October 14

Today is Columbus Day for 2013.

1066. Duke William of Normandy defeats King Harold Godwinson as the Battle of Hastings.  The result of this battle would bring feudalism into England and result in the birth of English Common Law.

The Bayeux Tapestry depicting the vents of October, 1066.

1884  State Democratic Convention held in Carbon County.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1912. John Schrank, suffering from delusions about the late William McKinley, shoots Theodore Roosevelt at a campaign stop.

1916   Bull Moose Carey goes for Wilson: Cheyenne Leader for October 14, 1916.
 

Illustrating the ongoing split in the GOP, and perhaps providing us something that sounds a little familiar for us today, the Cheyenne Leader for October 14, 1916 lead with a story about respected former Republican Governor Carey supporting Woodrow Wilson.

Joseph M. Carey was born in Delaware and studied law at the University of Pennsylvania before coming to Wyoming as its first, territorial, Attorney General.  He went very rapidly from that post to being a Wyoming Territorial Supreme Court justice, and just as rapidly left that post to start ranching, founding a large ranch near what is now Casper Wyoming, the CY Ranch. The ranch house, indeed, still exists in a much updated form near today's Casper College.

Almost as soon as he took up ranching, he took up politics, first serving on the  Cheyenne City Council and then as the Territorial Representative to the U.S. House of Representatives.  He served in the U.S. Senate from 1890 to 1895 but lost that position thereafter.  At that time Senators were elected by the Legislature and there was a great upheaval in the Wyoming Legislature following the Johnson County War which, for a time, threatened the Republican hold on the state.

He returned to politics in 1911 and was elected Governor, but he was one of the Republican Governors who followed Theodore Roosevelt out of the GOP in the 1912 election, at which time he joined the Progressive Party.  He was sincere in his Progressive convictions and like some of the more dedicated Progressives he did not make peace with the GOP like Roosevelt himself did in this election year.  He remained in the Progressive Party until his death in 1924.

The 1916 election year saw quite a few instances like this.  While Roosevelt made peace with the GOP and returned to it, after some indication that he might run as Progressive against Wilson, not everyone did. And some of those Progressives were leaning towards Wilson, with some even going more leftward than that.

1918  Countdown on the Great War. October 14, 1918. Saying no to the Boche, Sinkings in the Atlantic, Americans resume the offensive in the Meuse Argonne and the British in Flanders.

Camp Funston, Kansas, which some believe if the locus of the origin of the Spanish Flu.

1.  The Battle of Courtrai commences in which the Groupe d'Armees des Flanders, made up of twelve Belgian, ten British and six French divisions under the command of King Albert I of Belgian attacked German forces in the hopes of continuing the Allied advance as far as possible before the oncoming winter made further advances impossible.  It was still anticiapted at the time that the war would drag into 1919.

British forces found, to their expectation, that the Germans offered much reduced resistance and they had achived all of their objectives, reaching the Scheldt, by the 22nd.

The Germans were basically collapsing while still offering resistance.  The nearness to a complete German disaster was not apparent, but it was coming.

2. The U.S. resumes the offensive in the Meuse Argonne with assaults near Montfaucon.

Senencourt (Muese) France. "Kamerad," a figure by the soldiers in the yard of the American Red Cross Canteen at Senencourt. The Red Cross girls are, from left to right: Miss Louise Adams of 10 Arlington Place, Brooklyn, N.Y.; Miss Alice Birdall, of 310 Third Ave. Reselle Ave., N.J.; and Miss Gertrude Nichols, #849 West Galen Street, Butte, Montana; Capt. Beverly Rautoul of #17 Winter Street, Salem, Mass., and Private Geo. St. Clair Preston, both of the American Red Cross Evacuation Hospital #8, are on the extreme left

3.  The air wing of the United States Marine Corps engaged in its first all Marine air action by bombing Pitthem, Belgium.  Marines Ralph Talbot and gunner Robert Guy Robinson won the Medal of Honor for heroism associated with holding off German air attacks on their Airco bomber when they became separated and had to return to attempt to return to their base alone.

Airco DH4, which was used in the tactical role.

4.  The provisional government for Czechoslovakia formed.


5.  The U-139 attacked the Portoguese steamer Sao Miguel and its escort the Portuguese Navy trawler NRP Augusto de Castilho on the Action of 14 October 1918.  The trawler was lightly armed and while it fought for several hours, it was actually outgunned by the submarine and surrendered to it, and was thereafter scuttled by the German submariners.  The engagement is regarded as the only high seas naval battle of the Great War to take place in the North Atlantic.

On the same day, German submarines sank the Bayard, a French fishing vessel, the Stifinder, a Norwegian barque, which was scuttled due an engagement with the U-152 and the British passenger ship Dundalk, with the loss of 21 lives.  The German minsweeper SMS M22 was sunk by mines.

6.

1919  October 14, 1919. Missing the Mark and Other Dangers

There was already a winner, but the 1919 Air Derby, which saw plans stationed in the east fly west, and planes stationed in the west, continued on and continued to make news inWyoming.

Two of those planes that arrived over Cheyenne in the dark had to come down, with one missing the field.

In other news, things in Gary Indiana were getting out of hand, in terms of labor strikes. And two members of the Arapaho Tribe were recounting their experiences at the Battle of the Little Big Horn to interviewers.

And an interesting observation was made about not owning a car.

1943  Hunters were asked to donate animal skins to the war effort.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

A Wisconsin deer camp in 1943.  I couldn't find a Wyoming example and this one was available for use. The rifle on the wall appears to be a nice Mauser with a set trigger, perhaps a rebuild of a World War One prize rifle.  Photograph courtesy of the Wisconsin Department of Fish and Game, which retains all rights to the same.

If this seems like an unusual request, we have to keep in mind that the leather requirements for the service during World War Two were quite high, and moreover various uniform items used different types of leather.  Cowhide was the most common leather in use, of course, but elk hide was specifically required for mounted service boots, which were used by cavalrymen, horse artillerymen and other mounted soldiers.  While its common to believe that mounted soldiers did not exist in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, this is in fact incorrect and only horse artillery was actually phased out during the war.  Mounted service boots continued to be made for service use as late as the late 1940s.

1963  The State Penitentiary's Shaw High School graduated its first class.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

September 28

490 BC Greeks defeated the Persians at the Battle of Marathon.

1066 William the Conqueror, the duke of Normandy, invades England. The Saxon forces, haveing recently fought Harald Haadraada at Stamford Bridge, were located a considerable distance to the north.

1769   Captain Rafael Martínez Pacheco post as commander of San Agustín de Ahumada Presidio.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1891   Paul Ranous Greever born in Lansing Kansas.  He was a graduate of the University of Kansas law school and came to Wyoming after serving as an officer in World War One.  He was Wyoming's Congressman from 1935 to 1939.

1901   At Balangiga on Samar Island, Philippine villagers surprised a the US military Company C, 9th Infantry Regiment. Church bells, allegedly used to signal the attack, were taken by the Americans as prizes.  Thirty-eight  of Seventy-four US soldiers were killed and all the rest but six were wounded. Philippine casualties were estimated at 50-250.  The bells were installed at Ft. D. A. Russell Wyoming upon the 9th Infantry's return, where they remain today on the now F. E. Warren AFB.  The Philippines still seek their return, and the presence of the bells remains an ongoing controversy.  A few years ago a member of the Wyoming Veterans Commission lost his seat by stating that he supported their return.  The Philiipinno representatives maintain that the bells in some cases reflect that they were taken from churches other than those near the battle.

1909  Sheridan accepted plans for a new town hall. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916   Two battalions of the Wyoming National Guard left for the Mexican border.  Attribution:  On This Day.

The Punitive Expedition: Addtional Wyoming National Guard units leave for the border, maybe. September 28, 1916.
 

 New York (not Wyoming) Guardsmen entraining, June 1916.  Similar scenes, however, would have taken place near Cheyenne.  These troops, by the way, have a real mix of gear, as photos of Wyoming's troops do as well, as more modern canteens hadn't caught up with them yet and they were still using bedrolls, frontier campaign style, rather than backpacks.  In terms of the scene, we see Guardsmen caught in the moment between the style of Frontier campaigning and modern warfar.

When I originally posted this item it read:

Two additional battalions of the Wyoming National Guard depart for the Mexican border.

These units had been under orders since June.

This might be right, but frankly what I think is may be the case is that the historians who suggest this have the departure dates confused.  But maybe not.

It's possible that the entraining took place on the 27th and 28th, but it seems possible that it took place all late in the night of  the 27th.  Still, the "two additional" battalions items does raise some questions and its not impossible that the Guard entrained over two days.

Raising more questions, 642 Wyoming National Guardsmen were mobilized in the Punitive Expedition.   The first newspaper reports on their departure only indicated that a little under 150 left on the night of the 27th. Assuming that's correct, the bulk of the men were still encamped near Cheyenne.  And if that's right, and it may well be, that means that is perfectly possible that more left over the next two days on additional trains, or at least that more left on a separate train on the 28th.

If you know, let us know.

The Wyoming Tribune for September 28, 1916: Guard leaves on 26 trailroad cars, revolt in Greece, and we're a sick soft nation in 1916, apparently

 

The always more dramatic Wyoming Tribune noted that the Guard was "finally" off for the Mexican border, but its the other headlines that really drew attention.

I'd hardly regard the US of 1916 as sick, soft and fat, but apparently somebody did.

Cheyenne State Leader for September 28, 1916: The troops have left

In today's edition of the Cheyenne State Leader we learn that the Wyoming Guard departed the prior night, after an apparently long day of delays.

The bottom entry, I'd note, reminds us to be careful out there.

1918 

Col. J. W. Cavendar, a Casualty of the Great War. Who was he?

The September 28, 1918 Casper Daily Press in which we learn a fair amount about Joseph J. Cavendar.  What we don't actually learn from this paper is the true circumstances of his death.

From the Wyoming newspapers of September 27, 1918, we learned that Col. J. W. Cavendar had become a casualty of the fighting on the Meuse Argonne.  He was the commander of the 148th Field Artillery, one of the units formed out of Wyoming National Guard infantrymen (as well as the Guardsmen of other regional states, or at least the state of Utah.

But who was he?

It's pretty hard to tell.

What we know, or thought we knew, from the Cheyenne papers of the day is that he was an attorney, and they report him as a local attorney, and hence the problem.

Lawyers may rise to the heights of great fame during their lifetimes, and certainly the ascendancy to high positions has been common, including in a prior era to the command of Federalized National Guard units.  But after they are dead, they are almost always completely forgotten.  The fame of lawyers follows them into the grave.

From what we can tell, the Cheyenne papers that reported him as "local" were a bit in error.  He was a Georgia born attorney who had originally apparently been a shopkeeper. According to the Casper paper set out above, he came to Wyoming at first to enter ranching, but that must not have worked otu as he returned to Georgia and entered the law. After that, he came back to Wyoming, was admitted to the bar here, and then practiced for a time in Carbon County before relocating to Park County.  In 1912, as the newspaper above notes, he was elected as Park County Attorney.

The old part of the Park County Courthouse, which was built in 1912, the year Cavendar became the Park County Attorney.

A little additional digging reveals that he'd been in the National Guard for awhile.  In 1911 he'd been elected, as that's how they did it, as the Captain of the infantry unit in  Cody.  His wife was asked to speak for Spanish American War pensioners as late as 1921, in hopes they'd claim their pensions, so his memory remained that strong at least to that point.  Perhaps more interestingly, given that he was born in 1878, that raises some question of whether he'd served in the Army during the Spanish American War.  He would have been old enough to do so.

He was in command, at least for a time, of the Wyoming National Guard troops that were mobilized for the crisis on the Mexican Border and was a Major in the National Guard by that time.

So we know that Col. Joseph W. Cavendar was a Georgia born lawyer who had relocated to Wyoming twice.  He'd started life as a merchant, and then switched to ranching, then went back to Georgia and became a lawyer.  After that, he came back to Wyoming and ultimately ended up the Park County Attorney.  At some point he'd entered the Wyoming National Guard.  Given his age, he was old enough to have been a Spanish American War veteran and it would be somewhat odd, given his obvious affinity for military life, if he had not been.

At the time of his death he was fifty years old.  Not a young man.  And there's a ting, maybe, of failure to his life.  It's subtle, but it's sort of there.  The law was his third career and Wyoming was his second state of practice.

But perhaps that's emphasized by what we later learn.

Cavendar killed himself.

Indeed, what we learn is that on the very first day of the Meuse Argonne Offensive the Army found the fifty year old Park County Attorney, former rancher, former merchant, wanting and informed him that it was relieving him of his command and giving him the choice of returning to the United States to be mustered out of service or to be reduced in rank to Captain and return to service in that capacity.  Instead he walked over to the hotel where he was staying and killed himself with a pistol.  The Army, no doubt wanting to save his reputation, or perhaps worried that the relief of a National Guard officer (from a state in which powerful U.S. Senator F. E. Warren was. . . Gen. Pershing's father in law, was from) reported him killed in action.

Cavendar had been in front of a board that was reviewing National Guard officers and finding more than a few of them wanting.  Some were higher ranking that Cavendar.  By the time the true story broke, following the war, the sympathies were clearly on the relieved National Guard officers side and the action regarded as an outrage.

Was it?  That's pretty hard to say. Cavendar had been in command of his unit for a good five months at the time he was relieved. But that doesn't mean that his service had been perfect or that there weren't better officers, and potentially younger ones, coming up behind him.  On the other hand, the Regular Army was legendary for containing officer that had a strong, largely unwarranted, animosity towards the National Guard.  Indeed, elements of the Army had openly opposed making the Guard the official reserve of the Army in 1903, an action which if they had been successful in would have lead to absolute disaster during World War One.  Nonetheless, as late as World War Two the Army seemed to retain a strong animosity in some quarters towards National Guard officers and relieved many of them with no clear indication as to why.  No doubt some, perhaps many, warranted removal, but the Army seemed more zealous in its actions than facts warranted.

Whatever happened, apparently Cavendar couldn't bare what he regarded as the shame of it, or perhaps other things combined to push him over the edge. Whatever it was, he shouldn't have done what he did.  Indeed, followers of the blog on Canadian colones in the Great War would note that many of them were relieved and went on to be highly regarded.  Relieving officers in wartime isn't unusual, it's part of the service.  

Well, anyhow, now we know more about Cavendar than we did, sad story though it is.

1918  Villa rides again and the Spanish Flu marches through American camps. The Cheyenne State Leader, September 28, 1918

Death in various forms figured prominently on the front page of the Cheyenne State Leader for September 28, 1918.

Including in that was the resurgent Pancho Villa. . . whom only two years prior was the prim military concern of the United States.

1930  Union Pacific towns  Cumberland No. 1 and No. 2 dismantled.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

1930  S. H. Knight took photographs of the Centennial Valley and of this lodge in southern Wyoming.

September 25

1066  Harold II of England defeats an invasion by Harald Hardrada of Norway, at Stamford Bridge near York.  Amongst the dead were King Harald, who had lead an adventurous Viking life, and Tostig, King Harold's brother who had sided with the Norwegians.  This battle is overshadowed by the Battle of Hastings, but in this battle, just a few weeks earlier, King Harold Godwinson defeated King Harald Haardaada, the King of Norway

King Harald was a tall man for the era, and when he asked King Harold "How much of England will you give me." Harold famously replied "Six feet, as you are bigger than other men.".  That's what he got.

What's this have to do with anything, you might ask?  Well, Harold's forced march to Stamford bridge with Saxon levies, followed by the battle, is sometimes cited as fatiguing his troops, who then had to turn around shortly thereafter and march to Hastings.  Some recent scholarship has questioned that, but that assertion has been made.  The Norman victory lead to the introduction of feudalism in England, which produced the Common Law as we know it, including the Common Law as used in Wyoming's courts.

1493     Christopher Columbus set sail from Cadiz, Spain, with a flotilla of 17 ships on his second voyage to the Western Hemisphere.

1789     The first United States Congress adopted 12 amendments to the Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification. (Ten of the amendments became the Bill of Rights.)

1909  August Malchow, the "Wisconsin Kid", of Havre Montana defended his world welterweight crown at the Methany Hall in Thermopolis.  The fight was against "Kid Erne" of Lewistown.  In  his professional career Malchow would go on to fight three more bouts, two of them also in the Methany Hall, with both of those being victories (one being a technicality, as it was a draw).  He would go on to loose in Sheridan in 1910 and he died in 1915 at age 30.

1912  USS Wyoming, BB-32, commissioned.

1916   Wyoming Tribune for September 25, 1916: Villa seeking alibi for Columbus Raid. Guard to go to San Antonio.
 

A dramatic Monday newspaper.

Villa looking for an alibi for Columbus.

The Guard to go to San Antonio.

Austria was without bread, and prohibitionist were submitting a bill to the Legislature to deprive the populace of booze.

1918  The Flu shares pride of place with the Great War and Villa, September 25, 1918.

The Spanish Flu, which would kill more Americans in 1918/19 than combat in Europe would, was now sufficiently newsworthy that it was making the front page day after day.  On this day, readers of the Casper paper woke up to find that as many as 30,000 cases of the particularly deadly and virulent flu strain had run through Army camps.

They also learned that Villa had returned to full violence in his war against Carranza.

In more positive news, Germany appeared to be collapsing.

Cheyenne's readers had equally disturbing news, including a claim that the Germans had returned to worshiping pagan gods in their desperation, a rather extreme claim to say the least.

1933  Memorial to June Downey, important early professor with widely varying interests, unveiled at the University of Wyoming.  In addition to writing poetry, teaching English, later psychology, and being a department head, she wrote the schools Alma Mater.

 Where the western lights' long shadows
Over the boundless prairies fling
And the mountain winds are vocal
With thy dear name, Wyoming.
There it is brown and yellow
Floats in loving loyalty,
And the College throws its portals
Open wide to all men free.

Refrain:
And so our songs we bring.
Our Alma Mater sing,
To her our hearts shall cling,
Shall cling forever more.

Yonder we can see it standing,
Circled by purple hills,
While the flaming fire of sunset
Every Western window fills;
'Tis the College! Ah, we know it!
Shrine of many joys and tears,
And the rays that light upon it
Are prophetic of its years.

1956     The first trans-Atlantic telephone cable went into service.

1963  John F. Kennedy spoke at the University of Wyoming.  His address:

Senator McGee--my old colleague in the Senate, Gale McGee--Governor, Mr. President, Senator Mansfield, Senator Metcalf, Secretary Udall, ladies and gentlemen:

I want to express my appreciation to you for your warm welcome, to you, Governor, to the President of the University, to Senator McGee, and others. I am particularly glad to come on this conservation trip and have an opportunity to speak at this distinguished university, because what we are attempting to do is to develop the talents in our country which require, of course, education which will permit us in our time, when the conservation of our resources requires entirely different techniques than were required 50 years ago, when the great conservation movement began under Theodore Roosevelt--and these talents, scientific and social talents, must be developed at our universities.

I hope that all of you who are students here will recognize the great opportunity that lies before you in this decade, and in the decades to come, to be of service to our country. The Greeks once defined happiness as full use of your powers along lines of excellence, and I can assure you that there is no area of life where you will have an opportunity to use whatever powers you have, and to use them along more excellent lines, bringing ultimately, I think, happiness to you and those whom you serve.

What I think we must realize is that the problems which now face us and their solution are far more complex, far more difficult, far more subtle, require a far greater skill and discretion of judgment, than any of the problems that this country has faced in its comparatively short history, or any, really, that the world has faced in its long history. The fact is that almost in the last 30 years the world of knowledge has exploded. You remember that Robert Oppenheimer said that 8 or 9 out of 10 of all the scientists who ever lived, live today. This last generation has produced nearly all of the scientific breakthroughs, at least relatively, that this world of ours has ever experienced. We are alive, all of us, while this tremendous explosion of knowledge, which has expanded the horizon of our experience, so far has all taken 'place in the last 30 years.

If you realize that when Queen Victoria sent for Robert Peel to be Prime Minister-he was in Rome--the journey which he took from Rome to London took him the same amount of time, to the day, that it had taken the Emperor Hadrian to go from Rome to England nearly 1900 years before. There had been comparatively little progress made in almost 1900 years in the field of knowledge. Now, suddenly, in the last 100 years, but most particularly in the last 30 years, all that is changed, and all of this knowledge is brought to bear, and can be brought to bear, in improving our lives and making the life of our people more happy, or destroying them. And that problem is the one, of course, which this generation of Americans and the next must face: how to use that knowledge, how to make a social discipline out of it.

There is really not much use in having science and its knowledge confined to the laboratory unless it comes out into the mainstream of American and world life, and only those who are trained and educated to handle knowledge and the disciplines of knowledge can be expected to play a significant part in the life of their country. So, quite obviously, this university is not maintained by the people of Wyoming merely to help all of the graduates enjoy a prosperous life. That may come, that may be a byproduct, but the people of Wyoming contribute their taxes to the maintenance of this school in order that the graduates of this school may, themselves, return to the society which helped develop them some of the talents which that society has made available, and what is true in this State is true across the United States.

The reason why, at the height of the Civil War, when the preservation of the Union was in doubt, Abraham Lincoln signed the Land Grant College Act, which has built up the most extraordinary educational system in the world, was because he knew that a nation could not exist and be ignorant and free; and what was true 100 years ago is more true today. So what we have to decide is how we are going to manage the complicated social and economic and world problems which come across our desks-my desk, as President of the United States; the desk of the Senators, as representatives of the States; the Members of the House, as representatives of the people.

But most importantly, as the final power is held by a majority of the people, how the majority of the people are going to make their judgment on the wise use of our resources, on the correct monetary and fiscal policy, what steps we should take in space, what steps we should take to develop the resources of the ocean, what steps we should take to manage our balance of payments, what we should do in the Congo or Viet-Nam, or in Latin America, all these areas which come to rest upon the United States as the leading great power of the world, with the determination and the understanding to recognize what is at stake in the world--all these are problems far more complicated than any group of citizens ever had to deal with in the history of the world, or any group of Members of Congress had to deal with.

If you feel that the Members of Congress were more talented 100 years ago, and certainly the Senators in the years before the Civil War included the brightest figures, probably, that ever sat in the Senate--Benton, Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and all the rest-they talked, and at least three of them stayed in the Congress 40 years--they talked for 40 years about four or five things: tariffs and the development of the West, land, the rights of the States and slavery, Mexico. Now we talk about problems in one summer which dwarf in complexity all of those matters, and we must deal with them or we will perish.

So I think the chance for an educated graduate of this school to serve his State and country is bright. I can assure you that you are needed.

This trip that I have taken is now about 24 hours old, but it is a rewarding 24 hours because there is nothing more encouraging than for those of us to leave the rather artificial city of Washington and come and travel across the United States and realize what is here, the beauty, the diversity, the wealth, and the vigor of the people.

Last Friday I spoke to delegates from all over the world at the United Nations. It is an unfortunate fact that nearly every delegate comes to the United States from all around the world and they make a judgment on the United States based on an experience in New York or Washington; and rarely do they come West beyond the Mississippi, and rarely do they go to California, or to Hawaii, or to Alaska. Therefore, they do not understand the United States, and those of us who stay only in Washington sometimes lose our comprehension of the national problems which require a national solution.

This country has become rich because nature was good to us, and because the people who came from Europe, predominantly, also were among the most vigorous. The basic resources were used skillfully and economically, and because of the wise work done by Theodore Roosevelt and others, significant progress was made in conserving these resources.
The problem, of course, now is that the whole concept of conservation must change in the 1960's if we are going to pass on to the 350 million Americans who will live in this country in 40 years where 180 million Americans now live--if we are going to pass on a country which is even richer.

The fact of the matter is that the management of our natural resources instead of being primarily a problem of conserving them, of saving them, now requires the scientific application of knowledge to develop new resources. We have come to. realize to a large extent that resources are not passive. Resources are not merely something that was here, put by nature. Research tells us that previously valueless materials, which 10 years ago were useless, now can be among the most valuable natural resources of the United States. And that is the most significant fact in conservation now since the early 1900's when Theodore Roosevelt started his work. A conservationist's first reaction in those days was to preserve, to hoard, to protect every non-renewable resource. It was the fear of resource exhaustion which caused the great conservation movement of the 1900's. And this fear was reflected in the speeches and attitudes of our political leaders and their writers.

This is not surprising in the light of the technology of that time, but today that approach is out of date, and I think this is an important fact for the State of Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain States. It is both too pessimistic and too optimistic. We need no longer fear that our resources and energy supplies are a fixed quantity that can be exhausted in accordance with a particular rate of consumption. On the other hand, it is not enough to put barbed wire around a forest or a lake, or put in stockpiles of minerals, or restrictive laws and regulations on the exploitation of resources. That was the old way of doing it.

Our primary task now is to increase our understanding of our environment to a point where we can enjoy it without defacing it, use its bounty without detracting permanently from its value, and, above all, maintain a living balance between man's actions and nature's reactions, for this Nation's great resources are as elastic and productive as our ingenuity can make them. For example, soda ash is a multimillion dollar industry in this State. A few years ago there was no use for it. It was wasted. People were unaware of it. And even if it had been sought, it could not be found--not because it wasn't here, but because effective prospecting techniques had not been developed. Now soda ash is a necessary ingredient in the production of glass, steel, and other products. As a result of a series of experiments, of a harnessing of science to the use of man, this great new industry has opened up. In short, conservation is no longer protection and conserving and restricting. The balance between our needs and the availability of our resources, between our aspirations and our environment, is constantly changing.

One of the great resources which we are going to find in the next 40 years is not going to be the land; it will be the ocean. We are going to find untold wealth in the oceans of the world which will be used to make a better life for our people. Science is changing all of our natural environment. It can change it for good; it can change it for bad. We are pursuing, for example, new opportunities in coal, which have been largely neglected--examining the feasibility of transporting coal by water through pipelines, of gasification at the mines, of liquefaction of coal into gasoline, and of transmitting electric power directly from the mouth of the mine. The economic feasibility of some of these techniques has not been determined, but it will be in the next decade. At the same time, we are engaged in active research on better means of using low grade coal, to meet the tremendous increase in the demand for coal we are going to find in the rest of this century. This is, in effect, using science to increase our supply of a resource of which the people of the United States were totally unaware 50 years ago.

Another research undertaking of special concern to this Nation and this State is the continuing effort to develop practical and feasible techniques of converting oil shale into usable petroleum fuels. The higher grade deposits in Wyoming alone are equivalent to 30 billion barrels of oil, and 200 billion barrels in the case of lower grade development. This could not be used, there was nothing to conserve, and now science is going to make it possible.

Investigation is going on to assure at the same time an adequate water supply so that when we develop this great new industry we will be able to use it and have sufficient water. Resource development, therefore, requires not only the coordination of all branches of science, it requires the joint effort of scientists, government--State, national, and local--and members of other professional disciplines. For example, we are now examining in the United States today the mixed economic-technical question of whether very large-scale nuclear reactors can produce unexpected savings in the simultaneous desalinization of water and the generation of electricity. We will have, before this decade is out or sooner, a tremendous nuclear reactor which makes electricity and at the same time gets fresh water from salt water at a competitive price. What a difference this can make to the Western United States. And, indeed, not only the United States, but all around the globe where there are so many deserts on the ocean's edge.

It is in efforts, I think, such as this, where the National Government can play a significant role, where the scale of public investment or the nationwide scope of the problem, the national significance of the results are too great to ignore or which cannot always be carried out by private research. Federal funds and stimulation can help make the most imaginative and productive use of our manpower and facilities. The use of science and technology in these fields has gained understanding and support in the Congress. Senator Gale McGee has proposed an energetic study of the technology of electrometallurgy--the words are getting longer as the months go on, and more complicated-an area of considerable importance to the Rocky Mountains.

All this, I think, is going to change the life of Wyoming and going to change the life of the United States. What we regard now as relative well-being, 30 years from now will be regarded as poverty. When you realize that 30 years ago r out of 10 farms had electricity, and yet some farmers thought that they were living reasonably well, now for a farm not to have electricity, we regard them as living in the depths of poverty. That is how great a change has come in 30 years. In the short space of 18 years, really, or almost 20 years, the wealth of this country has gone up 300 percent.

In 1970, 1980, 1990, this country will be, can be, must be--if we make the proper decisions, if we manage our resources, both human and material, wisely, if we make wise decisions in the Nation, in the State, in the community, and individually, if we maintain a vigorous and hopeful 'pursuit of life and knowledge--the resources of this country are so unlimited and science is expanding them so greatly that all those people who thought 40 years ago that this country would be exhausted in the middle of the century have been proven wrong. It is going to be richer than ever, providing we make the wise decisions and we recognize that the future belongs to those who seize it.

Knowledge is power, a saying 500 years old, but knowledge is power today as never before, not only here in the United States, but the future of the free world depends in the final analysis upon the United States and upon our willingness to reach those decisions on these complicated matters which face us with courage and clarity. And the graduates of this school will, as they have in the past, play their proper role.

I express my thanks to you. This building which 15 years ago was just a matter of conversation is now a reality. So those things that we talk about today, which seem unreal, where so many people doubt that they can be done--the fact of the matter is, it has been true all through our history--they will be done, and Wyoming, in doing it, will play its proper role.

Thank you.

1997   Guernsey State Park designated a National Historic Landmark.  Attribution:  On This Day.