Blast from the Past: War on the home front

by Shannon Forbes
Tuesday, April 3, 2007 2:07 PM MDT

On April 6, 1917, after years of watching foreign armies in Europe slaughter each other, the United States Congress finally declared war on the German government (“but not on the German people,” although it’s a fine line there).

Casper went to war too — 1918 saw it fully engaged in the war effort. Slogans appeared in local newspapers declaring, “Slackers desiring to leave the country should be given every opportunity -— on transports to France!” and “Don’t kick about the heat this summer. Try it in a gas mask!”

“Powder River, let ’er buck!” became a familiar war cry over there, beginning on troop transports as they pulled out of Casper. One special train started out with 87 Casper draftees, who decorated their car with flags and bunting. At each stop, cars, men and more flags were added, until the train of 13 coaches and 500 men reached its destination.

One young private, home on leave, was persuaded to give a talk from the stage of the Empress Theater, which urged locals to come learn “How it feels to face the Hun and kill or be killed by him! If you have a desire to learn something authentic of how your boy or chum may be working for Uncle Sam over there, now is your chance to get it … and get it straight! Free admission!”

The United States entered World War I after Germany announced it would begin unrestricted submarine warfare, attacking merchant ships regardless of country of origin. More than 6 million tons of desperately needed war materiél were sent to the bottom of the Atlantic in 1917 alone.

During World War I, posters were the primary form of public communication. People would encounter posters in schools, factories, offices, store windows and other places outside the scope of paid advertising. Second, posters had democratic appeal -- they could be made by anyone; they could be seen by all.

Both medium and message spoke of democracy, which made posters ideal for expressing American war aims -- why we fight, what we fight for. “Sugar means ships,” read one government poster.

“The consumption of sugar must be reduced,” proclaimed an especially beautiful woman holding a glass of lemonade and looking out to sea. “For your beverages 400 million pounds of sugar were imported in ships last year. Every ship is needed to carry soldiers and supplies.”

Future President Herbert Hoover was appointed head of the United States Food Administration. Citizens’ efforts to conserve food were known as “Hooverizing.”

The need to ship non-perishables overseas was a particular problem in that Americans would have to be convinced to alter their eating habits. "Food will win the war!" and "Don't eat less, waste less!" became commonplace sayings. More posters proclaimed “Victory is a question of stamina! Wheat! Meat! Fats! Sugar! Save fuel for fighters!”

By 1918, world merchant shipping had lost 12 million tons of food and materiel to U-boat wolfpacks in the Atlantic. Vast armies on both sides suffered shortages of everything from horses to hats, bullets to bandages.

Americans were encouraged to plant vegetable gardens to assist in stretching food supplies. Victory gardens were planted in backyards and on apartment building rooftops, with the occasional vacant lot "Commandeered for Victory!" and put to use as a cornfield or a squash patch.

All over the United States, wartime families were helping to relieve food shortages by a program of victory gardens, also called war gardens or gardens for defense. If a man possessed even a tiny clear square of earth in his back or front yard, he was urged to make use of it for this purpose.

Victory gardening was not a new concept invented just for the Great War. In 1597 England, a man named Richard Gardiner wrote: "Carrets are good to be eaten with salt fish. Therefore sowe Carrets in your Gardens, and humbly praise God for them, as for a singular and great blessing; so thus much for the use and benefit had in the commonwealth by Carrets. Admit if it should please God that any City or towne should be besieged with the Enemy, what better provision for the greatest number of people can be, then every garden to be sufficiently planted with Carrets."

In addition to aiding the war effort, gardens also were considered a civil "morale booster," in that gardeners could feel empowered by their contribution of labor and rewarded by the produce grown for use by family, friends and neighbors. Surplus home-canned fruits and vegetables were given to churches and hospitals. Victory gardening enabled more supplies to be shipped to our troops overseas.

Emphasis was placed on making gardening a family or community effort -- not drudgery, but a pastime —- and a national duty to ensure an adequate food supply for civilians and troops. Government agencies, private foundations, businesses, schools and seed companies all worked together to provide land, instruction and seeds for individuals and communities to grow food.

From California to Florida, Americans plowed backyards, vacant lots, parks, baseball fields and schoolyards to set out gardens. Children and adults fertilized, planted, weeded and watered in order to harvest an abundance of vegetables.

Colorful posters and regular feature articles in newspapers and magazines helped to get the word out and encouraged people to stick with it. The goal was to produce enough fresh vegetables through the summer for the immediate family and neighbors. Excess produce was canned and preserved for the winter and early spring until next year's victory garden was ripe.

Gardening and canning information was available through booklets distributed by the Department of Agriculture and various agribusiness companies, encouraging all Americans to plant vegetable gardens to assist in stretching food supplies. They taught the basics of gardening. The audience was assumed as having no knowledge and the material was presented as such. 

Topics included soil health, how to plant, when to plant, how to tend plants, pest identification and even suggestions on what to plant.

Victory garden jokes became as corny as the produce: “Say, did you know I got a dozen steaks today?”

“You did! Where? Tell me! How much did they cost? How many ration points?”

Only then would the prankster reveal that he had just bought “stakes” for his tomato plants!

Gardeners in Casper went to it with enthusiasm, but growing anything here had always been difficult.

Early homesteaders brought lilac and rose slips, each wrapped inside a potato and thick cloth, then tied with twine and kept damp during the long trip west. When they reached their new homes, the entire bundle could be planted, and a bonus potato crop would sprout, to boot. Anthropologists know to look for these non-native species to indicate where a homestead once existed, even if all other traces of settlement were gone.

Edness Kimball Wilkins recalled that the first earthworms “came to Casper in the dirt packed around some plum trees” her father, W.S. Kimball, had ordered shipped from Illinois.

Earthworms, too, were not native to this area. The original Casper location was so dry and sandy that no worms could have lived here, anyway. Some years had passed since the town was founded in 1888. As trees and lawns were painfully planted and watered around the handful of homes, a thin layer of mulch had developed, so that the immigrant worms prospered.

When Kimball planted his trees, the precious worms slowly multiplied and spread from the Kimball yard throughout pioneer Casper. But, according to Wilkins, “For many years when people wanted fishing worms, they brought their shovels and tin cans” to the Kimball yard and dug there for free bait.

While war raged overseas, Americans at home joined the war effort and dealt with government policies, such as rationing. At the same time, women entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers.

In July of 1918, Congress passed a “Work or Fight” law. It decreed that “ball-players, waiters, bartenders, ushers, elevator operators, hotel and store clerks, and all domestics” were henceforth positions “to be filled by women.” This freed the men to fight, and every able-bodied man over 21 either had to work in a war-related job or be drafted.

There were many positions in the service for stock-handlers, since horses and mules were still the Army’s main means of transportation. One young man, answering his draft call, walked 20 miles to Arminto to catch the train to Casper, hoping to be assigned to wrangling horses in France. Many of Wyoming’s horses, both tame and wild, went to France, too.

Even pigeons served their country, as homing messengers for the Army Signal Corps. With speeds up to 30 mph over short distances, a bird with a very long message could beat the new telegraphy in speed of delivery.

The world was at war. Resources of all kinds were being diverted to support national war efforts. Countries asked their citizens to help in every way that they could. People dutifully funded the war by purchasing bonds. They conserved raw materials, they recycled, they rallied behind the troops, they helped their neighbors, they planted gardens for Victory and a great number of them gave their lives.

Casper newspapers carried alarming headlines: “Hunnish Airmen Bomb French Hospitals!” and urged citizens to recycle brass, copper and iron. Instructions for converting worn-out shirts to children’s clothing and recipes for wheatless meals were regularly featured.

Holmes Hardware advertised gardening stools and supplies with an encouraging little ditty: “Forward to vict’ry we go! Forward to make things grow! Forward to beat the foe!”

An ad for a tailor shop urged the patriotic to have their clothes repaired instead of buying new ones.

Still, little girls must have their “Last Day of School White Dresses” on sale for $2 to $7.50 at The Leader Children’s Clothing store. Plain gingham dresses a bargain at $1.50 along with underwear, hosiery and bloomers.

Merchant’s Café offered a 50-cent lunch featuring tomato soup, fried silver smelts, boiled short-ribs of beef, mashed potatoes, stewed tomatoes, tapioca pudding and coffee.

Despite the war, Casperites still managed to have some fun. People sang along to “When You Wore a Tulip,” “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” and “Hail! Hail! The Gang’s All Here!”

Admission to the Empress Theater and Dance Hall “Across from the Midwest Hotel” was 10 cents. It offered dancing to its own orchestra, plus vaudeville, musical comedy and occasional legitimate theater.

Movies, all silent, were starting to catch on nationwide. “Tarzan of the Apes,” starring Elmo Lincoln, was the highest-grossing film of the year. Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton made three movies together, “The Bell-Boy,” “The Cook” and “Out West.”

Mary Pickford was everyone’s golden-haired darling, and Charlie Chaplin was cranking one out (literally, with hand-cranked cameras of the day) every couple of months. Future movie stars William Holden, Rita Hayworth, Art Carney and Rin-Tin-Tin were born that year so long ago.

Casper was a bustling little boom town, with burgeoning oilfields, a busy railroad and a rapidly-growing population. All things considered, 1918 started off as a pretty good year.

There was just the one tiny squib in the Casper Daily Press to catch anyone’s eye, about a village in Spain where most of the population had died of “la grippe,” which was what people back then called a really bad cold.

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