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.
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.
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.
