Salacious February?

I wonder if there's something wrong with February?

Or maybe just men in February.

I've been posting some newspapers recently, as they've been again been featuring Mexico and our troubles with it in 1917.  But at the same time, there's been some really odd stories popping up.

Earlier in the week in a newspaper that I didn't put up there was a news story about a group of young men from Denver, all apparently of prominent families, in 1917, that were arrested and were clearly going to be convicted of violating the Mann Act.  That statute, for those who might not be familiar with it, makes it a crime to take a woman across state lines for immoral purposes, which is what they did.  Or rather, they took girls across as it reported that the girls danced for them sans clothing, with one being as young as 16 years of age.  One of the young men was reported to be "getting a divorce".

Yeah, I bet he was.

And then yesterday we find that in Kemmerer there was a problem with "bear dancing".  Well, there was also a problem with the headline writer at The Wyoming Tribune that day, as it wasn't "bear dancing", but rather females dancing bare.  The saloons were ordered to knock it off. 

The Wyoming Tribune for February 14, 1917.  I'd like to see a saloon that featured dancing bears.

That's more like it.

Surprisingly the saloons were resisting the order, including the bear dancers, um, the bare dancers.

I should note that this past week, in 1917, was the week that Mata Hari was arrested, speaking of bare dancers.

Now, I would not have thought that bare dancing was really a thing in very many saloons in 1917.  I guess it fits in with the gritty Sam Peckinpah version of the West, but not really the real West as I'd have imagined it. But maybe I was off the mark.

Moreover, I wouldn't have thought bare dancing in saloons a common thing in the West in 1917, let alone in Lincoln County, Wyoming.  Kemmerer is part of the Mormon Hub of Eastern Wyoming and I'm certain that the Mormon's do not approve of dancing bare.  Of course, they don't approve of saloons either to it would be safe to assume that whomever the patrons of the saloons were they were likely not practicing Mormons.

I'm a practicing Catholic which brings me to this.  I don't approve of bare dancing in saloons either nor do I approve of Sports Illustrated's annual descent into pornography.  That occurs, yes, in February.

Every year at this time Sports Illustrated takes a break from covering football, basketball, baseball and lawn tennis or whatever else it covers, and just goes flat out pornographic.  I'm not sure how it chose February for its descent, but it may have something to do with it being the depth of winter (take that, January) or perhaps its because its truly the sports "garbage time".

No, not that Garbage Time.  This one actually deals with sports.

Or perhaps its because its the depth of winter and, as the old saying goes, idleness truly is the devil's playground.  Indeed, that would explain why young Denverites were hauling girls up into Cheyenne to dance for them sans clothing and why guys were hanging around in Kemmerer bars drinking and watching dancing bears. . .um bare dancing.

Anyhow, there is a serious side of this.  1917 was in the hard swing towards women's suffrage and it was shortly thereafter achieved in most of the Western World.

Bare or Bare dancing?  Forget that. Vote.

The vote was a major strike in favor of women's equality with men. And true equality, not one that ignored their gender but respected it.

Bare dancing, let alone violating the Mann Act, certainly doesn't respect it.  Nor does plastering it all over the pages of Sports Illustrated and claiming that it celebrates swimwear (which, I'd note, I don't think they really particularly even claim now as the swimwear is hardly there or indeed is actually absent). That's exploitation.

And as long as women are exploited in that fashion, not matter what their hopes and aspirations were in 1917, they'll never really be equal.  An object isn't equal.  It's an object.

Something to ponder, I guess, in muddy February.

Teenage Machinist. March 15, 1917

Teenage machinist, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  An after school job in this case.  Note that he appears to be wearing a tie, which would be regarded as a terrible safety violation in the present age.

The Natrona County Tribune for February 15, 1917: Casper Man Witnesses Return of Pershing's Expedition

An eyewitness Wyoming Guardsman reported on what he saw on the return of the Punitive Expedition from Mexico.

In other local news, a German-Hibernian bank was being formed.

The Cheyenne State Leader for February 15, 1917: Villistas threaten U.S. "Line".

Using terms now familiar to the readers to due the news on the Great War, Villistas were reported to be threatening the U.S. "line".

The news, in regards to Mexico, had nearly returned to the state of the year prior.

Otherwise, the news was much as noted in the paper below.  Gas leases, horse thieves, and the German U-boot campaign.

And Cuba again.

The Wyoming Tribune for February 15, 1917: Five Americans Shot by Mexican Raiders.

The border with Mexico was fully back on headlines, recalling the year prior, with news of a deadly Mexican raid into the US.

In other news, the crisis with Germany loomed large, but so did the capture of horse theives.

What Downton Abbey doesn’t tell you about the First World War (Part 2)

Another excellent entry:

What Downton Abbey doesn’t tell you about the First World War (Part 2)

February 6, 2017 ~ woostersauce2014

For part 1 – see here
Delayed Reaction –  food rationing
Another example of this delayed reaction I mentioned before is with regards to shortages and rationing. As early as late 1914, the difficulty in obtaining goods from other countries resulted into price hikes for both essential and non-essential goods. . .

An interesting item within the article:

The inefficiency of British agriculture and the commitment to free trade was one of the factors why Britain imported the bulk of its food from abroad. There were other factors as well as Jeremy Paxman noted, the British, he wrote, “lived by trade, and the growth of imperial power had rendered the country unable to feed itself any longer.” This overdependence on imported food meant that supplies were vulnerable to enemy attack . . .

The Laramie Boomerang for February 14, 1917: Germans to blame for trouble in Cuba and Mexico

The Laramie Boomerang ran an article blaming the trouble in Cuba and Mexico on Germany. The same story had the English about to land at Tampico, Mexico, to guard Mexican oilfields, upon which the British were in fact dependent.

And the city manager form of government, which would later become common in Wyoming, didn't pass the bar in 1917.

The Cheyenne State Leader for February 14, 1917. Trouble on the border.

Here we learn more about what happened on the border.  Mexican forces of some sort had crossed into the US and murdered three on American soil.  Ironically, the murdered men were Hispanics, but then that likely didn't mean much to the raiders.  An abduction also occurred.

It was rumored that the leader of the expedition that had just returned from Mexico, John J. Pershing, was about to marry. That would prove not  to be the case. While he'd come close on occasion, Gen. Pershing never married again and remained a widow for the balance of his life.

The Wyoming Tribune for February 14, 1917. US Cavalry back across the border.

Some regard this day as the last day of the Punitive Expedition.

Perhaps that's because US cavalry again crossed the border on this day, seeking to find three American cowboys who were taken by force into Mexico.  So, American forces were back in Mexico on this day, or maybe it was just being reported on, on this day.

In other news, American ships were going down, the German Ambassador was leaving, somebody had insulted the Legislature and authorities had had enough of bears dancing in saloons in Lincoln County . . . or maybe that was another kind of dancing they'd had enough of. . .

And, having just gotten out of Mexico we were now thinking of getting into Cuba.

Major Leroy Eltinge delivered a speech on the use of cavalry.

Major Leroy Eltinge delivered a speech on the use of cavalry on this day, in 1917.

Major Eltinge had commanded an element of the 8th Cavalry in Mexico, so this speech was delivered hard on the heels of his recent experiences.  He was a career Army officer, in the service since 1896 who would go on to rise to the brevet rank of Brigadier General as Deputy Chief of Staff of the AEF during World War One before reverting to his permanent rank of Major following the war.  He'd re-obtain the rank of Brigadier General in 1924 and died while still a serving officer during World War Two.

A ship that served in World War Two was named in his honor.

We made that. And surprises.

Wyoming Lard Can, Fort Casper Museum.  I was surprised to see it. I wish we had a can of it still.  I used to have some stationary, but now I don't even have that.

Wyoming Lard.

We, that is my family, made that.

From about 1940, when my grandfather acquired the local packing plant, until his death, which was in the late 40s.  The packing plant was sold at that time.  My father had graduated high school, but was still a teenager at the time. So, suffice it to say, his future (he was in Casper College at the time, studying engineering) underwent a big change.

My father, because he was in Casper College at the time, must have had at least some plan to pursue engineering.  He never spoke about that much and indeed I don't recall him speaking about it ever, actually.  I knew that from my mother.  When my grandfather died he went to work for the Post Office and the packing plant was sold.  He liked the Post Office and planned on staying there but my grandmother would have none of that and insisted that he go on in his education. That was, I think, a very common view at that time, the late 1940s.

And so he did.  He changed from engineering to dentistry at some point, and again, I don't know when.  He was shortly in the University of Nebraska where he graduated in the early 1950s.  He entered the Air Force after that and then came back to Casper.

He would speak about the packing house and working there, which he'd done as a teenager.  My grandfather, who had quit school at age 13, wanted everyone to know what "real work" was like.  Frankly, dentistry in the era when he did it was "real work" as well, and indeed it remains so.  There's a common concept in the world that being a dentists means you don't work and you are rich, much like people think about being a lawyer. The opposite is very true, and in the era in which he practiced it was particularly true.  Most of the dentists around here seemed displaced from agriculture in one way or another and they all had strong rural roots.  When they gathered, they hardly ever spoke about dentistry.  Indeed, I can recall a few conversations in which they did, even so many decades later, as they were that unusual.

Anyhow, it's interesting to see how things can take a sudden change.  As my uncle has told me, at the time of his death, the packing house "was dong really well".  It was making money, the family had sold the creamery which really didn't, and things were going fine.  Then death intervened.

I doubt, had my grandfather lived, that my father would have become a dentist.  I don't know what would have occurred.  My grandfather was only his his 40s when he died.  Would my father have gone to work there later?  Maybe.  He always fondly recalled the packing house and the work there.   He was also frank, however, that the margins in the packing industry were, at that time, slim.  That he knew that shows that he knew some of the business aspects of it even though he was a teenager at the time of his father's death.  Over time, most of these smaller packing houses have gone away, including this one, which kept on into the 1970s when it finally closed.  It was used as a welding shop after that, and then a big fire took it down in the 1980s or 1990s.

And so things go.  Death intervenes and sends everyone into a new direction.

Today In Wyoming's History: February 13, 2016. Justice Scalia passed.

Something that was posted on on our companion Today In Wyoming's History blog a year ago today:

Today In Wyoming's History: February 13:

 2016  Antonin Scalia passes on.

The full entry appears there.  Or  here, if you follow the link below the link, as it was originally posted here and then linked on to our other site.

So, an entire year has gone by, with lots of drama associated with it.  And the drama just keeps on keeping on, it seems.

Both of the nominees to fill this position have been good justices. The GOP held up President Obama's nominee, however, as they correctly surmised (probably) that approving that nominee would tilt the court to the left for decades.  It was quite a gamble on their part, but they read things correctly and were not only not punished at the polls for their actions, but probably gained a significant number of votes by doing it. Democrats have cried foul but in reality not approving Supreme Court nominees is not novel, and indeed treating them very badly isn't novel either.

Now the Democrats are threatening to hold up President Trump's nominees. But they seemingly fail to grasp that they don't have the votes to do that, they can only delay it. And there's no good reason to believe that achieves anything politically. They ought not to try that, but they likely will.

And so the drama goes on.

Cheyenne State Leader for February 13, 1913: Carranza the peacemaker?

Carranza, who was settling in as the recognized head of the Mexican government, but still fighting a civil war himself, entered the picture of the Great War by proposing an arms embargo.  Some cynics suggested German influence in his proposal.

Today In Wyoming's History: February 13, 1917 Legislature acts to move the Jim Baker cabin.

Today In Wyoming's History: February 13:

1917  The Wyoming Legislature appropriated $750 to move Jim Baker's cabin from Carbon County to Cheyenne.  Baker was a frontiersman who came West working for the American Fur Company.  He was later Chief Scout for Gen. Harney out of Ft. Laramie.  In 1859 he homesteaded at a location that is now within Denver Colorado.  He held a commission in the Colorado State Militia during the Civil War.  He relocated to a site near Savery Wyoming in 1873 and homesteaded there.  He continued to ranch in that location until his death in 1898, although he did serve the Army as a scout occasionally in the 1870s.

Today the cabin is located once again in Savery.  It is an unusual structure, as it was built partially as a block house in case of attack. It's interesting to note that a concern for preserving the early history

of the state became quite pronounced during this period.

The History of East Asia: Every Year

The Chinese Civil War Part Two.

The Chinese Civil War

When men wore fur coats

People tend to think of fur in terms of fashion.  And fur is thought of in terms of fashion because its expensive.  It was worn, however, as it was practical.

It's easy to think otherwise, in our day of synthetics. But, in thinking on it, fur is a renewable natural resource where as synthetics can be the opposite.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Benedict Catholic Church, Roundup Montana

Churches of the West: St. Benedict Catholic Church, Roundup Montana:

This is St. Benedict Catholic Church in Roundup Montana. The church is built in a fairly modern style, although I do not know the year of construction.  It's located directly across the street from the Musselshell County Courthouse.

Freight station, Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad. Philadelphia. February 12, 1917.

Freight station, Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad.  Philadelphia.  February 12, 1917.