Monthly Archives: February 2024

Range War.

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            “Tick, tick, tick” went frontier New Mexico.  The United States had seized New Mexico from Old Mexico in 1846, and then corralled most of the Indians on reservations around a chain of Army forts.  Neither the original Hispanic population nor the Indians were happy with the new lords of the land.  The few Anglo immigrants scrambled to make a living.  Crime at the expense of the government provided the main income.  The treaties with the Indians had promised them food in return for living on the reservations.  Ranchers raised cattle for sale to the government; the government gave the beef to the Indians.  The contracts to supply beef were controlled by the territorial government in Santa Fe, so corruption held one key to wealth.  Delivering short weight held another.  The ranchers and their cowboys needed other things (food, clothes, tools, booze, guns), so the widely-spaced towns each had a general store.  The ranches provided enough business to support one local store, but not two.  One store could exploit its monopoly to charge high prices; two stores would end in bankrupting both.  Tension mounted between storeowners, and between them and ranchers.  Finally, some cowboys stole cattle off ranches and sold them cheap to men with government beef contracts.  The thieves were outlaws, but the buyers didn’t want them caught.  Law books, store ledgers, and guns were all equally useful in getting ahead. 

            So it was in Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory in 1876.  Two Irish immigrants (Lawrence Murphy, James Dolan) owned the general store, a big ranch, and the county sheriff (yet another Irishman, William Brady).  John Chisum, a big rancher up from Texas, disliked their monopoly.  Alex McSween, once their lawyer, just disliked them.  John Tunstall, a dopey immigrant from Britain, saw an opportunity in November 1876.  He bought a ranch and, with McSween opened a rival store in the town of Lincoln.  Murphy and Dolan fought back.  They mortgaged the store to backers in Santa Fe to get the cash to out-last Tunstall; they papered him with lawsuits; and they hired some outlaws to rustle his cattle.  Tunstall and McSween hired their own group of wild young men, who called themselves “The Regulators,” to guard the herd and Tunstall himself.  The last bit didn’t work out too well: a group of outlaws “deputized” by Sheriff Brady murdered Tunstall on 18 February 1878. 

            The “Lincoln County War” was on.  The Regulators killed two of Tunstall’s assassins on 9 March, Sheriff Brady and a deputy in Lincoln on 1 April, another of the suspected killers on 4 April, four outlaws associated with Murphy and Dolan on 30 April, and yet another enemy on 15 May.  Two of the Regulators died in these fights.  A four day gun-fight in Lincoln from 15 to 18 July left McSween, his law partner, two Regulators, and two of their opponents dead.  Murphy died of cancer in October.  Most of the Regulators fled to other parts, ending the “War.” 

            The few remaining Regulators turned to rustling cattle under the leadership of William Henry McCarty, called “Billy the Kid.”  In November 1880 Pat Garrett won election as Lincoln County Sheriff on a promise to get rid of the rustlers.  Garret captured Billy on Christmas Eve Day.  Convicted and sentenced to death for killing Sheriff Brady, Billy escaped from the Lincoln County jail after killing two guards in April 1881.  Garrett again tracked Billy, then killed him at Old Fort Sumner, New Mexico in July 1881. 

            The larger pattern went on the same.  Dolan bought up Tunstall’s property; McSween’s widow built a cattle empire; Billy’s lawyer, Albert Fountain, struggled with Albert Fall for political and economic control of Lincoln County.  In 1896 Fall’s gunmen murdered Fountain.  Pat Garrett led the investigation, but the killers—defended by Fall—escaped conviction.  In 1908 men linked to Fall killed Garrett.  In 1912 Fall became a Senator, in 1921 Secretary of the Interior.  In 1929 he went to prison in a bribery scandal—for using public lands for private gain. 

Cattle Ranch.

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            To this day, much of Spain consists of dry, high-plains covered with grass and brush rather than trees.  Much of the land is poor farmland, but suitable for sheep.  Before “Columbus sailed the ocean-blue,” wool–rather than cotton—provided the “fabric of our lives.”  However, sheep eat the grass down to the roots if they get the chance.  Sheep-owners learned to move the flocks of sheep from pasture to pasture, often over long distances.  So, sheep were a movable gold-mine.  The flocks were vast, if docile, so the shepherds learned to manage the flocks from horseback.  By the Age of Discovery, Spain abounded in “sheep-boys.” 

            The Spanish “conquistadors” imported these familiar techniques to Mexico.  They applied them to the vast “haciendas” and added cattle to the bargain.  So, “vaqueros” developed the skills of handling cattle herds from horse-back on huge tracts of arid grasslands.  Citizens of the United States first encountered this culture and economy when the government of the Mexican Republic encouraged immigration into Texas (then a part of Mexico) in the 1830s and 1840s.  English-speakers called “haciendas” ranches and “vaqueros” “cowboys.”  From Texas, “ranching” and “cowboys” spread northward and westward. 

            The method in the early days was simple.  Grass land abounded and water could be found.  Horses were faster than cattle, so riders could collect the cattle when needed.  Each year, ranch owners just turned the cattle loose after the calves were born in the Spring.  They fended for themselves for the next six months or so.  In the Fall, the “cowboys” would “round up” the cattle, separate the herd into those suitable for sale and those suitable for breeding.  Most of the cattle would be driven to market, while the minority would be herded back toward the ranch so that they could be cared-for over the winter.  As more and more ranches were started, it got to be difficult to tell who owned which cattle.  This led some clever person to invent “branding.”  This got added to the tasks of the “cowboy.” 

            The classic or “golden age” of “open range” ranching lasted from about 1866-67 to 1886-1887.  The completion of the first trans-continental railroad began a rush of railroads across the Plains.  This opened up access to the cattle markets of the Eastern United States.  At the same time, both industrialization and immigration shot ahead in the East.  Cattle prices rose as demand for meat zoomed upward.  Cattle ranchers began driving their herds toward distant railroad towns for shipment east.  Smelling money, ranchers built up the size of their herds.  Eastern and foreign investors bought up cattle ranches to run on an industrial basis. 

            All of these forces for expansion over-strained the grasslands.  Over-grazing wrecked the grasslands.  Cattle ranchers could see problems coming, even if they did not really understand the causes or see a solution to those problems.[1]  Then the Winter of 1886-1887 broke all sorts of records for different categories of Awful.  Long, bitterly cold and very snowy, it killed off much of the cattle grazing on the open range.  Many ranchers who had borrowed money to expand their herds or Easterners who had invested in Western ranches ran the danger of bankruptcy when their main form of capital—cattle—died in droves. 

            The survivors cut costs and changed their operations.  They fenced the land, not just around the outer edges, but also sub-divided them; limited the size of their ranches; and they leased grazing rights on public lands according to the market for cattle anticipated each year.  The cattle “boom” had ended and the survivors began treating ranching just like some eastern business.  Fencing and sub-division greatly reduced the number of cowboys needed.  They started to go the way of the buffalo and the Indians. 

[1] Like the Plains farmers of the 1870 to 1930s era.  See: “The Grapes of Wrath” (dir. John Ford, 1940). 

Doolin Daltons.

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            By 1890, the “Old West” was dying.  The terrible winter of 1886-87 had destroyed he original “open range” cattle industry and thrown many cowboys out of work forever.  The advance of settlement, and the law enforcement that went with it, had greatly reduced outlawry.  Across the West, however, a combination of economic displacement and the wilder dreams of young men set off spasms of violent crime. 

            Adeline Younger, aunt to Cole and Bob Younger, married Lewis Dalton, who ran a saloon in Kansas City, Missouri.  They moved from Missouri to the “Nations” (Oklahoma) to Coffeyville, Kansas.  Along the way, they had a passel of kids (15, of which 13 survived).  They seem to have grown up listening to dramatic stories of their Younger relatives and the James Gang.  Unlike his outlaw Younger cousins, Bob Dalton (1869-1892) first went to work as a lawman, serving as a policeman in the Nations and riding with possess organized by the US Marshalls.  When he was 19, Bob killed a man who ran an illegal still, although rumor had it that they both were chasing the same girl.  A year later he killed another man who was in flight from arrest.  Pretty soon he got fired as a policeman for selling illegal whisky in the Nations. 

            Bob and his brothers Grat (1861-1892) and Emmett Dalton (1871-1937) may have stolen some horses soon afterward.  In any event, they all went to California, where their brother Bill (1866-1894) already resided.  Bill Dalton had been elected to the state legislature, but figured that there must be a more exciting way of stealing people’s money.  In early 1891 the four brothers held up a Southern Pacific train, making off with $60,000, which was a lot of money in those days.  They never were too good about hiding their identities and a posse soon hunted them.  Bob and Emmett got away back to Oklahoma, but Bill and Grat were captured. 

            Bob and Emmett decided to set up as outlaws.  They recruited a bunch of former cowboys (Bill Doolin, George “Bitter Creek” Newcomb, and some others).  The Dalton Gang robbed a train in Wharton; then robbed another near Wagoner; then Grat, who had escaped from jail in California showed up; then they robbed another train; and then they robbed another train.  They didn’t make much money from these robberies.  Hard feelings among the gang-members led to a split.  The Dalton brothers stuck together, but Doolin, Newcomb, Charley Pierce, and some others split off to form their own gang.  The brothers decided to try for one big score to finance their move to some new territory. 

            In October 1892, the Daltons decided to rob the two banks in their hometown of Coffeyville, Kansas.  This proved to be a poor idea: they were well-known in the town and known to be robbers; and the locals were heavily armed.  The robbery itself went OK but only because the locals who recognized them when they rode into town went home for their rifles and shotguns.  Getting out of town proved to be harder than getting in.  Grat and Bob Dalton got killed, along with two other gang-members.  Emmett Dalton caught a shot-gun load that left 23 wounds, but didn’t kill him.  Emmett Dalton got life in prison. 

            Bill Dalton joined up with Bill Doolin to rob banks.  After the gang shot it out with federal marshals in Ingalls, Oklahoma, in September 1893, Bill Dalton split off to form his own gang.  His gang robbed a bank in Texas in May 1894, then spent the next month running from the law.  The law caught up with him in Ardmore, Oklahoma, in June 1894.  He died in the fight. 

            The U.S. Marshalls in Oklahoma made the destruction of Bill Doolin’s gang their chief mission.  Between November 1892 and April 1898, they killed six of them and captured two others; Newcomb and Pierce were killed by the brothers of Newcomb’s lady-love, who wanted the reward (the brothers, not the girl).  Doolin himself caught the full load from a double-barreled shotgun when he came out of the house where he had been visiting his wife. 

Emmett Dalton won a pardon in 1906.  He moved to California, where he went into the real estate business.  (Wyatt Earp lived there—intermittently—at the same time.  The Rotary Club meetings must have been interesting.)  Late in life he published a book, When the Daltons Rode (1931).  It was turned into a movie starring Randolph Scott in 1940.  Emmett Dalton died in 1937. 

Retired U.S. Deputy Marshall Bill Tilghman, one of the chief manhunters, later made a silent movie about the hunt.  He filmed on location, played himself, got a couple of his old buddies to play themselves, and even talked one of the few surviving outlaws into playing himself.  You can watch a surviving chunk of the movie at Passing Of The Oklahoma Outlaws – 1915 (youtube.com)  Later, the former-outlaw went back to being an actual-outlaw.  A Joplin, MO, police officer killed him in a gun fight in 1924.  And that, I suppose, marked the passing of the Old West.    

Land Bridges and Ocean Barriers.

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            In war, killing goes on until a victory is achieved.  For the United States the strategy of the Second World War came down to these two things: land bridges and ocean barriers. 

On the one hand, solid ground created “bridges.”  Where opponents were in direct contact, the fighting could never really stop.  Poland and Germany had been in contact in 1939; Britain, France, and Germany had been in contact in 1940; Russia and Germany were in direct contact from June 1941 onward.  In this kind of war, soldiers, small arms, artillery, fighter-bombers, and trucks were decisive. 

On the other hand, bodies of water, and especially oceans, created “barriers.”  The British staved off German victory with a ferocious defense of both the English Channel and the ocean shipping routes.  The Atlantic and Pacific oceans imposed huge obstacles to laying America’s military weight on the Germans and the Japanese.  Furthermore, most established sea-ports were in the hands of the Germans or the Japanese.  In the case of the Pacific Islands between Japan and America, they didn’t exist at all.  Invaders would have to go in over the beaches.  That meant landing craft.  Getting soldiers, weapons, supplies to a near-by launching point for the attacks meant a huge number of merchant ships.  Protecting those merchant ships required a great navy.  Anglo-American forces had to conquer water barriers to reach a land bridge. 

Until that could be achieved, the weight of the war fell on the Russians.  Countries have foreign policies for their own advantage, not for the advantage of other countries.  The Bolsheviks had made a separate peace with the Germans in 1918; Stalin had made a Non-Aggression Pact with the Germans in 1939.  If the Anglo-Americans appeared to be dragging their feet on getting into the war, then maybe he would strike another deal with Hitler.  Let the Anglo-Americans try to reconquer Western Europe in the face of the whole German Army instead of just ten percent of it.  So, the Anglo-Americans had to do what they could against Germany.  For a long time this meant the “strategic bombing” of German cities to reduce industrial production and perhaps to break the will of the German people. 

Warships, merchant ships, landing craft, heavy bombers, fighter planes, tanks, trucks, artillery, and small arms had two things in common.  They were made of steel and made in factories.  America had a lot of both, so it became the “Arsenal of Democracy.”  Two thirds of Allied military production—and half of the world’s total production–came from America. 

The United States mobilized almost 12 million men for the Army and another 4 million for other branches.  All these (mostly) men left the labor force while the demand for labor soared.  Women, Blacks, and Hispanics filled up the gap.  The US unemployment rate fell to 1.9 percent, finally ending the Depression.  High wages raised the standard of living. 

As soon as command of the seas permitted, the Anglo-Americans put their troops to use.  They invaded French North Africa (November 1942); Sicily (July 1943); Italy (September 1943); Normandy (June 1944); Southern France (August 1944); and Germany (Fall 1944). 

Meanwhile the Americans shoved back the Japanese.  Battling in jungles, on coral atolls, and on the high seas, the American advantage in industrial power and man power ground Japan into dust.  The war found its grim conclusion in fire raids and atom bombings. 

We had won.  What would we make of the peace, at home and abroad? 

Charles Floyd, Depression-era Bandit.

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            Charles Arthur Floyd (1904-1934) was born in Georgia, but grew up in Oklahoma.  More exactly, he grew up in the Cookson Hills in the Cherokee Nation of southern Oklahoma.  Steep hills and valleys covered with oak, black walnut, and hickory.  People grew cotton in the bottom land, grazed cattle, and grew corn to feed to the hogs and to distill for private sale in Mason jars.  During the Twenties people started logging and sawing the lumber.  You go down out of the Hills and you come to little towns like Muskogee, Salisaw, and Talhlequah.  (The Joad family in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) were from Salisaw; and Merle Haggard is proud to be an “Okie from Muskogee.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iYY2FQHFwE )  You go east into Arkansas a bit and you come to Fort Smith, where Judge Isaac Parker had his court and George Maledon ran the “hanging machine.”[1]  (See: “True Grit” (1969, 2010).) 

Charlie Floyd left Oklahoma for the bright lights of Kansas City, Missouri, where he fell in with ill company.  He turned to armed robbery early and then stayed with it whenever he wasn’t in prison.  Given the nature of robbing banks and company payrolls, he became a traveling man.  In 1929-1932 he visited Missouri, Colorado, Ohio, and Oklahoma, generally to rob banks.  The police arrested him a number of times, but let him go when his false identity held up or he escaped when it didn’t.  He killed or had a hand in killing a number of policemen as well as two bootlegging brothers who had gotten on the wrong side of organized crime in Kansas City.[2]  Still, people generally didn’t disapprove of Charlie Floyd: whenever he robbed a bank he also burned all the mortgage records showing what local farmers owed the bank.   

Charlie’s luck turned against him when the FBI mis-identified him as one of the gunmen in a botched attempt to free bank-robber Frank Nash.  This “Kansas City Massacre” left four lawmen and Nash dead on 17 June 1933.  Floyd denied anything having to do with it, while never denying any of the other crimes attributed to him.  J. Edgar Hoover said different and sent the FBI after Floyd.  Floyd, and his fellow bank-robber Adam Richetti, hid out in Buffalo, New York over the winter of 1933-1934.[3]  Headed back to Oklahoma in October 1934, the two outlaws and their girlfriends wrecked their car on a foggy road in northeastern Ohio.  One thing led to another and both the police and a team of FBI men showed up.  Floyd died in the ensuing gun-fight.[4]  Floyd’s funeral in Salisaw, Oklahoma, drew a crowd of at least 20,000 people. 

In 1939, Woody Guthrie wrote the “Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd.”  It included the lines “As through this world you travel, you’ll meet some funny men; Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.”   The song became a standard for country/folk/rock musicians, being recorded by Joan Baez (1962), The Byrds (1968), Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger (1981), and Bob Dylan (1988).  He appeared as a central or secondary figure in half a dozen movies.  Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana wrote a novel Pretty Boy Floyd (1994).  He was an affable young man with a gun, and a poor boy out against the Law and the Banks in hard times.  When people talk about Charlie Floyd, they’re talking about other things. 

[1] A twelve man gallows. 

[2] The newspapers gave him the knick-name “Pretty Boy,” but nobody called him that to his face. 

[3] Apparently making the reasonable assumption that a) no one would think that somebody would go to Buffalo, NY, in the winter willingly, and b) no one would look for a couple of Okies in Buffalo, NY, at any time of the year. 

[4] There has been some dispute just how he died.  At first, the FBI tried to claim that the local police weren’t even present and that Floyd had been brought down by the FBI alone.  Later, they had to admit that the local police had played a vital role.  Much later still (1979), one of the policemen claimed that the FBI had killed Floyd after he had been wounded, had surrendered, and had been disarmed.  The FBI denied that charge.  Who could believe that the FBI would murder someone?  (See: Ruby Ridge.) 

The Depression.

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            By late 1929 the American economy had reached the saturation point in its ability to consume new goods.  The number of new cars registered began to fall sharply and new houses being constructed fell off as well.  These were warning signs of an economic slowdown.  As the American economy slowed, the Stock Market began to fall.  The fall of the Stock Market was more a symptom than a cause of the problem.  From 1929 to 1931 the American economy went into a deep spiral.  Demand for goods fell off, producers cut back on the number of workers and on the amount of raw materials.  The unemployed suddenly spent less and farmers and miners saw their incomes shrink even further, so they spent less.  Falling spending by ordinary consumers then drove down demand even further, setting off a new turn of the spiral.  People who couldn’t pay back the loans they had contracted in happier times lost their homes or farms or businesses.  Banks collected farms and houses and businesses they couldn’t then resell. The banks themselves went bankrupt too.  Most countries had little or no unemployment insurance.  If you lost your job, you had to get another one or starve.  There weren’t any jobs to be found.  People got desperate.  They demanded government action, or they moved elsewhere in search of work, or they tried to organize protest movements and political movements.  All existing institutions were called into question. 

            This crisis quickly spread to the rest of the world.  Americans stopped importing, but insisted on collecting the loans they were owed by other countries.  These countries first tightened up their own economies to try to pay back the loans, then defaulted on the loans rather than drive themselves into complete collapse.  Countries went off the existing system of international payments.[1]  This caused international trade to decline sharply, throwing more people out of work.  Nobody but the Soviet Union—a non-capitalist country that traded very little with the rest of the world—managed to ride out this crisis without suffering economic hard times.[2]  In many places, people concluded that the government would have to accept responsibility for insuring prosperity in the future, as well as peace and security.[3] 

            Many people questioned the systems of capitalism and representative government.  All they seemed to offer was the “freedom to starve.”  Democracy failed in Germany and Adolf Hitler came to power.  It teetered on the edge of collapse in France.  In the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt became president and launched a program called the “New Deal.”

This constituted a decisive moment in the development of modern governments.  The historian John Garraghty has written an interesting book comparing the response to the Depression of the American “New Deal” and Nazi Germany.  One would expect that they were very different from one another.  Wrong: there were a lot of similarities.  The main difference was that Nazi Germany was more effective at putting people back to work.  The both increased government control of the economy.  They both spent a lot of money to put the unemployed back to work.  One thing that people discovered, during the Depression and later in the Second World War, was that deficit spending offered the best way out of the slump.  We’re still living with the consequences of that discovery. 

[1] The Gold Standard. 

[2] Well, more accurately, it didn’t suffer hardships as a result of the Depression.  Stalin’s drive for rapid industrialization inflicted severe hardship on almost all Russians. 

[3] If you look at the—so far—failed efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare, you can see that Americans have now concluded that it is the duty of the government to insure health care at a low cost to consumers. 

The American System.

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            By the 1920s Henry Ford and the “assembly line,” and Frederick W. Taylor (a Philadelphia native) and his “efficiency studies” had helped to create a remarkably efficient, productive, and expansive American economy.  Both men tried to break jobs down into the simplest tasks, then train workers to specialize in the best way of doing that task.  Intense specialization combined with close supervision by management would allow the production of immense quantities of goods at a very low cost for each unit produced.  Low costs would allow the goods to be sold at low prices; low prices would allow lots more things to be sold while maintaining a good profit rate; the sale of lots of stuff at a high profit would allow employers to pay higher wages; people who got higher wages would use them to buy more stuff.  Everybody would be a winner and nobody would need unions or disruptions of production.  This worked like a dream.  American industry adopted this system during the first two decades of the 20th Century.  Profits soared, but real wages also advanced tremendously.  The American system—often called “Fordism” or “Taylorism” in other parts of the world—spread around the globe.  One place where it received the most enthusiastic reception appears to have been in the Soviet Union, where Stalin’s Five Year Plans to turn the country into an industrial super-power seems to have owed much to American example.  So long as the American economy went on expanding, it imported goods from all over the world.  America served as the locomotive pulling the rest of the world along toward prosperity. 

            There were two problems with the prosperity of the Twenties.  First, workers hated the dehumanized, speeded-up nature of work (although they were glad to take the higher wages).  They felt that they were being turned into mere extensions of the machines they operated.    

          Second, there were big imbalances inside the economy, both in the United States and elsewhere.  Even before the First World War the huge volume of agricultural goods and raw materials tended to exceed demand and to hold down prices paid to farmers, miners, loggers, etc.  American farmers on the Great Plains tended to blame the faceless, soulless railroads and big corporations back East for rigging the economy against the ordinary working man, farmer, and small businessman.  During the First World War there had been a huge increase in the volume of goods produced all over the world to make up for all the stuff Europeans were not making because they were busy blowing each other up.  Many people borrowed money from banks to expand their production of goods then in high demand.  After the war ended, everybody was still producing too much stuff for the world to consume.  Prices for farm goods (especially wheat, corn, cotton) and minerals (especially coal and oil) trended downward throughout the Twenties.  But people still had to pay back the loans they had taken out when prices were high.  To get the same amount of money, they had to produce even more of what it is they were making.  Production went on rising when it should have been cut back.  In 1920 half of Americans lived in small towns that depended on farming or mining or cattle raising.  People who depended on farms or mining just didn’t have the money to buy all the neat stuff being churned out by modern industry.  What was true in America was true everywhere else.  This was a train-wreck waiting to happen. 

            How would governments respond if the economy suddenly entered a downturn?  Standard economic theory of the time (see: “Economic Ideas”) said to let the system automatically correct for previous errors.  Cut taxes, cut spending and everything will be fine. 

Economic Ideas, 1850-1950 (roughly).

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            International payments and the domestic economy. 

            First, in the olden days, money had consisted of silver (good) and gold (better).  Then, people had agreed to use paper money (which was worthless) on the understanding that it could be exchanged for gold whenever anyone wanted.  To prevent scummy governments from printing all the paper money they wanted (“How can I be over-drawn when I still have some checks?”), fixed ratios of paper money to gold held by the government were established.  The more gold that a government held, the more paper money that it could issue; the less gold that a government held, the less paper money it could issue.  (See: accordion.) 

            Second, the money from one country can’t be used in another country.  Countries settled their debts by transferring gold.  Buy more stuff from a foreign country than you sell to that country and you had to settle the debt by shipping gold.  Sell more stuff to a foreign country than you buy from it and they sent you some gold. 

            Third, if you put gold-backed paper currency together with the use of gold to settle international debts, you got a system in which the domestic economy of each country was linked to the international economy of all countries.  If a country exported more than it imported, then gold flowed into the country.  The increased gold supply inside the country compelled that country to increase the amount of paper currency in circulation.  Prices and incomes would rise, making it less competitive.  If a country imported more than it exported, then gold flowed out of the country.  The decreased gold supply inside the country compelled that country to decrease the amount of paper currency in circulation.  Prices and incomes would fall, making it more competitive. 

Ideally, each country would strive for a rough equilibrium.  However, the system was thought to be kinda-sorta automatically self-correcting.  Countries with in-flows of gold and rising national incomes then could afford more stuff from abroad until they ended up having to export gold.  Countries with outflows of gold and falling incomes then could afford less stuff from abroad until they ended up importing gold.  This cut down on the role of any national government in managing the economy.  Mostly, the heads of the various national banks (the Bank of England, the Bank of France, the US Federal Reserve Bank, etc.) were supposed to co-operate in smoothing out any bumpy patches. 

            Business cycle theory. 

Commonly-accepted economic theory held that during a period of growth demand exceeded supply, so prices rose too high; any fool could make a profit and many did; wages tended to float up above a sensible level and many dead-beats got hired; and banks made unsound loans.  In short, “plaque” built up in the “arteries” of the economy.  This couldn’t go on.  Eventually a “slump” would clean out all the plaque and re-establish the basis for sound growth.  (See: angioplasty.)  Demand would fall.  Falling demand would force down prices to a reasonable level; unemployment would get rid of dead-beats and take wages down to a sensible level; silly businesses (see: nail salons) would go bankrupt; stupid loans would not be made; and the particular mix of products would return to what people actually needed.  Then the economy could start growing again.  There is a seductive elegance to these all-encompassing theoretical systems.  Same as there is with Marxism.  The parallels don’t end there.  Ideas have consequences. 

Revolutionary Russia.

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In the 19th Century, many people reacted badly to brutal working and living conditions under early capitalist industrialization.  Some of these people argued that all people should be equal, that all government should be a democracy, and that all forms of wealth should belong to the community instead of to selfish individuals.  This is called Socialism. 

Later, Karl Marx argued that Socialism would inevitably triumph because History was a big rock rolling downhill in that direction.  This is called Marxism. 

Later still, Vladimir Ulyanov (“Lenin”) argued that History needed some help from professional revolutionaries because most people were too stupid and would be satisfied just with a better life.  Most Russian Socialists rejected this view.  Lenin led his faction, called “Bolsheviks” into what is now called Communism.[1]   So, this isn’t Bernie Sanders’ fault. 

For most of its history, Russia was on the dark side of the moon compared to Europe.   

Most people were serfs (see: Middle Ages) until 1853; 95 percent of the people could not sign their own name well into the 20th Century; the ruler (called the czar or tsar) ruled “by divine right”; there was little industry and farming was REALLY backward. 

Russians weren’t sure if they were Europeans or Asians like, say, the Huns. 

They weren’t too good on compromise.  Once in a while, rulers (Peter the Great, Alexander II, Peter Stolypin) tried to drag Russia kicking and screaming into modern times.  Once in a while, people thought the solution was to kill whoever was the problem.  (See: “Propaganda of the Deed.”) 

Wars were disastrous for Russia.  Government made a mess of everything; huge numbers of people got killed; the food supply broke down and people starved or ate their neighbors; disease (and indigestion) ran wild.  Russia was defeated by Japan in 1905 and a revolution broke out.  This revolution got squashed.  Russia was defeated by Germany in the First World War and a revolution broke out in February 1917.  This revolution didn’t get squashed, but it didn’t fix any of Russia’s problems either.  Another revolution broke out in October 1917.  (See: “The Hunt for Red October.”) 

Vladimir Ulyanov (“nom de guerre” Lenin) led the “first” Russian Revolution.  He led the October Revolution; told everybody what they wanted to hear, then did whatever he wanted (See: “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”); shot as many of his enemies as he could get his hands on; gained control of Russia; then had a stroke and died in 1923. 

A power struggle followed.  In 1928 Josef Dzhugashvili (“Stalin” = “Man of Steel”) won.  (See: “uh-oh.”)  Stalin had a low anxiety threshold and an unusual coping device: everyone made him nervous eventually and if you made him nervous he tried to kill you.  For example, Leon Trotsky, who lost the power struggle in Russia with Stalin in 1928, got hit in the head with an ice-axe.  In 1940.  In Mexico.  (See: elephants.)  Stalin led the “second” revolution. 

Stalin brought together everything above this point on the page: he had a really primitive country; he had no limits on his power; he wanted to drag Russia into the modern world; he wasn’t sure Russia was “Western”; he believed in killing people who were seen as a problem; and it was going to work just like a Russian war—ugly and deadly.  

[1] This is different from living on turnips and blackberry wine in a commune in New Hampshire with girls in peasant dresses who don’t shave their legs.  Trust me: it is.

Strong-minded People.

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            “There’ll always be an England.”[1]  You know why?  ‘Cause it’s a country filled with strong-minded flakes, that’s why. 

Elizabeth Wiskemann (1899-1971) had a German father and a British mother.  She went up to Oxford to study history, then went to grad school there.  Her dissertation flunked because it contradicted the argument of one of the readers and her supervisor didn’t have the “cojones” to fight for her.  So she settled for tutoring Oxford undergraduates for half the year and travelling throughout Europe the rest of the year as a journalist.  She visited Weimar Berlin a lot, but also travelled throughout Europe.  Wiskemann became an ardent critic of Nazi Germany, so the Nazis expelled her in 1936.  During the Second World War, she worked for British Intelligence in Switzerland.  Here she became the lover of Adam von Trott zu Solz, one of the conspirators who tried to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944.  When he left her to return to Germany, he accidentally left behind his gloves.  Soon afterward, Von Trott was hanged.  She kept the gloves as a momento.  After the war she wrote books.  When her eye-sight failed, she took her own life.[2] 

Sybille Bedford (1911-2006) grew up in Germany and Italy in the Twenties and Thirties.   She got to know many British and French writers on the Riviera.  Actually, she was German and only became British through education and a marriage of convenience with a gay British man who married her to prevent her from being sent to a concentration camp by the Nazis.  (Her discovery that she was a lesbian after her first night with a clumsy, self-absorbed man is hilarious.)  Later, she became a writer who reported on British criminal cases, wrote novels, a biography of her friend Aldous Huxley, and a couple of highly-deceptive memoirs.[3] 

Patrick Leigh-Fermor (1915-2011) had no talent for coloring inside the lines.  He managed to be expelled from a series of “progressive” schools in interwar Britain.  Then he failed to gain entry to the British equivalent of West Point.  One school report card described him as “a dangerous mixture of sophistication and recklessness.”  In December 1933 he set out to walk from Holland to Istanbul, Turkey.  In January 1935 he arrived, having travelled on foot through Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Rumania.  Later, he fought in a Greek civil war, then served as a British Commando in German-occupied Crete.  After the war, he became a travel writer.[4] 

Eric Newby (1919-2006) got a good education, but never went near a university.  After a couple of years in advertising, he signed on as an apprentice seaman on the square-rigged grain clipper “Moshulu.”[5]  In 1938-1939 he made the passage from Belfast to Australia to London in the “last grain race” before the outbreak of the Second World War.  He joined the Commandos after the war started, got captured on a raid, escaped from the prison camp, met his future wife, got re-captured, spent the rest of the war in a prison camp in Germany, went into the dress trade, got bored, went for a short walk in the Hindu Kush, and became a travel writer.[6] 

[1] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qhLPWcm-0w 

[2] See: The Europe I Saw (1968).  Her description of a sailing trip along the Croatian coast led me and my wife to a similar adventure. 

[3] See: Jigsaw (1989); Quicksands (2005)

[4] See: A Time of Gifts (1977); Between the Woods and the Water (1986); and see also W. Stanley Moss, Ill Met by Moonlight (1950), which recounts the 1944 kidnapping of the German commander of the Crete garrison by Leigh Fermor and Moss.  You can’t make up this stuff.  Or:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TKW_9uUwa0 

[5] Now a floating restaurant on the Philadelphia waterfront.  “How are the mighty fallen.”  2 Samuel, 1: 27. 

[6] See: The Last Grain Race (1956); A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958); Love and War in the Apennines (1971); and Learning the Ropes (1991).