Saturday, July 27, 2019
July 27, 1919. Riots, halts and finishes.
White mob during the Chicago riot.
On this day in 1919 the Red Summer came to Chicago when race riots broke out following a young black man accidentally wondering onto the white area of an informally segregated beach. This caused whiles to react, resulting in their throwing rocks at black swimmers. The young man was killed in the process. Things descended from there with white mobs invading black areas. Authorities were intentionally slow to react. By the time the matter concluded on August 3, 23 blacks had died and 15 whites.
Illinois State Guardsman and Chicago policemen. Authorities were slow to call out the State Guard, but when 6,000 Guardsmen were deployed to the city the riots came to an end.
The riots in Chicago, which had a large black population and which was a target destination of the Great Migration, are generally regarded as the worst of the Red Summer. The city had been a powder keg all summer long and when violence erupted, white youth gangs were a major contributor to it, including the Hamburg Athletic Club which the then 17 year old future Mayor Daley was part of (his activities during the riots are unknown).
Ultimately the State of Illinois deployed the Illinois State Guard, deployment of the National Guard being impossible due to its not existing following its conscription during World War One. The State Guard forces, equipped largely with Spanish American War era arms, were not unsubstantial and the slowness in committing them and the lack of cooperation of the City of Chicago in addressing the violence contributed to the disaster.
Given the events, the cartoon run in the Chicago Tribune on this Sunday seems odd.
Cartoon from the Chicago Tribune, July 27, 1919.
Another disaster occurred at St. Ignatius Montana when fire destroyed the town.
In Iowa, the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy took the day off from moving, but not maintenance.
Progress itself was a concern in the Round the Rim trip of the Air Corps, as reported in the Cheyenne paper. The bomber detailed to the effort had done a nose digger the prior day in Jay, New York.
In France, Firmin Lambot came out the winner in that years Tour de France.
Firmin Lambot
Pray, hope, and don’t worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayer.
Pray, hope, and don’t worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayer.
St. Padre Pio
_________________________________________________________________________________
I'll confess that I'm not personally good at not worrying whatsoever.
St. Padre Pio
_________________________________________________________________________________
I'll confess that I'm not personally good at not worrying whatsoever.
Blog Mirror: A Bird Hunter's Road: Be a Good Guest
A Bird Hunter's Road: Be a Good Guest: Armed with the information-superhighway, more dependable vehicles and hopefully, more disposable income than our grandparents had, traveli...
Friday, July 26, 2019
Saturday, July 26, 1919, The 1919 Motor Transport Convoy goes to Denison and to a dance, the USS Wyoming goes through the Panama Canal.
The Saturday Evening Post for this day had a scene that was a bit out of season.
The Army's Motor Transport Convoy made 69 miles, a reduction over recent lengths, on this Saturday, July 26.
In Denison they were treated to the largest crowd in the town's history, a temporary shower bath in Washington Park, and a dance at the Courthouse Square.
On the same day, the USS Wyoming was going through the Panama Canal.
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Cross Examining the Lawyer
Years ago I gave a deposition in a case in which I'd written a coverage opinion on an insurance policy. It was a complicated detailed matter.
Before I was deposed, I went over and over what I'd written and what I'd based it on.
In the deposition, I closely stuck to my written opinion.
The party that based their decision on my opinion won the suit.
That's how these things go. A lawyer writes his opinion, puts in it what, in his professional judgement, he believes to be correct and important, and turns it in.
All of which leaves me wondering why people seriously believed that Robert Mueller had some deep personal opinion about anything he was going to blurt out, changing the course of history.
I mean. . seriously. You can't take your law from television.
Postscript
From CNN:
What a completely moronic headline.
Before I was deposed, I went over and over what I'd written and what I'd based it on.
In the deposition, I closely stuck to my written opinion.
The party that based their decision on my opinion won the suit.
That's how these things go. A lawyer writes his opinion, puts in it what, in his professional judgement, he believes to be correct and important, and turns it in.
All of which leaves me wondering why people seriously believed that Robert Mueller had some deep personal opinion about anything he was going to blurt out, changing the course of history.
I mean. . seriously. You can't take your law from television.
Postscript
From CNN:
Not a star, not a villain: Mueller's say nothing strategy confounds everyone
What a completely moronic headline.
Dissension in the local GOP
There's been some real movement inside the GOP itself in the state here that could have a major impact. And it's causing quite a rift in the party.
The party's Central Committee has been meeting and it proposed a new method of selecting the party's national delegates that would weight the votes of the smaller, less populated counties. Those counties are seen (although not entirely accurately) as considerably more conservative, and frankly considerably more in the tea party camp, than the more populated counties like Natrona and Laramie Counties.
This was received poorly, to say the least, by the larger counties and indeed, the dissension became blisteringly open when a Laramie County delegate opened the story up to the public through a Laramie County blog, starting off with:
Wow, an internecine dispute in which a committee member is accusing others of corruption is a pretty serious rift. And she goes on from there, stating:
You can link in to read the rest of that item if you wish to.
I don't know a thing about that blog or the person who wrote the article, but frankly that there's a rift in the GOP is rather obviously clear and was plain in the 2018 election. In that election, tea party elements and very hard right elements came to view the nominated Governor as some sort of unfairly nominated usurper, and were open about stating that. And prior to that, under Governor Mead's last term, there was a big rift between these elements and the Governor's office and more traditional Republicans.
It apparently doesn't stop there, as in today's Tribune the Natrona County delegates released a statement openly noting that they opposed the delegate change and went on to further note that the Central Committee vetted a proposal to score legislative votes with an eye towards declaring certain Republicans not to be Republicans if they voted to frequently in a manner contrary to the platform.
This is all a serious development and one that the state's GOP had better be very careful with. The GOP in Wyoming has been the absolutely dominant political party since the Clinton years, when the local Democratic Party simply collapsed. Since that time, the Democrats have not been able to muster any sort of serious reappearance in no small part as those remaining highly active are so far to the left of the average Wyomingite that they tend not to reflect anything but themselves. But a residual mainstream group of Democrats remain, something that the hard right Republicans are convinced caused Gordon to be nominated due to registration crossing over (which UW has proven to be statistically false) and if the GOP takes steps to drive its elected officials away, there's an obvious place for them to cross into.
Indeed, the GOP Central Committee may well want to recall that a selection of their influential legislators since the Clinton years were in fact former Democrats. And they may also wish to recall if a majority of counties chose not to go with the harder right candidates in 2018, they may start to wonder off from the GOP entirely if it weights certain views in a non democratic manner. A rift sufficiently serious that delegates from the state's two most populous counties are complaining about the Central Committee is a pretty serious rift.
As we so often post on the first couple of decades of the 20th Century, we'd pause here to take one big historical diversion to note an analogy. What the Central Committee did in terms of delegate selection is how the pre World War One German Reichstag operated for parliamentary seats and is why that body is disregarded as being democratic in spite of a wide franchise. German aristocracy has arranged for that as it assured continued support for an institution that didn't have popular support. And that arrangement helped fuel the violent extremism that came to a head in 1918 and which gave the world horrific results by 1932.
Not that we're going to have revolution in the streets by any means. . .but putting aside a more democratic process for a less democratic one, and then threatening to declare who can, and can't be a Republican not only has constitutional implications, its not politically wise.
The party's Central Committee has been meeting and it proposed a new method of selecting the party's national delegates that would weight the votes of the smaller, less populated counties. Those counties are seen (although not entirely accurately) as considerably more conservative, and frankly considerably more in the tea party camp, than the more populated counties like Natrona and Laramie Counties.
This was received poorly, to say the least, by the larger counties and indeed, the dissension became blisteringly open when a Laramie County delegate opened the story up to the public through a Laramie County blog, starting off with:
Beware of corruption at the Wyoming GOP
BY DANI OLSEN
Republicans, this is my call for you to open your eyes to what is happening behind closed doors in the Wyoming Republican Party’s State Central Committee.
I recently was elected as chairwoman of the Laramie County Republican Party. The chairperson is one of the three representatives of each county that becomes a member of the State Central Committee – the governing body of the State Party.
Having filled in as a proxy for the previous county chairman at previous State Central Committee meetings, I am not new to the process and the going-ons of the State Central Committee.
But, the special election meeting that was held in June left me feeling disgusted at the over-assertion of power that certain members of the State Central Committee believe they have. And I feel as the chairwoman of Laramie County that I owe it to the Republicans I represent in my county – heck, to all Republicans in the state – to be the whistleblower on what I can only describe as closed-door political corruption.
Wow, an internecine dispute in which a committee member is accusing others of corruption is a pretty serious rift. And she goes on from there, stating:
Now, back to my whistleblowing. The State Central Committee has long been controlled by a few members who do not represent Wyoming Republicans and who have long surpassed what most would view as a conservative length of service on the State Central Committee.
This group of individuals has an agenda it wishes to press that goes far outside of the Republican Party’s platform. You know who I am talking about. They have grown to adopt an “if you do not agree with me, you are not welcome in the party” mentality even if the issue you disagree with is not in the Republican platform.
You can link in to read the rest of that item if you wish to.
I don't know a thing about that blog or the person who wrote the article, but frankly that there's a rift in the GOP is rather obviously clear and was plain in the 2018 election. In that election, tea party elements and very hard right elements came to view the nominated Governor as some sort of unfairly nominated usurper, and were open about stating that. And prior to that, under Governor Mead's last term, there was a big rift between these elements and the Governor's office and more traditional Republicans.
It apparently doesn't stop there, as in today's Tribune the Natrona County delegates released a statement openly noting that they opposed the delegate change and went on to further note that the Central Committee vetted a proposal to score legislative votes with an eye towards declaring certain Republicans not to be Republicans if they voted to frequently in a manner contrary to the platform.
This is all a serious development and one that the state's GOP had better be very careful with. The GOP in Wyoming has been the absolutely dominant political party since the Clinton years, when the local Democratic Party simply collapsed. Since that time, the Democrats have not been able to muster any sort of serious reappearance in no small part as those remaining highly active are so far to the left of the average Wyomingite that they tend not to reflect anything but themselves. But a residual mainstream group of Democrats remain, something that the hard right Republicans are convinced caused Gordon to be nominated due to registration crossing over (which UW has proven to be statistically false) and if the GOP takes steps to drive its elected officials away, there's an obvious place for them to cross into.
Indeed, the GOP Central Committee may well want to recall that a selection of their influential legislators since the Clinton years were in fact former Democrats. And they may also wish to recall if a majority of counties chose not to go with the harder right candidates in 2018, they may start to wonder off from the GOP entirely if it weights certain views in a non democratic manner. A rift sufficiently serious that delegates from the state's two most populous counties are complaining about the Central Committee is a pretty serious rift.
As we so often post on the first couple of decades of the 20th Century, we'd pause here to take one big historical diversion to note an analogy. What the Central Committee did in terms of delegate selection is how the pre World War One German Reichstag operated for parliamentary seats and is why that body is disregarded as being democratic in spite of a wide franchise. German aristocracy has arranged for that as it assured continued support for an institution that didn't have popular support. And that arrangement helped fuel the violent extremism that came to a head in 1918 and which gave the world horrific results by 1932.
Not that we're going to have revolution in the streets by any means. . .but putting aside a more democratic process for a less democratic one, and then threatening to declare who can, and can't be a Republican not only has constitutional implications, its not politically wise.
Friday July 25, 1919. Marshalltown to Jefferson Iowa, 81 miles in 10.5 hours
If you look up the towns mentioned today, which is worth doing, you'll note that we're to the north of the current Interstate 80. While they both cross the nation more or less in the same areas, they're not the same road at all.
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
This morning the Mueller report was on television at the house. . .
and the pundits were already expressing disappointment with Mueller's testimony.
What the heck?
Mueller is a careful measured lawyer. It's really unlikely that he's going to come across like Sam Spade in the final scenes of The Maltese Falcon, let alone like Inspector Cleuceau in any Pink Panther film. So you are never going to hear 1) "Trump did him in with a candle stick in the drawing room" or 2) "Trump is as innocent as the day is long".
What the heck?
Mueller is a careful measured lawyer. It's really unlikely that he's going to come across like Sam Spade in the final scenes of The Maltese Falcon, let alone like Inspector Cleuceau in any Pink Panther film. So you are never going to hear 1) "Trump did him in with a candle stick in the drawing room" or 2) "Trump is as innocent as the day is long".
That's not Robert Mueller on the left.
Standards and non standards.
On my news feed, there's a story I didn't read, with the headline:
Jennifer Lopez Turns 50. Her scandalous love life exposed.
How odd.
I don't know, nor do I care, if Lopez has a "scandalous" love life, I'm just amazed that any press anywhere acknowledges that such a thing as a "scandalous love life" exists.
Yesterday some pop tart was celebrated for revealing that she's a "pan sexual". There's no such thing as a "pan sexual", and frankly, as we've otherwise noted here recently a couple of times, the various terms that are used in this area to describe behavior are probably generally wrong. That's another topic, but in an era when the standard of morality is set by television and varies, but not much, between such slop as Friends, The Big Bang Theory or Two Broke Girls, how could Lopez actually be scandalous?
I guess I'd have to read it to find out, but unless she's hanging out with Putin, Kim Jong-un and procuring for that Epstein dude, it'd be hard to figure out how any current entertainment reporter could find a scandal, let alone recognize one, that was high enough to meet the current bar.
Jennifer Lopez Turns 50. Her scandalous love life exposed.
How odd.
I don't know, nor do I care, if Lopez has a "scandalous" love life, I'm just amazed that any press anywhere acknowledges that such a thing as a "scandalous love life" exists.
Yesterday some pop tart was celebrated for revealing that she's a "pan sexual". There's no such thing as a "pan sexual", and frankly, as we've otherwise noted here recently a couple of times, the various terms that are used in this area to describe behavior are probably generally wrong. That's another topic, but in an era when the standard of morality is set by television and varies, but not much, between such slop as Friends, The Big Bang Theory or Two Broke Girls, how could Lopez actually be scandalous?
I guess I'd have to read it to find out, but unless she's hanging out with Putin, Kim Jong-un and procuring for that Epstein dude, it'd be hard to figure out how any current entertainment reporter could find a scandal, let alone recognize one, that was high enough to meet the current bar.
Thursday, July 24, 1919. A "Quiet and uneventful day" on the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy, Cedar Rapids to Marshalltown, Iowa. 75 miles in 9.5 hours. The Round The Rim flight takes off from Washington D.C. National Association of Negro Musicians meets in Chicago..
A typical day for the Motor Transport Convoy.
Breakdowns, rescues by the Militor, lunch and with the Red Cross. The Knights of Columbus, in this instance, provided refreshments and dinner at Marshalltown, Iowa.
A "Quiet and uneventful day".
It wasn't as quiet at Bolling Field at Washington D.C. where the U.S. Army commenced a second transcontinental expedition, this time by air.
A single Martin GMB bomber with five crewmen took off to circumnavigate the rim of the U.S. border, counter clockwise in what was billed the Round the Rim Flight.
The country had been crossed by air before, as indeed the country had been driven across before, but a giant flight around the periphery of the country was new. That the air branch of the Army would commences this while the Army was driving across the center of the country is a bit of an odd coincidence, if it is.
The flight by a single aircraft was about 10,000 miles in length, and it took until November to complete. Completion, we'd note, was a returning to Bolling Field.
The National Association of Negro Musicians commenced its first meeting in Chicago. It's the nation's oldest organization of black musicians and had formed that prior May.
African Americans had a strong presence in American music since it became a thing of its own. The Great Migration had brought, and was very much then bringing, African American musicians and forms of music north, and into the American mainstream at the time, with jazz and blues influenced musical forms very much on the rise. That the conference was held in Chicago, a northern city, cannot be regarded as an accident.
A "Quiet and uneventful day".
The Knights of Columbus were one of the many U.S. service organizations that responded to World War One. As we addressed earlier, an organization like the USO didn't exist during the Great War, and service organizations filled that roll instead. The war was now over, of course, but many of them were still acting in that role as mobilization wound down, and of course they would have responded to events like this in any event. The KoC is a Catholic service organization.
It wasn't as quiet at Bolling Field at Washington D.C. where the U.S. Army commenced a second transcontinental expedition, this time by air.
A single Martin GMB bomber with five crewmen took off to circumnavigate the rim of the U.S. border, counter clockwise in what was billed the Round the Rim Flight.
The country had been crossed by air before, as indeed the country had been driven across before, but a giant flight around the periphery of the country was new. That the air branch of the Army would commences this while the Army was driving across the center of the country is a bit of an odd coincidence, if it is.
The flight by a single aircraft was about 10,000 miles in length, and it took until November to complete. Completion, we'd note, was a returning to Bolling Field.
Stealing thunder? The Round The Rim Flight made the front page of the Casper paper.
African Americans had a strong presence in American music since it became a thing of its own. The Great Migration had brought, and was very much then bringing, African American musicians and forms of music north, and into the American mainstream at the time, with jazz and blues influenced musical forms very much on the rise. That the conference was held in Chicago, a northern city, cannot be regarded as an accident.
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
No. 10 Cat's new house guest is. . .
Boris Johnson.
And that's not the end of the world, contrary to the gloom and doom on Twitter.
I don't know anything about Johnson. A review of his Wikipedia bio reveals a man who has an excessively interesting personal history and pretty bad hair. An immediate calling to mind of Donald Trump occurs for more than one reason, which is why the left side of Twitter, which is the loudest part of the Twitterverse, as well as some of the press, is declaring his ascension to Prime Minister the end of British democracy.
Nah.
Good or bad, it isn't like the British have had a uniform set of excellent PM's before. And the fact that they haven't, and that the United Kingdom's democracy has survived, is oddly reassuring. The fact that its not credibly possible to imagine a Prime Minister causing the UK to end should mean, by extension, that those who feel the current American era of democracy is at a terminal low point would be wrong
Sure, you can pick up a lot of the zeitgeist based upon Johnson's rise. There's something in the political air of the western world right now which is causing governments to go in a certain direction even at the same time that those who claim an allegiance to perpetual "progress" to apoplexy. But no matter what one things one way or another, things keep on keeping on and are more durable than a person might suppose.
Larry, No. 10 Cat, Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, with former Prime Minister David Cameron and former President Barrack Obama.
And that's not the end of the world, contrary to the gloom and doom on Twitter.
I don't know anything about Johnson. A review of his Wikipedia bio reveals a man who has an excessively interesting personal history and pretty bad hair. An immediate calling to mind of Donald Trump occurs for more than one reason, which is why the left side of Twitter, which is the loudest part of the Twitterverse, as well as some of the press, is declaring his ascension to Prime Minister the end of British democracy.
Nah.
Good or bad, it isn't like the British have had a uniform set of excellent PM's before. And the fact that they haven't, and that the United Kingdom's democracy has survived, is oddly reassuring. The fact that its not credibly possible to imagine a Prime Minister causing the UK to end should mean, by extension, that those who feel the current American era of democracy is at a terminal low point would be wrong
Sure, you can pick up a lot of the zeitgeist based upon Johnson's rise. There's something in the political air of the western world right now which is causing governments to go in a certain direction even at the same time that those who claim an allegiance to perpetual "progress" to apoplexy. But no matter what one things one way or another, things keep on keeping on and are more durable than a person might suppose.
Wednesday July 23, 1919. 1919 Motor Transport Convoy arrives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Cheyenne publishes a big newspaper. Red Summer spreads to Pennsylvania.
A Trailmobile was a trailer, made by the company of that name. They're still around. Their stout trailer was used for a lot of applications, including the mounting of vehicle hauled kitchens. There were a variety of trailers built by Trailmobile and I frankly don't know what this particular trailer was like, although a lot of them were four wheeled trailers that had an appearance that closely resembled horse drawn freight wagons.
The White Staff Observation car a large car built on a 1 ton White truck chassis.
The Red Summer spread to Darby Pennsylvania when a mob gathered and attempted to lynch the arrested Samuel Gorman. Gorman, 17, had been an employee of a hay merchant that he killed in an assault when the hay merchant terminated his employment due to lack of work. Upon learning of the murder, the mob gathered, but authorities prevented the lynching from occurring.
The Cheyenne State Leader, coincident with Cheyenne Frontier Days, published a massive twelve section edition of the paper that might hold the record for the largest Wyoming paper published up to that time, and which would frankly dwarf the weekday size of any newspaper published in Wyoming today. . . if not any edition of any Wyoming paper published today. Included in that was a section that heavily featured boosting advertisements, including some for towns, and including one for Casper.
I've noted before the massive change to Casper that occurred because of World War One, and you've seen it here in part due to the qualitative change in its newspaper. This advertisement really brings that out.
Casper had gone from a city of just over 4,000 people (which is a city under Wyoming's definition) to one three times that size in just a few years. Oil was the reason, as this ad boosted, but the Great War is the reason that oil became such a big deal, something that coincidentally the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy accidentally emphasized.
And then as now oil tended to be the focus of the local economy, with other industries taking second position. The reference to other industries here is interesting, however, in that the sheep industry, which was a major agricultural enterprise in Wyoming up until the 1970s, was featured and in fact was centered in central Wyoming.
Tourism, however, also shows up. And tourism by automobile, which was just getting started at the time. That three legged stool we talked about here in connection with the last general election had appeared.
Of course, you have to wonder what those 4,000 residents, assuming they remained, thought of the change. The majority of Casperites were now new residents, grossly outnumbering the old, and the town of 4,000 had changed forever.
Speaking of 1969. . .
the band ZZ Top has now been around for fifty years.
That's right. The band formed in 1969.
That's right. The band formed in 1969.
Monday, July 22, 2019
Tuesday July 22, 1919. The Motor Transport Convoy makes Iowa, Volstead Act Passes the House.
On the same day, in Washington D. C., where riots had finally been stopped, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Volstead Act, the bill to provide for the enforcement of the 18th Amendment.
Andrew Volstead.
The act was named after Andrew Volstead, who introduced the act. It was actually largely drafted, however, by Wayne Wheeler of the Anti Saloon League. Volstead, a lawyer and a Congressman from Minnesota was chairmen of the House Judiciary Committee at the time, and supported the goals of the bill.
Wayne Wheeler.
Volstead would go down in defeat in 1922, when he failed to secure an eleventh term in office. He would, however, go on to work for the National Prohibition Enforcement Bureau in the role of its chief legal adviser. Upon Prohibition's repeal, he returned to private practice. He lived until 1947 and died at age 86. Wheeler, also an attorney, would not persist as long, falling into criticism as Prohibition proved rapidly unpopular, and dying at age 57, just two weeks after his wife died in a tragic fire.
What a Japanese crime might remind us.
A horrific event, by any measure.
But also one that points towards something.
In the debate on violence, people who know next to nothing about Japan, frequently cite Japan as an example of a society that "has no guns" and therefore "has no violence".
Neither is true.
On guns in Japan, you can in fact own firearms in Japan. Unfortunately for those trying to research it in the US, the data on Japan is so overridden by inaccuracies that its almost impossible to get accurate data.
Firearms in Japan are strictly controlled. I don't have the full data either, and I'm not particularly inclined to research it, but you can own rifles and shotguns in Japan, bare minimum. Most of these are owned for hunting, in so far as I'm aware, but there is also target shooting in Japan. The percentage of use, i.e., whether more firearms are owned by hunters or target shooters I'm also not aware of. But I am aware that both classes of ownership do in fact exist.
Okay, so what's the point?
The point is that cross cultural discussions on crime are pretty meaningless as to specifics.
Japan does have low firearm ownership and it also has low firearm violence. That doesn't mean that Japan is violence free, or ever has been. Indeed, it has more to do with firearms being quite outside of Japanese culture.
Indeed, Japan was a medieval country only up until the very late 19th Century. It was a rural culture as well, but a highly controlled one. This largely meant that the carrying of any weapon at all was largely the privilege of people in in officialdom or associated with it, in some fashion. It also means, because of this, that Japan's weaponry was fairly primitive up until its crash late 19th Century militarization, which in turn means that it never had a significant domestic firearms market.
That's why the Japanese have the approach to firearms that they do.
It's also why the Japanese have a fascination with edged weapons. Indeed, Japan is odd in that it still gets mass attacks with edged weapons, the traditional Japanese weapon. FWIW, the Japanese government made it illegal to carry a sword after World War Two. The fact that they made this illegal shows you that people were in fact doing it, and indeed Japan has the distinction of being the only country in World War Two other than the Soviets to really use very many swords (the Red Army's cavalry also carried swords in the form of sabers, their traditional weapon). Even Japanese criminals, who are not nice, don't use firearms much, even though they don't spend their time cuddling kittens instead.
Japan certainly has crime, and it has mass crime. This is one horrific example. But it's not alone.
Japanese crime is Japanese, although in something like this there's something recognizable I don't know what this guy had against anime and I'm not going to research it either. But the lesson is, citing a radically different culture for criminal law ideas, is usually pretty pointless.
But also one that points towards something.
In the debate on violence, people who know next to nothing about Japan, frequently cite Japan as an example of a society that "has no guns" and therefore "has no violence".
Neither is true.
On guns in Japan, you can in fact own firearms in Japan. Unfortunately for those trying to research it in the US, the data on Japan is so overridden by inaccuracies that its almost impossible to get accurate data.
Firearms in Japan are strictly controlled. I don't have the full data either, and I'm not particularly inclined to research it, but you can own rifles and shotguns in Japan, bare minimum. Most of these are owned for hunting, in so far as I'm aware, but there is also target shooting in Japan. The percentage of use, i.e., whether more firearms are owned by hunters or target shooters I'm also not aware of. But I am aware that both classes of ownership do in fact exist.
Okay, so what's the point?
The point is that cross cultural discussions on crime are pretty meaningless as to specifics.
Japan does have low firearm ownership and it also has low firearm violence. That doesn't mean that Japan is violence free, or ever has been. Indeed, it has more to do with firearms being quite outside of Japanese culture.
Indeed, Japan was a medieval country only up until the very late 19th Century. It was a rural culture as well, but a highly controlled one. This largely meant that the carrying of any weapon at all was largely the privilege of people in in officialdom or associated with it, in some fashion. It also means, because of this, that Japan's weaponry was fairly primitive up until its crash late 19th Century militarization, which in turn means that it never had a significant domestic firearms market.
That's why the Japanese have the approach to firearms that they do.
It's also why the Japanese have a fascination with edged weapons. Indeed, Japan is odd in that it still gets mass attacks with edged weapons, the traditional Japanese weapon. FWIW, the Japanese government made it illegal to carry a sword after World War Two. The fact that they made this illegal shows you that people were in fact doing it, and indeed Japan has the distinction of being the only country in World War Two other than the Soviets to really use very many swords (the Red Army's cavalry also carried swords in the form of sabers, their traditional weapon). Even Japanese criminals, who are not nice, don't use firearms much, even though they don't spend their time cuddling kittens instead.
Japan certainly has crime, and it has mass crime. This is one horrific example. But it's not alone.
Japanese crime is Japanese, although in something like this there's something recognizable I don't know what this guy had against anime and I'm not going to research it either. But the lesson is, citing a radically different culture for criminal law ideas, is usually pretty pointless.
Sunday, July 21, 2019
Today In Wyoming's History: The Bates Battle, July 4, 1874
Today In Wyoming's History: The Bates Battle, July 4, 1874:
Bates chose to attack down the slope of the hill he was on, described above, with thirty troopers and twenty Shoshones. At the same time, Lt. Young, meanwhile, attached down the valley from above it on the watercourse, in an apparent effort to cut the village off and achieve a flanking movement.
The fighting was fierce and the Arapaho were surprised. They put up a good account, however, and were even able to at least partially get mounted. Chief Black Coal was wounded in the fighting and lost several fingers when shot while mounted. The Arapaho defended the draw and the attack, quite frankly, rapidly lost the element of surprise and became a close quarters melee.
Fairly quickly, the Arapaho began to execute the very move that Bates feared, and they retrated across the draw and started to move up the high ground opposite the direction that Bates had attacked from. Young's flanking movement had failed.
Bates then withdrew.
Bates' command suffered four dead and five or six wounded, including Lt. Young. His estimates for Arapaho losses were 25 Arapaho dead, but as he abandoned the field of battle, that can't be really verified. Estimates for total Arapaho casualties were 10 to 125. They definitely sustained some losses and, as noted, Chief Black Coal was wounded in the battle.
Bates was upset with the results of the engagement and placed the blame largely on the Shoshone, whom he felt were too noisy in the assault in the Indian fashion. He also felt that they had not carried out his flanking instructions properly, although it was noted that the Shoshone interpreter had a hard time translating Bates English as he spoke so rapidly. Adding to his problems, moreover, the soldiers fired nearly all 80 of their carried .45-70 rifle cartridges during the engagement and were not able to resupply during the battle as the mules were unable to bring ammunition up. This meant that even if they had not disengaged for other reasons, they were at the point where a lock of ammunition would have hampered any further efforts on their part in any event (and of course they would have been attacking uphill).
After the battle the Arapaho returned to the Red Cloud Agency. Seeing how things were going after Little Big Horn, they came onto the Wind River Reservation in 1877 for the winter on what was supposed to be a temporary basis, and they remain there today. They were hoping for their own reservation in Wyoming, but they never received it. Black Coal went on the reservation with him, and portraits of him show him missing two fingers on his right hand. His people soon served on the Reservation as its policemen. He himself lived until 1893.
Alfred E. Bates, who had entered the Army as a private at the start of the Civil War at age 20. Enlisting in the Michigan state forces, he soon attracted the attention of a politician who secured for him an enrollment at West Point, where he graduated in the Class of 1865. He missed service in the Civil War but soon went on to service on the plains. His name appears on two Wyoming geographic localities. He rose to the rank of Major General and became Paymaster of the Army, dying in 1909 of a stroke.
The Bates Battle, July 4, 1874
We were fortunately recently to be able to tour one of Wyoming's little known battlefields recently, thanks due to the local landowner who controls the road access letting us on. We very much appreciate their generosity in letting us do so.
Our Jeep, which should have some clever nickname, but which does not. Wrecked twice, and reassembled both times, it gets us where we want to go. But we only go so far. We stopped after awhile and walked in.
The battlefield is the Bates Battlefield, which is on the National Registry of Historic landmarks, but which is little viewed. There's nothing there to tell you that you are at a battlefield. There are no markers or the like, like there is at Little Big Horn. You have to have researched the area before you arrive, to know what happened on July 4, 1874, when the battle was fought. And even at that, accounts are confusing.
Fortunately for the researcher, a really good write up of what is known was done when Historic Site status was applied for. Rather than try to rewrite what was put in that work, we're going to post it here. So we start with the background.
And on to the confusion in the accounts, which we'd note is common even for the best known of Indian battles. Indeed, maybe all of them.
The text goes on to note that the Arapaho raided into country that what was withing the recently established Shoshone Reservation, which we know as the Wind River Indian Reservation. It also notes that this was because territories which the various tribes regarded as their own were fluid, and it suggest that a culture of raiding also played a potential part in that. In any event, the Shoshone found their reservation domains raided by other tribes. Complaints from the Shoshone lead, respectively, to Camp Augur and Camp Brown being established, where are respectively near the modern towns of Lander and Ft. Washakie (which Camp Brown was renamed).
The immediate cause of the raid was the presence of Arapaho, Northern Cheyenne, and Sioux parties in the area in June and July 1874 that had an apparent intent to raid onto the Reservation. Ironically, the Arapaho, who were involved in this battle, had separated themselves from the Cheyenne and the Sioux and had no apparent intent to participate in any such raids. They thereafter placed themselves in the Nowood River area. Indian bands were known to be in the area that summer, and they were outside of those areas designated to them by the treaties of 1868.
Given this, Cpt. Alfred E. Bates, at Camp Brown, had sent scouts, including Shoshone scouts, into the field that summer to attempt to locate the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho bands. On June 29, Shoshone scouts reported at Camp Brown that they'd sited an Arapaho village. We here pick back up from the text:
The expedition took to the field on July 1, 1874, and remarkably, it traveled at night.
A few days later, they found what they were looking for.
Let's take a look at some of what Bates was seeing:
This is the valley which was below the ridge that Bates was traveling up, the night he found the Arapaho village when he passed it by. It's not clear to me if he backtracked all the way back past this point and came back up this valley, or if he came from another direction. Based upon the description, I suspect he rode all the way back and came up from this direction, but from the high ground, not down here in the valley.
Here's the spot that Bates referenced as being the area where two ravines joined. Not surprisingly, in this wet year, the spot is fairly wet. But to add to that, this area features a spring, known today, and probably dating back to the events of this battle, as Dead Indian Springs. The "gentle slope" from which Cpt. Bates made his survey, is in the background.
And here we look up that second ravine, with its current denizens in view.
And here we see the prominent bluff opposite of where Cpt. Bates reconnoitered. It was prominent indeed.
Bates chose to attack down the slope of the hill he was on, described above, with thirty troopers and twenty Shoshones. At the same time, Lt. Young, meanwhile, attached down the valley from above it on the watercourse, in an apparent effort to cut the village off and achieve a flanking movement.
The slope down which Bates and his detail attacked, and the draw down which Young attacked.
The draw down which Young attacked.
The slope down which Bates attacked is depicted above.
The fighting was fierce and the Arapaho were surprised. They put up a good account, however, and were even able to at least partially get mounted. Chief Black Coal was wounded in the fighting and lost several fingers when shot while mounted. The Arapaho defended the draw and the attack, quite frankly, rapidly lost the element of surprise and became a close quarters melee.
The slope down which Bates attacked.
The valley down which Young attacked.
High ground opposite from the slope down which Bates attacked.
The high ground.
The opposing bluff.
The opposing bluff.
Bates then withdrew.
Bates' command suffered four dead and five or six wounded, including Lt. Young. His estimates for Arapaho losses were 25 Arapaho dead, but as he abandoned the field of battle, that can't be really verified. Estimates for total Arapaho casualties were 10 to 125. They definitely sustained some losses and, as noted, Chief Black Coal was wounded in the battle.
Bates was upset with the results of the engagement and placed the blame largely on the Shoshone, whom he felt were too noisy in the assault in the Indian fashion. He also felt that they had not carried out his flanking instructions properly, although it was noted that the Shoshone interpreter had a hard time translating Bates English as he spoke so rapidly. Adding to his problems, moreover, the soldiers fired nearly all 80 of their carried .45-70 rifle cartridges during the engagement and were not able to resupply during the battle as the mules were unable to bring ammunition up. This meant that even if they had not disengaged for other reasons, they were at the point where a lock of ammunition would have hampered any further efforts on their part in any event (and of course they would have been attacking uphill).
After the battle the Arapaho returned to the Red Cloud Agency. Seeing how things were going after Little Big Horn, they came onto the Wind River Reservation in 1877 for the winter on what was supposed to be a temporary basis, and they remain there today. They were hoping for their own reservation in Wyoming, but they never received it. Black Coal went on the reservation with him, and portraits of him show him missing two fingers on his right hand. His people soon served on the Reservation as its policemen. He himself lived until 1893.
Alfred E. Bates, who had entered the Army as a private at the start of the Civil War at age 20. Enlisting in the Michigan state forces, he soon attracted the attention of a politician who secured for him an enrollment at West Point, where he graduated in the Class of 1865. He missed service in the Civil War but soon went on to service on the plains. His name appears on two Wyoming geographic localities. He rose to the rank of Major General and became Paymaster of the Army, dying in 1909 of a stroke.
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