The Quebec bridge disaster was also reported the day it occurred in Laramie, testament to how quickly news was now able to be reported.
Also in that news was a report of the ongoing failure to capture or corral Pancho Villa.
And the founding of what would become Tie Siding, outside of Laramie, a tie treatment plant and later a major environmental clean up location, was also in the news. And the crisis in Greece over World War One made front page news in the Gem City.
The bridge disaster in Quebec managed to make the front page the very day it happened, which is truly remarkable. The big news for Wyoming, however, was the failure of the Stock Raising Homestead Act to pass to pass on its first attempt. The act, a modification of the series of Homestead Acts dating back to the 1860s, was important for those in Wyoming agriculture and therefore extremely big news. Particularly as the entire West was in the midst of a homesteading boom at this time.
Something was also going on with a "border patrol", which wouldn't mean the agency we think of when we hear those terms, as it did not yet exist.
LOC Caption: Photograph shows the Quebec Bridge across the lower St. Lawrence
River. After a collapse of the original design a second design was
constructed the center span of the second design collapsed as it was
being raised into position on September 11, 1916 killing eighteen
workers. (Source: Flickr Commons project,
After the jeep incident, the Diesel Particulate Filter (my 07 Dodge is probably the last diesel Dodge in the world that still has its filter still on the truck blocked up. I'd had that replaced in January when the old one failed, and so that was a surprise. More of a surprise even as the truck had just been into our regular mechanics for a new clutch.
Well, it turned out it had an exhaust leak (but it may be worse) that was causing this. I took it to the great local diesel shop here and they fixed it. It's several miles from my house, so I walked from there. No big deal. I rode my bike down yesterday as I knew I'd have to pick it up.
When I went to get on my bike, trusty Ol' Blue, I had a flat tire.
Great.
And the "See Dealer Now" warning is already back on, on the Dodge. They warned me that it might be the injectors.
The release date on the poster was actually a day off, the release date was September 10, 1916.
1916 was the year that John Bowers began acting in film. His career would not survive the talking movie era, which he seemingly was not able to personally adjust to.
Behind Their Lines: Gramophone Tunes: Popular music provided the soundtrack of the First World War. Troops sang “ It’s a Long Way to Tipperary ” as they marched toward rail st...
I have found it a real privilege to be here to-night and to listen to
the addresses which you have heard. Though you may not all of you
believe it, I would a great deal rather hear somebody else speak than
speak myself; but I should feel that I was omitting a duty if I did not
address you to-night and say some of the things that have been in my
thought as I realized the approach of this evening and the duty that
would fall upon me.
The astonishing thing about the movement which you represent is, not
that it has grown so slowly, but that it has grown so rapidly. No doubt
for those who have been a long time in the struggle, like your honored
president, it seems a long and arduous path that has been trodden, but
when you think of the cumulating force of this movement in recent
decades, you must agree with me that it is one of the most astonishing
tides in modern history. Two generations ago, no doubt Madam President
will agree with me in saying, it was a handful of women who were
fighting this cause. Now it is a great multitude of women who are
fighting it.
And there are some interesting historical connections which I would like
to attempt to point out to you. One of the most striking facts about
the history of the United States is that at the outset it was a lawyers'
history. Almost all of the questions to which America addressed itself,
say a hundred years ago, were legal questions, were questions of
method, not questions of what you were going to do with your Government,
but questions of how you were going to constitute your Government,—how
you were going to balance the powers of the States and the Federal
Government, how you were going to balance the claims of property against
the processes of liberty, how you were going to make your governments
up so as to balance the parts against each other so that the legislature
would check the executive, and the executive the legislature, and the
courts both of them put together. The whole conception of government
when the United States became a Nation was a mechanical conception of
government, and the mechanical conception of government which underlay
it was the Newtonian theory of the universe. If you pick up the
Federalist, some parts of it read like a treatise on astronomy instead
of a treatise on government. They speak of the centrifugal and the
centripetal forces, and locate the President somewhere in a rotating
system. The whole thing is a calculation of power and an adjustment of
parts. There was a time when nobody but a lawyer could know enough to
run the Government of the United States, and a distinguished English
publicist once remarked, speaking of the complexity of the American
Government, that it was no proof of the excellence of the American
Constitution that it had been successfully operated, because the
Americans could run any constitution. But there have been a great many
technical difficulties in running it.
And then something happened. A great question arose in this country
which, though complicated with legal elements, was at bottom a human
question, and nothing but a question of humanity. That was the slavery
question. And is it not significant that it was then, and then for the
first time, that women became prominent in politics in America? Not many
women; those prominent in that day were so few that you can name them
over in a brief catalogue, but, nevertheless, they then began to play a
part in writing, not only, but in public speech, which was a very novel
part for women to play in America. After the Civil War had settled some
of what seemed to be the most difficult legal questions of our system,
the life of the Nation began not only to unfold, but to accumulate. Life
in the United States was a comparatively simple matter at the time of
the Civil War. There was none of that underground struggle which is now
so manifest to those who look only a little way beneath the surface.
Stories such as Dr. Davis has told to-night were uncommon in those
simpler days. The pressure of low wages, the agony of obscure and
unremunerated toil, did not exist in America in anything like the same
proportions that they exist now. And as our life has unfolded and
accumulated, as the contacts of it have become hot, as the populations
have assembled in the cities, and the cool spaces of the country have
been supplanted by the feverish urban areas, the whole nature of our
political questions has been altered. They have ceased to be legal
questions. They have more and more become social questions, questions
with regard to the relations of human beings to one another,—not merely
their legal relations, but their moral and spiritual relations to one
another. This has been most characteristic of American life in the last
few decades, and as these questions have assumed greater and greater
prominence, the movement which this association represents has gathered
cumulative force. So that, if anybody asks himself, "What does this
gathering force mean," if he knows anything about the history of the
country, he knows that it means something that has not only come to
stay, but has come with conquering power.
I get a little impatient sometimes about the discussion of the channels
and methods by which it is to prevail. It is going to prevail, and that
is a very superficial and ignorant view of it which attributes it to
mere social unrest. It is not merely because the women are discontented.
It is because the women have seen visions of duty, and that is
something which we not only cannot resist, but, if we be true Americans,
we do not wish to resist. America took its origin in visions of the
human spirit, in aspirations for the deepest sort of liberty of the mind
and of the heart, and as visions of that sort come up to the sight of
those who are spiritually minded in America, America comes more and more
into her birthright and into the perfection of her development.
So that what we have to realize in dealing with forces of this sort is
that we are dealing with the substance of life itself. I have felt as I
sat here to-night the wholesome contagion of the occasion. Almost every
other time that I ever visited Atlantic City, I came to fight somebody. I
hardly know how to conduct myself when I have not come to fight against
anybody, but with somebody. I have come to suggest, among other things,
that when the forces of nature are steadily working and the tide is
rising to meet the moon, you need not be afraid that it will not come to
its flood. We feel the tide; we rejoice in the strength of it; and we
shall not quarrel in the long run as to the method of it. Because, when
you are working with masses of men and organized bodies of opinion, you
have got to carry the organized body along. The whole art and practice
of government consists not in moving individuals, but in moving masses.
It is all very well to run ahead and beckon, but, after all, you have
got to wait for the body to follow. I have not come to ask you to be
patient, because you have been, but I have come to congratulate you that
there was a force behind you that will beyond any peradventure be
triumphant, and for which you can afford a little while to wait.
A joint commission of the United States and Mexico commenced meetings in New London, Connecticut, in an effort to resolve the issues that lead to American military intervention in Mexico.
It was unusual as shoppers found the food they were looking for themselves, rather than present their list clerks who found the items for them. The business plan was revolutionary.
and there are people who couldn't care less about the yards.
I'm in the latter class.
My wife is in the former.
All summer long has been one endless yard project here and I'm now way beyond it. I'm at the point where, on weekend days when I hear my wife state "can you help me in the yard to do. . ." or "come look at this in the yard" I'm actually refusing. I don't care where the next flower goes. I don't care about putting in a bush here or there. I don't care.
Its a huge freaking waste of money, in my view, at some point save for one thing. For people who enjoy doing it, it isn't. I don't enjoy it. My wife does. But she enjoys having me participate in this.
Which to me sounds a lot like "don't go fishing today but. . ." or "don't go hunting today but . . . "
I like some flowers. Poppies. Okay, I like a single flower that's it.
And I like fruit trees and bushes as they have fruit. I like pines as well, and aspens, as they remind me of the mountains which we're nearly in. That is, they give me the illusion of living in the woods. The rest of the stuff I don't care about. At all.
I like gardening for stuff I can eat, as that's farming on a small scale, and I like farming.
This all probably makes me a bad person. But I'll be glad when it snows and the flower and grass season comes to an abrupt and final end.
Which still speaks poorly of me, I am quite and sincerely certain.
Roads to the Great War: The Doughboy Cookbook: This has been one of the most visited sites at our DOUGHBOY CENTER Website over the years. Visit it at: www.worldwar1.com/dbc/food.h...
A tour around the net can find a lot of blogs or net articles about how law schools fooled people into miserable careers, or by or about lawyers who hold their careers are miserable. This isn't a post like that. Indeed, as the Internet is one vast sea that is more akin to a vast sewage pond than it is to a pristine Mare Pacific, who knows how accurate that stuff actually is. Usually happy people don't post stuff rejoicing "I love my job!", although I would guess if I google that about the law you'd find lots of hits. If you are a law student, I encourage you to do that. To get a balanced dose of the questionable, you probably ought to google something like the opposite as well.
Anyhow, that's not what this is about, except I don't want to be reading your new blog in four years about how you are an unhappy camper.
No, what I have in mind on this Labor Day is something else. On this day, all across the country, new law students are contemplating their first or second weeks of law school, probably nervous and excited at the same time. Happy that they made it in (although that was never as big of challenge as they thought it was). Sent off by happy parents who have dreams that in a decade they'll have a big job, big house, and a beautiful wife/husband, rather that a little job, big debt and a divorced wife/husband. Somebody needs to tell the what their professors, most of whom have very little experience actually in the law, or the real law, won't. Quit.
Now, that's the same thing that my great University of Wyoming Calculus teacher, Steve Morello, told us on the first day of class. More specifically, he said "I encourage you to quit this class". Why did he do that (and no, I didn't)?
He wanted people to know exactly what they were getting into. Calculus, for most people, is really hard. The class entailed long hours of study and very hard tests. You had to be dedicated to make it through the class. And if you had a career that required its use, you had to have a real acclimation for it, or a real desire to work in the field. I made it through three semesters of collegiate upper mathematics and liked it, but it was a struggle the entire time as unlike my father and his father, I don't have a natural mathematical ability.
So I didn't quit, but if I hadn't had a goal at the time that accepted that this was fraught with difficulty it would have been a peculiar effort. Morello only wanted students who were dedicated like that.
Now, I'm not saying that law school is rough like that. Indeed, the entire belief that law school is difficult is a laughable joke. Law school was like a cakewalk compared to my undergraduate in geology and I've never grasped how anyone could think law school was hard.
The practice of law is, however.
This isn't to say, right away, that there aren't a lot of good things about the practice of law. There are. But those things are almost never emphasized to potential students, so that's not the thing that attracts them. It's interesting and varied, but people don't use that a s recruiting pitch. You might be able to go to your hometown and work, rather than be one of the three people who go into what the ABA calls "Big Law", which most lawyers don't give a rat's ass about. If you like reading and writing, we read and write all the time. Just some of the stuff that is good about what we do.
Law students, however, come into law school, by and large, with a set of distinct beliefs about the practice of law, 90% of which are completely erroneous. Unfortunately the American legal education system is populated mostly by professors whose connection with real law is brief, and they don't know it any better. Indeed, Justice Posner recently commented on that, noting that law school professor ships are a refuge from the law in many cases. Generally, a torts teacher, for example, is unlikely to have spent twenty years in tort litigation. Shoot, he's unlikely to have spent more than a few years, bare minimum, in private practice, if that. And clerking for a judge isn't working as a lawyer. Sorry, it isn't.
Given that, all those bright shiny faces that are entering into law schools are by and large entering into an academic world that will feed them bull about the profession, or tell them nothing at all about it, until they emerge on the other side as lawyers. That's great, if they want to to it, and have the ability and acclimation for it. If they don't, and as they don't know what they're getting into most don't know, that's not so great. Indeed, if they end up doing something they love and are really well suited for, it's a little bit of an accident.
So let's look at the frauds about the law, student, to see if you've been fraudulently or negligently induced to fill that seat.
1. With a law degree you can do a lot of things.
People tell law students this who are already expressing some doubt about practicing law or whom the speaker feels isn't really suited to be a lawyer. Whether they feel that way or not may or may not be valid, but the statement itself is complete bunk.
Oh, sure, some people with law degrees do something else. But by and large the one and only think a law degree does is to let you practice law. That's it. If you are getting a law degree so you can become an entrepreneur or something, quit right now. When you are a public defender four years from now that's going to have seemed like an exceedingly stupid thing to have done.
And if you are so uncertain about entering the profession that this is your parachute, you are going down in flames already. Seriously, are you about to spend thousands of dollars to study something that you think you might abandon, with a jump into. . . who knows what? That's like boarding a rickety airplane to Hawaii and figuring, well, if it doesn't look good, I can always jump out. Into what? The Pacific?
Not the time to think, well, uncertainty is my plan.
2. Lawyers help people, and other self romanticizing propaganda.
Bar associations like to shovel this drivel but its really self serving propaganda. You can find the same propaganda, by the way, in ever single profession. Pick up any trade journal and you'll find it. "The Journal of Executioners. . . detailing the dirty work in helping people since 1642". "Journal of American Turkey Pluckers. . . Helping People since 1875".
Sure, lawyers help people, garbage men help people, postal carriers help people, dog catchers help people, whatever.
Lawyers hurt people too. They don't tell you that very often. I've met people who lost hard fought causes and were left with a burning hatred of the opposing lawyer, and sometimes their own lawyers, even though I know those lawyers and they're good guys. They were just doing their job. We don't worry that much about the ultimate result so much as we worry about winning. Lawyers don't hate other lawyers who are their opponents, we expect that. Clients are often baffled by that "I hate that guy. . why aren't you running him over in the parking lot". Why? His client probably hates me.
By the way, if you can't stand being in a group of hated people, you truly don't belong here.
The general self aggrandizing belief here, which we tell ourselves, is that we are a noble profession out for truth, justice, and the American way, or something like that. Well, bs.
Lawyers are in actuality part of a system, the justice system. That system is based on the old English trial by combat theory that if you put two combatants together, the right one will win, most of the time. That may in fact be right, but the entire concept of it is that two champions will afflict as much pain and destruction on the other until the one that wins ought to win. The little acknowledgement in there is that we know sometimes the matches aren't even and the wrong one wins. Oh well.
Lawyers in court. . .oh wait, those are British Tommies in World War One. Hard to tell the difference.
This has very little to do with "helping people" in the way that people seem to think it does. Indeed, people who believe that lawyers "help people", in the warm and fuzzy sense that they believe it, have a distant view of the cause in the same way that people who glorify war do. It's easy to back a war if you don't have to make the decision about whether or not shelling the village to save the platoon is a good idea. Up close and personal, war's icky.
England, Australia and New Zealand, Attorneys and Counselors at law, arguing with the firm of Ottoman and Empire, 1st Gallipoli District Court.
So is litigation. So is a lot of law. Keep in mind I'm not talking about transactional work, but most people who feed the "lawyers help people" pablum aren't into transactional law.
War is often necessary.
Litigation is as well.
But romantic notions about it being something like feeding starving children are misplaced entirely.
Additionally, as aspect of that, there's a common concept in the "helping people" line of thought about a singular event. That is, Joe Lawyer gets out of law school and takes on the Big Case for the Little People and wins.
Okay, fine, but that isn't how things really work. Being a trial lawyers isn't so much akin as signing up for one Crusade as it is volunteering to be part of the British Expeditionary Force in 1914. Sure, there are going to be those big days, but you are going to be there day after day after day, fighting in all of them.
Indeed, you'll have a lot of fights going on, great and small, all the time. So, that concept of singularly glory should have George Armstrong Custer in mind. Yes, he was glorious at Gettysburg.
But a decade later, at Little Big Horn, not so much.
I should note that it doesn't even work this way for "public interest law", most of which entails a person working for darned near nothing for an organization that has a cause. If you can afford to use an expensive education for free, well so much the better for you, but you have to keep in mind that your role in that cause is as a foot soldier. Not as the general. So, when your boss tells you to get in the Enola Gay and nuke Hiroshima, that's what you are expected to do, providing its within the rules. Put in legal terms, if you work for that organization that's seeking to stop coal shipping in your state, and you succeed, and then you see Joe Railroader walking down to the unemployment line with his fifteen starving children and his wife, well you have to accept you hurt them and you can live with that. Just doing your job, after all.
That's because in a legal contest, there's always two sides. And the two sides almost never involve good vs. evil. Usually everyone involved in the contest is a pretty decent person. Somebody will probably win and somebody else lose (actually a settlement is more likely) but people who like to imagine that the will be Charles Martel are more likely to be Charlie Chaplin.
And some of the causes lawyers advance in the name of "helping people" are quite detrimental, in reality. Lawyers were heavy in radical socialist movements around the world when they were up and coming. Fellows like Lenin didn't really help people all that much. No, not at all. Lawyers helping people right now have seriously undermined the nature of domestic relationship in real natural terms, and long term this will be regretted. There's almost no bad idea that lawyers won't back in the name of the public interest.
3. The money and the glamour.
Yeah, right.
Even now, in the wake of lots of stories about lawyers being unemployed, there's a common belief that once you find that law job you'll be rich and live in glamour.
Maybe you will be rich. And maybe you will be glamorous. But probably not.
The other day I was in a deposition with a whole host of plaintiffs lawyers when the lead plaintiffs' lawyer went into a long dialog to the witness about all the real world problems associated with the law and lawyers. He had them memorized. Some huge percentage of lawyers are addicted to something, in his words "booze, drugs or women". Depression is rampant. On and on. It was something that had clearly been on his mind, and I'd regard him as a dangerous (in litigation) but jovial fellow. I was stunned, really. But he's right, all of it is true.
Most lawyers don't make huge amounts of money, and even though some do, by and large the law is a middle class profession. As a middle class profession it really isn't glamourous at all. For transactional lawyers its day after day in the office. For litigators its day after day on the road, away from home, under high stress, and sleeping in hotel rooms. I have yet to meet a lawyer that I think is glamorous, although I've met some young ones who were living in full delusion that it would be (one such fellow told me he couldn't stand working indoors, which of course is exactly what we were doing).
And lawyers work.
Once a person really become established in the law they never quit working again. I never have a morning I don't think about a case. There's never a day that goes by, no matter what I'm doing, that doesn't involve thinking about the law. Most lawyers work more than eight hours a day and more than five days a week.
Indeed I think actually practicing law might fundamentally alter a person's thinking. I'm not sure, but I wonder. I tend to think it does. If a person is going to be an effective lawyer they have to have an analytical mode of thinking to start with, and that will be forever emphasized in their thinking. It can make lawyers hard to be around for people who are close to them, as lawyers will inevitably analyze any problem presented to them and get very frustrated if their analysis isn't wanted. It's common, for example, so spouses to dump problems on their spouse and not really want the fix. A lawyer husband or wife is going to give the fix, and then given argument if the suggestions are ignored. I do this all the time.
That fact combined with the intense nature of the work burns out any competing interest over time with many lawyers. I feel that's the real reason you'll see lawyers in their 80s still practicing. "They sure must love the law". Maybe, but what did they do when young? This might be all that's left. I know that at nearly thirty years in I now do less of everything than work than I did twenty years ago.
All of which isn't to say that all lawyers are misdirected fools. Far from it.
So, young student, that's the point. Are you motivated by an accurate, obtainable, goal?
I doubt it.
Ask yourselves these things.
Am I in it for the money? If so, quit and do something else.
Am I in it for the glory? Well, there's no glory here. Indeed, there's little glory in anything, and most glory is conferred accidentally in anything. That's why its glorious. But if you must have glory, the PKK and YKK are recruiting.
Am I in it as I like to argue? Well, then you are an asshole and we don't want you. Seriously, argumentative people are just argumentative. We want thinking people, not jerks.
Am I in it for the prestige? Sorry, lawyers are hated by more than admire them. No prestige available.
Am I in it to help people? The world needs people who will help, in real terms. Doctors Without Borders really helps people. The Red Cross really helps people. Consider becoming a Rabbi, Pastor or Priest (and if you can't imagine why you'd do that, if this is your goal, then your desire to "help people is so thinly grounded you'd better sit down and reflect on it). The law isn't a crusading profession, no matter what the ABA might have told you or what you read from your law school. It's trench warfare for whatever side will pay you.
Am I in it as I like to fight? See the one about arguing and double it.
Do you just not know what to do? Well, misdirected polymath, okay. Lots of lawyers fit that definition. The law might be for you, but read the rest of this stuff first.
Do you just love the law? Great. You are weird, but you should be a lawyer.
Am I condemning the entire profession and all in it? No, I am not. I've been a lawyer for almost thirty years. But in recent years I've seen more and more young people enter this career and feel lost. And I know something that they don't. This profession is changing, and not for the better. It's slowly getting stupider, nastier, and poorer paying. Hours are getting longer, and its only a matter of time until state bar boundaries are destroyed to the point where all the good work is grounded in big cities, most of which are not worth passing through, let alone living in. I'll be retired, or dead, before all that happens to its fullest, but those entering today will not be.
But I don't want you unhappy. More than that, I don't want you messing up a profession that's somewhat messed up to start with. If you don't belong here, and I think you might not, please don't come in. Indeed, maybe part of what we need in order to address a system which seems to me to be in decline is for people to say, "ewww. . . ick. . . " and not come on in and stomp around the slop and then leave crying. If you don't sign up, that tells the 1,000 year old lawyers who are in the judiciary and the three or four people left in the ABA that something really needs to be done, and a judicial declaration that you can self identify as a tree sloth or something isn't really taking that on.
Well, happy Labor Day. And, no matter what your Liberal Arts teachers told you at Big State College, you are getting an education so you can get a job. You are already on campus, so today, before class starts tomorrow, go look in the window of the medical and pharmaceutical schools (they "help people"), check out the college of business (business actually is about making money), see what's up in the engineering school (it's not to late for a second bachelors in an industry that also helps people), go check out ROTC (a real fighting profession). Read that course catalog. You can still do something else. But once you get that JD, you can't, and don't fool yourself that you can. You're one of us now, like it or not, and if you don't, well too darned bad for you.
And if you really want to help people, you can probably still get in the Seminary next fall.
Conservatives, which with rare exception almost all Wyoming politicians claim to be, have long decried the intervention of the courts into politics and even daily life.
So why are they causing that here?
The Casper Star Tribune has a front page article on suits by and against politicians, all of which have some common threads here, and in fact some of which have common individuals in at least the "Seven Degrees of Separation from Kevin Bacon" fashion.
Boo hiss.
One suit profiled is the suit by Cindy Hill, whose name came up here back when the big power struggle over her position was going on. Hill was a divisive figure whose leadership of the state Department of Education was hugely controversial. She left that position to take a run at Governor Mead, apparently grossly overestimating her popularity and resulting in the vacation of her position for a new office holder. Good riddance in my view. She has a suit against former Wyoming Speaker of the House Tim Stubson over something he apparently wrote on his Facebook page.
Defamation suits in modern America are nearly impossible to win and my predication is that this one will fail. It'll have served no purpose other than to cost Stubson money, keep Hill's unfortunate public personal in the news longer, and perhaps have cost Stubson some votes in the recent primary. It ought to serve to keep Hill from ever running for anything again as public officials who are so thin skinned they sue for defamation aren't suited for the office, as things are going to be said against you. Look what they said about Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt (either one). Shoot, for that matter, look what they've said recently about Bush and Obama. It's overall appalling. But they didn't sue anybody.
Next we have a suit by serving Legislator Gerald Gay and an ultra conservative Uinta County resident against Governor Mead about some funding on a building. Gay is quoted in the paper today complaining that part of the problem is that the Legislature wouldn't consider a bill of his.
Well, Gerald, grow up. They don't have to.
I don't know if Gay is currently running, but this should be a red flag to Republicans in his district. Get rid of this guy next primary season.
Finally, there's a person who was some sort of Hill lieutenant of some sort back when, who filed the ethics complaint about Eli Bebout. Reading the paper, I thought this one a closer call, but the complaint recently was dismissed in Bebout's favor. The complainant has stated "it's not over".
Well, it should be over. You lost.
The common thread is an interesting resort by the Tea Party here to the courts.
Sort of takes a page out of what is routinely claimed to be the liberal play book. Interesting.
Something we've addressed here before, but which would seem alien to many locals today. The era in which the local high school required uniforms.
For girls, anyhow.
Boys had a uniform they couldn't avoid, as we've already noted, but one which their parents, relieved of buying school clothes, were often glad to have imposed. The military uniform of JrROTC. Girls, on the other hand, had a prescribed uniform. What exactly it was in 1916 I'm not sure, but a basic blouse and dress is likely what was required.
In other news current residents of Natrona County would be shocked to see that the county fair was, at that time, held in late September. Gambling with the weather? And the tragic death of Mildred Burke, front page news in Cheyenne, had hit the Casper paper.
One of our family friends referred to me as "frugal". I probably am. Or maybe I'm just cheap.
Or economical.
Its a virtue taught to me by my parents. They never splurged on things and they didn't spend money unwisely. This doesn't mean that they didn't buy some nice things, they did, but they didn't waste money and they almost never bought anything a person would consider a luxury. Somehow or another, that quality was passed on to me, although I often think that I compare very poorly with them in these regards and I tend to feel guilty when I purchase something I really don't need, particularly if it is for myself.
I often ponder purchases a very long time even when they are a good idea. That often saves me money as over time I'll find that I didn't buy it, and lost interest in it, whatever it is, or that the item was sold to somebody else and therefore the opportunity to buy it is gone. As I didn't need it, I don't worry about it. It's habits like that which will keep me, for example, from every owning a Harley-Davidson as I while I might admire the occasional Harley, the length of time that I'd deliberate on buying one virtually guarantees that I'll never own one. And that's okay, as I'll save money by not buying it.
That doesn't always work, however.
This is my sad Jeep.
I love my Jeep.
Ever since I bought it I have been pondering buying a RedRock grill guard. And only a grill guard but also a Or-Fab swinging tire carrier/rack for the back and a winch. All of these things are very useful for a Jeep, and the Jeep is very useful.
Well, Or-Fab went out of business last month, although their website says they're going to be reorganized and back in business soon, so when I went to order the tire carrier, which I decided on last month, it was no longer available.
And I've never ordered the grill guard.
Well, the Jeep lost this contest with a large ungulate yesterday. If I had the grill guard I'd be buying a new one.
But instead I'll be buying a new radiator, grill, fenders and hood.
I'm going to spend a lot more than I would have for the grill guard and what's more, I knew I needed a grill guard for just this sort of thing.
Frankly, I'm sick about it. I'll loose use of the Jeep for a month now thanks to all of this, and mostly thanks to myself.
This is Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in the small town of Glendo, Wyoming. This church is served by the Parish in Douglas and was built in 1953.
Founded in 1949 with the purpose to “aid the industrial and productive interests of the State of Wyoming" the Casper Petroleum Club, a longstanding local institution, is giving up the ghost. Hitting the news on September 1, the Club has announced:
September 1st, 2016
Dear Members of the Casper Petroleum Club:
As you are all aware, the Casper
Petroleum Club has been experiencing decreased membership attendance for
the past 15 years. It is with heavy hearts that the Board must announce
the the situation has now reached a level that requires the Casper
Petroleum Club to close permanently.
It is the Board’s desire that the Club
be able to remain open until December 31st, 2016 in order to honor
current reservations, allow staff to make future arrangements, and
provide the members ample opportunity to enjoy the Club through the
holiday season.
In order for the Club to
maintain the ability to remain open until December 31st, you, the
membership, must double your efforts to make the Casper Petroleum Club
your choice for your lunches and dinners in each of these remaining 4
months. If September attendance is not strong, members should expect the
Club to close in October.
Additionally, after reviewing the
evening dinner service attendance for the past fiscal year, the Board
found that dinner service for Monday and Tuesday nights is consistently
unattended, or attend with less than 5 nightly reservations. As a
result, beginning September 12th and 13th, the Club will no longer be
open for Monday and Tuesday dinner service. Existing Monday and Tuesday
event reservations will be honored.
Members, as the Club reaches its
twilight, we eagerly invite you to come often to celebrate the legacy,
food, and ambiance of the Casper Petroleum Club for the rest of the
year.
Regards,
Your Board of Directors
Done.
The Club survived numerous booms and busts, and even managed to use the bust of the 1980s to its advantage when it went from being the last tenant of the old downtown Townsend Building (now the Townsend Justice Center) to a building vacated by the 1810 Mining Company, a 1970s era boom restaurant.
I'd never been in the club when it was in the Townsend other than to peek through the door from the Townsend lobby into it, which gave you a glimpse of a dark bar from the bright lobby of the Townsend as the Townsend slid, or rather rapidly fell, into true devastation even as its restaurant continued to do a thriving lunch business. The attachment of the still thriving Petroleum Club showed how vibrant the Townsend must have been in the 1950s.
I was never a member of the CPC, but I'd been in it many times. The county bar association used to have monthly lunches there and the firm sometimes had an annual Christmas or New Years lunch there, and at least one time a Christmas party there. I attended a few big wedding receptions there, as well as a few large funeral receptions there, including those of people to whom I am very closely related. More than a few times people I knew well just decided to have lunch there, and I along with them.
Well, we can't say that the current bust killed it, but it must not have helped. The decline in clubs in general probably didn't help much either. Various former members that I used to know who kept a membership there, and indeed at one time it was something that people who had arrived had, no longer were keeping one. Odd to think of, at one time it was a place where lawyers and oilmen commonly went to lunch, but I haven't been in there now for several years.
This is an interesting 1916 item to say the least. The moment at which the eight hour day became the American standard.
We're so used to thinking of the average working day lasting eight hours that we hardly give any thought to there being an error in which this wasn't the case. But there certainly was. Prior to 1916, many laborers worked well over eight hours pre day. After September 3, 1916, that work day was established and the modern work day became law.
Which is not to say that there hasn't been some retreat on this. There certainly has. At least for the "professional" class of worker the eight hour day has long ago expanded into more hours than that, and well over forty hours per week. As more and more Americans have entered this category, the working hours of American have been increasing in recent decades, with wages not doing the same.
One of the two banded collar shirts I have. Ironically, this shirt was made by the Arrow Shirt Company.
Up until at least the end of World War Two, banded, or "collarless" shirts were a relatively common item for men, in some places.
Not equally in all countries at all times, however. They were less common in the United States, but they weren't uncommon at all early in the 20th Century and in some places into mid century. Now, they're sort of hard to find, and when you do find them, they can be really expensive. It's weird. It's too bad as well, as I really like them.
When the heat closes in, men
want chill-out clothing. That’s why a shirt that’s shed its stifling
collar—aka a ‘band-collar’ shirt—might be the most important piece of
the season.
Well, if so, it'd be nice if a person was able to find one around here.
The Journal tapped right into the history of the shirt, partially, and that goes where I want to go a bit here as well. The Journal observed:
Though the breezily incomplete look also enjoyed a vogue in the bohemian
1970s, its roots go back to the era when collars were starchy,
detachable things that men fastened to a basic collarless shirt to
appear properly dressed. (The advantage: You could just launder the
collars while rewearing a shirt a few times.) That so many contemporary
designers are now marketing such shirts to be worn on their own speaks
to the steady casualization of modern men’s style. First went the tie,
now goes the collar. “Guys just aren’t wearing ties as much,” said Mr.
Olberding. “And with a band collar, it’s the anti-tie shirt. You just
simply can’t wear [a tie].”
Yep, exactly right (but wait, it's a bit more complicated than that actually). Hence the scarcity of the shirt type as well.
While the thought of rewearing a shirt, rather than a collar, probably would strike a modern audience as gross, the Journal is right on. We've dealt with it at length in another post, but before the invention of the modern washing machine, people re-wore clothes. They had fewer clothes, they wore quite a bit of wool, and they didn't wash things nearly as often. Frankly, people could do that today, it would not raise a might stench like you might suppose, but people generally don't do that. I, for one, will toss an Oxford cloth work shirt in the laundry pile after I wear it at a work for one day. I could, I'm sure, get away with hanging it back up and pressing it for a second, or third, go, but I don't.
But if I had to wash it by hand, I might. And therefore, back in the day, it was easier and practical to have a starched collar that I'd launder first. Collars get dirty. And the shirt cold keep on keeping on. When I was home and not wanting to wear the collar I'd detach it, which of course would give the shirt its casual look by default right then.
Drew Clothing Company advertisement for collars, April 1913. Man, who hasn't had these problems?
When I say "I'd launder", I should note that I mean I'd likely send the collars to the laundry. Indeed, some laundries advertised this very service. For example, when Lusk Wyoming had a new laundry come in, prior to World War One, it specifically advertised washing and starting collars.
This small building in Wheatland, Wyoming is still in use. A
newer sign above the door says "Coin Operated Laundry", so perhaps its
still in its original use, although presumably not as a "steam
laundry". Its location is just off of the rail line, which was likely a
good location for a laundry, although this is a surprisingly small structure, much smaller than the laundry in Lusk was. Anyhow, while we think of laudrimats as being the domain of students and apartment dwellers today, prior to the invention of the washing machine they were a big deal for regular people. From Painted Bricks.
Indeed, that laundries would advertise such a service says a lot about the state of washing prior to the invention of the household washing machine. Most people don't send routine washing to the laundry unless they live in an apartment or are students. But at that time, they did quite often, as the alternatives were basically non existent. Today, quite a few businessmen and women still retain the practice of having their shirts laundered, I should note, and indeed I do (something I adopted after I got married for some reason, as I used to launder all my shirts myself, but after we had kids, it seemed to be a chore I was happy to omit. . . maybe some things don't change as much as we think). Laundries were so important at the time that they are specifically given a priority in the state's laws on water appropriation.
41-3-102. Preferred uses; defined; order of preference.
(a)
Water rights are hereby defined as follows according to use: preferred
uses shall include rights for domestic and transportation purposes,
steam power plants, and industrial purposes; existing rights not
preferred, may be condemned to supply water for such preferred uses in
accordance with the provisions of the law relating to condemnation of
property for public and semi-public purposes except as hereinafter
provided.
(b) Preferred water uses shall have preference rights in the following order:
(i) Water for drinking purposes for both man and beast;
(ii) Water for municipal purposes;
(iii)
Water for the use of steam engines and for general railway use, water
for culinary, laundry, bathing, refrigerating (including the manufacture
of ice), for steam and hot water heating plants, and steam power
plants; and
(iv) Industrial purposes.
(c) The use of water
for irrigation shall be superior and preferred to any use where water
turbines or impulse water wheels are installed for power purposes;
provided, however, that the preferred use of steam power plants and
industrial purposes herein granted shall not be construed to give the
right of condemnation
Detachable collars got their start early in 19th Century and by mid century they were fairly common. This isn't to suggest that their use was universal, which would not be true. It was never true. But it became common. Men bought banded collar shirts and detachable collars. Sometimes they also bought detachable cuffs. When the collars were dirty, they were boiled and restartched, and then buttoned back onto the shirt. That way a person could have both a clean collar, and one that was incredibly stiff. Such shirts were, of course, worn with ties.
I've never seen anything directly linking it in, but I strongly suspect that the banded collar shirt, at least of this type, was partial victim of the laundry machine. Again, while we've dealt with the revolutionary device, the washer, before, its impact on things was so significant that it's ignored, and of course, when people want to talk about revolutionary machines, they want to talk about Computers, or Enigma Machines, not washers and dryers. But people ought to take a second look. Just as it was Maytag, not Rosie the Riveter, that took women out of a mandatory domestic role, good old Maytag attacked the banded collar shirt and defeated it.
Collars on shirts had been around, of course, for a long time. But as noted, if you were working in an office and wearing a clean white shirt, that collar wouldn't look so clean for so long. But with the washing machine things changed.
Indeed, the fact that the changed is illustrated nicely by the history of Cluett Peabody & Company, a collar manufacturing firm. As washing machines began to come in during the 1920s, their fortunes declined. The reason was that the demand for dress shirts with attached collars increased and the shirt with the collar began to supplant the banded collar shirt. Cluett Peabody and Company, thinking it over, figured a way out of the problem by 1929. The Arrow Collar Shirt.
Arrow collar ad, 1907. The fellow with the checkered touring cap is wearing an Arrow collar, to the apparent distress of the fellow with the starched white collar in the background. The fellow to the left appears non pulsed and I fear a duel may break out latter. All of the collars in this 1907 advertisement are likely of the detachable type except for hte arrow collar.
Now, in fairness, Americans have always had a stronger attachment to the collared shirt than seemingly Europeans did, and collared shirts no doubt made up the majority of shirts in the US, even taking the position of collarless shirts in certain roles that banded shirts did in Europe. The US was a heavily rural nation up until the mid 20th Century and as a result, most men didn't have a real pressing need for s starched collar on a daily basis and instead wore a collared shirt. Indeed, Americans always wore a lot of conventional collared shirts as dress shirts even in the starched collar era.
Indeed, the recent idea we've picked up from television that everyone in the 19th Century, including folks like cowboys, were wearing banded collar shirts is simply wrong. Sure, you'd see a banded collar shirt out on the plains occasionally, but that's because that fellow was pressing a dress shirt into that service for some reason. More likely, cowhands would be found with collared shirts. Indeed, a favorite shirt of the 19th Century cowhand was the collar U.S. Army shirt introduced for frontier service after the Civil War.
Actor Francis X. Bushman wearing an Arrow collar and subtly smirking in 1917. Maybe he was smirking as he knew that US troops were fighting in collared shirts under their service coats, while Tommies were wearing banded collared shirts. Or not.
We have to add here, however, that Europeans, and those on the British Isles in particularly, seemingly picked up a fondness for banded collared work shirts in a way that we here in North America never did, and that does complicate this story a bit. Well, more than a bit, sort of. Anyhow, Europeans adopted banded collared shirts in the early industrial era, and they spread to all sorts of workmen fairly quickly, in a way that in the US might rival the collared chambray shirt. This lead to a sort of shirt called the "Granddad Shirt" that's particularly associated with Ireland for some reason, but which was really the working man's shirt of Great Britain up until after World War Two. The British working man's use of the shirt (and the Irish use of it) was very widespread, and they even were adopted into official use by the British Army as the service shirt that went under the service blouse, which was a light blue shirt at first, and all the way through World War One, but which became an olive (or khaki, in British parlance) by World War Two.
Arrow made shirts and collars both, as this 1920 advertisement in Powell attest to.
That's telling as well, as the U.S.
Army, unlike European armies, never went for banded collared shirts. It
did issue one mid 19th Century, but that shirt was an undergarment meant
for field use, not for outerwear. After the Civil War, when the hot
conditions of the West meant that solders were stripping down to
shirtsleeves, the Army started issuing a collared shirt that could be
worn without the service coat. (As an aside, the routine wear of wool
coats in most conditions in the Civil War must have made summer service
beastly hot.).
Detail from Edgar Paxon's remarkable Custer's Last Stand. The incredibly detailed painting is incredibly accurate, including its depicition of cavalrymen fighting in blue wool shirts (stained reddish due to dust) and wearing flannel shirts underneath them. At this time, in one minor error, the issue flannel shirt worn under the blue shirt was gray.
Federalized National Guardsmen at the time of the Punitive Expedition, from the earlier thread on hats. The U.S. Army was downright odd at the time in having a shirt that could be worn like these New York National Guardsmen are wearing it. . . alone with no service coat. This was likely a remnant of the Frontier Era when soldiers commonly omitted the coat during the summer months.
European
armies, in contrast, sometimes issued banded collar shirts in that role, and did
for a really long time. The British in particular did.. Not all retained them the same length of time,
but the British, as noted, issued a wool, banded collar, shirt for
wear underneath its service jacket all the way through World War Two, although it was of the "granddad" variety we otherwise discuss in this thread.
American workmen, quite frankly, tended towards collared shirts also, as they were buying shirts to work in, not to double as nice dress shirts. Those shirts may in fact have so doubled, but that doesn't mean that they gave priority to the dress shirt. Europeans, or at least the British, were otherwise wearing banded collared shirts anyway.
As arrow collars were rising in the workplace, supplanting banded collars, a couple of other competitors came in too to really do in the banded collar shirt. The big victor was the button down collar. It came in during the 19th Century in the United Kingdom, but not as a dress item. It was worn by polo players to keep the collar down in hard play. Obviously the polo shirt was somewhat different at the time. In the 1896, however, Brooks Brothers, the famous clothiers, took note of them and introduce dress shirts that buttoned down, which is why Brooks Brothers still refers to them as a "polo collar", basically claiming pride of place in their introduction. Oxford cloth button down shirts became so dominant over time in men's wear that they nearly define business dress, and even business casual and casual. This was so much so that the early comedy lp of Bob Newhart, who had been accountant, could be titled The Button Downed Mind of Bob Newhart with no explanation being needed. You see button down Oxfords everywhere, every day.
Some time in this same era tab collars and tie bars also came in, which served the same purpose, but in a way that retains a more formal appearance. A tie bar holds the knot of the tie forward and, quite frankly, gives it a certain spiffy appearance as accented by the gold or silver tie bar. Tie bars had become sufficiently widespread by the early 20th Century such that British officers routinely wore tie bars for that purpose by World War One, as the British had, by that time, introduced an opened collared service coat for officers and collared shirt, with tie, for them. When the US did the same in 1923, wearing of tie bars by American officers was also common. Every once in a while you'll see a shirt with pin holes manufactured in it for a specialized type of tie bar, although that's rather rare. Anyhow, tab collared shirts had a tab that buttoned behind the tie knot that did the same thing, which also aided in the spiffy appearance. I'll confess to having a couple of tabbed collared shirts in my collection, although as I've aged (becoming I find, more and more like my father in these regards) I tend to dress up nicely for work less often, which is something I likely should address. And I'll admit to having had several tie bars as well, although never more than one at a time. I lose them.
By the 1920s, stiff starched collars were on their way out, and also with them the banded collared shirt in the US. Daily armor, for some reason, of the working man and man in the field (both the agricultural field and the field of war) they kept on keeping on in the British Isles. But after the war they died away there too. Perhaps they were just too old fashioned.
Well, while they've waned, they've never really disappeared entirely. They revived a bit in the 1960s, in the counter culture era, as a hip alternative to a shirt that could take a tie, and then they nearly vanished again. But they are back now, both here and in Europe. Here, as the Wall Street Journal relates, they've become a cool shirt that's an alterntaive to a button downed Oxford, and I've seen quite a few of them worn as dress shits even with sports coats. Sometimes with full suits, giving a sort of cool, if not somewhat Middle Eastern, appearance. But they sure aren't cheap, as the journals listing of available shirts reveals:
From left: Michael Bastian Shirt, $425, mrporter.com; Boglioli Printed Shirt, $375, Barneys New York, 212-826-8900; Half Raglan Shirt, $198, stevenalan.com; 1883 Poplin Shirt, $195, Hamilton Shirts, 713-264-8800.
If you are paying $425 for a shirt, man, you are paying too darned much.
The always amusing J. Peterman Catalog lists a couple as well, with its fantastic short story form advertising copy. Consider, for example, the "Gatsby Shirt".
Gatsby was amazing. He even managed to see to it that the book about
him was regarded as a novel, as pure fiction, as though he didn’t exist.
Even Fitzgerald, by the time he was through writing it, believed he’d made the whole thing up.
There were those who knew the truth all along, of course; knew
everything except where all that money came from. (Even by today’s
standards, when millions mean nothing, only billions matter, Gatsby was
incomprehensibly rich.)
Gatsby walked into rooms wearing a shirt with no collar. Even a
little thing like that made people talk. And probably will still do so.
Our uncompromising replica of Gatsby’s shirt has the same simple band
collar. The placket is simpler, also narrower. The cotton we have used
is so luminous, in and of itself, that even a person who notices nothing
will notice something.
Gatsby, of course, could afford stacks of these shirts — rooms of
them. Never mind. All that matters is that you have one, just one. A
piece of how things were.
What a hoot.
The protagonist of Fitzgerald's novel, of course, would have worn banded collar shirts, probably, unless he was wearing one of the up and coming Arrow Collars. But he sure would have worn a starched collar with him, in that heavily tied era. Indeed, in that era of rebellion the young were dressing up, not down, and women had affected the tie, dressing with starched collars themselves. Indeed, the irony, perhaps, of that era so long ago is that men and women's dress, amongst the fashionable, came about as close to resembling each other as they ever would, something that perhaps those in perpetual angst over such topics should consider.
The Peterman outfit charges $89 for its Gatsby shirt, but only $69 for its "Irish Pub Shirt", which is a Granddad Shirt. The ad copy is just as delightful, however.
It’s Friday night at the Hog & Fool, a 200-year-old pub off O’Connell Street in Dublin. World headquarters for conversation.
Dark mahogany walls. Lean-faced men. Ruddy-faced women.
The bursts of laughter aren't polite, but real, approaching the edge of uncontrollability.
The stories being told are new, freshly minted, just for you, my dear. There is no higher honor.
The room roar is high (but still, not as bad as in certain New York
restaurants where you can’t make out what it is you just said).
These Irishmen, in collarless Irish shirts, under dark herringbone
vests and tweed caps, have managed to keep their mouths shut all week,
saving up the good stuff for now, for Friday night, for this very place,
for this very moment...
How could one single city possibly give birth to Yeats, Shaw, Joyce, Wilde, Beckett... and all those here tonight as well?
Again, what a hoot. And at least $69 approaches affordability, which $89, after shipping, doesn't, in my cheap view. Which is the same problem afflicting Orvis' Granddad shirt, which otherwise looks pretty nice.
Well, would that a person could find one locally. You can't.
This is Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in the small town of Glendo, Wyoming. This church is served by the Parish in Douglas and was built in 1953.
