Sunday Morning Scene: Denver Catholic Register, December 1919.

Best Post of the Week of December 8, 2019

Well, there's not doubt the most important post here on this site, for the last week, was this one.

Chrome Messing Up Blogger

Otherwise, we'd offer these as the best posts of the week of December 8, 2019:

The Frozen Puppy

Is it weird to feel bad about what happened, all those eons ago, to the puppy?

The Time Warp

Cry Havoc. How the marijuana story ends.

Lawyers, fire up those complaints.

Blog Mirror. A Hundred Years Ago. Old-fashioned English Pudding with Hard Sauce

The Long Slow Rise. Was Lex Anteinternet: Women in the Workplace: It was Maytag that took Rosie the Riveter out of the domestic arena, not World War Two.

Mid Week At Work: Tobacco, cats, and dogs.

The Chemical News: "New Study Links Birth Control Pill to Brain Differences, but Don't Panic", "Breast Cancer Warning Tied To Hair Dye", "Hair Dyes and Straighteners May Raise Breast Cancer Risk for Black Women". Go ahead and panic.

In terms of public service announcements, this one is probably really the most important.

December 12, 1919. Debutantes and their pets

The British 2019 Election. The tell of the tape.

Democrats, take note.

Inside the Chieftain's Hatch: Dodge WC-51

Chrome Messing Up Blogger

It is, and that's odd, as Chrome is a Google platform and so is Blogger.

Anyhow, right now, on Chrome this blog is so slow its unusable.  In the process, I've tried eliminating some links and the calendar that was a link to our This Day In Wyoming's History blog, which had the impact of wiping out that calendar entirely (and I don't have the code right now to restore it).

Extremely frustrating, to say the least.

Poster Saturday: Why Aren't You In The Army?

A Russian White poster from the Russian Civil War, raging a century ago and to have enormous global impacts in its results.

Southern Rockies Nature Blog: What Would a Mountain Lion Eat for Thanksgiving?

Southern Rockies Nature Blog: What Would a Mountain Lion Eat for Thanksgiving?: A wintry view of the riparian area in or near Santa Ana Pueblo, photographed from Amtrak's Southwest Chief on November 20th. Br...

Meanwhile, in the United States House of Representatives. . .

where the makeup of parliament is not an immediate concern, Republican maneuvers Thursday meant that the vote on the articles of impeachment for Donald Trump rather than occurring yesterday afternoon, in time for the evening news cycle, will occur today.

Speculation abounds, but it appeared that GOP objections and actions were designed to push the vote late into the night with the corresponding result that it would hit the news for most people this morning, when they were otherwise concerned about work and the day, and therefore make less of a splash.  Chairman Jerry Nadler was apparently having none of it and gaveled the hearing down, meaning the vote will occur today.

A lot of the political maneuvers and spectacle surrounding the impeachment proceedings has been a feature of routine politics, old fashioned politics, and aiming for the media fence on the part of both sides.  It hasn't been pretty.  Never content with the normal opening and closing statement that should be routine, the hearings have featured daily openings in which, at least in the intelligence committee, featured a Democratic Congressman who presents as an absolute pompous ass v. a GOP Congressman who didn't seem to quite know what the real issues are. Everyone looks horrible.  Indeed, it makes a person nostalgic for hearings as presented in The Godfather or The Aviator, which were supposed to show defeated proceedings but which look so much more adult.  In truth, they've probably always been this juvenile but we didn't get a front row seat until recently.  Having said that, the chance for Congressmen to imagine that they're making points at home with their declarations means that the temptation to drone on while pretending to be Roman Senator from a 1960s vintage movie or a jacketless Teamster is just too strong for some.

So the vote will come today.

Having said that, savvy press folks take the view that the best time for a story to break is a Friday, as people want to get home and quit thinking about the hard week behind them.  Many people never read a Saturday newspaper and if they do, they read the sports page so they can see what their teams are doing that day and tomorrow.  Others check the local events.  Political circus isn't on most people's minds.

Particularly when it appears that most people have their minds made up already. So the maneuver may prove to be wise indeed.  The hearing will end with a whimper and it looks like it'll never get much beyond a motion to dismiss in the Senate.  We'll hear about the whole thing all next year as Democrats try to use what occurred to whip up support for their Presidential candidates and the President uses it to accuse the Democrats of doing nothing the past four years except look for ways to remove him.  Frankly the Democrats are pretty vulnerable to such accusations now that this is set to fail.  Nancy Pelosi's early instincts in this area will prove to be correct.  Nobody who is not in one camp or the other is going to be deeply moved by these results, and those strongly in either camp will see the entire matters as vindicating the views they already held.

And one of those views is that Congress has done pretty much nothing over the past four years. That's not completely correct, and indeed the House passed a major trade bill this past week.  The Senate, in fact, has been making a record number of Court appointments and that fact, little notice,d means that the Federal bench has been more impacted since any time since Jimmy Carter's administration, when the Carter appointments reformed a left leaning bench into a solidly left leaning bench.  Now it'll be a solidly conservative bench.  The result of that will be that many topics now decided by courts rather than legislatures will have to be done the other way around, with the national legislature having to really actually work for the first time in over a decade.

If it can find its way around to doing that.

The British 2019 Election. The tell of the tape.

Conservatives took 364 seats.

Labour Party took 203.

In Scotland, the Scottish Nationalist Party took 48.

The United Kingdom, Scottish protests aside, will leave the EU.  This will probably occur by the end of January.

A new British immigration system will be ushered in which will be similar to the Australian one, requiring immigrants to have a job before entering the country.  EU citizens will have no preference over non EU immigrants.

Scottish nationalist will howl, but their ability to impact anything will decline.  Indeed, this result can be partially attributed to the fact that a referendum occurred on Scottish independence some years ago, something that was wholly unnecessary under the law but which boosted the power of Scottish nationalist, something which had been largely absent before that.  They'll howl now, but they'll be along for the ride, like it or not.

The Labour Party will start to reform and retreat from the hard left positions it was espousing.

The EU will be weakened significantly.  Anti EU sentiment exists in numerous localities within the EU itself, particularly outside of the few dominant nations, but even within them.  And the resurgence of the British right will lead to a resurgence in the European right as well, which is much further to the right than the British right is.

The Agrarian/Distributist surprise

I want to get some orange juice.

Okay, here it is.

But I want it from the companies that get it right from the farmers.

Oh. . .okay.

I give Coca Cola enough of our money as it is.

Okay.

I want to help support farmers, like us.

Trailing, in other words:

From the English language version of an Italian news outlet:

(ANSA) - Rome, December 11 - Transhumance, the traditional farming practice of seasonal migration of livestock along storied tracks towards better climate conditions, was unanimously inserted Wednesday into UNESCO's list of of intangible cultural heritage.    The successful bid was made by Italy, Austria and Greece.    With this new inclusion, Italy has overtaken Turkey and Belgium into top spot for rural and agri-food citations.

Trailing to the high country, in other words.

Eating is an agricultural act.

Eating is an agricultural act.

Wendell Berry

The British Conservatives Win Big (but Scottish Nationalist do too).

And so nationalism, both of the union and disunion type, triumphed over a British left that was going more left.

The Labour Party's defeat today in the UK was blistering.  Boris Johnson, whom some compare to Donald Trump, probably inaccurately, took a Conservative Party that lacked a majority six weeks ago and demolished a British left tainted by a leader who made anti Semitic comments while his already left wing party went further left.

So the results are that a British Conservative Party will dominate in a way that it hasn't for decades, even while Scottish nationalism appears resurgent.  Some predict that Northern Ireland will turn toward the Irish Republic, although quite frankly that seems extremely unlikely, and that the United Kingdom will fall apart.

I doubt that, but this British election does have a lesson for the American one.  Simply detesting an opponent and claiming he's boorish isn't a platform.  And in an era in which old nationalism, of both the conservative and radical variety, are resurgent, being an internationalist isn't a lesson for success.

The United States isn't the United Kingdom, but U.S. Democrats should take note.  Labourites were counting on Johnson's own character defeating the Conservatives not only miscalculated, they didn't calculate at all.  American Democrats counting on Trump defeating himself in the fall of the next year may likewise be making a tremendous miscalculation.  Indeed, my prediction is that the impeachment that the Democratic Party is about to launch the country into will turn first into a failed impeachment trail and then be used by President Trump as a bloody flag during the election.  It'll become the symbol of a "do nothing Congress" allied to the "Deep State".

Exactly how the Labour Party should have approached this election isn't clear to me.  It would seem, however, that opposing Brexit, which they had to do, shouldn't have been the hill that they chose to die on, if they did.  But beyond that, I suspect the following comment by a Labour MP sums up a lot quite quickly:

Caroline Flint

@CarolineFlintMP

We’re going to hear the Corbynistas blame it on Brexit and the Labour Uber Remainers blaming Corbyn. Both are to blame for what looks like a terrible night for Labour. Both have taken for granted Labour’s heartlands. Sorry we couldn’t offer you a Labour Party you could trust.

And that too should provide a lesson for U.S. Democrats.  Demographics that the Democrats have depended upon for decades are now showing disinterest in the party at what should be, for them, alarming rates.  That doesn't mean that the some voters are becoming Republicans, they probably only are in very small numbers. But it does mean that they are no longer reliable Democratic voters.  In spite of that, the Democrats have been taking positions that are contrary to these demographics even while basically claiming them as their own.

Whatever the lessons for American politicians are, I doubt they'll be learned. Labour learned a lesson tonight, but it may be years before they really digest the lesson to where they can adjust to it.  And, for that matter, the Scottish Nationalist Party may have learned false lessons in the same way that the Parti Quebecois has had, and then been forced to adjust to, over the years, that being a protest against Ottowa, or London, doesn't really necessarily mean that its a vote to depart.

Lex Anteinternet: Election Day. . .

Lex Anteinternet: Election Day. . .: in the United Kingdom, that is. Today the British go to the polls, again, in an election called on October 29. Yes, the British are deci...

And it appears that the Conservatives are in fact emerging with a clear majority in the first British December election since 1923.

If there were doubt on Britain and Brexit, in terms of resolve, this would appear to have addressed them.

Election Day. . .

in the United Kingdom, that is.

Today the British go to the polls, again, in an election called on October 29.

Yes, the British are deciding major political and policy matters with only a month and a half lead in time.

If only. . .

Well anyhow, the theoretical contenders for control of parliament, together with who would be PM if they should win, and their present share of the last vote, are: 1) Conservatives (Boris Johnson), 42.4%; 2) Laboour (Jeremy Corbyn), 40.0%; 3) Scottish Nationalist Party (Nicola Sturgeon) 3%; 4) Liberal Democrats (Jo Swinson) 7.4%; 5)  Democratic Unionist Party (Arlene Foster) .9%; and 6) Sinn Fein (Mary Lou McDonald) .7%.

Rather obviously, only Johnson or Corbyn will emerge the PM.

Corbyn has made a lot of news recently for anti semetic statements.  Johnson, of course, has made a lot of news for being Johnson.  Johnson is attempting to secure a pure majority, which he lacks, in order to push Brexit through.

December 12, 1919. Debutantes and their pets

Clarion State Normal School, Dec. 12, 1919, Clarion, PA

The Clarion State Normal School, formerly a seminary, was photographed on this day in 1919.  The next year it would become a public institution with the State of Pennsylvania purchased it.  At that time it became a university, which is what it is today, as Clarion University.  A normal school is a teachers college.

And a photographer from the National Photo Company spent the day photographing debutantes and their pets.

The Chemical News: "New Study Links Birth Control Pill to Brain Differences, but Don't Panic", "Breast Cancer Warning Tied To Hair Dye", "Hair Dyes and Straighteners May Raise Breast Cancer Risk for Black Women". Go ahead and panic.

The headlines counsel not to panic.

Well of course they do.

Panic is nature's way of getting you the heck of the way out of some terrible danger.  You are Captain Willard on an improbable mission into Camboida and the tiger comes through the jungle. . . you are in the velt when an African elephant spies you and charges full on aiming to squish you. . . you forgot to study for that exam that's scheduled 30 minutes from now.

Yes, panic.

And by panicking, concentrate your focus on that bad thing and avoid it.

But then, if you panic here, you may change your lifestyle in a truly revolutionary way that will be bad for somebody's pocketbook and may require you to make inconvenient life choices, opting for a natural, which doesn't just involve buying cabbage at the farmer's market.

Yup.

A long time ago on this blog, I posted a topic called We like everything to be natural . . . except for us.  That post, like a lot of posts here, was pretty wide ranging.  But part of what it noted was this:

 Chilean couple, 1940, no doubt a lot more natural than "all natural" folks today, in every sense.

In our world today, westerners (residents of Europe and North America) are huge on things being "all natural".  It's the rage, and it doesn't appear to be going away any time soon.  And I'm not really criticizing it, as my agrarian leanings make me sympathetic, when its done in the messy, bloody, muddy way of actual nature.  I'm not so sympathetic with the fanciful fake natural way that some who fear real nature would have it.

So, in this era of all natural, we have "natural" organic foods of all types.  Natural organic oatmeal (maybe even better if from Ireland and cut with steel), organic vegetables, grass fed beef.  You name it.

Indeed, entire sections of the European and North American populations are at war with any genetically altered foods of any kind, although it must be noted in fairness that nearly every food we eat was selectively bred that way so as to alter it from its original form, save for people who eat fairly primitive foods and hunt and fish.  Indeed, ironically for some of these folks, our meat sources tend to be much less genetically altered by selective breeding than our plant foods.  Cows, for example, differ little from aurochs.

 

Frequently satirical copied World War Two era poster.  Presenting an idealistic image, the mother and daughter in fact represent Americans who were a lot more "natural" than nearly any living today.

People have taken this one step further and now, in some hip circles, want their foods to be produced all locally.  Again, I'm not criticizing that.  I have some sympathy for it, being a fan of systems and realizing how odd some of our food production chain actually is.   I used to grow a big garden myself, and miss doing so, which sort of taps into this.

And we have all natural concerns expressing themselves in clothing.  I know of people who will only wear "all natural fibers".  Not liking synthetics much, I trend that way, although I do like the storm proof hoodies that are now out there, which make for great winter insulation.

Some folks, however, have gone even one step further there, and insist that their fibers, if plant derived, also be organic, out of an apparent concern for the environment.

All really big in Europe and North America, particularly with the upper class, the upper middle class, and the university crowd.

And then it went on to pose this question:

So why don't we apply it to ourselves?

And then it went on to address some of the very headlines addressed below, although some certainly weren't.

First, one that was:

New Study Links Birth Control Pill to Brain Differences, but Don't Panic

The news there actually isn't all that new in some ways actually.  Brain differences may not have been specifically previously noted, but what has been noted, scientifically, is that women's abilities in regards to mate choosing (it's hard to find a way to put this that doesn't sound odd) are significantly clouded if they're on the pill.

Now, what I don't mean is that women who are on the pill are less choosy about sex than women who are not.  They likely are.  While the risks associated with sex are there no matter what, rather obviously women who are at a higher risk of getting pregnant are no doubt a lot more careful than those who are not.

No, what I mean is that those who have studied it have said that women on the pill, for bio-psychological reasons that aren't well understood (but for which there may be a hint here) actually tend to choose men whom studies claim they'd frequently avoid if they weren't on the pill.

Again, while its really unpopular to say so, it's well known that sex impacts thought and psychologically women and men bond to each other upon having sex in a deeply psychological way.  One of the real fall outs from the sexual revolution that wasn't expected is the now fairly well demonstrated psychological wounding that casual sex has brought about.  People don't actually end up feeling "liberated" at all, but rather they become more animalistic with their behavior while feeling a deep sense of loss.  Like with so many other things, the old standards turn out to have a real basis beyond that which were imagined.

Anyhow, earlier studies found that women selecting long term mates while on the aforementioned pharmaceuticals often went in a different direction, the studies claimed, than they would have but for them.  As part of that, when off, there was the responding reaction of "what the @#$@#$ have I done here?" in some instances.

Anyhow, any time something changes in your brain due from what it would be in a state of nature is, in fact, a reason to panic.  That headline makes about as much sense as one stating "Smoking changes lungs. . .put don't panic."

This isn't, of course, the first concerning study on the pill, or more properly the pills.  Prior studies have pointed out increased health risks of all sorts, including cancer and strokes.  And this in turn makes the pill one of those pharmaceutical products which it is pretty clear the FDA wouldn't allow on the market today, if just introduced today, but which is due to our being both acclimated and societaly dependent on it.  There's as much chance of addressing it objectively as there would have been on objecting tobacco in Virginian in 1798.  Not going to happen.

So, "don't panic", is the advice you'll get.

And then there are these headlines:

Breast Cancer Warning Tied To Hair Dye

and;

Hair Dyes and Straighteners May Raise Breast Cancer Risk for Black Women

First, let's clear something up.  There are risk for white women, black women, Asian women, Latina women. The risk is to women.  The headline is deceptive.

There's a heightened risk however for black women.

We're not really certain why that is, but my guess is that it has to do with frequency of use rather than anything else.  It's not, of course, that other women, particularly white women, don't use hair products, but the marketing aimed at black women and white women are different as their hair is.  One of those difference is noted right in the headline.  White women don't often use hair straighteners.

African Americans have put up with a lot of hair abuse, it should be noted.  I don't know when it really got started but my guess is that it's a 20th Century thing.  Once African Americans moved into the cities in the Great Migration, they started to take up urban styles, for obvious reasons, and that meant taking up the urban hair styles of the day.  Both men and women were affected with this and one of the things that was affiliated upon them was hair straighteners.  African American men seem to have largely abandoned this in the 1960s, and I suspect that may be in part to conscription.  Nobody is going to mess with their hair too much if they're fighting in Vietnam, for example. I note that as during the 1960s African American men really abandoned this stuff en masse and have never taken it back up.  African American women did for awhile as well, but then at some later point, the late 80s or 90s, it became popular in their community for hair to be straightened and colored once again.

If there's any leveling factor in here at all, it's notable that, if anything, white women are really taking up messing with hair color in spades now and it's even spread to white men.  The pretty girl who looks like she's been in a tragic fishing tackle accident at Albertson's, for example, has lime green hair.  So that's going to be catching up with them as well.

All this fits into the unfortunate set of facts that women are uniquely afflicted with those who want to change how they look for no good reason.  Women look the way they're supposed to look without hair dies, hair straighteners or giant artificial lips or boobs.  Just stop it should be the cri de couer here. Don't.  You'll be better for it in every way.

This would seem to be self evident, but all the known health risks with the pill haven't put much of a dent in its marketing and popularity and all the demonstrated disaster due to synthetic boobs haven't caused that to stop either.

So yes, panic.

Or maybe just "Go organic", in a broader sense.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 12, 1919

Today In Wyoming's History: December 12:

December 12

1919  Fourteen Spanish Flu deaths were reported in Washakie County for this week, which of course occurred during the Spanish Flu Pandemic.

The Spanish Influenza was a disaster of epic proportions which managed to impact nearly the entire globe.  While accounts vary, some accounts indicate that the flu epidemic first broke out, at least in its lethal form, in Camp Funston, Kansas. 

Time announces its person of the year

Thereby guaranteeing with its choice a second full day of ranting, raving, screaming, proclaiming, crying, yelling, showing, and self righteous accolades and condemnations on Twitter, Reddit and Facebook.

Mid Week At Work: Tobacco, cats, and dogs.

"Men rolling barrels of tobacco across platform over water onto the already crowded CORKER for Louisville, Dec. 11, 1919"

"War dogs decorated for bravery. Group of War dogs decorated by French War department for heroism work on the fighting front"

"This "Kitty" belonged to the Sultan of Turkey. Mrs. Martin K. Metcalf, wife of Commander Metcalf, U.S.N., holding "Pansy" a thoroughbred Turkish cat who formerly did her "meowing" in the palace of the Sultan of Turkey. The cat, brought to Washington from Turkey by Commander Metcalf, is eight years old. She will be one of the interesting entrants in the cat show to be held in Washington at the Wardman Park Hotel, February 1 and 2"

The Long Slow Rise. Was Lex Anteinternet: Women in the Workplace: It was Maytag that took Rosie the Riveter out of the domestic arena, not World War Two.

Some time ago I published this item:

Lex Anteinternet: Women in the Workplace: It was Maytag that took R...: A virtual icon of the liberated strong woman, Rosie the Riveter proclaimed "we can do it" to the nation and became a symbol of ...

This came up elsewhere, where I also posted on it, and in doing that I looked up some of the statistics. They're pretty revealing.  I'll quote, but only in part, the item I was replying to, and then post my reply. That items was:

The post-War labor saving device boom did indeed allow a lot more women into the workforce.  There is also the additional problem of all those ‘Rosie the Riveter’ women were being forced out of the workforce by the returning servicemen.  They wanted their own jobs.

The reply.

It is true that women who worked in industry in World War Two wanted their own jobs, in at least some instances, but I think that story has been pretty heavily oversold and surprisingly the data doesn't really support a large wartime increase like we'd expect, although it does support an increase.  Female labor was heavily used in World War One as well and in some areas may have been more critical in WWI than it was in WWII.

You can find published examples of women who were reluctant to give up their jobs after the Great War, or who even attempted to hang on them nearly by force.  But by and large they pretty quickly reverted to pre war roles.  By the same token, while I've never seen figures on it, I think women who were employed in World War Two in industry had largely returned to pre war roles by some point in 1946.  It began to change after that.

Even at that, some of the statistics you can find are surprising and suggest that a lot of the way that this is now remembered is pretty heavily subject to myth.  In terms of just women working, the real boom is well after World War Two and the trend towards it started well before.

You an find varying data, but it's all pretty close, what it tends to show by decade is the following, with the categories being year, numbers (thousands) employed, percentage gainfully employed, and percentage of the workforce over age 16.

1900 5,319 18.8 % 18.3 %
1910 7,445 21.5         19.9
1920 8,637 21.4         20.4
1930 10,752 22.0         22.0
1940 12,845 25.4         24.3
1950 18,389 33.9         29.6
1960 23,240 37.7         33.4
1970 31,543 43.3         38.1
1980 45,487 51.5         42.5

This doesn't really take into account the spike in employment during either World War One or World War Two, which may be significant in that it tends to potentially be overemphasized.  Taken out, what we see is a slow increase from 1900 onward, which coincides with the rise of domestic implements.

If we figure in the years after 1980, it might be even more revealing.

1980 45,487 51.5     42.5
1990 56,829 57.5     45.2
1993 58,795 57.9     45.5
1994 60,239 58.8     46.0
1995 60,944 58.9     46.1
1996 61,857 59.3     46.2
1997 63,036 59.8     46.2
1998 63,714 59.8     46.3
1999 64,855 60.0     46.5
2000 66,303 60.2     46.6
2001 66,848 60.1     46.5
2002 67,363 59.8     46.5
2003 68,272 59.5     47.0
2004 68,421 59.2     46.0
2005 69,288 59.3     46.4
2006 70,000 59.4     46.0
2007 67,792 56.6     46.4
2008 71,767 59.5     44.0
2010 71,904 58.6     53.6 (which is another watershed year in that the majority of the                                                                     workforce became female and stayed that way)
2014 73,039 56.9     57.0

If we do all of that, we find that the number of women gainfully employed doesn't reach 50% at any point (including WWI and WWII) until 1980 and that it peaked for several years at 60% starting in 1999, before dropping down slightly.

If we also keep in mind that the 1930, 1940 and 1950 numbers we should keep in mind that the 1930 number and the 1940 number may have been artificially low due to the Great Depression.   In other words, we have to wonder if it was higher because of that (women taking jobs because men couldn't find work), or if the opposite was true (female employment artificially low due to lack of employment).  The general statistics curve would suggest it was a little lower than it should have been due to the Depression.  Having said that, my own mother and a couple of her sisters were employed in that period due to the Great Depression.  Their employment probably carried on into World War Two, but it was the Depression, not the war, that brought it about, which is always the way they themselves recalled it.

During the war the number of American women employed outside of the home went from 13.9% to 22.5%, which shows another element to this.  Lots of employed women were employed, but not "outside the home".  I'm not sure exactly how that was categorized, but even as late as World War Two a large number of women were regarded as not employed outside the home, while still gainfully employed.  It makes me wonder if domestic servants were categorized as employed inside the home, as large numbers of women were employed in that capacity.  If that's correct, it was still apparently the case during the war.  The number of women who were employed (which would include those employed inside of their own homes in some capacity) reached 37%, which is a large number and a big jump, but it also means that a lot of women were employed were in some classification that included being employed inside their own homes. The 10% or so jump in the figures represented millions of women, but it's not the impression that people tend to have today which would suggest that the majority of women were in the workforce.  In fact, the majority weren't.  This would also have been an increase in the Great Depression level of employment at 24.3%, but only by about 15% or so. Given the wartime emergency, and the end of the Great Depression, that's a much lower jump than we'd generally suppose.

It's also interesting to note that the wartime 37% figure wouldn't be reached again until 1960.  1960 was only fifteen years after World War Two, and therefore quite a few of the women in that workforce had been employed during the war (to include, again, my own mother).  But because it was a fifteen year gap, that also likely means that some of the women employed during the war had dropped out and returned to work by 1960.  It also, however, would reflect a lot of women entering the workforce who had been children during World War Two.

By 1950 33.9% of women were employed overall in the workforce, which is higher than at any point during the 1940s outside of World War Two.  But even that was only a 10% climb from the 30s.

Leaping back to the Great War, 20% of the war industry work force in the U.S. during World War One was female, a pretty big percentage.  I don't know what the overall percentage of women working in the U.S. workforce was during WWI, but that figure alone suggests it was pretty big.  If we consider that a lot of farm labor was simply left to women during the war it becomes more impressive.  30% of the German workforce during World War One was female, probably a much higher percentage than during WWII.  France was so denuded of men that women occupied all kinds of occupations.  Nearly anyone who has handled a long arm that was used by an American soldier in France during WWI is handling a weapon rebuilt by female labor in France following the war.

All that's a lot of blathering on my part, and I'm clearly proposing a revisionist history, but all in all, I think the data supports that 1) women were hugely important in the workforce in WWII; but 2) they also had been in WWI; and 3) female employment dropped really rapidly to immediate prewar levels following the wars (partially, no doubt, due to social pressures that were high, but higher in 1919 than in 1946);  but 4) those levels of employment were steadily increasing due to something other than workforce acclimation and had been rising since at least the 1890s. So the question then becomes, what caused that?

Probably a lot of things, to be sure, some of which I can suppose but will omit. But one definite factor, and I'd argue a much more significant factor, was the rise of domestic machinery.

So, if it seems like I'm suggesting that Maytag and Hoover may have had more to do with putting women in the workplace rather than the example of Rosie the Riveter, while an unpopular view, that's what the data suggests.

But what else might that data suggest, if we look at it carefully?

Well, as the person posting on the topic noted, quite correctly:

There weren’t a lot of fields open to women to work outside of the home, either.  School teacher, nurse or secretarial for the most part, were the majority of the jobs available to women.  Now you have women working as guards in men’s prisons.

So my further elaboration, or blabbering, follows, in this interesting topic.

I was going to come back and post on that after thinking about it, but I also don't think that the change there was brought about due to World War Two.

One thing the Rosie the Riveter type image sort of predisposes us to think is that women hadn't worked in heavy industry before World War One, and then after World War Two,t they stayed in it. But neither is true.

Whats definitely true is that women's occupational options were much more limited in prior times, but that seems to have started changing in real terms in the 1970s, although even there, there had been a slow change earlier in the 20th Century. 

Going into World War One women's occupational opportunities were really limited, which is part of the reason the statistics might reflect a large number of "inside the home" employed women, as they may have been domestics, one of the few fields open to them.  Other than that, teaching, like you mention, was an option, but not much beyond that. Secretarial roles, which later became a woman's field, wasn't open to them much at the time.  Store clerks, waitresses, and other occupations in that low paying arena were, together with some manufacturing such as clothing manufacturing, but it was pretty limited.  Given that, it's interesting that the number of women employed was as high as it was, and it was probably almost in low paying jobs as a rule.

World War One saw a big increase in women employed in heavy industry.  Here's one such example:

British factory worker, 1919.

Jobs like that no doubt paid a lot better than traditional women's roles, and lots of other examples can be found from that time frame and a lot of them are really surprising.  Lots of nurses, of course, but also lots of women drivers and women working in agriculture and timbering roles (both involving horses, linking back into our focus here).  After the war, however, employment in all those roles save for nursing dropped off.  Women really came into the Army, Navy and Marines in strength in telephone and secretarial roles as well, although they were mustered back out after the war.  In some isolated instances (including in Germany) women saw some use in law enforcement.

Between the wars women pretty much replaced men in the secretarial role. That had started prior to World War One, but as late as that time men occupied most secretarial roles.  The first female secretary to be employed by a U.S. Senator was one employed by Wyoming's Francis E. Warren, and that was just before World War One.  But by the 1920s women secretaries had not only become common, they dominated the field.

Anyhow, the industry jobs disappeared after the war. During the Second World War we get all the industrial occupations once again, but then again right after the war it dropped off again.

After World War Two women's fields were likely more open than they had been, but even then it was really several decades before women were commonly in most occupational areas.  While its only a movie, as sort of an example, the film The Deer Hunter was on the other day and I happened to watch it and it didn't strike me as odd that 100% of the iron workers in the film are men.  It was filmed in 1979, depicting 1973, I think, and it was right about that time that it was thought to be interesting to show a woman working in a blue collar job because it remained so unusual.  Locally the first women police officers and firemen came in right about 1980 or so and it was unusual enough that it wasn't really well thought of.  But that's 35 years after the Second World War. 

I think that too all points to something else going on, and what I think it is, is that the rise of domestic machinery made women surplus to domestic labor.  All of us here were born after the rise of domestic machinery and so we only have the recollections of our parents, who came up during the tail end of that rise.  My mother used to speak of the girls taking rugs out to hang on the line to be beat to clean them, something I've only seen on rare occasion but which seems to have been pretty common in the era she was speaking of.  More than one woman her age spoke about hanging out the laundry to dry to be a collective chore, and with big families, I'm sure it was.  Cooking took all day at the time as a lot of people didn't have modern stoves and both my father and my mother had some recollections of their mothers or grandmothers being involved in cooking on an average day nearly all day.  Indeed, my mother was a terrible cook as she'd learned from her mother who had never adjusted to a gas stove and who simply boiled everything endlessly if that was an option, that being pretty common when people had to cook on wood burning stoves.

All of that isn't very long ago, but if we look back, as late as the 1930s the majority of men didn't graduate from high school but went to work in their teens while still living at home.  If they left home, they lived in a boarding house.  Domestic labor was too difficult for people to really "live out on their own".  Army barracks of the old era (which more than one of us here have lived in) showed that, as collective living of the simple type was about as good as a group of men could manage, the same being reflected in bunkhouses on ranches.  Female labor tended to be heavily employed at home, and therefore out of the workforce, by necessity.

But once you don't have to haul rugs out to beat them but run a vacuum cleaner over them, and you don't have to have somebody cooking from around 5:00 a.m. through 5:00 p.m., and you don't have to buy food every other day as the ice box is now a refrigerator, things really change.  That probably reflected itself first in young women starting to attend college in large numbers (47% of college students in 1920 were female), showing that they weren't needed at home, followed by young women occupying new occupational fields, and then with the big increase in education following World War Two the opening up of many field to women starting in the 1970s.

Indeed, that probably does have a connection with World War Two, but it'd be oddly with the GI Bill, which benefited mostly men.  That opened up fields to men of entire demographics that were previously closed to them, and with the advance of domestic machinery freeing up young women from employment in that role, and in their getting education in other areas, the results came about by the 70s.

So where does all of this leave us?

Well, things have rather obviously changed for women in the work place, but the reasons for that aren't, it seems to me, what they might seem to be.  Rather, they're technological and economic.

All of this was addressed in the first post we linked into here, which is one of the better ones on this website.  And the social implications of that are enormous and play into a huge amount about how things developed, rather than how we believe they developed.  And that really matters.  But we've gotten it mostly wrong.

The Resolution on Impeaching Donald Trump.

It's undoubtedly an historic moment, although a sad one to be sure. For the fourth time in the nation's history the House of Representatives is taking action to impeach a President.  Notably in this, this is the third time in less than fifty years that this is taking place, showing how the country managed to go nearly two hundred years before repeating an impeachment, after having gone about sixty years of its initial existence before undertaking one.

We're doing this, in other words, more often than we used to.

This will of course result in the third impeachment trial in the country's history, as Nixon chose to depart prior to being impeached.  President Nixon remains the only President who surely would have been removed from office had the trial go forward. This effort is highly unlikely to remove President Trump and it may prove to be a political miscalculation by the Democrats, to be used by Trump's supporters, in the fall election.

The resolution goes further than some anticipated by including an obstruction of Congress charge, which is much like an obstruction of justice charge.  This puts the Executive squarely at odds with Congress on the murky topic of Executive Privilege, something that is likely to end up in the courts at some point and have long lasting consequences that everyone may regret.

116TH CONGRESS

1ST SESSION House of Representatives. 

RESOLUTION 

Impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors. 

Resolved, That Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate:  

Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and of the people of the United States of America, against Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against him for high crimes and misdemeanors.

ARTICLE I: ABUSE OF POWER 

The Constitution provides that the House of Representatives "shall have the sole Power of Impeachment" and that the President "shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors". In his conduct of the office of President of the United States and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed--Donald J. Trump has abused the powers of the Presidency, in that: Using the powers of his high office, President Trump Solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 United States Presidential election. He did so through a scheme or course of conduct that included soliciting the Government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations that would benefit his reelection, harm the election prospects of a political opponent, and influence the 2020 United States Presidential election to his advantage. President Trump also sought to pressure the Government of Ukraine to take these steps by conditioning official United States Government acts of significant value to Ukraine on its public announcement of the investigations. President Trump engaged in this scheme or course of conduct for corrupt purposes in pursuit of personal political benefit. In so doing, President Trump used the powers of the Presidency in a manner that com promised the national security of the United States and undermined the integrity of the United States democratic process. He thus ignored and injured the interests of the Nation. 

President Trump engaged in this scheme or course of conduct through the following means:

1) President Trump?acting both directly and through his agents Within and Outside the United States Government?corruptly solicited the Government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations into:(A) a political opponent, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, and(B) a discredited theory promoted by Russia alleging that Ukraine rather than Russia interfered in the 2016 United States Presidential election.

(2) With the same corrupt motives, President Trump acting both directly and through his agents Within and outside the United States Government conditioned two official acts on the public announcements that he had requested:(A) the release of $391 million of Unites States taxpayer funds that Congress had appropriated on a bipartisan basis for the purpose of providing vital military and security assistance to Ukraine to oppose Russian aggression and which President Trump had ordered suspended;and(B) a head of state meeting at the White House, which the President of Ukraine sought to demonstrate continued United States support for the Government of Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.

(3) Faced with the public revelation of his actions, President Trump ultimately released the military and security assistance to the Government of Ukraine, but has persisted in openly and corruptly urging and soliciting Ukraine to undertake investigations for his personal political benefit.

These actions were consistent with President Trump's previous invitations of foreign interference in United States elections. 

In all of this, President Trump abused the powers of the Presidency by ignoring and injuring national security and other vital national interests to obtain an improper personal political benefit. He has also betrayed the Nation by abusing his high office to enlist a foreign power in corrupting democratic elections. 

Wherefore President Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. President Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States. 

ARTICLE II: OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS 

The Constitution provides that the House of Representatives shall have the sole Power of Impeachment and that the President shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. In his conduct of the office of President of the United States?and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed--Donald J. Trump has directed the unprecedented, categorical, and indiscriminate defiance of subpoenas issued by the House of Representatives pursuant to its sole Power of Impeachment. President Trump has abused the powers of the Presidency in a manner offensive to, and subversive of, the Constitution, in that:

The House of Representatives has engaged in an impeachment inquiry focused on President Trump?s corrupt solicitation of the Government of Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 United States Presidential election. As part of this impeachment inquiry, the Committees undertaking the investigation served subpoenas seeking documents and testimony deemed vital to the inquiry from various Executive Branch agencies and offices, and current and former officials. 

In response, without lawful cause or excuse, President Trump directed Executive Branch agencies, offices, and officials not to comply with those subpoenas. President Trump thus interposed the powers of the Presidency against the lawful subpoenas of the House of Representatives, and assumed to himself functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of the sole Power of Impeachment vested by the Constitution in the House of Representatives. 

President Trump abused the powers of his high office through the following means:

(1) Directing the White House to defy a lawful subpoena by withholding the production of documents sought therein by the Committees.

(2) Directing other Executive Branch agencies and offices to defy lawful subpoenas and withhold the production of documents and records from the Committees in response to which the Department of State, Office of Management and Budget, Department of Energy, and Department of Defense refused to produce a single document or record.

(3) Directing current and former Executive Branch officials not to cooperate with the Committees?in response to which nine Administration officials defied subpoenas for testimony, namely John Michael, Mick Mulvaney, Robert B. Blair, John A. Eisenberg, Michael Ellis, Preston Wells Griffith, Russell T. Vought, Michael Duffey, Brian McCormack, and T. Ulrich Brechbuhl.

These actions were consistent with President Trump's previous efforts to undermine United States Government investigations into foreign interference in Unites States elections.

Through these actions, President Trump sought to arrogate to himself the right to determine the propriety, scope, and nature of an impeachment inquiry into his own conduct, as well as the unilateral prerogative to deny any and all information to the House of Representatives in the exercise of its ?sole Power of Impeachment?. In the history of the Republic, no President has ever ordered the complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry or sought to obstruct and impede so comprehensively the ability of the House of Representatives to investigate high Crimes and Misdemeanors. This abuse of office served to cover up the President's own misconduct and to seize and control the power of impeachment and thus to nullify a vital constitutional safeguard vested solely in the House of Representatives. 

In all of this, President Trump has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. 

Wherefore, President Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self?governance and the rule of law. President Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States. 

December 10, 2019 (7:16 am.)

And then there's December 10, 2019. . .

which I predict to be a particularly silly, self affirming, self righteous, day on Twitter and Facebook, as well as certain quarters of Reddit.

And I'm not even pointing fingers, I'd note, at any one side when I say that.

Some random looks at other looks on Wyoming and women's right to vote.

On This Day in 1869: Wyoming is the first territory to give women the right to vote

Home  December 10, 1869

December 10, 1869

 150 Years of Women’s Suffrage in Wyoming