Airport flaps and the law of unintended consequences. Parking should be free? No, it shouldn't, and it actually isn't.

 

Flying back from Tulsa, Oklahoma.  A trip which entails going from Tulsa to Denver (cheaply) and then from Denver to Casper (expensively).  Parking while you are in Tulsa is hardly going to be a significant element of your costs.

You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free except the Grace of God. You cannot earn that or deserve it.

Maddie Ross in True Grit (written by Charles Portis)

I sometimes get the feeling recently that the Star Tribune is looking for something to do.  It probably needs something to do as its paper declines to the size of a large pamphlet and its reduced to running columns from the national syndicates.

Maybe not, but it's hard to look at the story on airport parking at the Natrona County International Airport as a real story.  Or at least its hard to get all worked up about it.  But I suppose its a legitimate story.

Here's the deal.

The airport is putting in some new parking, but it isn't in yet.  It won't be, maybe, for a long time, as its part of the airport's strategic plan, not a present project.

Big deal, you might say.

Well, it sort of is, maybe, in that there's a Wyoming state law that provides:

For public convenience, commissioners or boards having jurisdiction to regulate parking of vehicles shall provide free parking areas adequate to accommodate at least twenty percent of the number of vehicle parking spaces for which a fee is charged.

That's nice, eh?

Well, it is. And it was a law that was backed by former Natrona County Democratic legislator, Dick Sadler.

So, what's the deal, you may ask?

Well, the free parking is 1.5 miles distant from the terminal.  Quite a ways.  Probably nobody is going to park there.  At least not very many people, and not very often.

The tribune, alerted to this (it seems to have come up in recent airport board meetings), interviewed Natrona County Airport Board president Joe MacGuire on this.  MacGuire, who holds a pilots license (and whose father once kept a really neat A26 Invader out at the airport), is also a Republican state representative from Natrona County.  He tends to be blunt.  So, he told the Tribune that he knew it was a long ways away and admitted that its unlikely to be used.  He even stated , about the law;“It was kind of added in there at the very end and wasn’t even placed in a part of the statute that directly deals with parking,  Honestly, it’s kind of an unfunded mandate"

You know, it is an unfunded mandate.

Now, this is just the sort of thing that's fun for some people to get their back's arched up about.  Dick Sadler, the former legislator who often focused on Democratic populist type things while in the legislature has been working on this, apparently, out at the Airport and stated about the situation; "I passed that law and they hate my guts for it."

M'eh.

I very much doubt that.

But some folks are mad.  One friend of mine with far left political leanings commented "It's always obnoxious when rich people like MacGuire are quoted saying shit like, 'I wish everything at the airport was free.' I'm sure he's not really that much of a tool."

A very nice mural, obviously put up before terrorist attacks made extra security necessary, at the airport.  I have no doubt that most of these folks don't walk to walk 1.5 miles to the terminal. . . but I also have no doubt that saving $20.00 makes much of a difference to their trip.

MacGuire did say that, in the interview, but maybe he just deserves credit for being honest.

Consider the following.   The airport is only within $33,000 of going into the red.  That's really tight.  According to MacGuire the free parking at the airport costs the airport  $165,000. That makes quite a difference.

And now we learn, on top of it, that Allegiant Air is pulling out of Casper, and that will cost the airport $26,000.  With that loss, that $33,000 in the black becomes only $7,000.

That's really tight.

And as the airport manager noted, that's just the direct costs to the airport, not the ancillary loss, and that's likely to occur.  So that $26,000 direct loss is likely to become a bigger loss.  Indeed, it almost certainly will. Quite a few of those Allegiant travelers would have, well, parked at the airport while they were in Los Vegas (which is where Allegiant flew to from here).  That's a loss.  So, we can probably say that bare minimum, at least right now, the airport has probably less than a $5,000 margin, post Allegiant, before it goes into the red.

And while "free parking" is just the sort of "looking out for the average man" type of program that folks like to get behind, in this case, it makes darned little sense in general.

Indeed, the common thesis behind such things is that this protects the interest of the little guy. That would presuppose, in this instance, that the little guy is able to afford a ticket, set by the airlines not the airport, to fly out of Casper.  Most Casperites can in fact afford to fly out of here, but its so expensive that many, including most experienced travelers, actually choose to drive to Denver and catch a plane from there. The most expensive leg of air travel in and out of Casper is the flight to Denver or Salt Lake City.

The B Concourse (United Air Lines) in Denver.

Indeed, generally if you do that (and maybe you have to), you then park your car in a public lot that's so far from the actual Denver terminal that its located just outside of Dallas, Texas.  Or at least it feels that way.  And you catch a bus from there to the airport terminal.

Ground Transportation, Denver International Airport.

All of which makes the "free parking" at the Natrona County International Airport more than a little bit absurd.  You can shave off a little of the costs of prolonged parking, sure, but not much.  And any free parking is always going to be second best and always, therefore, going to entail an added element of risk for whatever you left there.  All this means that the thought was nice, but extremely unrealistic.

 

The view from Salt Lake City's airport.  Like a lot of business travelers, I go to both airports a great deal.

Something that the residents of the County don't appreciate much, I think, is that the airport is a real gem.  We're very lucky to have it. We're so acclimated to it that we don't realize what a major piece of infrastructure it is.  The runways are massive.  Some of the runways, I'd note, are retired from use and aren't maintained, and there's no plans to put them back in use. That's a real shame.

The entire airport is a legacy of the Second World War.  It was the third airport in the county, replacing a second that is now the Town of Bar Nunn.  There's no earthly way that Bar Nunn airport, which wasn't even completely flat, could serve the needs of the county today.  Not even close.  It was likely barely adequate at the time it closed.  The Natrona County International Airport was built as a training airbase for B-24s and B-17s during World War Two, on a much flatter piece of ground, and the runways are numerous and enormous.  Beyond that, probably a majority of the hangers date to the Second World War and are gigantic. The airport complex it self features numerous buildings that date from the original airbase as well.  It's a huge, and great, airport.  Probably the closest thing to it in the state is Cheyenne's municipal airport, once a major stop for transcontinental air mail runs, but it's a shadow of what Casper's airport is.*

The airport receives quite a bit of international traffic, given its great facilities.  If kept up, and they're trying, it'll continue to.  Better yet, if the retired runways could be put back in use it would be fantastic, but there's no money to do that.**

 

British Antarctic Survey airplane at the Natrona County International Airport.  This is a common site at our airport.  Surprisingly, they did not fly here from the UK for the free parking.  Go figure.

Which takes us back to parking.  The airport's master plan is to put in new parking near the terminal, and it will include public parking, so that will solve the problem.

But it won't solve the short funding problem.

And, everything that legislators mandate must be "free", no matter what it is, in the end, isn't.  It's a reverse tax of some sort, or it just becomes a public impossibility.  Free health care, free college, free highways, whatever, aren't really free.  When there are few public "frees" its easy to appreciate that, when there are thousands of such mandates, however, they cease to be.

Which doesn't mean that they aren't worthwhile.  Some are. Some are not.  One like this, in its intent, is perfectly understandable.

But it isn't free.

__________________________________________________________________________________

*Indeed I'll note here that the location of the Wyoming Air National  Guard's infrastructure at the Cheyenne airport is somewhat unfortunate.  The Natrona County International Airport was built by the United States Army Air Corps and it has everything, including size and an out of town location, that an airbase needs. Cheyenne's airport is surrounded by the town, on the other hand (you can circumnavigate the darned thing by car) and is smaller.  In terms of placement it wouldn't matter whether the Guard's airbase was in Casper or Cheyenne and the only reason I can think of it being in Cheyenne is that its close to F. E. Warren Air Force Base, which is also in Cheyenne. But F. E. Warren houses missile wings and nothing else, and doesn't have a large air strip itself. The aircraft at F. E. Warren are helicopters.

Maybe this is something that Natrona County should ponder, although over the years some super huge hangers have been built for the Air Guard in Cheyenne and it is, no doubt, too darned late now.

**Military traffic. . . is anyone listening?

The Big Picture: Two Harbors, Minnesota. September 1, 1917

Friday Farming: "Trump’s olive siege of farming fortress Europe".

It's mostly the headline that caught my attention on this one:

Trump’s olive siege of farming fortress Europe

Brussels fears that fast-moving US trade case could undermine €58 billion-per-year Common Agricultural Policy.

But this item is quite interesting:

For Brussels, the case could set an alarming precedent. Under the sacrosanct Common Agricultural Policy, the EU pours about 40 percent of its budget into farm subsidies and it is highly protective of any trade investigation that questions the legality of those payments. Last year, Brussels pushed back hard against Australia’s moves to put tariffs on Italian tinned tomatoes.

40% of the budget in farm subsidies?  Wow.

Does that mean 40% of the EU's overall budget, or of its Common Agricultural Policy budget?  It appears to mean 40% of its actual budget, which would be an impressive figure.

This fight apparently comes about due to olives:

The U.S. Department of Commerce opened a probe last month to determine whether to slap duties on ripe olives from Spain, after Californian producers argued their Iberian rivals receive an unfair advantage because of the EU’s lavish farm subsidy scheme.

I do like Spanish olives.

The plank in our own eye. Considering the memorials again.

Why do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye and never notice the great log in your own?  And how dare you say to your brother, "Let me take that splinter out of your eye," when, look, there is a great log in your own?

Hypocrite! Take the log out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother's eye.

Matthew, Chapter 7.

Recently I made several posts on the big battles about the Confederate memorials.  From those it's probably pretty clear that I have mixed feelings about the whole thing.  On one hand, I think that most of those memorials went up in the teens and twenties riding a the crest of the "Lost Cause" myth that did violence to history itself.  On the other hand, I also think that they stand as reminders as to how things were viewed when they were put up, and I think that's valuable in and of itself.  One thing I noted there was that perhaps a page should be taken out of the book on how Indian War memorials have been handled in the US, in which I stated:

All over there's been a movement to remove monuments that were erected in earlier times to things that now are recognized as morally wrong.  Yale University, for example, has been fighting over the removal of symbols that demonstrate that some of its early donors were slave holders.  But removing them won't change that fact.  At least one other university went through something similar as well.  Probably almost any Eastern university has some money that came, originally, out of human trafficking and something that recalls that in honorific form.  Removing that causes that to be forgotten, it doesn't change the fact that it occurred. And it needs to be recalled that it occurred, and that something about earlier generations even celebrated it, or at least could but it out of mind.  Taking the evidence away doesn't correct the wrong, it just dulls the memory until it is erased entirely.

Indeed, such monuments, in my view, can serve as monuments to a greater historical reality, and that's what's occurred in my region of the country.  There are a lot of monuments put up in the early 20th Century to people and events involved in the Indian War that were massively one sided and even racist, as we'd view that now.  Some have come down, such as the "First White Man's Cabin" marker here in Natrona County.  But most have not. Rather, efforts have been made to correctly name things, such as changing the Little Big Horn battle ground to that name (which was always used here, oddly enough) form Custer Battleground, and where older monuments exist new explanatory ones have been added that enhance the understanding of what actually occurred.

Monument at the Fetterman Battleground, placed in the early 20th Century.  The battleground itself has a large number of very good explanatory signs that explain the battle and what occurred there.

Something continued to make me uncomfortable about all that, however, and I think I can say why, even though I was processing it at the time.

Somehow it didn't occur to me that I'd taken a photograph of just such a memorial location recently when I posted the topic, but I hadn't put it up yet.  I just put it up on two of our companion blogs and I think this helps focus my queasy feeling over the whole things.  This would be my recent post on Some Gave All, which focuses (or has come to focus) on memorials of all types.  Here's the entry in its entirety. We'll break it down from there:

Some Gave All: The Sundance, Wyoming Rest Stop Memorials.: 

 Memorials at the Sundance Wyoming Rest Stop.

I usually don't put a bunch of memorials, even at one single spot, in one single post.  Each, I generally feel, deserves its own post as each is its own topic, in terms of what it commemorates.

 Black Hills Sign at the Sundance Wyoming Rest Stop.

I'm making an exception here, however, as these are grouped so nicely, they seem to require a singular treatment. 

The first item we address is the Black Hills sign. This sign discusses the Black Hills, which straddle the Wyoming/South Dakota border.

 Crook County sign.

The second sign discusses Crook County, named after Gen. George Crook, and in which Sundance is situated.

The sign oddly doesn't really go into Crook himself, but then its a memorial for the county, not the general.  Still a controversial general, Crook came into this region in the summer campaign of 1876 which saw him go as far north as southern Montana before meeting the Sioux and Cheyenne at Rosebud several days prior to Custer encountering them at Little Big Horn.  Crook engaged the native forces and then withdrew in a move that's still both praised and condemned.  At the time of the formation of Crook County in 1888 he was sufficiently admired that the county was named after him, at a time at which he was still living.

 Custer Expedition Memorial.

Finally, the Rest Stop is the location of an old monument noting the passage of Custer's 1874 expedition into the Black Hills, which is generally regarded as the precursor of the European American invasion of the Black Hills and the Powder River Expedition of 1876.  Obviously, it's more complicated than that, but its safe to say that the discovery of gold in 1874 gave way to a gold rush which, in turn, made conflict with the Sioux, who had taken over the Black Hills (by force) from the Crow, inevitable.

This memorial is interesting in the super heated atmosphere of today given that the historical view has really changed since 1940, when this roadside monument was dedicated (surprisingly late, I'd note, compared to similar Wyoming monuments). In 1940 Custer was still regarded as a hero.  By the 1970s, however, he was regarded in the opposite fashion, by and large, at least in terms of his popular portrays are concerned.  The 1874 expedition into the Black Hills is not favorably recalled in history now at all.

I have to wonder, however, in terms of the history if this expedition changed history the way it is recalled.  The Black Hills always seem to be an attractant.  They attracted the Sioux who took them (in living memory in 1874) from the Crows and it seems highly likely that they would would have attracted European Americans as well.  Certainly they continued to even after the hopes of gold seekers were dashed.

Now, it's obviously the marker to the Black Hills Expedition of 1874 that has my focus here.  Let's take a second look at that memorial, and what it says, and what I said about it:

 Custer Expedition Memorial.

Finally, the Rest Stop is the location of an old monument noting the passage of Custer's 1874 expedition into the Black Hills, which is generally regarded as the precursor of the European American invasion of the Black Hills and the Powder River Expedition of 1876.  Obviously, it's more complicated than that, but its safe to say that the discovery of gold in 1874 gave way to a gold rush which, in turn, made conflict with the Sioux, who had taken over the Black Hills (by force) from the Crow, inevitable.

This memorial is interesting in the super heated atmosphere of today given that the historical view has really changed since 1940, when this roadside monument was dedicated (surprisingly late, I'd note, compared to similar Wyoming monuments). In 1940 Custer was still regarded as a hero.  By the 1970s, however, he was regarded in the opposite fashion, by and large, at least in terms of his popular portrays are concerned.  The 1874 expedition into the Black Hills is not favorably recalled in history now at all.

I have to wonder, however, in terms of the history if this expedition changed history the way it is recalled.  The Black Hills always seem to be an attractant.  They attracted the Sioux who took them (in living memory in 1874) from the Crows and it seems highly likely that they would would have attracted European Americans as well.  Certainly they continued to even after the hopes of gold seekers were dashed.

And now let's take a second look at how the State of Wyoming is handling the setting for this memorial today:

Some Gave All: The Sundance, Wyoming Rest Stop Memorials.: 

 Memorials at the Sundance Wyoming Rest Stop.

I wonder if you see what I'm seeing here?

Now, this location is in the Black Hills itself and just over the South Dakota state line.  The Black Hills have been the focus of a protracted argument between the Sioux, the United States, and basically South Dakota and Wyoming for decades, with that focus being very sharp since the 1970s.  Their argument is that the Black Hills are sacred to them, and that the United States stole it.

Let's consider the actual history of this for just a moment.

George Armstrong Custer.  Civil War general, post war colonel.  Hero of the Civil War in his own day, and still to those who study Michigan's cavalry in that war.  Hero of the Indian Wars to the public during his life and certainly for a time after his death, but controversial and somewhat disliked officer to his fellow officers and men.  Genocidal agent in revisionist histories of the 1970s and bad commander serving a dubious cause in modern times. But the same guy the whole time, really.

Custer went into the Black Hills on a military expedition, with part of that expressed military expedition being to explore the region for economic minerals.  That surely violated at least the spirit of the treaty of the late 1860s that had carved this region out for the Sioux.

Now, we should note, this this wasn't George Armstrong Custer's idea.  He was a soldier and he was ordered to go there.  The decision to look at the Black Hills was done by the Administration, and no matter what we think of it, it truly was hedging the bets on the treat that was entered into by the prior Administration.  Grant was the President, and he was generally fairly sympathetic to the Indians conceptually, even if in terms of actual policy they really lost out under him.  Andrew Johnson's administration had concluded the Treaty of 1868, which reserved the Black Hills for the Sioux, who truly did regard it as sacred. None of that had anything to do with Col. Custer, who was simply following orders.

 Crow Indians in Montana in 1908. These two men are old enough to have fought against the Sioux in their youth.

It did have something to do, however, with the Crow. When the Sioux received the Black Hills it recognized, in effect, that they'd conquered them from teh Crow.  But in 1874 the Crow had not acknowledged that at all.  Indeed, the amazing thing acout the Crow is how tolerant they'd been in putting up with US blundering on the whole topic of Sioux expansion onto the plains and into t he rangeland of northern Wyoming and Montana, which was theirs by right of long occupation.  Indeed,t he Crow had been loosely allied with the US in Red Cloud's War and had offered to throw in with the US in a conclusive fashion prior to the Fetterman disaster.  If Col. Carrington had taken the offer up chances are that the Crow would have turned the tied and the Sioux would have been pushed out of the Powder River Basin and back to the Black Hills prior to 1868.  That the Crow were fighting for the entire area was well known to Americans of the time, if wholly forgotten now.  Indeed, one old Frontiersman present at the 1868 council noted to a Sioux chief, regarding the Black Hills, "you just stole it from the Crow, who stole it from someone else".  If the Crow "stole" the Black Hills I have no idea, but they'd certainly been fighting to hold or recover it at least as early as the 1840s.

 Two Crow women in the very early 20th Century.  These women would have been born and have grown to adulthood in the 19th Century when memories of Crow possession of the Black Hills were still strong.  Note the title, which would be regarded as offensive today.

The Sioux, for their part, invaded the area as they were being pushed out of the upper Midwest by European American expansion.  It's hard not to sympathize with them on that, but at the same time their reaction was basically an invasion of their neighbors to the west, an action that was followed by their allies, the Cheyenne, who interestingly are not a closely related people.  The Cheyenne, for their part, were pushed out of the Great Lakes region by the Ojibwa.   The Sioux, interestingly enough, had been allied with the British in the Midwest against the United States, providing an example of how Europeans entered into alliances with native peoples and vice versa.  The first combat between the US and the Sioux on the plains, however, came not over a land contest, but because an Army unit positioned itself between a Sioux band and a Crow band in an attempt to enforce the official US policy of peace on the plains.  The Sioux asked them to move, and they wouldn't, so they were attacked as a result.  This was, if I recall correctly, in the 1840s.

All of which may be more or less interesting, but put in context, it makes this entire story rather confusing in terms of who is right and who is wrong.  The US should not have been exploring the Black Hills for economic minerals, even if it wasn't officially seeking to violate any treaties.  The US also really shouldn't have given the Black Hills solely to the Sioux in 1868 as that violated a long and rightly held claim of the Crows.  Should the Sioux have pushed the Crows out of the Black Hills?  That doesn't really seem right either.  There doesn't seem to be any clean hands in this story, except perhaps that of the Crows.

Wyoming roadside monument dating from the 50s or 60s commemorating the fight between the Crows and the Shoshone, and retelling one of the versions of the Crow heart story.  Notable on this sign is the retelling of the positive attributes of Chief Washakie which included that "No white man's scalp hung in this chief's teepee."  Would this be politically correct today.  The Crow, it should be noted, can't even seem to catch a break in signs of this type.

So what's the point, should all these signs be updated and corrected?

Santa Fe Plaza Obelisk, Santa Fe Plaza, Santa Fe New Mexico, commemorating certain Indian Wars battles in New Mexico.

This inscription reads:  "To the heroes who have fallen in various battles with [            ] Indians in the Territory of New Mexico.".  The word "savage" was removed from the memorial.  Was this an improvement, or the erasure of a historical view that we'd do well to recall that it was once commonly held?

No, I think not.

Rather, these signs serve as memorials not only in the context of those who placed them, but also as reminders of previously held common views. We would do well to recall that those views were held, and why, even if we disagree with them.  We won't learn that by tearing them down.

Co. K, 2nd Indiana Infantry, Indiana National Guard. August 31, 1917.

Send Off Day for the 27th Division. The New York National Guard leaves for Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina. August 30, 1917.

Send Off Day Poster.

On this day in 1917 the State of New York held a massive parade in New York City for its sons in the National Guard. Those men formed the 27th Division.

The parade lasted a massive five hours.  The dignitaries in the reviewing stand included former President Theodore Roosevelt.  4,000 New York City policemen were deployed to control a crowed that was estimated to reach as high as 2,000,000 spectators.

 Col. James S. Boyer. Washington Arch Square in the background.

The New York National Guard's 27th Division had a fair number of dignitaries and representatives from well known families itself amongst 24,000 members in and of itself.

Colonel Cornelius Vanderbilt III, Commander of the 22nd Engineers, New York National Guard.  In civilian life Vanderbilt was an engineer associated with his family's railroad interest but often on the outs with his parents due to a marriage that they disapproved of.

The unit wasn't going to France yet, but actually just leaving the State of New York for Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina.  And the New York National Guard wasn't contained completely within the 27th Division.  Other units remained in training in the state and would be deployed to Army training camps in the coming weeks, resulting in more, if not quite so massive, farewell parades.

The unit Vanderbilt commanded at this time, the 22nd Engineers, New York National Guard.

 

Watching from downtown New York.

 

Major General John Francis O'Ryan, commander of the 27th Division.  He was a lawyer and a life long resident of New York City.  He was also a rare National Guard officer in that he was a graduate of the Army War College.  The youngest division commander in the Army at the time of his arrival in Europe, he was also the only National Guard officer still in command of a division by the war's end.

Lt. Col. Paul Loeser, Commander of the Eighth Coast Defense Command (coastal artillery).

The parade also included units of the New York National Guard's Coastal Artillery.  Coast Artillery is something we don't think much about anymore, but it was a major defensive organization at the time by necessity and it was a natural for the National Guard, given that Guardsmen could train in place on the same weapons they'd man in war.

Col. Sidney Grant, Commander of the Thirteenth Coast Defense Artillery.  By the time this phoograph was taken the day must have grown hot as Col. Grant has taken off his service coat.

 

 Maj.Wilbur T. Wright, Commander of the Second Battalion, Second Field Artillery, New York National Guard.

Col. John J. Byrne, the Commander of the Ninth Coast Defense.

Scenes like this were playing out all over the nation as National Guard units were being sent off to training camps and ultimately to the war.  New York's example was an unusually large one, but then the populace state had a very large National Guard establishment.

Conscription in the English Speaking World. Passing an Anniversary

We've been posting some on conscription and today is a World War One conscription anniversary.

 

The Irish Canadian Rangers, a unit raised, but not fully filled, in Quebec, drawing from Irish Canadians.  It had to be filled out by Irish recruits from Ireland, and then was folded into another Canadian unit.  In some ways, its story is emblematic of the situation in Quebec during the Great War.

Not in the United States, however. Rather, its the centennial of the Military Service Act which, ineffectively, ushered in conscription in Canada for the Great War.

Canada was a country with a population of only 8,000,000 people during the great war.  It's almost a shock to realize how small the population really was.  23% of that population was made up of the Quebecois.  During the war 400,000 Canadians, more than a few of whom were English immigrants, although the majority were not, volunteered to serve in Canadian army.  Full mobilization, for countries with universal conscription, is usually regarded as 10% of the population, all male in the traditional form of conscription.  So Canada mustered men at the rate of 5% of the population.  Pretty darned impressive really for an all volunteer force. And that doesn't include those contributions from Prince Newfoundland, and Labrador, which were not part of Canada at the time.

Royal Newfoundland Regiment crossing the Rhine, 1918. This is not the Canadian army.

By 1917 the well had somewhat run dry in Canada. And in these regards it was facing the difficult choice that other English speaking countries had already faced.

Conscription was not a strong land army tradition in any of them.  The English had never had conscription for ground troops in modern times, although it did have it for sailors in the 18th and early 19th Century.  Indeed, conscription of sailors gave rise to the War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom as the Royal Navy felt free to remove Englishmen from American ships to serve in the ongoing war with Napoleonic France.  There's more to that to be said, but given as this isn't an entry on the War of 1812 of the Napoleonic Wars I'll forgo telling it.  Anyhow, that did mean that England had a bit of a tradition of conscription, but not for land armies. That came to an end with the British Military Service Act of 1916 which made men from age 18 to 40 liable for service in the English Army.

The application of that act, of course, gave rise to the Easter Rebellion in Ireland which ultimately lead to the Anglo Irish War and an independent Ireland.  Conscription in Ireland was pointless, really, as the Irish were already serving in such high numbers.  In the end, conscription was likely necessary for the British in the war, but the cost proved to be great in terms of permanently severing the UK's political ties with Ireland.  Perhaps an added element of irony in regards to that is present however as the UK would resort to conscription very early in World War Two and the Irish, now citizens of the "Free State", once again volunteered to serve in the British Army in high numbers.  Very unusually, and in recognition of the Cold War, the UK would reinstate conscription in peacetime in 1948 but would phase it back out a decade latter and official end it in 1960.

Australia put conscription up for vote twice during the Great War, and both times it was defeated, although narrowly.  Australia would contribute 416,809 men to the Australian army during World War One, a massive contribution given its also small population.

An Australian pro conscription poster.  The Australians weren't persuaded and while plenty of Australians went to help, they were all volunteers.

Australia's conscription story was more complicated for World War Two during which it first made all unmarried men of 21 years of age liable for military training.  In 1942 it introduced conscription, but it wasn't until the end of the war that Australia deployed conscripts overseas.  Australian soldiers who were conscripts stand apart ab bit, during World War Two, as they did not measure up to the same aggressive quality, at first, that Australian volunteers did.  Australia twice reintroduced conscription after the World War Two, once for the Korean War and once for the Vietnam War, but unlike other nations that kept prolonged peacetime drafts, they kept them tied to the wars themselves.

New Zealand had a friendlier view towards compulsory military training than Australia, having had a militia history that is somewhat analogous to that of the United States. While almost every English Commonwealth nation had been looking at compulsory military training prior to World War One, that movement was fairly well received in New Zealand. New Zealand, therefore, had started compulsory military training for teenagers in 1909, exempting conscientious objectors.  Conscientious objectors, however, were not well regarded.  Having already established compulsory military training and having effectively created an army reserve prior to the war, it is not surprising that New Zealand followed the UK by enacting conscription in 1916.

That brings us back to Canada.

Canada had a vigorous militia system prior to the Great War and readily adapted that enthusiastically to its army that went overseas in World War One.  It was an all volunteer system, however.  Noticeably absent amongst the volunteers were the Quebecois.

There are undoubtedly a variety of reasons for this but chief amongst them were that the Quebecois, a sizable minority of the Canadian population at 23% of that population, but concentrated in Quebec where they were a majority, did not regard the United Kingdom as the mother country and had a distance and separate history from France, having been severed from Imperial France during France's royal Bourbon period.  They did not see the war in Europe as their war and were not keen in serving in it.  Their view cannot be regarded, quite frankly, as unreasonable.  By 1917 the Canadian government was ready to attempt to force the issue which was largely unsuccessful. There was large scale opposition to conscription in Canada and in the end only 24,132 conscripts were sent to France.  The word "only" has to be used with some caution, of course, as that's over a division of men and 124,000 men were drafted and therefore added to the army.  Not everyone in a North American army in any war has made it overseas, so perhaps this contribution was more significant than supposed.

Canada would repeat this history during World War Two. Canada enacted conscription at the start of the war but it was overwhelmingly opposed in  Quebec.  As a compromise Canadian conscripts were not liable for overseas service at first but by late 1944 this was changed.  During World War Two only 12,908, contemptuously called "zombies" were sent by order overseas, although quite a few draftees volunteered for overseas service.  The repeat of conscription during World War Two, however, served to worsen relations between the Quebecois and English speaking Canadians which would have an impact after the war.  Canada has not attempted to enact conscription since the war.

Other Commonwealth nations had other experiences with conscription.  I do not believe that it was attempted in the Union of South Africa during World War One or Two, no doubt because of lingering resentment against the British amongst the Afrikaans population during that period.  In 1967 the country started to conscript white men over the age of 16, a young age for conscription by that time, and then phased it back out in 1993 after the collapse of apartheid. The country has toyed with reintroducing it in recent years.  It's neighbor to the north, Rhodesia, enacted conscription following its declaration of independence from the UK modeling it on the British system.  I don't know if Zimbabwe retains it today.

Which leaves us with the US.

We've explored that a bit in recent posts.  Conscription was not a popular concept going into World War One by any means, having only strictly existed during the Civil War.  The Wilson Administration was so concerned it would be poorly received that it attempted to camouflage its nature by calling it "Selective Service", a name it still officially retains in the United States, under the theory that the country would be fooled that the country was simply selecting volunteers, more or less.  Nobody was fooled.

 Selecting the first U.S. draftee during World War One.

Generally, Americans volunteered enthusiastically, and enthusiastically accepted the draft, during the Great War.  Nonetheless that well known story isn't as simple as it is often related to be. There were two uprising amongst southern yeoman populations against conscription during the war, one of which we've already discussed.  These were serious armed uprisings, not mere protests.  And hard left organizations, which were in some ways at the peak of their popularity in the country, were dead set against conscription.  Organizations like the IWW actively campaigned against it.

The US did have compulsory militia duty on the part of military aged males from the colonial period up until after the Civil War, and that's a type of conscription, so this story isn't quite as clear as it might at first seem.  That had passed away by the late 1800s, however, and the memory of it seems to have been largely forgotten.  So the World War One draft was an unusual event.  After the war conscription was halted, only to be reintroduced just prior to World War Two, but with very narrow support.  It went away again after World War Two but, just as in the UK, it came back in 1948 with the need to form a large Cold War Army.  It was retained in the US up until 1975, although nobody was conscripted after 1973.

Jeffrey Mellinger, who was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1972 and who remained in the Army until he retired in 2011, making him the last American serving who entered the military as a conscript.

The View from the San Jacinto Monument

A live webcam, right on the harbor. 

It is a very strange thing . . .

to look at photographs of a disaster and recognize places in it.

 

Downtown Houston.

I'm not going to second guess anything or anybody on this.  It's simply a shock to see it.

The past several years I've spent a lot of time in Houston.  In terms of large cities, I'm fairly certain that only Denver Colorado has claimed more of my time.  As a result, I've become pretty familiar with parts of the enormous city, although because it is an enormous city I certainly don't know all of it by any means.  Indeed, I'm really only familiar with the downtown, the energy corridor, and various bits and pieces of the town.  Having said that, I've been in it so much that it's one of the large American cities I'm comfortable with to a degree.

Given that, while there are millions of people in Houston, I can't but feel that I have a bit of a personal connection to the city.

Well, God bless those there.

People will post prayers, of course, and they should. For some reason, I always think of the Navy Hymn when things like this occur.  Perhaps because Hurricanes and their aftermath are so closely connected to the sea.  Indeed, they're the sea come on land, really.  So, that being the case, I'll post the text here.  Give some thought to Houston and its residents today.

Eternal Father, strong to save,

Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,

Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep

Its own appointed limits keep;

Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,

For those in peril on the sea!

O Christ! Whose voice the waters heard

And hushed their raging at Thy word,

Who walkedst on the foaming deep,

And calm amidst its rage didst sleep;

Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,

For those in peril on the sea!

Most Holy Spirit! Who didst brood

Upon the chaos dark and rude,

And bid its angry tumult cease,

And give, for wild confusion, peace;

Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,

For those in peril on the sea!

O Trinity of love and power!

Our brethren's shield in danger's hour;

From rock and tempest, fire and foe,

Protect them wheresoe'er they go;

Thus evermore shall rise to Thee

Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.

The Sad Emblem of American Industry, the Jeep: Fiat Chrysler looks at selling Jeep to Great Wall Motors

And I'm not thrilled about it.

The original, or almost the original. An abandoned M38 in rural North Dakota, a vehicle basically identical to the CJ2A and the immediate descendant of the Jeeps of World War Two.

I have a Jeep. It's the third one I've owned.

But not one of them was made by the same manufacturer.

My first was military M38A1.  It was made by Kaiser.

My second was a 1946 CJ2A.  It was a Willys.

My third, and current Jeep, is a Chrysler.

Now, we learn, Fiat Chrysler is pondering selling the Jeep line, which is doing well, to Great Wall Motors, a Chinese automobile maker.

Don't do it Fiat.

One of those silly little cars that Fiat is known for.

Jeeps were the original vehicle in their class and, in the US, they only survivor in that class.  Once populated with rivals, some very good rivals (oh, Toyota Land Cruiser, where are thou?), its' outlasted hem all as it stayed true to its original off the track form. The others morphed into bigger family trucksters, or weenie pathetic SUVs.  Not the Jeep.

And that's how the Jeep has managed to endure being traded around like a prized marble from maker to maker as its owners became troubled.  Willys, Kaiser, American Motors, Chrysler-Fiat.  And now, potentially, Great Wall Motors.

Frankly, the entire Chrysler episode worried me in the first place.  Not because I dislike Chrysler's, I like them, or rather I like Dodge.  No, because Chrysler has been in trouble ever since the  Cold War ended.  And as part of that the Chrysler brand has been tossed around a fair amount itself, going through a Daimler ownership on to an American holding company and then on to that maker of silly little Italian cars.  Fortunately, all those holders have avoided messing with Jeep, and messing much with Dodge, other than the Daimler attempt to put European diesels in Dodge vans, a Germanic flight of fancy that worked out about as well as Operation Barbarossa.

Now Fiat, which presumably doesn't really completely grasp its American market, or maybe doesn't care, is pondering selling Jeep to Great Wall, which certainly doesn't.

Jeep won't survive Great Wall.

Jeep is a red blooded American vehicle and, quite frankly, only soccer moms in New Jersey track homes are going to buy a Chinese Jeep.

The whole thing, really, is sadly symbolic of American industry in general, or maybe the United States in general.  From the arsenal of democracy, to a major industrial power with a strong rural base, to an anemic also ran that grows acres of safe blue grass for cubicle dweller dog walkers who buy, and must buy, everything from a rising non democratic Asian giant and rival.

A sad state of affairs.

The Big Picture: Co. G, 2nd Inf., Minnesota National Guard. Austin, Minnesota, Aug. 28th, 1917

Today In Wyoming's History: August 27

Today In Wyoming's History: August 27: 



1917:   Allen Tupper True receives a contract to paint eight oil on canvas murals for the Wyoming State Capitol in
Cheyenne. True was a prominent muralist who did a collection of prominent murals in the region.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Greybull Wyoming

Churches of the West: Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Greybull Wyoming:

This Catholic Church in Greybull Wyoming features Gothic and Romanesque features. The bell tower in particular is an interesting Romanesque addition to the existing church.

Advertising in history: Pabst Blue Ribbon Presents: The Greatest Beer Run Ever

I will confess to liking beer.

I'm not much of a fan of whiskey and the only wine I really like much is Chianti, but I rarely drink it. But, beer I like.  I don't care if it's pedestrian or not.

And, while I like best, in American beers, what are sometimes referred to as "craft beers' now, and my favorite beer, if you consider it that, is Guiness Stout, I'll also confess to liking Pabst Blue Ribbon.

PBR is in that class of beers which beer snobs snub, but that's just because they're beer snobs.  I like it.  And interestingly enough, over the past few years its undergone a revival as sort of the good, anti-craft, beer.  It has a big following, apparently, on the Pacific Coast's Northwest, which is otherwise a craft beer epicenter.  It's become sort of the working man's beer there.

So, here's to PBR and their interesting commemoration of an event during the Vietnam War.

Poster Saturday: Marine Corps recruiting poster, 1971.

The Vietnam War was still going on and we still had troops in the field, although the numbers were decreasing steadily.

In that atmosphere, and with a background of protest in the country, the Marine Corps released one of its most iconic recruiting posters of all time, riffing off of Lynne Anderson's popular country song of the year prior.

The Big Picture: Company G, Fourth Nebraska National Guard. August 26, 1917.

The Best Posts of the Week of August 20, 2017.

Best Posts of the Week of August 20, 2017.

Changing times. The centennial of the 94th Aero Squadron. August 20, 1917-2017.

Regional History, Buffalo South Dakota

Berlin Air Lift Rates

Rotary Sidewalk Clock, Casper Wyoming

Well I have to admit. . .

Blog Mirror: The Aerodrome; Maybe Berlin Airlift Rates were achieved.

The Houston Riots of August 23, 1917

Lex Anteinternet: The Houston Riots of August 23, 1917. The fate of Cpl. Baltimore

President Trump's August 21, 2017 Speech on the War In Afghanistan.