January 16

Today is Martin Luther King Day for 2012.  The day is observed on the third Monday of each year.

Today is Wyoming Equality Day for 2012.  The day is observed on the third Monday of each year.  This is, of course, a state holiday only.

The fact that the days overlap is not coincidental.  Wyoming was slow to recognize the Martin Luther King Day holiday.  The reason does not stem from racism, but rather from the fact that the Wyoming Legislature of the time felt the holiday was an intrusion on the state's rights and that it was, additionally, worried about the creation of an additional Federal holiday at at time in which fewer and fewer are actually recognized by non governmental employees.  There was also a feeling on the part of the sitting legislature that the holiday was, in some way, not directly applicable to the state, given the state's long history of recognizing equality.  The conflict was ultimately solved by the state passing a holiday recognizing Wyoming's pioneering role in equality which fell on the same date as the Martin Luther King Holiday.

1847  John C. Fremont is appointed Governor of the new California Territory.

1882. H. R. 3174 introduced by Congressman Post, of Wyoming, to construct a military road from Fort Washakie to Yellowstone Park. Adversely reported later by Military Affairs Committee.

1883   The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, establishing the United States Civil Service, is passed.

1910  Contrary to yesterday's entry, others note that today is actually the day in which the Buffalo Bill Dam was completed, and not the last cement was poured on this date, in sub zero weather.  The dam was originally named the Shoshone Dam.

1915   Younghawk, an Indian scout for the 7th Cavalry who participated in the valley and hilltop fights at Little Big Horn, died in Elbowood, North Dakota.

1919  Wyoming ratified the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Wyoming, North Carolina, Utah, Nebraska, and Missouri push the 18th Amendment over the top.

On this day in 1919, Wyoming, in combination with North Carolina, Utah, Nebraska and Missouri ratified the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution.  These legislative acts secured a sufficient number of votes to make the 18th Amendment the law. The Senate had passed the original proposal on August 1, 1917 and the House a revised variant on December 17, 1917.  The various states passed it in the following order:

1. Mississippi (January 7, 1918)
2. Virginia (January 11, 1918)
3. Kentucky (January 14, 1918)
4. North Dakota (January 25, 1918)
5. South Carolina (January 29, 1918)
6. Maryland (February 13, 1918)
7. Montana (February 19, 1918)
8. Texas (March 4, 1918)
9. Delaware (March 18, 1918)
10. South Dakota (March 20, 1918)
11. Massachusetts (April 2, 1918)
12. Arizona (May 24, 1918)
13. Georgia (June 26, 1918)
14. Louisiana (August 3, 1918)
15. Florida (November 27, 1918)
16. Michigan (January 2, 1919)
17. Ohio (January 7, 1919)
18. Oklahoma (January 7, 1919)
19. Idaho (January 8, 1919)
20. Maine (January 8, 1919)
21. West Virginia (January 9, 1919)
22. California (January 13, 1919)
23. Tennessee (January 13, 1919)
24. Washington (January 13, 1919)
25. Arkansas (January 14, 1919)
26. Illinois (January 14, 1919)
27. Indiana (January 14, 1919)
28. Kansas (January 14, 1919)
29. Alabama (January 15, 1919)
30. Colorado (January 15, 1919)
31. Iowa (January 15, 1919)
32. New Hampshire (January 15, 1919)
33. Oregon (January 15, 1919)
34. North Carolina (January 16, 1919)
35. Utah (January 16, 1919)
36. Nebraska (January 16, 1919)
37. Missouri (January 16, 1919)
38. Wyoming (January 16, 1919)
39. Minnesota (January 17, 1919)
40. Wisconsin (January 17, 1919)
41. New Mexico (January 20, 1919)
42. Nevada (January 21, 1919)
43. New York (January 29, 1919)
44. Vermont (January 29, 1919)
45. Pennsylvania (February 25, 1919)
46. New Jersey (March 9, 1922)

Connecticut and Rhode Island told Congress to pound dry sand and didn't ratify the amendment, not that that matter in context.  There were, of course, only 48 states at the time.

The 18th Amendment provided:

Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all the territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

While the intent of the Amendment was clear; "bone dry prohibition", it didn't actually provide any definitions and so it required legislation to make it effective, which was quick in coming. 

As this list should indicate, Prohibition was actually massively popular in the United States including the Western United States.  Only two states refused to ratify the proposed amendment.  I'm not sure what the situation was in Connecticut, but Rhode Island was heavily Catholic with a large Italian demographic and likely found the proposal abhorrent for that reason.  Still, it's somewhat telling that Wyoming's ratification came with a slate of late Western states that voted for it.  Still, the entire process really only took one year once Congress had passed it.

Everyone is well aware of how the history of Prohibition worked and its generally regarded as a failure.  Like most popular history, it's become mythologized, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself as myths are the means by which humans originally remembered their history.  However, like other instances in which an event quickly turned into an unacceptable defeat, the myth isn't completely accurate.  The popular myth is that Prohibition was unpopular from the start and is a failed example of legislating morality.  While it may be an example of such a failure, it very clearly wasn't unpopular at first and in fact the opposite was very much the case.  Indeed, as late as the election of 1922 it remained so popular in Wyoming that William B. Ross, the Democrat who ran for office, ran on a platform of more strictly enforcing its provisions.

So a person might reasonably ask what happened to cause it to so rapidly fail and to be so inaccurately remembered.  Quite a few things really.

For one thing, the final push to pass Prohibition came in the context of World War One.  While momentum to pass it had been building for well over a decade, the war caused an enormous fear that American youth would be exposed to the corrupting influences of European culture.  If that seems really odd, and it is, we have to keep in mind that American culture in the 1910s remained predominantly Protestant in outlook (and indeed it still is).  English speaking Protestants took a distinctively different view of drink in this period than their Catholic fellows, in part because their history with it was considerably different.  While early Protestants had not been opposed to drink at all, this had evolved and by this point there was a strong anti drinking culture in the English speaking world.  People feared that progress on the anti drinking front would be lost when young Americans were exposed to French wine and, frankly, French women.

But for the most part the cultural impact on Americans, who were not in the war long, was much less than it would be for later wars, even where they fought overseas.  So this fear did not really last that long.  The short but deep depression that followed the war, moreover, reminded people that alcohol was an agricultural byproduct, and like a lot of things that impact a person's wallet, that had an influence.  The lid coming off of the culture in the 1920s had an additional big impact on things as the 1920s started to Roar and Prohibition became fashionable to flaunt.  That in turn inspired criminal activity that became a major problem.  By the early 1930s Americans had substantially changed their minds as a second depression, the Great Depression, again depressed the agricultural sector along with every other.  So, after a short stint, Prohibition went from massively popular to substantially unpopular, and the 18th Amendment was repealed.

1919  January 16, 1919 (Other than Prohibition). Back to War? Wyoming National Guardsmen "in the heart of Prussia", Smaller Baseball Salaries?

The Cheyenne newspaper had some shocking headlines, in addition to the expected arrival of Prohibition, on this day in 1919.  Fears of a resumed war in Europe loomed large as German objections to the terms of the peace were developing.

News of a revolution in Argentina had been in the press all week long as well. And now there was news of a revolution in Peru.

And baseball salaries, reportedly huge just prior to this time, but certainly not retrospectively, were in the news.

Officers of the 49th Infantry Division arriving in New York on January 16, 1919.  Note the officer on the left is wearing pince nez glasses, still in style at the time.  The officer in the middle is wearing leather gloves of a type that would continue to see use for decades.

While fears of a revived war were in the press in Cheyenne, troops were none the less still pouring home.

Fantastic "yard long" panoramic photograph of Camp Custer, Michigan, copyrighted on this day in 1919.  Not taken on this day clearly, but a great photo.

1920     Prohibition began as the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution took effect.  Wyoming's politicians were surprisingly supportive of prohibition, even though the population began evading it from the onset of the Volstead Act.

This, of course, was the official arrival of permanent, or thought to be permanent, Prohibition under an amendment to the United States Constitution and the enabling act the Volstead Act.  Wyoming, which was very supportive of Prohibition at first, helped push it over the top.

Indeed, by this point Wyoming was several months into state prohibition.  Often forgotten, however, the enter country was now in "wartime" prohibition, which had passed during World War One ostensibly as a grain saving measure.  As the US didn't ratify the Versailles Treaty, the war was technically still on and wartime prohibition still in effect.  Therefore, the night prior wasn't a giant party by drinkers seeking one last legal drink.  The sale of alcohol had been illegal for months.

1924  First aircraft landing at Pinedale.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1943  A B-17 bomber did a ground loop in high winds at the Casper Air Base.  Wind was a contributing cause.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1944  USS Johnson County, which was not named that at the time, but later renamed that in honor of several counties in various states, including Wyoming, called that, commissioned.


1944.  Rev. Francis Penny was appointed pastor of St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Cody but he resided at St. Barbara's in Powell where he was administrator in the absence of Rev. Fred Kimmett.  Rev. Kimmett was serving as Chaplain in the U.S. Armed Services.

1953  Wyoming's long National Guard association with cavalry ends when the 115th Cavalry becomes the 349th Armored Field Artillery.  The 115th had not been activated during the ongoing Korean War.

2017  Today is Equality Day for 2017

Elsewhere: 

1917  Admiral George Dewey dies
 

George Dewey, a hero of the Spanish American War and the only U.S. officer to ever hold the rank Admiral of the Navy died at age 79 on this date in 1917.  He had been an officer in the U.S. Navy since the Civil War but obtained fame during the war with Spain during which his fleet took Manila Bay, securing the Philippines for the United States.

 Dewey as a Captain while with the Bureau of Equipment.

Dewey was a Naval Academy graduate from the Class of 1858.  He saw very active service during the Civil War with service on a variety of vessels.  He married Susan Goodwin after the Civil War and had one son, George, by Susan in 1872, but she died only five days thereafter leaving him a widower with a young son.  He none the less shortly received sea duty, retaining it until 1880 when he was assigned to lighthouse administration duty, a serious assignment at the time.  His son was principally raised by his aunts and would not follow the military career of his father, becoming instead a stock broker who passed away, having never married, in 1963.  Dewey himself asked for sea duty again in 1893 as he felt his health was deteriorating with a desk job.  He was therefore assigned, at the rank of Commodore, to command the Asiatic Squadron in  1897.

Seeing the war coming and receiving what were essentially war warnings from Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt in the weeks leading up to the Spanish American War, he based himself at Hong Kong, the British possession, and began war preparations from there.  His fleet was ordered out of harbor at Hong Kong only shortly before the declaration of war with Spain as the British, knowing that the war was to come, did not want a belligerent power in their ports, which they were effectively doing in the run up to war. His squadron was therefore well situated, if not completely re-outfitted, to attack Manila Bay only a few days later, on April 30, 1898 after war had been declared.  In a one sided victory which cost only one American life (of course the "only" wouldn't mean much to that sailor) Spanish naval power in the Philippines was essentially eliminated in the battle.  As a result he became a household name and a great American hero of the era.

 Heroic painting of Dewey in the Battle of Manila in the Maine State House.

Dewey married for the second time (second marriages were somewhat looked down upon for widowers) in 1899, this time to the widow of a U.S. Army general.  The marriage to Mildred McLean Hazen would be a factor, amongst several others, in keeping him from running for President in 1900, which was a semi popular position with some people and which he entertained.  His second wife was Catholic and the marriage had been a Catholic ceremony, which angered Protestants at a time at which it remained effectively impossible for a Catholic to run for that office.  In 1903 he was promoted to the rank of Admiral of the Navy in honor of his Spanish American War achievement making him the only U.S. officer to ever hold that rank.

 Dewey in 1903.

The extent to which Dewey was a huge hero at the time cannot be overestimated.  That he would seriously be considered as a Presidential contender, and seriously consider running, says something about his fame at the time.  His promotion to a rank that is matched only to that held by John Pershing in the U.S. Army, and which of course Pershing did not yet hold, meant that he was effectively at that time holding a rank that exceeded that granted to any other American officer during their lifetime and which has never been exceeded by any Naval officer since.  A special medal was struck bearing his likeness and awarded to every sailor or marine serving in the battle, a remarkable unique military award.  That he is not a household name today, and he is not, says a lot about the fickle nature of fame.

Armour's meat packing calendar from 1899, Dewey medal, as it is commonly known, on lower left corner.

There's no denying that Admiral Dewey's death had a certain fin de siecle feel to it, particularly when combined with the passing of Buffalo Bill Cody, which happened the prior week, and also in combination with the death of another famous person which was about to occur.  It is not that Dewey and Cody had similar careers or that they'd become famous for the same reason, but there was a sense that the transition age which began in the 1890s and continued on into the early 20th Century was ending.  Both Cody and Dewey had careers that started at about the same time. Both were Civil War veterans.  If Cody became famous well before the 1890s, which he did, it was also the case that in some ways the full flower of his Wild West Show came during that period.  Indeed, Cody had modified his show after the Spanish American War to feature the "Congress of Rough Riders", building on the romantic notions that the term "Rough Rider" conveyed. That term, of course, had come up during the Spanish American War to describe members of the three volunteer cavalry regiments raised during that conflict, never mind that only one of them, the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, saw service in the war and that it was in fact deployed dismounted.

 Dewey receiving Roosevelt on board the Olympia, 1909.

Indeed, the actual Spanish American War had been a fully modern war, much like the Boer War was, and which saw the US attempting to belatedly adapt to that change.  The Navy was really better prepared for it than the Army.  That contributed to the peculiar nature of the era, however, with combat being much like what we'd later see in World War One but with the service still having one foot in the Civil War era.  By the war's end, of course, the US was a global colonial power, whether it was ready to be or not, and that was a large part of the reason that Dewey was such a celebrated figure.  His actions in the Philippines had significantly contributed to the defeat of a European colonial power, albeit a weak and decrepit one, and which helped to make the US a colonial power, albeit a confused and reluctant one.  The passing of Dewey and Cody seem, even now, to have the feel of the people who opened the door stepping aside to let they party in, just before they go back out.

Dewey in retirement, 1912.

January 15

1883  Cheyenne puts in electric street lights.

1886.  Union Pacific employees required to wear blue uniforms. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1890  Eleventh and final Territorial Legislature convened.

1890  The Wyoming Supreme Court, in the first of what has come to be an ongoing series of decisions, found Wyoming's system for funding public schools unconstitutional.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1910  Work completed on the Buffalo Bill Dam.

1919  January 15, 1919. Murders in Germany, The Eve of Prohibition in the United States

This day is the centennial of one of the giant, and most mythologized days in the history of communism.  Indeed, it's one of its foundational myths, and like most myths cited by communists, they've cited it without really grasping the story.  On this day in 1919 German Freikorps officers murdered Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.  The had both been captured following the collapse of the Communist uprising in Berlin and both tortured prior to their murder on this day.

Beyond that the details are murky.

It's known that they were under the custody of the Freikorps Garde-Kavallerie-Shutzendivision, a cavalry Freikorps unit that had been committed to action after the German Army had failed to put down an earlier phase of the rebellion and in fact had been repulsed.  The Socialist German provisional government then turned to the right wing Freikorps, which did put it down.  Both Socialist leaders were captured in the wake of the collapse of the rebellion.  Both were tortured and the units commander Waldemar Pabst and a lieutenant in the unit, Horst von Pflugk-Harttung gave orders for them to be killed.  The killing was very clearly a murder.  Liebknecht was sent to the morgue as an unidentified body and Luxemburg was dumped in a canal.  Their execution would spark further left wing rebellion.

Luxemburg.  Even in her portraits she appears vaguely perplexed.

The fact that it sparked additional uprisings says something about the extent to which Luxemburg and Liebknecht were held in high regard by the German hard left.  The irony is that neither of them were as radical as they are now remembered to be.  Indeed, it's hard not to look at both of them and assign a certain level of cluelessness to them.  They had been opponents of the German war effort in World War One, as radical socialist generally were, but they were also opposed to the Sparticist uprising itself.  They went along with it when it came, perhaps feeling they had no choice.  Luxemburg, who was a Pole by birth and who had adopted Germany as her home and as the center of her revolutionary activities, was a critic of Lenin's and a vocal proponent of allowing all sides to participate in an imagined future democratic Germany.  Both of them would have ironically found more of a home in the side they were rebelling against and in the name of revolution essentially operated against the very thing they were attempting to build.  Had they lived, they would have been unlikely to have remained Communists and their views certainly did not square with the Communism that was rapidly coming into being in Soviet Russia.

Liebknechct, who was a lawyer by profession.

Pabst, whom we would figure would have been a Nazi official, did not become that but briefly and went into the World War Two years as a businessman, after having been influential in early Nazi politics even though he never joined the Nazi Party, and fled to Switzerland on the even of the July 20 plot.  It's not known if he was an extreme right wing sympathizer with it, but that fact is extremely odd if he was not.  After World War Two he returned to Germany and associated himself with extreme right wing political parties again.  He claimed that German Socialists Noske and Ebert had approved of his actions in ordering the murders of Luxemburg and Liebknecht but as he made that claim well after the war there's no way to know the truth of that claim and at least to me it seems highly unlikely.  He died in Germany in 1970 at age 89, never having been punished for his role in the murders.

Both Liebknecht and Luxemburg have gone on to become Communist martyrs, an irony given that their views, while radically socialist, were also radically democratic, and did not square well with the German Communist Party's that they helped come into being, or with the Russian one at that time.  In retrospect, they seem to have been more in the nature of true Social Democrats who went along with a rebellion and aided in it, when they really ought to have stepped back.

Concrete Central Elevator.  January 15, 1919.

Closer to home it was clear that Prohibition was on the right side of history and about to become the law of the land.

And some Wyoming artillerymen were arriving home.  Governor Carey was addressing the state, and calling for a memorial for those lost in the recent war.

1941  School in Kooi destroyed by fire. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1967 The first Super Bowl, an American celebration of televised advertising, occurred. A football game was also played as the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League, 35-10.

1991  The 1022nd Medical Company, Wyoming Army National Guard, deployed to Saudi Arabia.

2001 Wikipedia made its debut.

January 14

1868  A Vigilance Committee in Cheyenne threatened three suspected thieves.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1891  Gen. Nelson Miles reports that the Sioux are returning to Pine Ridge following the events at Wounded Knee on December 19, 1890.

1920  The first fatal air accident to occur near Casper occurred, taking the life of passenger Maud Toomey.   Ms. Toomey is also the first female air fatality in Wyoming.  The very early airport in use at this time was located where the town of Evansville now sits, and a memorial to Ms. Toomey, who was a schoolteacher, is located in Evansville.  Attribution. Wyoming State Historical Society.

January 14, 1920. Untimely passings.

On this day, Natrona County suffered its first air fatality.

The location of this tragic accident is in Evansville, Wyoming, where the county's first air field was located.  There's a cross marking the location somewhere in Evansville, but I've never been able to find it.

On the same day, the paper was reporting on the prior days violent clashes in Germany.

Maud Toomey Memorial, Evansville Wyoming

Maude Toomey was a 33 year old high school Latin teacher, and an oil company bookkeeper, in Casper when she took a ride as a passenger in a plane owned and piloted by Casperite Bert Cole on January 14, 1920.  Something went tragically wrong during the flight and Cole's plane crashed near what is now the Evansville water treatment plant, which is not far from what was Natrona County's first airport.

A cement cross was placed in the ground at the spot where the plant crashed.  Oddly, no inscription was placed on it, leading to a small element of doubt about its purpose later on when it was rediscovered during the construction of the water treatment plant.  Since that time, an inscription has been placed at its base and the location is now an Evansville park.

Evansville has sort of a unique history in that regard as two of its somber memorials are located in areas where children now play, which is perhaps a more appropriate placement than many might suppose, honoring the dead in a way that they might have appreciated.

These photographs were taken near the centennial of the accident, which contributed to very long shadows, even though they were taken near 1:00 p.m.

1942  President Roosevelt issues Presidential Proclamation No. 2537, requiring aliens enemy countries to register with the United States Department of Justice.

1968.  Lyndon Johnson delivered his final State of the Union address.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Members of the Congress and my fellow Americans
For the sixth and the last time, I present to the Congress my assessment of the State of the Union.
I shall speak to you tonight about challenge and opportunity--and about the commitments that all of us have made together that will, if we carry them out, give America our best chance to achieve the kind of great society that we all want. Every President lives, not only with what is, but with what has been and what could be.
Most of the great events in his Presidency are part of a larger sequence extending back through several years and extending back through several other administrations.
Urban unrest, poverty, pressures on welfare, education of our people, law enforcement and law and order, the continuing crisis in the Middle East, the conflict in Vietnam, the dangers of nuclear war, the great difficulties of dealing with the Communist powers, all have this much in common: They and their causes--the causes that gave rise to them--all of these have existed with us for many years. Several Presidents have already sought to try to deal with them. One or more Presidents will try to resolve them or try to contain them in the years that are ahead of us.
But if the Nation's problems are continuing, so are this great Nation's assets:
--our economy,
--the democratic system,
--our sense of exploration, symbolized most recently by the wonderful flight of the Apollo 8, in which all Americans took great pride,
--the good commonsense and sound judgment of the American people, and
--their essential love of justice.
We must not ignore our problems. But .neither should we ignore our strengths. Those strengths are available to sustain a President of either party--to support his progressive efforts both at home and overseas.
Unfortunately, the departure of an administration does not mean the end of the problems that this administration has faced. The effort to meet the problems must go on, year after year, if the momentum that we have all mounted together in these past years is not to be lost.
Although the struggle for progressive change is continuous, there are times when a watershed is reached--when there is--if not really a break with the past--at least the fulfillment of many of its oldest hopes, and a stepping forth into a new environment, to seek new goals. I think the past 5 years have been such a time.
We have finished a major part of the old agenda.
Some of the laws that we wrote have already, in front of our eyes, taken on the flesh of achievement.
Medicare that we were unable to pass for so many years is now a part of American life.
Voting rights and the voting booth that we debated so long back in the riffles, and the doors to public service, are open at last to all Americans regardless of their color.
Schools and school children all over America tonight are receiving Federal assistance to go to good schools.
Preschool education--Head Start--is already here to stay and, I think, so are the Federal programs that tonight are keeping more than a million and a half of the cream of our young people in the colleges and the universities of this country.
Part of the American earth--not only in description on a map, but in the reality of our shores, our hills, our parks, our forests, and our mountains--has been permanently set aside for the American public and for their benefit. And there is more that will be set aside before this administration ends.
Five million Americans have been trained for jobs in new Federal programs.
I think it is most important that we all realize tonight that this Nation is close to full employment--with less unemployment than we have had at any time in almost 20 years. That is not in theory; that is in fact. Tonight, the unemployment rate is down to 3.3 percent. The number of jobs has grown more than 8 1/2 million in the last 5 years. That is more than in all the preceding 12 years.
These achievements completed the full cycle, from idea to enactment and, finally, to a place in the lives of citizens all across this country.
I wish it were possible to say that everything that this Congress and the administration achieved during this period had already completed that cycle. But a great deal of what we have committed needs additional funding to become a tangible realization.
Yet the very existence of these commitments--these promises to the American people, made by this Congress and by the executive branch of the Government--are achievements in themselves, and failure to carry through on our commitments would be a tragedy for this Nation.
This much is certain: No one man or group of men made these commitments alone. Congress and the executive branch, with their checks and balances, reasoned together and finally wrote them into the law of the land. They now have all the moral force that the American political system can summon when it acts as one.
They express America's common determination to achieve goals. They imply action.
In most cases, you have already begun that action--but it is not fully completed, of course.
Let me speak for a moment about these commitments. I am going to speak in the language which the Congress itself spoke when it passed these measures. I am going to quote from your words.
In 1966, Congress declared that "improving the quality of urban life is the most critical domestic problem facing the United States." Two years later it affirmed the historic goal of "a decent home . . . for every American family." That is your language.
Now to meet these commitments, we must increase our support for the model cities program, where blueprints of change are already being prepared in more than 150 American cities
To achieve the goals of the Housing Act of 1968 that you have already passed, we should begin this year more than 500,000 homes for needy families in the coming fiscal year. Funds are provided in the new budget to do just this. This is almost 10 times--10 times--the average rate of the past 10 years.
Our cities and our towns are being pressed for funds to meet the needs of their growing populations. So I believe an urban development bank should be created by the Congress. This bank could obtain resources through the issuance of taxable bonds and it could then lend these resources at reduced rates to the communities throughout the land for schools, hospitals, parks, and other public facilities.
Since we enacted the Social Security Act back in 1935, Congress has recognized the necessity to "make more adequate provision for aged persons . . . through maternal and child welfare . . . and public health." Those are the words of the Congress--"more adequate."
The time has come, I think, to make it more adequate. I believe we should increase social security benefits, and I am so recommending tonight.
I am suggesting that there should be an overall increase in benefits of at least 13 percent. Those who receive only the minimum of $55 should get $80 a month.
Our Nation, too, is rightfully proud of our medical advances. But we should remember that our country ranks 15th among the nations of the world in its infant mortality rate.
I think we should assure decent medical care for every expectant mother and for their children during the first year of their life in the United States of America.
I think we should protect our children and their families from the costs of catastrophic illness.
As we pass on from medicine, I think nothing is clearer to the Congress than the commitment that the Congress made to end poverty. Congress expressed it well, I think, in 1964, when they said: "It is the policy of the United States to eliminate the paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty in this nation."
This is the richest nation in the world. The antipoverty program has had many achievements. It also has some failures. But we must not cripple it after only 3 years of trying to solve the human problems that have been with us and have been building up among us for generations.
I believe the Congress this year will want to improve the administration of the poverty program by reorganizing portions of it and transferring them to other agencies. I believe, though, it will want to continue, until we have broken the back of poverty, the efforts we are now making throughout this land.
I believe, and I hope the next administration--I believe they believe--that the key to success in this effort is jobs. It is work for people who want to work.
In the budget for fiscal 1970, I shall recommend a total of $3.5 billion for our job training program, and that is five times as much as we spent in 1964 trying to prepare Americans where they can work to earn their own living.
The Nation's commitment in the field of civil rights began with the Declaration of Independence. They were extended by the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. They have been powerfully strengthened by the enactment of three far-reaching civil rights laws within the past 5 years, that this Congress, in its wisdom, passed.
On January 1 of this year, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 covered over 20 million American homes and apartments. The prohibition against racial discrimination in that act should be remembered and it should be vigorously enforced throughout this land.
I believe we should also extend the vital provisions of the Voting Rights Act for another 5 years.
In the Safe Streets Act of 1968, Congress determined "To assist state and local governments in reducing the incidence of crime."
This year I am proposing that the Congress provide the full $300 million that the Congress last year authorized to do just that.
I hope the Congress will put the money where the authorization is.
I believe this is an essential contribution to justice and to public order in the United States. I hope these grants can be made to the States and they can be used effectively to reduce the crime rate in this country.
But all of this is only a small part of the total effort that must be made--I think chiefly by the local governments throughout the Nation--if we expect to reduce the toll of crime that we all detest.
Frankly, as I leave the Office of the Presidency, one of my greatest disappointments is our failure to secure passage of a licensing and registration act for firearms. I think if we had passed that act, it would have reduced the incidence of crime. I believe that the Congress should adopt such a law, and I hope that it will at a not too distant date.
In order to meet our long-standing commitment to make government as efficient as possible, I believe that we should reorganize our postal system along the lines of the Kappel¹ report.
¹Frederick R. Kappel, Chairman of the Commission on Executive, Legislative and Judicial Salaries.
I hope we can all agree that public service should never impose an unreasonable financial sacrifice on able men and women who want to serve their country.
I believe that the recommendations of the Commission on Executive, Legislative and Judicial Salaries are generally sound. Later this week, I shall submit a special message which I reviewed with the leadership this evening containing a proposal that has been reduced and has modified the Commission's recommendation to some extent on the congressional salaries.
For Members of Congress, I will recommend the basic compensation not of the $50,000 unanimously recommended by the Kappel Commission and the other distinguished Members, but I shall reduce that $50,000 to $42,500. I will suggest that Congress appropriate a very small additional allowance for official expenses, so that Members will not be required to use their salary increase for essential official business.
I would have submitted the Commission's recommendations, except the advice that I received from the leadership--and you usually are consulted about matters that affect the Congress--was that the Congress would not accept the $50,000 recommendation, and if I expected my recommendation to be seriously considered, I should make substantial reductions. That is the only reason I didn't go along with the Kappel report.
In 1967 1 recommended to the Congress a fair and impartial random selection system for the draft. I submit it again tonight for your most respectful consideration.
I know that all of us recognize that most of the things we do to meet all of these commitments I talk about will cost money. If we maintain the strong rate of growth that we have had in this country for the past 8 years, I think we shall generate the resources that we need to meet these commitments.
We have already been able to increase our support for major social programs--although we have heard a lot about not being able to do anything on the home front because of Vietnam; but we have been able in the last 5 years to increase our commitments for such things as health and education from $30 billion in 1964 to $68 billion in the coming fiscal year. That is more than double. That is more than it has ever been increased in the 188 years of this Republic, notwithstanding Vietnam.
We must continue to budget our resources and budget them responsibly in a way that will preserve our prosperity and will strengthen our dollar.
Greater revenues and the reduced Federal spending required by Congress last year have changed the budgetary picture dramatically since last January when we made our estimates. At that time, you will remember that we estimated we would have a deficit of $8 billion. Well, I am glad to report to you tonight that the fiscal year ending June 30, 1969, this June, we are going to have not a deficit, but we are going to have a $2.4 billion surplus.
You will receive the budget tomorrow. The budget for the next fiscal year, that begins July 1--which you will want to examine very carefully in the days ahead--will provide a $3.4 billion surplus.
This budget anticipates the extension of the surtax that Congress enacted last year. I have communicated with the President-elect, Mr. Nixon, in connection with this policy of continuing the surtax for the time being.
I want to tell you that both of us want to see it removed just as soon as circumstances will permit, but the President-elect has told me that he has concluded that until his administration, and this Congress, can examine the appropriation bills, and each item in the budget, and can ascertain that the facts justify permitting the surtax to expire or to be reduced, he, Mr. Nixon, will support my recommendation that the surtax be continued.
Americans, I believe, are united in the hope that the Paris talks will bring an early peace to Vietnam. And if our hopes for an early settlement of the war are realized, then our military expenditures can be reduced and very substantial savings can be made to be used for other desirable purposes, as the Congress may determine.
In any event, I think it is imperative that we do all that we responsibly can to resist inflation while maintaining our prosperity. I think all Americans know that our prosperity is broad and it is deep, and it has brought record profits, the highest in our history, and record wages.
Our gross national product has grown more in the last 5 years than any other period in our Nation's history. Our wages have been the highest. Our profits have been the best. This prosperity has enabled millions to escape the poverty that they would have otherwise had the last few years.
I think also you will be very glad to hear that the Secretary of the Treasury informs me tonight that in 1968 in our balance of payments we have achieved a surplus. It appears that we have, in fact, done better this year than we have done in any year in this regard since the year 1957.
The quest for a durable peace, I think, has absorbed every administration since the end of World War II. It has required us to seek a limitation of arms races not only among the superpowers, but among the smaller nations as well. We have joined in the test ban treaty of 1963, the outer space treaty of 1967, and the treaty against the spread of nuclear weapons in 1968.
This latter agreement--the nonproliferation treaty--is now pending in the Senate and it has been pending there since last July. In my opinion, delay in ratifying it is not going to be helpful to the cause of peace. America took the lead in negotiating this treaty and America should now take steps to have it approved at the earliest possible date.
Until a way can be found to scale down the level of arms among the superpowers, mankind cannot view the future without fear and great apprehension. So, I believe that we should resume the talks with the Soviet Union about limiting offensive and defensive missile systems. I think they would already have been resumed except for Czechoslovakia and our election this year.
It was more than 20 years ago that we embarked on a program of trying to aid the developing nations. We knew then that we could not live in good conscience as a rich enclave on an earth that was seething in misery.
During these years there have been great advances made under our program, particularly against want and hunger, although we are disappointed at the appropriations last year. We thought they were woefully inadequate. This year I am asking for adequate funds for economic assistance in the hope that we can further peace throughout the world.
I think we must continue to support efforts in regional cooperation. Among those efforts, that of Western Europe has a very special place in America's concern.
The only course that is going to permit Europe to play the great world role that its resources permit is to go forward to unity. I think America remains ready to work with a united Europe, to work as a partner on the basis of equality.
For the future, the quest for peace, I believe, requires:
--that we maintain the liberal trade policies that have helped us become the leading nation in world trade,
--that we strengthen the international monetary system as an instrument of world prosperity, and
--that we seek areas of agreement with the Soviet Union where the interests of both nations and the interests of world peace are properly served.
The strained relationship between us and the world's leading Communist power has not ended--especially in the light of the brutal invasion of Czechoslovakia. But totalitarianism is no less odious to us because we are able to reach some accommodation that reduces the danger of world catastrophe.
What we do, we do in the interest of peace in the world. We earnestly hope that time will bring a Russia that is less afraid of diversity and individual freedom.
The quest for peace tonight continues in Vietnam, and in the Paris talks.
I regret more than any of you know that it has not been possible to restore peace to South Vietnam.
The prospects, I think, for peace are better today than at any time since North Vietnam began its invasion with its regular forces more than 4 years ago.
The free nations of Asia know what they were not sure of at that time: that America cares about their freedom, and it also cares about America's own vital interests in Asia and throughout the Pacific.
The North Vietnamese know that they cannot achieve their aggressive purposes by force. There may be hard fighting before a settlement is reached; but, I can assure you, it will yield no victory to the Communist cause.
I cannot speak to you tonight about Vietnam without paying a very personal tribute to the men who have carried the battle out there for all of us. I have been honored to be their Commander in Chief. The Nation owes them its unstinting support while the battle continues--and its enduring gratitude when their service is done.
Finally, the quest for stable peace in the Middle East goes on in many capitals tonight. America fully supports the unanimous resolution of the U.N. Security Council which points the way. There must be a settlement of the armed hostility that exists in that region of the world today. It is a threat not only to Israel and to all the Arab States, but it is a threat to every one of us and to the entire world as well.
Now, my friends in Congress, I want to conclude with a few very personal words to you.
I rejected and rejected and then finally accepted the congressional leadership's invitation to come here to speak this farewell to you in person tonight.
I did that for two reasons. One was philosophical. I wanted to give you my judgment, as I saw it, on some of the issues before our Nation, as I view them, before I leave.
The other was just pure sentimental. Most all of my life as a public official has been spent here in this building. For 38 years-since I worked on that gallery as a doorkeeper in the House of Representatives--I have known these halls, and I have known most of the men pretty well who walked them.
I know the questions that you face. I know the conflicts that you endure. I know the ideals that you seek to serve.
I left here first to become Vice President, and then to become, in a moment of tragedy, the President of the United States.
My term of office has been marked by a series of challenges, both at home and throughout the world.
In meeting some of these challenges, the Nation has found a new confidence. In meeting others, it knew turbulence and doubt, and fear and hate.
Throughout this time, I have been sustained by my faith in representative democracy--a faith that I had learned here in this Capitol Building as an employee and as a Congressman and as a Senator.
I believe deeply in the ultimate purposes of this Nation--described by the Constitution, tempered by history, embodied in progressive laws, and given life by men and women that have been elected to serve their fellow citizens.
Now for 5 most demanding years in the White House, I have been strengthened by the counsel and the cooperation of two great former Presidents, Harry S. Truman and Dwight David Eisenhower. I have been guided by the memory of my pleasant and close association with the beloved John F. Kennedy, and with our greatest modern legislator, Speaker Sam Rayburn.
I have been assisted by my friend every step of the way, Vice President Hubert Humphrey. I am so grateful that I have been supported daily by the loyalty of Speaker McCormack and Majority Leader Albert.
I have benefited from the wisdom of Senator Mike Mansfield, and I am sure that I have avoided many dangerous pitfalls by the good commonsense counsel of the President Pro Tem of the Senate, Senator Richard Brevard Russell.
I have received the most generous cooperation from the leaders of the Republican Party in the Congress of the United States, Senator Dirksen and Congressman Gerald Ford, the Minority Leader.
No President should ask for more, although I did upon occasions. But few Presidents have ever been blessed with so much.
President-elect Nixon, in the days ahead, is going to need your understanding, just as I did. And he is entitled to have it. I hope every Member will remember that the burdens he will bear as our President, will be borne for all of us. Each of us should try not to increase these burdens for the sake of narrow personal or partisan advantage.
Now, it is time to leave. I hope it may be said, a hundred years from now, that by working together we helped to make our country more just, more just for all of its people, as well as to insure and guarantee the blessings of liberty for all of our posterity.
That is what I hope. But I believe that at least it will be said that we tried.

1981  Peggy Simson Curry named state Poet laureate.  She was the first person to be so designated.  She was born in Scotland in 1911 and immigrated as a child to Walden Colorado, where her parents worked on a ranch.  She moved to Wyoming to attend the University of Wyoming, where she majored in journalism and met her husband.  She later taught at Casper College.

While she was memorialized as a "poet", she wrote widely in other genres, having published novels and children's literature as well.  She died in 1987.

I can recall her speaking at my grade school when I was a child.  Her high pitched and forceful delivery, quite frankly, frightened me.

2015:  Governor Mead delivers his State of the State address to the Legislature.

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January 13

1794     President George Washington approved a measure adding two stars and two stripes to the American flag, following the admission of Vermont and Kentucky to the union.

1846  President Taylor dispatches U.S. troops to Texas in anticipation of trouble with Mexico.

1877   Corporal  Charles A. Bessey, Company A, 3d U.S. Cavalry wins the Congressional Medal of Honor for an action near Elkhorn Creek, Wyo., 13 January 1877. Citation. While scouting with 4 men and attacked in ambush by 14 hostile Indians, held his ground, 2 of his men being wounded, and kept up the fight until himself wounded in the side, and then went to the assistance of his wounded comrades.

"Elkhorn" is a common  name for creeks in Wyoming, so exactly where this occurred I do not know.

1885  Wyoming Territorial Governor William Hale died.

1888.  The post office at Ft. D. A. Russel re-established.

1890  Union Pacific carpenters went on strike in Cheyenne.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

1899  US Senator F.E. Warren introduced a bill for the erection of an Army post near Sheridan, Wyoming.

1899  Wyoming Governor  Jack R. Gage born.

1918  Cold Snap
 

We haven't been putting up that many newspapers recently, but if we had, you'd have noticed this occurring.  The early winter of 1917-1918 was really cold.

Brutal Winter Weather Of December 1917 and January 1918

December 1917 through January 1918 still stands today as the coldest and snowiest December-January period ever recorded in Louisville, Lexington, Bowling Green, and several other locations across southern Indiana and central Kentucky. The 49 inches of snow that buried Louisville during those two months beats the 2nd snowiest December-January by more than a foot and a half!

And I mean cold everywhere.  From the Mexico Es Cultura Site:

The hurricane season that hit the Gulf of Mexico usually starts between April and May and ends in November. Rarely there were extreme weather events of this magnitude outside of those months. However, according to the chronicles, in the coasts of Texas and Tamaulipas was recorded a strong hurricane at the beginning of January 1918.

The hurricane destroyed the poor houses of Tampico and flooded the city, as well as the towns of Nuevo Laredo and Laredo, Texas. The traditional neighborhood of Doña Cecilia was practically destroyed. On the other hand, a cold front from the glaciers of the North Pole caused severe snowfall in the cities of Monterrey, Saltillo, Ciudad Victoria, and San Luis Potosí, among other towns, mostly on the border side.

Local governments requested the help of President Venustiano Carranza to send medicine, food and blankets to help the most population in need.

Cold in Wyoming too.

The Wyoming newspapers, or at least one Cheyenne one, had been making fun of the cold in Nebraska earlier in the week, noting how much warmer it was in Wyoming, when of course the weather changed, as it will, and the mercury dropped. For the second half of the week of January 8, 1918, temperatures were down in the negative range.  Finally around this time of the week, after having been down that low the day prior, it looked like some relief was on the way.

The Cheyenne newspaper was noting temperatures were anticipated to go back up to above 35F, which shared placement with rifle practice being introduced to colleges.  Bad weather got more notice however.

This sort of temperature would be brutal at any point, but it's easy to forget looking back a century at 1918, which shares mental familiarity with us today, that houses were heated much differently.  We've dealt with this before, but today, most Wyoming houses are heated with natural gas, a clean burning efficient heating fuel.  Some houses (like mine) are heated with electrical heating elements.  In 1918, most houses in this area would have burned coal. Some houses would have been heated with wood fires, particularly rural ones.  Indeed, even houses heated by coal would have been partially heated by wood cook stoves for a lot of the day.

By this period, I should note, major buildings started having boilers.  And some, indeed a lot of, homes also had radiant steam heat as well.  I'm really far from an expert on these even though they exist everywhere to this day, but generally they require a boiler and that requires a fuel.  Around here, today,  the fuel is natural gas.  In other places it remains heating oil.  At that time it would have meant coal.  So when we speak of a house being heated by coal, we don't mean simply burning coal for heat, although I've been in modern houses where residents did just that, or in shops where the owners did just that.

A World War One vintage poster of the United States Fuel Administration.  This period poster nicely illustrates how coal fit in.  Homeowners were being urged to buy coal early in the year.  That coal wasn't delivered, in this poster, by a truck, but rather by a dump wagon drawn by heavy draft horses.  Given the light dress of the laborer and the depiction of foliage the poster must have been released during the summer.

 

Burning coal for heat entails some factors that we don't consider here in the West much, but those who still use heating oil in the East probably do.  For one thing, you have to order it and store it.  The poster above from World War One shows that this was a concern pretty far in advance of winter.  And at least according to my mother, who recalled their coal furnace in Montreal, fleas came with the coal for some reason.

 

 Coal furnace.  I've never seen one.

 

And of course, coal smells when it burns.  Almost any town would have been smoky in the winter.  Here in Wyoming people often lament the winds during winter, but I have to wonder if some wind (not enough to blow the furnace out, which can happen, weren't welcome as they'd blow the smoke out of town.

 

That would have meant, fwiw, that most towns would have had a smokey haze above them all winter.  Indeed, one thing I didn't like about Laramie when I lived there was all the wood smoke, as so many students burned wood at the time, and I still don't like that.  It's one of the reasons why I've resisted a wood burning insert in my own house for so many years, while my wife, who grew up with them in rural conditions, would like one.

 

"African American schoolgirls with teacher, learning to cook on a wood stove in classroom."  This is an odd photo put up here only to illustrate a wood burning cook stove.  Using these is much different than using a modern electric or gas oven, but I have to suspect that most of these girls learned as much about cooking at home as they did in the classroom.  Having said that, Home Economics remained a class a lot of girls took when I was in junior high in the 1970s.

For a lot of the day, in almost every home occupied by a family, or in every boarding house, the kitchen was putting out heat via a cook stove.  Cooking with a wood burning stove is generally fairly slow, so what this meant is that the stove generally burned for hours.  Chances are that in a lot of homes the fire was stoked right around 4:00 am or so, or certainly not later than 5:00, in contemplation of cooking a meal about an hour later.  The heavy cast iron stove would put out heat for at least 30 minutes if not an hour after it was last stoked, so kitchens started likely heating up around 4:15 and stayed that way until at least 7:00, if not until 9:00.  In many homes the heating process would start again around 11:00, if children were at home or if a male occupant returned to his house at noon. Most men likely didn't, so the stove may have remained cold or lukewarm during the mid day but get stoked back up around 3:00 in anticipation of serving around 6:00.  Cooking was slow.  Some such stoves on many days would have been fired back up much earlier, depending upon what was being cooked for that evening.  And the stove likely burned to a degree until 7:00 and started getting cold around 7:30.

A lot of business establishments of various types would have had a stove as well that they kept running basically all day long.

So, lots of wood smoke to add to the coal smoke.  Neat.

1929   Wyatt Earp died in Los Angeles.

1943  It is reported that 2,600 school teachers are employed in Wyoming.  Attribution.  Wyoming State Historical Society.

2015  Legislature commences general session.

Elsewhere:

1929   Wyatt Earp died in Los Angeles.

1937   The United States bars US citizens from serving in the Spanish Civil War.   This occurred a the same time that left wing American volunteers were forming the Lincoln Battalion/Brigade, which would first see action in February, 1937.  Foreign volunteers, in addition to outright foreign military missions, saw some action on both sides of the war, with some countries actually seeing volunteers on both sides of the war.

1950  The Soviet Union boycotts the UN Security Council over the issue of which government is the legitimate Chinese government, a move that will ultimately allow the UN to intervene in the Korean War.

January 12

1828 The U.S. and Mexico agree to the border falling on the Sabine River.

1872  Grand Duke Alexis commences a hunting expedition with Gen. Phil Sheridan, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, and William F. Cody. Their trip would include Nebraska and Colorado.  He later became an admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy, but while his influence was significant on modernization of the Navy he'd be relieved of command during the Russo Japanese War.

The Grand Duke's trip to the West,. which was part of a grand tour of the United States, symbolized a type of tourism in effect at the time, which included not only hunting expeditions such as this 1872 example, but also well equipped and well funded touring expeditions.  It also provides an example, albeit a little pondered one, on the limitations of transportation at the time.  Such expeditions were grand by necessity, although not usually this grand, as the limits on transportation meant that those heading out into the wilds of the West had very limited options if they were not intending to move there permanently, and even if they did.  Prior to the very recent advent of modern travel, those venturing beyond towns were either planning on very much roughing it, in which case they were rapidly hunting by absolute necessity, or they were extraordinarily well supplied from the onset.  While trips into and back out of the West and Wyoming were engaged in by much less well healed individuals than the Grand Duke, such as the early example by Francis Parkman, they were either relatively well provisioned or pretty darned spartan.  A good example of a contrary approach was a hunting expedition into the Big Horns by Theodore Roosevelt while he was a rancher, which actually had to start hunting well before that, and did the entire way, just in order to have the adequate provisions necessary to arrive at the intended destination.

1878  First issue of Carbon County News published. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1886  An explosion in the Almy coal mine killed thirteen miners.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1915 The United States House of Representatives rejected a proposal to give women the right to vote anti nationwide. It did exist in some individual states.

1963  Rock Springs hits its record low of -37F.

1995  Wolves retintroduced to Yellowstone National Park.

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January 11

1868  Vigilance Committee formed in Cheyenne. Attribution:  On This Day.

1886  Tom Horn, at that time a scout for the Army, enters Mexico with an Army expedition seeking out Geronimo.

1888 The great blizzard of 1888 comes into Wyoming in full force.  The storm is regarded as the worst storm in Wyoming's history, killing a fair number of people and hundreds, if not thousands of cattle.  The winter itself was the worst in Wyoming's history, and was devastating on the livestock industry of the Northern Plains, putting many ranches permanently out of business, and causing operational changes amongst those that survived.

1929  The Cambria casino dance hall opened in Niobrara County.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

1970  Fire destroys two downtown blocks in Cheyenne.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

Elsewhere:

1917  Massive explosion in Lyndhurst, New Jersey
 

On this day in 1917 a massive explosion occurred at a recently constructed ammunition plant which was providing ammunition under contract to Canada.  Sabotage was suspected at the time but a commission found in 1931 that there was no evidence to support that claim.

The disaster was bad enough but would have been worse but for the heroic act of Theresa Louise "Tessie" McNamara in staying at her post as a switchboard operator and providing notice to each link on the circuit that a fire had broken out and people needed to evacuate.  She's credited with saving up to 1,400 lives.

The belief at the time that the explosion was caused by German sabotage contributed to growing American support for entering the war in Europe.  Ironically, the Black Tom explosion of that past July had been caused by German saboteurs but that was not known at the time. So the Germans were blamed in the minds of some for an explosion they had not caused, but were not blamed for one which they had.

1917  The Zimmerman Note sent

A encoded telegram was sent from the Foreign Secretary of the German Empire Arthur Zimmermann to the German ambassador to Mexico, Heinrich von Eckardt reading as follows..

We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The settlement in detail is left to you. You will inform the President of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States of America is certain and add the suggestion that he should, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves. Please call the President's attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace.

Signed, ZIMMERMANN

The text proposed to invite Mexico into World War One as a Germany ally with the enticement that it was to receive those territories lost during the Mexican War.  Rather obviously Germany lacked a concrete understanding as to the degree of Mexican military strength, but as absurd as it sounds, in 1915 some vague Mexican revolutionary forces actually considered, and indeed attempted, to sponsor an uprising in that territory, albeit to little effect.  And Carranza's government did study the proposal, finding it unrealistic.

The note was decoded by the British in subsequent days, as will be seen, with negative consequences for Germany.

1917  The birth of the "pickup"
 

Courtesy of the 100 Years Ago Today Subreddit and the 365 Days of Motoring website we learn that today was the day that Ford introduced the TT, that is, its Model T based pickup truck.  Or rather, truck, they weren't all boxed trucks, but trucks in general.

It wasn't simply a Model T conversion. The chassis was heavier than that of the Model T, reflecting its intended use.

Apparently it was originally just a chassis, and the body was up to the owners.  According to 365 Days of Motoring, Ford offered the complete package, body and all, starting in 1924.  The grand total for production for 1917 was three.  Yes, only three, but the following year over 40,000 would be built and numbers were always higher than throughout its ten year production run.

Pickups have always been a big deal in the American West. Somehow, however, they've come to be a huge deal in the American automotive market in general and make up a big percentage of vehicles sold each year.

1919  January 11, 1919. Casper Gets Gas (no. . . really). Women ponder keeping their jobs.

Wyoming Oil World, and industry paper in Wyoming with a circulation of about 18,000, reported that Casper was going to be piped for natural gas.

It's somewhat odd to think of a time that Casper didn't have natural gas.  When I was a kid, natural gas in Casper was so cheap that the gas company would install gas yard lamps for free.  One of our neighbors had one.  Because of the way it worked, it burned night and day in their backyard, an odd thing to think of now, although gas flares, of course, aren't exactly a thing of the past in the oil patch.

Powder River Basin gas flare.

Elsewhere airmen who would later climb to higher heights of fame were now on occupation duty in Germany, including the legendary Billy Mitchell, and Lewis H. Brereton who would have air and ground commands during World War Two.

A group of serious looking American airmen; Brigadier General William Mitchell, chief of Air Service, his staff. From left to right: French Capt. R. Vallois, Ltc. Lewis Hyde Brereton (1890-1967, who rose to senior command in World War Two), Brigadier General William Mitchell, Maj. Ira Beaman Joralemon (1884-1975, who became a mining engineer), Capt. O. E. Marrel, First Lieutenant E. F, Schwab.  Dierdorf, Germany, January 11, 1919.

Some Americans were still in France, of course.

90th Division officers Major General Henry Tureman Allen, Cavalry (1859-1930).  He'd been commissioned after graduating from West Point in 1882 and was a veteran of the Spanish American War, the Philippine Insurrection, and the Punitive Expedition.  His son Captain Henry T. Allen Jr. (1889-1971). The Younger Allen would participate in the 1920 Olympics as an Army equestrian competitor. At the time, all equestrian competitors were Army officers. And Captain Sidney Webster Fish (1885-1950), of the famous New York political family.  Cote d'Or, France, January 11, 1919.

And some women weren't excited about giving up their wartime jobs.

And of course, there were always donuts.

1921.   The 1921 legislative session for Wyoming commenced.

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