post Office to be in the cabinet and there's a real reason that delivering the mail was one of the few duties that the Federal Government was actually charged with.  The mail needed to get through.

But it was carried by a postal rider.  That rider trotted, and indeed he probably "posted the trot", which game him some speed, but it was still horse speed.

In wet areas quite a bit of news went by boat or ship.  For that matter, anything going from North America to Europe, or vice versa, went by ship.  Sailing ship at that.  We wouldn't consider it fast, but the people of the pre telegraph age would have considered that to be what it was.

This only came to an end, and a dramatic and sudden end, with the telegraph and railroad.  And oddly enough, those two changes came at the same time, and were complementary to each other.  Indeed, it was the railroads that first really exploited telegraphs.

The telegraph, or more properly the electrical telegraph was first thought of in the late 18th Century as the properties of electrical transmission started to become known.  The first working telegraph was constructed by an English experimenter in 1816, an experiment that actually used eight miles of wire but which failed to gain much attention.  Various experiments by various individuals followed such that by the 1830s there were a fair number of individuals experimenting with similar concepts.  One such individual was Samuel Morse, whose code was adopted for telegraph transmissions.  By the late 1840s telegraph lines were going up everywhere.

By 1861 a telegraph line had been stretched across the vast expanse of the American West such that telegraph transmission from the Atlantic end of the United States to the Pacific could be achieved rapidly for the first time, replacing the Pony Express mail service, used only for mail that required rapid delivery, in short order.  What formerly took about ten days now took, as a practical matter, hours.

Transcontinental telegraph line.

Three years prior, in 1858 an even more amazing feat was accomplished when the Transatlantic submarine cable was put in. The thought of what was involved, and that it worked, is astounding.  Ships remained partially in the age of sale, and partially in the age of steam, at the time.  And that, in 1858, a cable could be stretched that vast distance, and work, is amazing, seeming to be more of our own age than of that of the Pre Civil War world. 

That it was a monumental achievement was known at the time and could hardly be missed.    The impact on time caused by the cable was massive. What had taken days to achieve in terms of communications could now take place, when it needed to, in hours.

Other submarine cables would soon follow all over the globe, although it would take until 1902-1903 to stretch the vaster distance of the Atlantic and reach significant points therein.  Still, by 1902 Canadians could telegraph to New Zealand and Americans to Hawaii.  The world, in terms of communications, had been connected.

So, by the last couple of decades of the 19th Century, there wasn't a significant region of the Untied States that couldn't be reached by telegraph. That doesn't mean that there was a telegraph office in every town by any means, but telegraphs were extremely widespread.  And if railroad reached a town, telegraph certainly did.  So, in a fairly short expanse of time, news which had once taken days or weeks to travel anywhere now could get there within hours.  A person in New York could send a message to a person in Sacramento.  And nations could exchange information nearly instantly.  The impact of this change was immense.  We think of the second half of the 19th Century, if we think about it at all, as being in an era of slow communications. But it wasn't.  It's part of our own age of rapid communications.  Just not quite as rapid as our own in many ways, but rapid still.

Of course, part of the reason we don't' think about telegraphs is that we don't use them. They've fallen away.

In the late 19th and early 20th Century they were a huge part of the culture in some ways, conveying good and bad news.  They were fairly institutionalized in fashion. Messages went from one telegraph office to another, with the sender usually paying a charged based upon the number of words in a telegram.  On the receiving office, while in some instances a person took the telegram at the telegraph office, usually a runner employed by the telegraph office delivered the message to the address of the recipient.

Western Union telegram delivery personnel, 1943.  Note the man on the right is wearing leggings, something we typically associate with soldiers of that era but which were also worn by people to who rode horses, motorcycles or bicycles.  That individual was probably a bicycle deliveryman for the Western Union telegraph company.

 

By the 20th Century, people were using telegrams to send fairly routine, but important, communications.  Often just to let family know where they were and that they were well.

Marine drafting telegram to his parents, early 1940s.  This Marine had just returned from duty in Cuba.  The telegraph is being sent from a booth owned by the Postal Telegraph Company, one of the major American telegraph companies up until 1943, when it merged with the most famous of telegraph companies, Western Union.

And they were also used by "wire services" to convey important new, about which we will have a subsequent post.

United Press dispatch of a news item to its subscribing news services.

 And they also conveyed tragic news, often officially.

Woman and child receive news of serviceman's death in this war time poster. The U.S. Army and the British Army in fact gave notice to families of soldiers who were killed, wounded or captured in this fashion during World War One and World War Two.

Now, you couldn't send a telegram even for sport.

And no wonder.  Telegrams have become a victim of other forms of rapid communication.  The ended in the United Kingdom, which was really responsible for their creation, in 1982.  Western Union in the US managed to carry on until 2006, which is frankly really amazing.  In India, which had less advanced communications, they carried on until 2013.  By they're gone now.  In an age of Internet communication, texts, and mass use of cell phones, they have no place.  

But they had been revolutionary.

Joe Medicine Crow

Joe Medicine Crow, the last Crow War Chief, has died at age 102.

Medicine Crow was the last person to have accomplished the four requirements necessary to be a Crow War Chief, those being touching an enemy without killing him, taking an enemy's weapon, leading a successful war party and stealing an enemy's horse, as a soldier during World War Two.  On the last item, he actually stole 50 horses from an SS unit in a singular instance, a remarkable achievement in a war as late as World War Two.

Medicine Crow, who had obtained a bachelors degree and a masters degree prior to World War Two, was also the last living person to have received oral history of the Battle of Little Big Horn from those who fought in it.  World War Two interrupted his efforts to obtain a doctorate degree.  With him dies the last direct living link to the most well known battle of the Indian Wars.

And in Wyoming, on this day, in 1916.

Today In Wyoming's History: April 4

1916  Bill Carlisle robs passengers on the UP's Overland Limited as it traveled between Laramie and Cheyenne.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916   Joseph Fallis of Rock Springs granted a patent for a article carrier.

The Punitive Expedition: The Wyoming Tribune, April 4, 1916

We're looking at, I think, a morning newspaper now.  The Wyoming newspaper archive lacked the public domain copy Casper evening paper I was posting for 1916, but it will be back tomorrow night.

The interesting thing here is that quite a few Wyoming papers for this date, including a Casper morning paper, do not have Punitive Expedition entries for this date.  I was curious of the story was just off the front page, but they're also smaller papers that may have simply been running all local news.

Also of interest is the cartoon on the price of gasoline.  Obviously it must have been of real concern to make the front page, but it's something we don't think much about, in the context of 1916, now.  That gasoline would be expensive in the context of a world war is not surprising.

The Big Picture: Whale hunt off Wakayama

Japanese whale hunt print, Edo period.

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Sweetwater County Courthouse, Green River, Wyoming...

Courthouses of the West: Sweetwater County Courthouse, Green River, Wyoming...:

The Punitive Expedtion. Casper Daily Press for April 3, 1916

Seeing what's coming doesn't make it much easier when it arrives.

I've had a couple of experiences in recent weeks of having read the tea leaves really correctly on big issues, only to see them arrive as I said they would, and then come as surprises to most when they do.

Most folks don't analyze stuff all the time, but that's a primary aspect of being a lawyer.  More frustrating that that, a lot of people who do analyze things analyze the with the goal of trying to boost a view they have, rather than find out the truth of a thing.

The recent stories on the demise of coal have had that frustrating nature.  Folks who stop in here are aware that I've been saying coal was on the ropes for months and months.  I've known that for years, indeed now decades.  It wasn't going to be able to keep on keeping on.  The truth of that was there.

Part of that is that, as noted, I try to analyze things for what they are, not for what I hope them to be, and no other conclusion seemed possible to reach.  I think, quite frankly, that a lot of people in government and industry had reached the same conclusion, and I know that at least some major energy players did.  When an outfit like British Petroleum dumped coal a couple of decades ago they were betting on it being a bad bet.  And just because an outfit like Peabody stayed in it doesn't mean that they were convinced .  R. T. Frazier, the successful saddle maker in Pueblo Colorado of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries reportedly told everyone that the thought the age of the horse was over, but that didn't mean that he quit making saddles.

I should note that I have personal experience with this.  I've posted it elsewhere but when I was a geology student my focus was on coal. That was because the petroleum industry fell into what must be regarded as an economic depression and there was hope still for coal.  I was about the only one focusing on it.  No matter, in the downturn of the 80s coal was hit too and some mines were closed.  No jobs.  I spent a year looking for work unsuccessfully and then headed back to school.  So, this is familiar to me personally.

And partially for that reason, I'm pretty sure I know what is going on.

In today's local Tribune a series has started that will focus on the plight of the coal industry. Good for the paper, but quite frankly this is like reporting on the crash after the cars have collided.  Still that should be done.

One thing that should not be done, however, is to give false hopes to people.  The Tribune interviewed all of those running for the open U.S. Congress seat, and that's what motivated this post.

Politicians shouldn't offer false hopes.  Indeed, doing that is the very thing that has caused the rebellion in the GOP and the Democratic Party this year leading two radical candidates to do so well, so far.  Feeding into the hopes of a desperate group of people and a desperate state shouldn't be done, if it can't produce results.   When that blows up, it's a disaster.

Let's be honest.  Everyone who speaks of regulations being the cause of this is flat out wrong.  It isn't.  Coal was able to work around the regulations.

Everyone who is holding out hope for "clean coal technology" to reverse this is pinning their hopes on a long shot.  It's worth looking into, and developing, but it is a long shot.

Everyone who states that climate change isn't real and shouldn't impact coal is swimming against a global tide.  It doesn't matter if it is real or not in this context.  The majority of people in the industrial world feel that way and what Wyomingites feel is really irrelevant given our numbers.  Only in the United States and Australia is there a view questioning this and even if the US and Australian critics are 100% right, the movement of the world opinion in this direction can't be criticized down.  The industry, if any aspect of it is to survive, has to work around and with this.  If the Democrats, moreover, take the White House in the Fall, again, and right now it appears highly likely they will, this argument will be effectively over in the context which it presently exists, even if the GOP retains the Senate.

And finally, people need to be honest about what killed coal.  Natural gas did it.

Gas is cheaper and cleaner in every sense.  It has a market advantage on coal and that's the simple fact of it.  Added to that, a movement towards "green" energy has cut into coal as well.  If nuclear power revived, which it really should as it is efficient and the greenest of them all, the death of coal would become all the more rapid.

When a person states things like this, they're stating the truth.  It's not gloating over the demise of coal to note the reality of what's happening, and it doesn't lessen the human tragedy of the lost jobs to note the truth. Indeed, it's kinder than spinning fantasies about the revival of coal which will not be happening.

So what do our candidates say.  Well, only the Democratic candid date, Ryan Greene, who actually works in the industry, is facing it by looking square into it with open eyes.  According to today's Casper Star Tribune, he stated:

Regulations are a problem but the bigger issue is the lack of demand, he said. To address that, Greene said he will work to curb coal imports from other countries, support federal research into clean coal technologies and support expanding extraction of Wyoming’s lithium deposits to keep mining jobs in the state.

Green believes global climate change is occurring.

The regulations have “been a long time coming,” he said. “This hasn’t just happened overnight. But if we send a talker to Congress, all we’re going to get is more talk. And talk is cheap.”

Talk is cheap, but Greene gets high marks here for facing this honestly with unpopular views.  He has almost no chance of winning, and being pessimistic about coal isn't going to help him, but at least he didn't shy away from unpopular views.

In contrast, Liz Cheney spoke only of regulations and rolling them back.  Well, you can't roll back the power plants converted to gas or the new ones built only for gas.

Tim Stubson, the other GOP candidate who stands a good chance of winning, spoke of clean coal technologies, but Stubson was much more hesitant in his views. He didn't really promise anything, and he probably shouldn't. That suggest to me that Stubson, a Casper lawyer, knows what I've stated here.  In order for coal to survive it has to survive in a market where it competes with gas and it becomes green. Hence his support for "clean coal" technology but hence, also, his reluctance to say he's optimistic.  And hence his lukewarm statement on regulation. Like Greene, I suspect he knows that market and social forces are against a coal revival.

None of the Wyoming candidates are going to oppose "clean coal" technology, nor should they. But we have to accept that there's a good chance they'll come to nothing.  Moreover, we have to also accept that if they do come to something, it might take so long that coal will be dead by then.  And if that technology is ever used, it'll be used somewhere else, not here, or in a future market that we're not in today.  But working on it is worthwhile.

But in doing that, we also have to accept that we're urging something that we claim we oppose. That is, here in free market Wyoming we want the government to fund research to help an industry.  That's pretty socialistic, and that makes a lot of our statements about economies out to be baloney, when it applies to directly to us.  But that's okay too, if we're honest about it.

All this begs the question if we can be angry.  And the answer here, I think, is yes. But unfortunately, that anger is going to have to be directed close to home.  When the oil crash of the 1980s came we vowed to diversify our economy so that when oil came back, as we hoped it would, and it did, we wouldn't be hurt in any future crashes.  We really didn't do that.  And with coal, if we were going to invest in its future, the time to do that was starting in the 1980s, or at least the 1990s, when the situation we are now facing was already becoming evident.  Waiting as late as we did was a mistake.

Oil will stabilize sooner or later at some price that we'll be able to live with, although it's fallen again this past week.  Natural Gas is here to stay.  Uranium is something we should be planning for now, but are ignoring.  The day might just be too late for coal.  But we didn't do much about any of these things when we could have.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Grace Lutheran Church, Casper Wyoming

Churches of the West: Grace Lutheran Church, Casper Wyoming: