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How To Use This Site


This blog was updated on a daily basis for about two years, with those daily entries ceasing on December 31, 2013. The blog is still active, however, and we hope that people stopping in, who find something lacking, will add to the daily entries.

The blog still receives new posts as well, but now it receives them on items of Wyoming history. That has always been a feature of the blog, but Wyoming's history is rich and there are many items that are not fully covered here, if covered at all. Over time, we hope to remedy that.

You can obtain an entire month's listings by hitting on the appropriate month below, or an individual day by hitting on that calendar date.
Use 2013 for the search date, as that's the day regular dates were established and fixed.

Alternatively, the months are listed immediately below, with the individual days appearing backwards (oldest first).

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Thursday, April 4, 2013

April 4

1842  Wyoming County, Pennsylvania, created through the severing of territory from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.

1861   Colonel Robert Reily a meeting in his home to name what would become Wyoming, Ohio.

1872  Wyoming Stock Growers Association officially organized.

1892  Wyoming Stock Growers Association annual meeting concludes.

1905  This stage stop at Muddy Home photographed.

As was this post office at Ft. Washakie.

1906  Worland incorporated.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916  Bill Carlisle robs passengers on the UP's Overland Limited as it traveled between Laramie and Cheyenne.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916   Joseph Fallis of Rock Springs granted a patent for a article carrier.

1916   The Punitive Expedition: The Wyoming Tribune, April 4, 1916
 


We're looking at, I think, a morning newspaper now.  The Wyoming newspaper archive lacked the public domain copy Casper evening paper I was posting for 1916, but it will be back tomorrow night.

The interesting thing here is that quite a few Wyoming papers for this date, including a Casper morning paper, do not have Punitive Expedition entries for this date.  I was curious of the story was just off the front page, but they're also smaller papers that may have simply been running all local news.

Also of interest is the cartoon on the price of gasoline.  Obviously it must have been of real concern to make the front page, but it's something we don't think much about, in the context of 1916, now.  That gasoline would be expensive in the context of a world war is not surprising.

1917   Nebraska Senator George W. Norris's speech to the Senate, April 4, 1917.
There are a great many American citizens who feel that we owe it as a duty to humanity to take part in this war. Many instances of cruelty and inhumanity can be found on both sides. Men are often biased in their judgment on account of their sympathy and their interests. To my mind, what we ought to have maintained from the beginning was the strictest neutrality. If we had done this I do not believe we would have been on the verge of war at the present time. We had a right as a nation, if we desired, to cease at any time to be neutral. We had a technical right to respect the English war zone and to disregard the German war zone, but we could not do that and be neutral. I have no quarrel to find with the man who does not desire our country to remain neutral. While many such people are moved by selfish motives and hopes of gain, I have no doubt but that in a great many instances, through what I believe to be a misunderstanding of the real condition, there are many honest, patriotic citizens who think we ought to engage in this war and who are behind the President in his demand that we should declare war against Germany. I think such people err in judgment and to a great extent have been misled as to the real history and the true facts by the almost unanimous demand of the great combination of wealth that has a direct financial interest in our participation in the war. We have loaned many hundreds of millions of dollars to the allies in this controversy. While such action was legal and countenanced by international law, there is no doubt in my mind but the enormous amount of money loaned to the allies in this country has been instrumental in bringing about a public sentiment in favor of our country taking a course that would make every bond worth a hundred cents on the dollar and making the payment of every debt certain and sure. Through this instrumentality and also through the instrumentality of others who have not only made millions out of the war in the manufacture of munitions, etc., and who would expect to make millions more if our country can be drawn into the catastrophe, a large number of the great newspapers and news agencies of the country have been controlled and enlisted in the greatest propaganda that the world has ever known, to manufacture sentiment in favor of war. It is now demanded that the American citizens shall be used as insurance policies to guarantee the safe delivery of munitions of war to belligerent nations. The enormous profits of munition manufacturers, stockbrokers, and bond dealers must be still further increased by our entrance into the war. This has brought us to the present moment, when Congress, urged by the President and backed by the artificial sentiment, is about to declare war and engulf our country in the greatest holocaust that the world has ever known… 
To whom does the war bring prosperity? Not to the soldier who for the munificent compensation of $16 per month shoulders his musket and goes into the trench, there to shed his blood and to die if necessary; not to the broken-hearted widow who waits for the return of the mangled body of her husband; not to the mother who weeps at the death of her brave boy; not to the little children who shiver with cold; not to the babe who suffers from hunger; nor to the millions of mothers and daughters who carry broken hearts to their graves. War brings no prosperity to the great mass of common and patriotic citizens. It increases the cost of living of those who toil and those who already must strain every effort to keep soul and body together. War brings prosperity to the stock gambler on Wall street—to those who are already in possession of more wealth than can be realized or enjoyed. [A Wall Street broker] says if we can not get war, “it is nevertheless good opinion that the preparedness program will compensate in good measure for the loss of the stimulus of actual war.” That is, if we can not get war, let us go as far in that direction as possible. If we can not get war, let us cry for additional ships, additional guns, additional munitions, and everything else that will have a tendency to bring us as near as possible to the verge of war. And if war comes do such men as these shoulder the musket and go into the trenches? 
Their object in having war and in preparing for war is to make money. Human suffering and the sacrifice of human life are necessary, but Wall Street considers only the dollars and cents. The men who do the fighting, the people who make the sacrifices, are the ones who will not be counted in the measure of this great prosperity he depicts. The stock brokers would not, of course, go to war, because the very object they have in bringing on the war is profit, and therefore they must remain in their Wall Street offices in order to share in that great prosperity which they say war will bring. The volunteer officer, even the drafting officer, will not find them. They will be concealed in their palatial offices on Wall Street, sitting behind mahogany desks, covered up with clipped coupons—coupons soiled with the sweat of honest toil, coupons stained with mothers' tears, coupons dyed in the lifeblood of their fellow men. 
We are taking a step today that is fraught with untold danger. We are going into war upon the command of gold. We are going to run the risk of sacrificing millions of our countrymen's lives in order that other countrymen may coin their lifeblood into money. And even if we do not cross the Atlantic and go into the trenches, we are going to pile up a debt that the toiling masses that shall come many generations after us will have to pay. Unborn millions will bend their backs in toil in order to pay for the terrible step we are now about to take. We are about to do the bidding of wealth's terrible mandate. By our act we will make millions of our countrymen suffer, and the consequences of it may well be that millions of our brethren must shed their lifeblood, millions of broken-hearted women must weep, millions of children must suffer with cold, and millions of babes must die from hunger, and all because we want to preserve the commercial right of American citizens to deliver munitions of war to belligerent nations.
Warren G. Harding's April 4, 1917 speech to the Senate.
 
 Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding's speech to the Senate.

My countrymen, the surpassing war of all times has involved us, and found us utterly unprepared in either a mental or military sense. The Republic must awaken. The people must understand. Our safety lies in full realization the fate of the nation and the safety of the world will be decided on the western battlefront of Europe.

Primarily the American Republic has entered the war in defense of its national rights. If we did not defend we could not hope to endure. Other big issues are involved but the maintained rights and defended honor of a righteous nation includes them all. Cherishing the national rights the fathers fought to establish, and loving freedom and civilization, we should have violated every tradition and sacrificed every inheritance if we had longer held aloof from the armed conflict which is to make the world safe for civilization. More, we are committed to sacrifice in battle in order to make America safe for Americans and establish their security on every lawful mission on the high seas or under the shining sun.

We are testing popular government's capacity for self-defense. We are resolved to liberate the soul of American life and prove ourselves an American people in fact, spirit, and purpose, and consecrate ourselves anew and everlastingly to human freedom and humanity's justice. Realizing our new relationship with the world, we want to make it fit to live in, and with might and fright and ruthlessness and barbarity crushed by the conscience of a real civilization. Ours is a small concern about the kind of government any people may choose, but we do mean to outlaw the nation which violates the sacred compacts of international relationships.

The decision is to be final. If the Russian failure should become the tragic impotency of nations--if Italy should yield to the pressure of military might--if heroic France should be martyred on her flaming altars of liberty and justice and only the soul of heroism remain--if England should starve and her sacrifices and resolute warfare should prove in vain--if all these improbable disasters should attend, even then we should fight on and on, making the world's cause our cause.
A republic worth living in is worth fighting for, and sacrificing for, and dying for. In the fires of this conflict we shall wipe out the disloyalty of those who wear American garb without the faith, and establish a new concord of citizenship and a new devotion, so that we should have made a safe America the home and hope of a people who are truly American in heart and soul.
U.S. Capitol at night, April 4, 1917
 

The Cheyenne State Leader for April 4, 1917: Conscription
 

By the 4th, still prior to the declaration of war, news of conscription was hitting.  An army numbering 500,000 men in strength still seemed to be the one that was contemplated, and which Wilson had indicated as anticipated in his speech.  It'd turn out to be much larger than that.

1st Battalion of the Wyoming National Guard was also being called up, it appeared.

Right away anti sedition measures were being contemplated, something that would occur and which is shocking to read about now.  We're used to thinking of the terrible example of Japanese internment during World War Two, but we've forgotten the anti sedition efforts, and even the enemy alien internment, of World War One.
The Laramie Boomerang for April 4, 1917: Troops might go overseas
 


War hadn't been declared yet but it began to dawn on people that war with Germany meant sending troops to Europe, something that President Wilson had indicated in his request for a declaration of war.  The news had been so full of the war being naval, and problems with Mexico, that this hadn't been obvious at first, even though it should have been.

Wilson's speech, however, grossly underestimated the number of men that World War One would require in that role.

In an act that would be shocking today, students at the Laramie High School who were 17 were being encouraged to enlist in the Navy.

And scarlet fever was back.
1933  Graduate engineering courses at the University of Wyoming suspended as a result of the Great Depression.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1955 39 inches of snow fell in Sheridan. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

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