The Trump Budget. Guns, no butter, but maybe less pork? And Dangerous Assumptions

As loyal readers of this blog already know, I am not a Trump fan.  I'm not a Clinton fan either, and I think the  Democrats blew this past election as, in their heart of hearts, the party is controlled by those for whom 1973 is still with us and they won't let control of the party go until their in their graves for a decade.  The ongoing bizarre presence of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi as Democratic spokesmen is proof of that.

But I will say, to my surprise a bit, that Trump has so far been perhaps the only President in living memory who came into  office with an agenda, even an extreme agenda, and stuck with it.  And, like it or not, he's been pretty successful so far, for the most part, in getting it moving.  Chuck coming on television and complaining about it hasn't done that much. To the extent that he hasn't gotten what he's want, it's been due to reluctant Republican, not Democrat, backstage maneuvering and the Courts.  The Democrats have come across so far like limp, 1973 flavored, noodles.

Which is why when Democrats come out and declare the Trump budget dead on arrival I don't think we need to listen too much. The same party that figured they'd coronated a Boomer Queen and buried that nasty experimentation with the young (if that's what President Obama was) and which brings out the the Greatest Hits of The Watergate Era for the news of the day can't really be taken all that seriously.

And, after getting the dope slap for not doing what they said they'd do, the GOP has to be really careful about not passing a budget, good, bad, or something else, that doesn't do what they've claimed they'd do, in part, for the past 20 years.

So, we'd do well to actually look at it.

And, while I'm genuinely horrified by big parts of the proposed budget, I'm also finding, in spite of myself, that. . . well. . . some of this stuff really ought to be cut.  Or if not cut, then paid for.

Let's start with what I don't think we need to add spending for.  Defense, and the Wall.

Now, I'm not an enemy of the Defense Department.  And I was in the National Guard back in the day when Reagan's first budget hit and things really improved in every way, including moral, in the service.  It was a huge change.

But, and this is important, we were building up to fight a really big, but short, war with the Soviet Union. That was what we were doing.  Oh, we said we were preparing to fight 2 1/2 wars, but one of those wars was with the Soviets. In other words, we were preparing to fight World War Three.

We aren't doing that now.

We are fighting a couple of wars. And we've been quite a bit more active in Syria (bout which I cringe) since Trump took office. But the big event, war wise, will be a slow burn war against Islamic terrorists.  I doubt we can win that overnight, but at any rate, that's the type of war best fought, quite frankly, by small armies.  Units like the Special Forces, the Rangers, or the SAS fight that kind of war. . . and the Air Force.  Not so much big infantry or armor formations.

So why are we building a big conventional military?  It makes no sense at all, and its really expensive.

And the wall is pointless.

I have a post in immigration in the hopper, but I haven't gotten it out. Any way you look at it, however, the truth is that we now have a net population loss to Mexico.  The whole big Mexican illegal immigration problem is over, and it started being over during the Obama Administration.

Besides, the whole sneaking over the river and into Texas thing is so, well, 1970s.  Not that it doesn't happen, but it isn't the vehicle for illegal immigration, for the most part, anymore.  It might be a little for smuggling, but that's not the problem we're supposedly trying to address.

So, you want to address illegal immigration?  Don't build a wall. Enforce the immigration laws inside the United States and punish Americans who hire illegal aliens. That would do it.  We're not going to do that.  Why not?  I have no idea other than that Trump said he was going to build a wall, his supporters believe that building a wall will do something, so he's going to do it.

Okay, now what about the cuts.

A lot of the cuts are deep and even shocking.  Some of the individual cuts, maybe all of them, create gasps in certain quarters that have specific interest in them.  For instances, the ABA is noting that the proposed budget eliminates funding for the Legal Services Corp, which is a Federally funded entity that provides legal aid for the poor.   Does it provide a service worth providing?  I think so.  We would have a less just society without it and, for the most part, I don't think the state's would fill in the gaps.  Should it be paid for?  Well, if we have it, it should be paid for.

What else fits in this category, i.e., things that are just flat out cut.  There's quite a list:

The 21st Century Community Learning Centers program

• Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy

• African Development Foundation

• Appalachian Regional Commission

• Chemical Safety Board

• Community Development Block Grant

• Community Development Financial Institutions Fund

• Community Services Block Grant

• Corporation for National and Community Service

• Corporation for Public Broadcasting

• Delta Regional Authority

• Denali Commission

• Economic Development Administration

• Essential Air Service program

• Global Climate Change Initiative

• Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, Chesapeake Bay

• HOME Investment Partnerships Program,

Homeownership Opportunity Program

• Institute of Museum and Library Services

• Inter-American Foundation

• US Trade and Development Agency

• Legal Services Corporation

• Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program

• McGovern-Dole International Food for Education program

• Minority Business Development Agency, under Commerce

• National Endowment for the Arts

• National Endowment for the Humanities

• NASA's Office of Education

• Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation

• Northern Border Regional Commission

• Overseas Private Investment Corporation

• State Energy Program

• Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants

• TIGER transportation grants

• United States Institute of Peace

• United States Interagency Council on Homelessness

• Weatherization Assistance Program

• Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

None of these programs is individually large.  And none of them make up a significant part of the budget.  But they do all add to it. While each will have their defenders, there truly does become a point, in the philosophy of tax, where you have to ask is taxing just for a program.

That may sound like an odd way to look at it, but taxation is one of the primary aspects of sovereignty.  Only sovereign entities can tax.  An entity doing the same thing that isn't a sovereign would be committing extortion doing the exact same thing.  It's legal, because the sovereign does it.

Which brings us to the budget. At the end of the day, we have to ask if forcing cash  out of individual wallets, or taking loans from the unborn to pay for things now, is just.  If we can say it likely is, then that's one thing.  But we should be careful.

Just turning to these entities again, some, while they no doubt do vital work, ought to go.  The Weatherization Assistance Program, for example, probably does vital work. But vital enough to tax everyone for?  Maybe, but it ought to be justified.

What about the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars?  Well, I doubt it deserves my tax money, frankly.  Indeed most of these are likely on fairly shaky ground, no doubt all deserving in their day, but are they collectively deserving now?  Some no doubt are, some no doubt are not.

Only the big ones, in relative terms, or the controversial ones, will receive a lot of attention.  The National Endowments (Art and Humanities) will receive a lot of attention that way.

These are interesting in and of themselves as the classic way that the sovereign sponsored arts and the humanities was when it engaged in a public project.  Great works of art have been done at public expense, through the sovereign serving itself.  I do not mean to suggest this is bad. Great monuments and buildings stand out as examples everywhere.  Which points out something that's often missed. Art, and the humanities, are always tied to sponsors in some fashion. 

In Europe most of the great art of earlier eras, which makes up most of the great art, was sponsored by the Church and the Sovereigns.  And for their own purposes.  Which doesn't mean that they are not great. What's never been done is to simply fund art or the humanities.  

Now, these grants do more than that. But we have to ask, as part of this, if funding in the fashion in which they are funded through these endowments serves a taxing authority justifiable goal.

Let's look at the NEA.  It states that:

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent federal agency that funds, promotes, and strengthens the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts participation.

Should the Federal government be taxing to do that?  Should it be doing it at all?

One of the things the NEA is now doing is sort of campaigning for itself.  It's website has a statement about being cut and notes that it cannot campaign but that it expects this to be an active area of discussion. That's promoting, in very mild form, a campaign to save itself.

It's website also has a selection of programs and what not that sound fun and are no doubt educational. But, for example, should the NEA be sponsoring an April 3 jazz concert in Washington D.C. on my dime.  Frankly, probably not.  What about the NEH? Well, because I like some of the NEH programs quite a bit I'd be very sorry to see them go, but the same analysis has to be done. Is it just to tax for them?

If it is, and this is the rub, then its also just for anyone Administration to back only those that serve the interest of the government as they see it.  People hate that idea, but that's the gist of public funding. . . it has to be for a public purpose as the public defines it.

All of this, of course, deals with just the programs that are eliminated. What about those that are cut?  Well, the same analysis would apply.

Probably every single person could go through the list of things being cut and find things they very strongly disagree with.  For example, I strongly disagree with cutting anything having to do with science.  Funding science, it seems to me, is in our national best interest and even perhaps fits in the category of national defense in a real sense.  I'd favor funding science over the massive boost in funding to the military as, it seems to me, our national needs in this area are great.  Likewise, I"m also opposed to any cuts that cut funding for the Department of the Interior or the Department of Agriculture.

What about the Department of Education?  We've only had that department since the 1970s, contrary to what people think. Education is a massively important aspect of real life and perhaps this brings to a head how we intent to approach it. Right now, we approach it in a highly balkanized fashion. We have a national department of education, state departments of education, and local school boards.  What is the role of each? We seemingly have never figured that out. An argument can be made for any of these, but its time to have that argument.

How about the Department of Housing? Well, having dealt with it, I'd be in favor of completely eliminating it.  And I'm not joking.  It flat out ought to go, and tomorrow.

What about Transportation?  Well, here we need to figure out what we expect.  We started a national transportation system with the arrival of the automobile, and have kept it ever since.  It's a big country, and we're complaining about infrastructure collapse. Does cutting Transportation address that?  I think not.

And the EPA?  The EPA is a constant target from the right, but the attacks on it do not seem justified to me.  It has a big job its trying to do and only a national entity can do it.

So, in short, when I went through these I find that I support quite a few things being cut, I don't support some others, and some I just don't know what they do.  

Which would suggest that if nothing else, a debate on Federal spending, a real one, is needed. We're probably not going to get that, but it is time.  And part of that debate has to be on actually paying for things.  Taxes are not intrinsically evil or anything.  Not paying for what you expect to receive, however, is really a problem.

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: The Tranquility of Days Gone By

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: The Tranquility of Days Gone By: Sometimes, in the hustle and bustle of the twenty-first century, it’s easy to pine away, wishing for the easier, more peaceful days of old....

Vera Lynn born. And today is her 100th birthday.

Vera Lynn, was born on this day in 1917 as Vera Welch.

This is her 100th birthday, and she remains very much alive.

Vera Lynn, 1941

Lynn sang the enormously popular British World War Two song We'll Meet Again. The hugely popular song, featuring Lynn's very strong voice, was featured again ironically in the 1960s in the film Dr. Strangelove in the final sequences.  A remastered version once again hit the charts just a few years ago..

She also sang the very popular wartime song The White Cliff's of Dover.  

She is the only person whose hit have spanned from the period of inception of charts to the present day.

Branch Rickey hired to manage the Cardinals

Branch Rickey, 1912

Branch Rickey was hired on this date in 1917 to manage the Cardinals.

Rickey debuted in professional sports as a football player in 1902, playing for the Shelby Blues.  The following year however, he switched to baseball, signing with a minor league team.  In 1905 he moved to the majors and played with the St. Louis Browns.  His fortunes fell, however, and he was traded to the New York Highlanders where he set a negative record for stolen bases against him.  He retired after 1907.  

He thereafter attended the University of Michigan where he obtained a law degree.  While in law school he became the schools baseball coach.  In 1913 he returned to the Browns as a member of the managment.

His run with the Cardinals in 1917 was short, as he left to join the Army the same year.  He returned to St. Louis after the war.  He moved to the Dodgers in 1942.  While with the Dodgers he signed Jackie Robinson.

Monday at the Bar: For the want of a comma

And it goes on from there:  http://media.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/16-1901P-01A.pdf

Revenge of the Oxford Comma?

The Wyoming Tribune for March 20, 1917. Colorado Cavalry at Ft. Russell. Lack of coat lethal?

Wyoming was contemplating adding cavalry to its National Guard, but Colorado had it. 

Colorado cavalrymen were disembarking at Ft. D. A. Russell.  They were demobilizing late in comparison to the Wyoming National Guard.

And one Wyoming National Guardsmen wouldn't be called back up for World War One.  He'd died of pneumonia. 

Pvt. Charles Schmidt of Company B, Lander Wyoming, had become ill after having to turn in his overcoat at Ft. D. A. Russell.  Apparently a lot of men were sick, and that likely explains the delay we recently read about in discharging from active service the men from Laramie, who made up the medical company.

March in Wyoming is cold and these papers have had stories of a cold spell being in the works in this time frame.  It seems a lot of men were sick and frankly viruses going through troops is a pretty common thing in military units.  Overcoats were an item of equipment, not a uniform item, which may sound odd to readers who have no military experience, but that's exactly how field jackets were viewed when my father served in the Air Force during the Korean War and how they were viewed when I was in the National Guard in the 1980s.  The National Guard had denied that it was taking the coats from the men when the story broke, but obviously there was some truth to the story for some units.

Would an overcoat have kept Pvt. Schmidt alive?  It sure couldn't have hurt.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Post Chapel. Prisoner of War Camp. Ft. Robinson Nebraska

Churches of the West: Post Chapel. Prisoner of War Camp. Ft. Robinson Nebraska

This is the second time I've posted a photo of a bare remnant of a church, but in this case, it's a much more recent structure. This is where the Post Chapel for the Prisoner of War Camp at Ft. Robinson Nebraska once was.  None of the original structures of the POW camp remain, and most is grass prairie, but where the chapel was is now this small stand of bushes.

Today In Wyoming's History: March 19, 1917; The Supreme Court upheld the eight-hour work day for railroads in Wilson v. New

Today In Wyoming's History: March 19: 1917     The Supreme Court upheld the eight-hour work day for railroads in Wilson v. New 

It was a six to three decision.

Women authorized to join U.S. Navy

Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels authorized the enlistment of women in the United State Naval Reserve Force.  Both officers and enlisted personnel were authorized to serve under Class 4 of the 1916 United States Naval Reserve Force under his act.  A new rank structure of Yeoman (F)  was created for basic female Navy personnel.

Training was obviously significantly different and involved class work for their intended role as couriers, draftsmen, fingerprint experts, masters-at-arms, mess attendants, paymasters, recruiters, switchboard operators, and translators

Female sailors of the U.S. Navy, 1918.

Hoy Oilfield near Enid, Oklahoma.

Copyrighted on this day in 1917.

The Russian Royal Family.

As published by the Bain News Service on this date, in 1917.

Poster Saturday: Blue Fund

Excélsior, Mexico City's second oldest newspaper, founded

And there was certainly a lot of news for it to follow.

Mexico, which was still fighting a civil war, but which was slowly seeing the Constitutionalist solidify their hold on the country, and which had recently adopted a new constitution and formed a new government, was much in the news.  In the US it continued to hit the headlines nearly daily, thanks to German blundering efforts to entice the country into a war with the United States, should the US enter the war against Germany.

In the midst of that, Rafael Alducin founded the Excélsior.

Rafael Alducin

He was just 28 years old at the time.  After his death at age 35 publication of the paper was taken over by a worker's cooperative. It remains in publication today, although cooperative ownership collapsed in 2006 after the fall of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, after which the paper was sold to new ownership.

Blog Mirror: Feb 18, 2013 9:40 pm - Dead Presidents

Blog Mirror:  Feb 18, 2013 9:40 pm - Dead Presidents

On the night of March 18, 1917, several hundred Republican leaders gathered in the Union League Club in New York City.  With German U-boats engaging in unrestricted warfare and sinking American ships on the high seas despite United States neutrality in World War I, the Republicans demanded that President Woodrow Wilson declare war against Kaiser Wilhelm II’s belligerent empire, infuse fresh warriors into the stagnant European war, and prove that the U.S. was a truly international power that was only getting stronger in the midst of the American Century. . .

Best Post of the Week of March 12, 2017

Bah, Daylight Savings Time

 

The feline musings of Judge Posner

The Child Newsies of Oklahoma City, March 15, 1917

 

Our Lady Derzhavnaya, Icon, found in Kolomenskoye, Russia after having been lost during Napoleanic invasion.

Working With Animals

1917 The Year that made Casper what it is. Or maybe it didn't. Or maybe it did.

I have no before and after pictures for Casper that would cleanly show what the town looked like in January, 1916 and then later looked like in December, 1917.  Indeed, while there are a couple of "birdseye" photos below, they aren't quite right.  If I did have such a photograph, it would be quite the contrast .  . .

Ireland

 

The Laramie Boomerang for March 18, 1917. Extra Edition

Pancho Villa was poised to attack Chihuahua again, which made the front page of the Laramie Boomerang, but which surely didn't cause the extra edition. The increasingly disastrous Atlantic news was causing that.

Ireland

 

Ireland was not converted but created by Christianity, as a stone church is created; and all its elements were gathered as under a garment, under the genius of St. Patrick. It was the more individual because the religion was mere religion, without the secular conveniences. Ireland was never Roman, and it was always Romanist.

G.K. Chesterton: A Short History of England, and brought here due to the G. K. Chesterton Blog.

A statement that remains true.  Ireland, without the church, is a mere European state, and nothing more.   One of many.  Its remained Ireland because of the Church, and the Irish are the Irish for the same reason.  The same could be said, we should note, for Quebec and the Quebecois, which are distinct only because of the church, and without it is nothing more than a geographic expression with interesting ethnicity.

St. Patrick's Day, 1917: British Pathe

British Pathe video of St. Patrick's Day, 1917.

Roshanara, and Ratan Devi on March 17, 1917 in Manhattan

 

Everything was tumbling into war, but entertainment hadn't stopped.  Roshanara (Olive Katherine Craddock), and Ratan Devi (Alice Coomara) on March 17, 1917 in Manhattan.

Olive Craddock was an Anglo Indian woman who grew up in India and learned to dance Indian dances there. She later made a career of it, even copyrighting ten of her dances.  Alice Coomara, aka Alice Ethel Richardson Coomaraswamy, nee Richardson, was English but had learned Indian music while living with her husband in India and performed under the stage name Ratan Devi.

The Cheyenne State Leader for March 17, 1917. Shades of the Spanish American War

During the Spanish American War Wyoming was strongly associated with volunteer cavalry.  The 2nd U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, Torrey's Rough Riders, to be specific.

The story of the 2nd is disappointing.  A really early effort along the same lines as the famous 1st US Volunteer Cavalry, the much more famous Rough Riders associated with Theodore Roosevelt, Torrey's unit never saw combat. Which isn't to say that it didn't see casualties.  The unit was involved in a terrible railroad accident on the way to to Florida resulting in loss of life to men of the unit.  Partially because of that, it never deployed.

Indeed no Wyoming volunteers or militiamen saw action in Cuba, but Wyoming's National Guard units, recruited during the war in part, much like the National Guard units raised during the Punitive Expedition, saw action in the Philippines.  Those units, like the ones raised and deployed in the Punitive Expedition, were infantry, however.  They did serve very well.

Well, cavalry is more glamorous, without a doubt, and even though the Wyoming National Guard had just come home, the looming entry of the United States into World War One, which was appearing to be increasingly certain, was causing thoughts to return of the glamorous idea of raising a volunteer cavalry unit.  Major Andersen, the Adjutant General of the Wyoming National Guard, was backing just such and idea and touring the state to try to get it rolling.

Cavalry saw a lot more action in World War One than people imagine.  And Wyoming was a natural for cavalry really.  Given the small population of the state Andersen surely knew that any infantry units provided to a mobilized Army for deployment to France would simply be swallowed up into other units.  Cavalry had a better chance of remaining distinct and intact, so the idea had some merit, in spite of the excessively romantic way that it must appear, reading it now.

Which isn't to say, frankly, that all the boys "from the border" who had just returned would have been horsemen. Far from it. The idea that every Wyomingite knew how to ride at the time is just flat out false.  Young men with little horse experience must have been cringing a bit at the thought of being converted to cavalry.

1917 The Year that made Casper what it is. Or maybe it didn't. Or maybe it did.

I have no before and after pictures for Casper that would cleanly show what the town looked like in January, 1916 and then later looked like in December, 1917.  Indeed, while there are a couple of "birdseye" photos below, they aren't quite right.  If I did have such a photograph, it would be quite the contrast.

Casper is named after Fort Caspar (yes, they are spelled differently), that being the name for Platte Bridge Station following the battlefield death of Caspar Collins in what is now Mills, Wyoming.  Ft. Caspar borders Casper, and it might now be in it, but if so it only became part of Casper relatively recently.  Interestingly enough, it's only one of at least three forts or posts, or stations, that were in the immediate area in the 1860s, although its the only one that's remembered much. The others, Richard's Bridge (in Evansville) and a telegraph station, were much smaller, so perhaps that's fair enough.

Casper was founded in 1888.  It was founded by two men anticipating the arrival of the railroad.  The man who gets credit for being first, John Merritt, was a Canadian. The second man, C. W. Eads, ironically is the only one whose name is preserved, sort of, in the town as there's a portion of it, once an unincorporated neighbor of Casper's but now part of the town, called Eadsville.  Only one week later the town had 100 residents who were there when the first passenger train of the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad stopped.

So it was a railroad stop in Central Wyoming, in the heart of cattle country.  Oddly, right from the start, it tended to look towards oil for its future, but it was a cowtown at first.

Casper Wyoming, 1893.  A few buildings, a few residents, wide streets, and a lot of mud.

And cattle got it rolling.  In a good location to support a growing cattle industry the town steadily expanded on the broad plain south of the North Platte River, safely, more or less, out of the broad flood plain of that river, which deluged annually, and which created an enormous swamp on the town's border in early spring that dried to become a large sandbar after the flood receded.  

As a cowtown, it would be the jumping off spot for the Invasion of 1892, when large cattlemen would come to Central Wyoming with Texas gunmen in an attempt to address control of the range forever. Pulling in on the single railroad in a darkened train, it didn't take Casperites long to speculate what was occurring, and Casperites were amongst the first to react, trailing the invading party as it procedd north into Johnson County.

Casper in 1903, the year of my grandfather's birth in Dyersville Iowa..  A very small town still, the railroad's path for the then single railroad is still there, but is now a rails to trail trail.

 

 Where the railroad, or at least that first railroad, once ran.

While people like to look back on their city fondly, it wasn't a nice town.  Owen Wister, author of the Virginian, who placed one of the central events of that novel, the Goose Egg Ranch dance baby switching (a fictional event so vivid that people claimed ancestors to have been in it, for years, even though it never happened), just outside of town, he himself described Casper as follows:

June 13: In Casper. Hotel food vile. Town of Casper, vile.

Hmmm.

 Casper in 1909.  In color, it doesn't look so bleak. Take that, Owen.

And then came World War One.

By 1914 Casper was a well established, very small, town that served the sheep and cattle industries, major Wyoming industries.  In 1910 its population stood at 2,639.  Newspapers that I've been running for the return of Wyoming Guardsmen show, if it hasn't already been shown, that  Casper was not one of the towns where there was a Guard officer for recruiting, which would suggest, perhaps, that the town lacked a National Guard unit.  Any local men wanting to serve, if that's correct, would have had to have opted for Douglas or Lander, and a train ride.  Having said that, by the 1930s small Glenrock had a National Guard unit, so there could have been one.

Casper was basically a railhead for cattle and sheep shipping which was centrally located in central Wyoming.  And those industries all boomed during World War One. But what massively impacted things was oil. And in two forms. The Big Muddy oilfield near Midwest Wyoming, but in Natrona County, really started producing and, right behind that, the third refinery to be established in Casper, but the first one to be successful, became successful.

That changed everything.

Casper, supposedly in 1918, but already inaccurate at the time of this depiction.  The town's growth had exploded, a second railroad had come in, and the Sandbar was developed.

Oil had been a factor in Casper's economy since the 1890s.  Early Natrona County newspapers are full of speculation about the success of oil rigs that were just rigging up here and there around the county.  The first producing well came in, in Midwest Wyoming, in 1889 and wells dating back nearly that far are still in production there today. The first refinery started production on March 5, 1895, refining Salt Creek crude for the railroad, which it bordered. It was built by the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Company in what is now downtown Casper.  It was the first refinery in the state.  Hauling the oil form Midwest for the small refinery was a round trip tour of ten days.

In 1903 the entire shooting match, field and refinery, was bought by the  Societé Belgo-American des Pétroles du Wyoming, giving Casper perhaps the most exotically named refinery in the state's history.  The rifinery declined in condition however and by the late first decade of the century it was drawing complaints from residents.  It's legacy lingers on, a little, however, in that even though it would soon close in those years oil from it was found to be present in bothersome quantities downtown within the last decade.

In 1910 the Franco Wyoming Oil Company bought the refinery and tore it down, tore it down, and built a new one.  About the same time, the Midwest Oil Company built a refinery near the railhead of Casper and put in a pipeline, cutting transmission time from the field down massively.  

The change in the town's fortunes were strongly indicated when, in 1913, Standard Oil bought over 80 acres near Casper for a refinery of its own.  It was operating by 1914 and dwarfed the Midwest refinery.  Focused on gasoline, it was, for a time, the largest gasoline producing refinery in the world.  It was located just to the West of Casper, within walking distance (as all these refineries were) of Casperites.  With the Standard Refinery the evolution from a cowtown to an oiltown was well on its way.  Following at this time the Burlington Northern's new rail line was put in, running north of Casper but sought of the North Platte, thereby (temporarily) squeezing Casper in between two railroads.  The BN ran up to, and into, the Standard Oil Refinery.

In 1905, moreover, the United States government dammed the North Platte in Fremont Canyon, some 40 or so miles up river from Casper.  By the winter of 1916 the North Platte had been fully tamed with memories of annual flooding remaining, but only memories..  The river no longer flooded right up to the town, and the sandbar area was owned but not developed. By that time, it was a camping spot for sheepherders on their annual trips with their bands of sheep into Casper, which remained a major agricultural railhead.  That changed in late 1916 when an enterprising individual bought the entire sandbar for $1.00 and subdivided it. Soon thereafter he sold it to a developer for over $12,000.  He was able to do that as housing had become so tight with a flood of construction and oil workers having come into town. Downtown Casper, in turn reached for the sky, literally, with "skyscrapers" comeing up for the first time, including the one I work in, the  Consolidated Royalty Building, then the Oil Exchange Building, was will celebrate its centennial (well, it won't celebrate it, it'll be ignored) this year.  Major buildings were going up, oil was going out, and money was coming in.

Consolidated Royalty Building, where I work, which was built as the Oil Exchange Building in the late summer of 1917.

So, in the 1917 and 1918 time frame, Casper changed.  Large buildings came up, more solid ones appeared everywhere.  Houses, many still remaining, were constructed by new and old residents, including some mansions that remain.  Oilmen, sheepmen, and cattlemen, all contributed to the boom, as did those who serviced those industries.  By 1920 the towns population was 11,447.  By some accounts by the late 1920s the town had grown to over 26,000 residents, before the population fell back down to about 19,000 in an oil crash.

 

St. Anthony's Catholic Church.

 
First Presbyterian Church.

 St. Mark's Episcopal Church.  All three of the churches depicted above have roots that predate the World War One boom, with First Presbyterian, founded in 1913, being the youngest congregation, but all three of these churches were built as part of the boom.

And vice in, in a major way, as well. The sandbar would become the Sandbar, a mixture of business (some of whose buildings are still there) small houses, and shacks. Pretty quickly it became a major relight district that would exist all the way until the 1970s until it was finally put out of business.  Estimates hold that at one time up to 2,000 prostitutes plied their trade in the Sandbar in spite of ongoing major efforts to shut it down, although that seems like it's based on inaccurate recollections and the real number would have been more like 300 or so.  Still, quite a number.. Even when I was a kid, the Sandbar was pretty darned seedy and more than a little scary.

 

Natrona County High School, completed in 1923 and replacing a smaller structure on the same site, part of the collateral impact of the boom.

Well, the Sandbar is gone, a successful termination thanks to urban renewal in the 1970s, and while oddly romantically remembered by some, it was, as Wister noted, "vile".  The Standard Oil Refinery, which was the big one of that era, is gone as well, and a town that once had three major oil refineries is down to just one.  But oil remains the engine that drives the town to this day.  Oil refining is a shadow of what it once had been in Natrona County, and indeed that's true all over the state.  Wyoming retains a number of refineries, but gone are the days when nearly ever town had one.  Indeed, it seems odd to think of Laramie Wyoming, our "college town", having once had a fairly substantial refinery (or that it once had very large stockyards).

While refining may have fallen off, oil exploration remains a major factor in Wyoming's economy and the economic driver of a lot of towns.  It has been that way since the early 1900s.  And it remains that way in Central Wyoming today.  Casper has grown considerably since 1910, but when oil is down, the town definitely feels it.  The entire state does.

Anyhow, this blog has been focusing on the early part of the 20th Century throughout its existence and its been hard focusing on the 1917 period recently.  What huge changes Casper say in that period.  From 1910 to the mid 1920s the town went from a small town to a small city, from under 2600 people to up to about 26,000. Everyone was new in town, and everything, almost, was new.  It must have been a shock for the early residents.  And for people like we've been focusing on, men who went off to the Mexican border and then to France, their town must have been nearly unrecognizable when they returned.

 

Downtown sidewalk dating to 1919.

Theodore Roosevelt and Russell J. Coles, fishing in Florida

On this day in 1917.

Coles was a scientist with a special interest in fish.  He had a fair number of publications to his credit on the topic.

Czar and son, March 16, 1917

Dated this date, but perhaps published on this date.  Things were not going well in Russia.

Our Lady Derzhavnaya, Icon, found in Kolomenskoye, Russia after having been lost during Napoleanic invasion.

Our Lady Derzhavnaya, icon.

The Our Lady Derzhavnaya, "the Reigning Icon" was found on this date in 1917 in  Kolomenskoye, Russia

The icon is believed to have been painted in the 18th Century by an unknown iconographer.  It was removed from Ascension Convent in Moscow province during the Napoleonic invasion of Russia  and hidden in the village church in Kolomenskoye, where it was forgotten.  On this date, in 1917, peasant woman Evdokia Adrianova, from the village of Pererva in Moscow Province, related that she had a dream in which the Blessed Virgin appeared and instructed her to go to the village of Kolomenskoye, where she would find an old icon which, "will change color from black to red."  She did in fact travel to Kolomenskoye and related her story to the village priest who accepted her story and helped her search. They found the icon, which was covered with candle soot, and discovered upon taking it outside that the icon depicted the Blessed Virgin wearing a red robe and with regal symbols.  Because of the day of the event, Russian Orthodox faithful have interpreted the appearance in connection with the abdication of Czar Nicholas II on the same day.

The icon has also been associated by some with the Marian apparitions at Fatima that commenced on May 13, 1917.  This is so much the case that the the Reigning Icon and the Theotokos of Port Arthur icon have been twice taken to Fatima, once in 2003 and once in 2014, a fairly remarkable effort given their age and the degree of attachment to them by the Russian Orthodox, particularly Russian Orthodox emigres, and all the more remarkable given Fatima's strong association with Catholicism..  The icon today is installed in the Kronstadt Naval Cathedral.

Theotokos of Port Arthur icon, which also was taken to Fatima in 2003 and 2014 by Russian Orthodox faithful and which had also been lost.  It was found in 1998 by Russian Orthodox pilgrims in a Jerusalem antique shop.

Bicycle Delivery Boy, aged 13, Oklahoma City.

$5.00/week.  On this day, in 1917.  Again, note the surprisingly high standard of dress.

Teenage blacksmiths, March 15, 1917

Another one from Oklahoma City.

The bicycle messenger

Manley Creasson, age 13 or 14.  $15.00 every two weeks.  Oklahoma City, on this day, in 1917.

The Child Newsies of Oklahoma City, March 15, 1917