Thursday, January 26, 2017

Utah National Guard clashes with Mexican forces on Arizona border. January 26, 1917

Cavalrymen from the Utah National Guard skirmished with Mexican forces along the Arizona border, resulting in ten Mexican casualties. This was the third, and last, skirmish that the Utah National Guard would engage in during the Punitive Expedition.

This unit would have been the 2nd Utah Cavalry, which remained on the border until March when relieved by the Regular Army's 10th Cavalry.

Note:  An item posted on Reddit's 100 Years Ago subreddit from the New York Times reports that this incident started off with cowboys trying to drive cattle away from the border at which time they were fired upon by "Mexican Troopers".

It's unclear in whose service the troopers were, but this gives a new dimension to the story.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

San Francisco cracks down on prostitution

San Francisco cracked down on prostitution in the city with the result that about 200 houses of prostitution were closed on this day in 1917.

The White Star liner Laurentic sunk by mines

White Star's SS Laurentic struck two mines on this date in 1917 and sunk off the coast of Ireland.  The mines had been placed in that location by a German mine laying submarine. The Laurentic was on her way to the UK from Halifax.


She had not originally been scheduled to be in that area but had stopped at a British naval base in Ireland to disembark four passengers with symptoms of yellow fever.  354 passengers lost their lives in the sinking.  121 survived.  Bodies washed up on shore for weeks.

The teenage dress makers, January 25, 1917

Marie Vancanvenberg, age 15.

Angelina Guinzali, 15.


Teenage labor in the bed spring factory. January 25, 1917.



USS Mississippi launched, January 25, 1917


The USS Mississippi was launched at Newport News on this date in 1917.


 Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels and others.

Sponsor Camille McBeath, who was a local girl chosen to perform the honor of breaking the bottle of wine on the hull.  This ship was unusually subject to a controversy on whether to use wine or water, given Virginia's recent enactment of prohibition. The choice was at one time left up to Miss McBeath who wisely deferred to Newport News, who had built the ship.



She would serve until February, 1956.

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

The Office Girls


Seems shocking.  A girl employed as a typist at age 15.  The LOC title reports: Ethel Selansky, 15 years old. Typist for Standard Neckwear Co., 91 Essex Street. Location: Boston, Massachusetts / Lewis W. Hine.  This photo dates from January 24, 1917.

As shocking, I suppose, as this is, my own mother was pulled out of school at age 16 to work in a similar role due to the Great Depression.

 Malvina Amundsen, age 15.  Office girl for Eastern Talking Machine Co.



Mary Creed, store clerk. Age 14.

All from January 24, 1917.

The Delivery Boys

 Small boy, big bucket.  Delivery scenes from this day, in 1917, in Boston.

Frank Hastings, 14 years old.

Louis A. Caulfield, age 16, typewriter.

 Delivery boys hitching a ride.



Monday, January 23, 2017

The Wyoming Tribue for January 23, 1917: Villa Ready To Regain Territory


While the other Cheyenne and the Casper papers were silent on this topic, at least on the first page, the Wyoming Tribune was sounding the alarm about the impact of American withdrawal from Mexico.

The weather and speeding were also in the news. And a cartoon complained about the price of the Danish West Indes.

The Child Newsies

Morrison Foster, 12 years old.

Boston newsies, four of whom were under 11 years of age when this photo was taken.

Newsie, age 11.

January 23, 1917.

U.S. House of Representatives House Rules Committee standing on the steps of the Customs House in New York City.


On this date, in 1917.

The Messengers

G. Leary, age 14.  $5.00 per week wages, $2.50 per week tips.

 Edward Williams, $5.00 a week.  No uniform.  Note the classic working man's newsboy cap.


Joseph Amico, 14 years old, $5.00 per week, deliverer of shoes.

January 23, 1917.




Sunday, January 22, 2017

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Catholic Church of the Ascension, Hudson Wyoming

Churches of the West: Catholic Church of the Ascension, Hudson Wyoming:



This Catholic Church in Hudson Wyoming was built in 1917.  In a way, it shows the limitations of travel at the time, as Hudson is quite near Lander, where there is another Catholic Church. At the time this church was built in 1917, however, travel between the two towns would have been time consuming.

Wilson delivers his "Peace Without Victory" speech

Woodrow Wilson delivered his "Peace without victory" speech to the United States Senate on this day in 1917.  In it he stated:
Gentlemen of the Senate:
On the 18th of December last, I addressed an identical note to the governments of the nations now at war requesting them to state, more definitely than they had yet been stated by either group of belligerents, the terms upon which they would deem it possible to make peace.  I spoke on behalf of humanity and of the rights of all neutral nations like our own, many of whose most vital interests the war puts in constant jeopardy.
The Central Powers united in a reply which state merely that they were ready to meet their antagonists in conference to discuss terms of peace.  The Entente powers have replied much more definitely and have stated, in general terms, indeed, but with sufficient definiteness to imply details, the arrangements, guarantees, and acts of reparation which they deem to be the indispensable conditions of a satisfactory settlement.  We are that much nearer a definite discussion of the peace which shall end the present war.  We are that much nearer the definite discussion of the international concert which must thereafter hold the world at peace.
In every discussion of peace that must end this war, it is taken for granted that the peace must be followed by some definite concert of power which will make it virtually impossible that any such catastrophe should ever overwhelm us again.  Every love of mankind, every sane and thoughtful man must take that for granted.
I have sought this opportunity to address you because I thought that I owed it to you, as the counsel associated with me in the final determination of our international obligations, to disclose to you without reserve the thought and purpose that have been taking form in my mind in regard to the duty of our Government in the days to come when it will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan the foundations of peace among the nations.
It is inconceivable that the people of the United States should play no part in that great enterprise.  To take part in such a service will be the opportunity for which they have sought to prepare themselves by the very principles and purposes of their polity and the approved practices of their government ever since the days when they set up a new nation in the high and honourable hope that it might, in all that it was and did, show mankind the way to liberty.
They cannot in honour withhold the service to which they are now about to be challenged.  They do not wish to withhold it.  But they owe it to themselves and to the other nations of the world to state the conditions under which they will feel free to render it.
That service is nothing less than this, to add their authority and their power to the authority and force of other nations to guarantee peace and justice throughout the world.  Such a settlement cannot now be long postponed.  It is right that before it comes this Government should frankly formulate the conditions upon which it would feel justified in asking our people to approve its formal and solemn adherence to a League for Peace.  I am here to attempt to state those conditions.
The present war must first be ended; but we owe it to candour and to a just regard for the opinion of mankind to say that, so far as our participation in guarantees of future peace is concerned, it makes a great deal of difference in what way and upon what terms it is ended.  The treaties and agreements which bring it to an end must embody terms which will create a peace that is worth guaranteeing and preserving, a peace that will win the approval of mankind, not merely a peace that will serve the several interests and immediate aims of the nations engaged.
No covenant of cooperative peace that does not include the peoples of the New World can suffice to keep the future safe against war; and yet there is only one sort of peace that the peoples of America could join in guaranteeing.  The elements of that peace must be elements that engage the confidence and satisfy the principles of the American governments, elements consistent with their political faith and with the practical convictions which the peoples of America have once for all embraced and undertaken to defend.
I do not mean to say that any American government would throw any obstacle in the way of any terms of peace the governments now at war might agree upon or seek to upset them when made, whatever they might be.  I only take it for granted that mere terms of peace between the belligerents will not satisfy even the belligerents themselves.  Mere agreements may not make peace secure.  It will be absolutely necessary that a force be created as a guarantor of the permanency of the settlement so much greater than the force of any nation now engaged or any alliance hitherto formed or projected that no nation, no probable combination of nations could face or withstand it.  If the peace presently to be made is to endure, it must be a peace made secure by the organized major force of mankind.
The terms of the immediate peace agreed upon will determine whether it is a peace for which such a guarantee can be secured.  The question upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is this: Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace, or only for a new balance of power? If it be only a struggle for a new balance of power, who will guarantee, who can guarantee the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe.  There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.
Fortunately we have received very explicit assurances on this point.  The statesmen of both of the groups of nations now arrayed against one another have said, in terms that could not be misinterpreted, that it was no part of the purpose they had in mind to crush their antagonists.  But the implications of these assurances may not be equally clear to all-may not be the same on both sides of the water.  I think it will be serviceable if I attempt to set forth what we understand them to be.
They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without victory.  It is not pleasant to say this.  I beg that I may be permitted to put my own interpretation upon it and that it may be understood that no other interpretation was in my thought.  I am seeking only to face realities and to face them without soft concealments.  Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished.  It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand.  Only a peace between equals can last.  Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit.  The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed questions of territory or of racial and national allegiance.
The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded if it is to last must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged must neither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations and small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak.  Right must be based upon the common strength, not upon the individual strength, of the nations upon whose concert peace will depend.  Equality of territory or of resources there of course cannot be; nor any sort of equality not gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate development of the peoples themselves.  But no one asks or expects anything more than an equality of rights.  Mankind is looking now for freedom of life, not for equipoises of power.
And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of right among organized nations.  No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.  I take it for granted, for instance, if I may venture upon a single example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, and autonomous Poland, and that henceforth inviolable security of life, of worship, and of industrial and social development should be guaranteed to all peoples who have lived hitherto under the power of governments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to their own.
I speak of this, not because of any desire to exalt an abstract political principle which has always been held very dear by those who have sought to build up liberty in America but for the same reason that I have spoken of the other conditions of peace which seem to me clearly indispensable-because I wish frankly to uncover realities.  Any peace which does not recognize and accept this principle will inevitably be upset.  It will not rest upon the affections or the convictions of mankind.  The ferment of spirit of whole populations will fight subtly and constantly against it, and all the world will sympathize.  The world can be at peace only if its life is stable, and there can be no stability where the will is in rebellion, where there is not tranquillity of spirit and a sense of justice, of freedom, and of right.
So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now struggling towards a full development of its resources and of its powers should be assured a direct outlet to the great highways of the sea.  Where this cannot be done by the cession of territory, it can no doubt be done by the neutralization of direct rights of way under the general guarantee which will assure the peace itself.  With a right comity of arrangement no nation need be shut away from free access to the open paths of the world's commerce.
And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be free.  The freedom of the seas is the sine qua non of peace, equality, and cooperation.  No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of many of the rules of international practice hitherto thought to be established may be necessary in order to make the seas indeed free and common in practically all circumstances for the use of mankind, but the motive for such changes is convincing and compelling.  There can be no trust or intimacy between the peoples of the world without them.  The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essential part of the process of peace and of development.  It need not be difficult either to define or to secure the freedom of the seas if the governments of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it.
It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of naval armaments and the cooperation of the navies of the world in keeping the seas at once free and safe.  And the question of limiting naval armaments opens the wider and perhaps more difficult question of the limitation of armies and of all programs of military preparation.  Difficult and delicate as these questions are, they must be faced with the utmost candour and decided in a spirit of real accommodation if peace is to come with healing in its wings, and come to stay.
Peace cannot be had without concession and sacrifice.  There can be no sense of safety and equality among the nations if great preponderating armaments are henceforth to continue here and there to be built up and maintained.  The statesmen of the world must plan for peace and nations must adjust and accommodate their policy to it as they have planned for war and made ready for pitiless contest and rivalry.  The question of armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind.
I have spoken upon these great matters without reserve and with the utmost explicitness because it has seemed to me to be necessary if the world's yearning desire for peace was anywhere to find free voice and utterance.  Perhaps I am the only person in high authority amongst all the peoples of the world who is at liberty to speak and hold nothing back.  I am speaking as an individual, and yet I am speaking also, of course, as the responsible head of a great government, and I feel confident that I have said what the people of the United States would wish me to say.
May I not add that I hope and believe that I am in effect speaking for liberals and friends of humanity in every nation and of every program of liberty? I would fain believe that I am speaking for the silent mass of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no place or opportunity to speak their real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they see to have come already upon the persons and the homes they hold most dear.
And in holding out the expectation that the people and government of the United States will join the other civilized nations of the world in guaranteeing the permanence of peace upon such terms as I have named I speak with the greater boldness and confidence because it is clear to every man who can think that there is in this promise no breach in either our traditions or our policy as a nation, but a fulfillment, rather, of all that we have professed or striven for.
I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world: that no nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own polity, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful.
I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances which would draw them into competitions of power; catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with influences intruded from without.  There is no entangling alliance in a concert of power.  When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same purpose all act in the common interest and are free to live their own lives under a common protection.
I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that freedom of the seas which in international conference after conference representatives of the United States have urged with the eloquence of those who are the convinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation of armaments which makes of armies and navies a power for order merely, not an instrument of aggression or of selfish violence.
These are American principles, American policies.  We could stand for no others.  And they are also the principles and policies of forward looking men and women everywhere, of every modern nation, of every enlightened community.  They are the principles of mankind and must prevail.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Poster Saturday: Pour La France.



I understand what this poster was for, "Combat gold for Victory", but my gosh its odd.

Senator Bebout reads the tea leaves

Yesterday, after the Inauguration, Senator Bebout announced that he was killing the proposed public lands transfer constitutional amendment by refusing to assign it for consideration. That's his option as President of the Senate.

He acknowledged, in doing that, the full force of public opinion, although he maintained that the whole effort was misunderstood.

To the extent it is misunderstood, and that wouldn't be misunderstood much, it would apparently be by our Senators and Congresswoman back in Washington D.C., who still appear to be clueless on this.  Faced with a public revolt, Bebout took the wise and politic route and sidetracked it before the legislature and individual legislators had to pay a price for refusing to listen to the public.  Located more remotely, we haven't seen any similar reactions out of D. C. yet.  But that may be coming . . . if people like holding their seats.

The Sunday State Leader for January 21, 1917. US Withdrawing from Mexico


The plant to withdraw from Mexico hit the press, along with a prediction that Villa would fill the vaccum.

Wyoming Guardsmen got high praise however.

And the Legislature was looking at Blue Laws.

Friday, January 20, 2017

Small Arms of WWI Primer 002: French Berthier Rifles






Small Arms of WWI Primer 001: Rifle Modèle 1886 M93 "Lebel"



Part of the series we started doing on weapons of the 1910s, given on our focus on that era.  The WWII era "Lebel".

I'll confess that I know very little about French weapons, other than they're odd looking.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 20. The Legislature sends Prohibition to the voters.

People tend not to think of Wyoming in the context of Prohibition, but the state was part of the big sweep that lead to it.  Indeed, while the story lays in the future from this post, Wyoming would push prohibition over the top with Sen. Francis E. Warren's vote in favor of the Volstead Act.

On this day, a century ago, the Legislature, which was predicted to pass a pro-Prohibition bill, did:
Today In Wyoming's History: January 20:

1917   Legislature passed an act submitting an act for a constitutional amendment that would allow people to vote on prohibition. Attribution:  On This Day.
The introduction of the bill had been widely predicated by the Cheyenne newspapers, in the form of predicting some bill.  That it would have taken the form, in 1917, of a proposed amendment to the state constitution is a bit of a surprise, but that would have served the dual purpose of making anything that passed really difficult to get rid of and, additionally, sort of passing the buck to the voters, as such an amendment requires the voters to approve it.

Which they didn't.

I'm not certain how it played out, but if the regular process took place, the voters rejected the measure that following fall.  Wyoming was the last state in the Rocky Mountain region to adopt Prohibition and the proposed amendment did not become law.

Which might have been a sign of things to come. While the state did pass Prohibition into law voluntarily, and in fact pushed it over the top nationally, it took to violating it nearly immediately.  Indeed Western Wyoming would become a bootleg liquor center, with wine being fermented in the Italian sections of Rock Springs and, ironically, heavily Mormon Kemmerer becoming a location for the distillation of high quality bootleg whiskey made with locally grown grain.

As outlined by Phil Roberts in an excellent article in Annals of Wyoming recently, Prohibition did break the back of the saloon trade in Wyoming, which in the end was a good thing. When alcohol returned in the 1930s it was stepped in over time, and with a new system which we retain today. That system, oddly enough for "free enterprise" Wyoming, runs all alcohol through the State Liquor Warehouse, which is the wholesaler for Wyoming, with no legal exceptions.

Prohibition would have the unfortunate impact of killing off a lot of local breweries, including those in Wyoming.  This has changed only recently, although there are quite a few small breweries now and even two distilleries.

A bottle of Wyoming Whiskey.  Something the legislators of 1917 would probably not have appreciated seeing at the time.