Fact Check 3.

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            The media and the academics they consult have not reached a perfect consensus on the cause or causes of the recent inflation.  Professor Tarek Hassan of Boston University offers the most straight-forward explanation.  “The pandemic of 2020-2022 causes massive disruptions to supply chains around the world…This caused what we call a cost-push inflation in all major economies,…”[1]  Professor Campbell Harvey of Duke University casts a wider net.  He points first to the Federal Reserve Bank’s purchase of $3 trillion worth of private and public bonds to counter the deflationary effects of lock-downs and lay-offs during 2020.  Second, the Trump administration joined with Congress to spend trillions of dollars on payments to businesses and individuals.  These were financed by expanding the deficit.  Third, says Professor Harvey, housing costs (sale prices and rents) jumped, with the median price of a home rising by 14.6 percent.[2]   

            Foreign policy elites, the people so disdained by President Donald Trump, appear to doubt that his continuation in office after January 2021 would have forestalled either of the current wars that dominate the headlines. 

In the case of Ukraine, it is argued that Vladimir Putin’s drive against an independent Ukraine has deep roots unrelated to who occupied the White House.  These range from his belief that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a world catastrophe, to his belief that Ukraine formed a part of historical Russia, to his resentment against the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) toward the steppe region of Western Asia.  Putin clearly rejected the Ukrainians’ own sense that they belonged to the “West.”  As circumstances have shown, Ukrainians have no desire to return to close links with Russia.  An earlier attempt to short-circuit movement toward the European Union had ended in a Ukrainian revolt against a pro-Russian government.[3]  The same scholars and diplomats argue that a President Trump might have urged Ukraine to surrender and certainly could not have mobilized a coherent response from the NATO countries.[4] 

In the case of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, it is argued that Trump’s Middle East policy marginalized, rather than attempted to solve, the Palestinians question.[5]  Furthermore, Trump’s policies did not stop Iran from continuing to aid and arm Hamas. 

“The ball is round and the game lasts ninety minutes.  All else is theory.”—Sepp Herbeger, coach of the West German national soccer team, 1954. 

[1] Quoted in Angelo Fichera, “Trump Imagines Alternate Reality of World Where He Didn’t Lose,” NYT, 18 March 2024. 

[2] It may be difficult to tease-out the causes of rising home prices and rents.  The substantial creation of money could have contributed to this rise in addition to the displacement of many people that followed from work-from-home policies.  Then, these analyses focus on the Trump administration and say nothing about the further increase in the deficit from spending in the early Biden administration. 

[3] See the moving documentary “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom.” Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom | Full Feature | Netflix (youtube.com) 

[4] A 2022 poll reported that 62 percent of respondents believed that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if Trump had been president.  This may be more of a commentary of a commentary on President Joe Biden in the aftermath of the widely misunderstood withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

[5] By inference, this may have given Hamas a greater motivation to attack Israel on a scale that would compel the world to re-engage. 

Fact Check 2.

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            The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (2022) includes tax rebates and other subsidies to encourage “clean energy” industries in the United States.  These include wind and solar power, and the battery industry.  The spending stretches over ten years and amounts to $370 billion.  The IRA also includes “Made-In-America” provisions that are intended to reverse the long-running “off-shoring” of dull, dreary, and occasionally dangerous manufacturing jobs to low-wage foreign countries.[1]  In particular, the IRA targets China, pushing American companies to move production either to home or to other foreign trading partners.[2]  One possible brake on the IRA’s effectiveness lies in China’s possession of the sources of some minerals that are critical for the transition to renewable energy.[3] 

            Social Security and Medicare face long-term problems with their financing.  Social Security payments come from a federal tax on payrolls.  For many years, workers paid in more than was paid out to beneficiaries.  This created a surplus that has been held in the Social  Security “trust fund.”  More recently, as “Baby Boomers” have shifted from labor force to the uneasy leisure force, more money has been paid out to beneficiaries than has been paid in by workers.  As a result, the “trust fund” is being depleted.  Medicare is financed in a similar way and confronts a similar problem.  The Medicare trust fund is predicted to be exhausted in 2031 and the Social Security trust fund in 2033.  After the trust funds are exhausted, the government will be able to pay beneficiaries only what comes in from current payroll taxes.  This will lead to a reduction in payments.  Payments would be reduced by about one-quarter.[4]  Unless,…

            Various Republicans—individuals and groups—have proposed “solutions.”[5]  One is simply to raise the retirement age to 70.[6]  Two to four more years of paying into the systems at their peak earning phase of life plus two to four years less of drawing benefits could help balance the books.  Others, including Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, have proposed creating a two-tiered system.  People over 40 would continue to receive their current deal, while those under 40 would face a higher retirement age and—probably—a different financing scheme. 

            How do the Trump and Biden administrations match up on economic issues when the first three years of each are compared?[7]  Biden (3.7 percent) Trump (3.6 percent) had about the same unemployment rate.  Biden had more manufacturing jobs created than did Trump (791K v. 419K).  Biden had a higher GDP growth than did Trump (3.4 percent v. 2.7 percent).  Trump had a better experience with inflation than did Biden (2.1 percent v. 5.7 percent).  Trump had a better experience with wage growth than did Biden (+ 3.0 percent v. -2.7 percent). 

[1] See: Offshoring – Wikipedia  If successful, the IRA will have lots of American workers once again missing fingers or toes and hacking up colored phlegm. 

[2] Which it what China continues to be. 

[3] Lisa Friedman, “Republican Debate Fact Check,” NYT, 29 September 2023. 

[4] Angelo Fichera, “Candidates Sparring Over Social Security and Medicare,” NYT, 8 January 2024. 

[5] Fichera, “Candidates Sparring.” 

[6] Some of the guys in my morning work-out group have blue-collar jobs.  At least three of them have suffered bad, on-the-job concussions.  Another had a finger-tip pinched off by a piece of machinery.  One of the ladies who rings up my groceries always has on a large hand and wrist brace.  It seems indecent that people who can work into their Seventies or even Eighties because they have staffs to do much of both their work and their family responsibilities should suggest that people unlike themselves just buckle down.  What do I mean, “seems”? 

[7] Jim Tankersley and Lazaro Gamio, “Which President Can Claim These Economic Wins?” NYT, 8 March 2024. 

Fact Check 1.

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President Joe Biden claims that his administration “created” more jobs in two years than did any previous administration in in four years.[1]  Except that no “administration” is solely responsible for creating jobs.  In terms of passing legislation, both houses of Congress also participate.  In a larger sense, the actual economic actors—private enterprise in the American system—have much to contribute.  Then, there are two ways of measuring.  In straight numerical terms, the American economy added 12.1 million jobs between January 2021 and January 2023.  In terms of percentage of the labor force, the Biden Administration ranks lower than four other administrations.[2]  

President Biden claims that his administration cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion in two years.[3]  Except that most of the fall in spending came from the expiration of time-limited Covid-related spending legislation passed during the Trump administration.  During the Trump administration, widely bi-partisan votes in Congress for Covid response spending added $3.4 trillion to the deficit.  The Trump administration’s tax cuts further expanded the deficit by an estimated $1 trillion in 2018 through 2021.  In terms of legislation proposed by the Biden administration and passed by Congress, two things may be noted.  The Inflation Reduction Act cut the deficit by $240 billion over ten years.  Other legislation proposed by the administration and passed by Congress, is projected to increase the deficit by $4 trillion over the same ten years.[4]  Thus, the combination of Democratic spending increases and Republican tax-cutting is set to increase the deficit by at least $5 trillion dollars.  That comes on top of the $3.4 trillion in bipartisan-supported Covid-related deficits. 

President Biden sometimes blurs reality in his comparisons of himself to President Donald Trump.[5]  First, he celebrates his own signing of legislation that dispatched $1,400 checks to every American adult and child in March 2021.  However, in March 2020, Trump signed legislation sending $1,200 to each adult and $500 for each child.  In December 2020, Trump signed legislation sending $600 to each adult and $600 for each child.  Second, he compares job-losses under Trump to job-losses under President Herbert Hoover.  Again, this ignores the larger pattern.  When Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, 145.6 million people were working.  In January 2020, when Covid first reared its ugly head, there were 152 million people working.  That’s “a rise of 6.4 million jobs or 4.4 percent.”  Then Covid hit, lock-downs and massive lay-offs followed, and almost 22 million people lost their jobs.  That took employment down to about 130 million people.  By January 2021, employment had recovered to 142.9 million jobs.  Almost 13 million of the people who had lost jobs had recovered them before Trump left office. 

All these are just talking points in a campaign.  But many voters seem to remember the boom in job creation under the Trump administration.  Perhaps they recognize that Biden is boasting about the recovering economy he inherited. 

[1] Linda Qui, “Since 2024 Kickoff, Missing Context on Deficit,” NYT, 26 April 2023. 

[2] Jimmy Carter takes pride of place with 12.8 percent. 

[3] Linda Qui, “Since 2024 Kickoff, Missing Context on Deficit,” NYT, 26 April 2023. 

[4] For purposes of comparison, was at $3.1 trillion in 2020, at $1.4 trillion in 2022.  The Biden administration spending will push it into the area of $5.7 trillion by 2032. 

[5] Angelo Fichera, “Evaluating Biden’s Recent Talking Points on Taxes, Industry and Jobs,” NYT, 22 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.