Happy New Year!

 

L. S. & M. S.

JAN 1 1901

RY. CO.

The Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

 

Happy New Year!

FREIGHT OFFICE

L.S.&M.S.RY.

JAN    1   1900

SO. CHICAGO

ILLS.

Cancel from the South Chicago freight office of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway. 

*****

Here is to a better 2013.  The end of the Mayan long count calendar did not bring an end to the world, nor will the fiscal cliff.  But we did experience a terrible tragedy with the assault rifle deaths of elementary school children in Connecticut.  

I learned to shoot as a kid, and owned my first shotgun by the age of 12 (20 gauge Remington).  Assault rifles, especially the M4 carbine and AK47, have been a constant presence for me in some of the places I've worked like Afghanistan and west Africa.  I appreciate the appropriate use and possession of assault rifles, especially when they are used for practical reasons and in the hands of trained soldiers in places where they've saved my life like Liberia.  But for the life of me I can't figure why we treat guns like glamorous objects and symbols of freedom in the continental United States.  And why do we venerate the things to the point where a Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association could make a dystopian recommendation to put armed guards in all of our schools?  Lanza, the Connecticut mass murderer, would have been smart enough to have taken out the guard first before using his Bushmaster human killing machine on the children.   The NRA, gun makers, and people that glorify these things should be ashamed, not so much for supporting the right to own guns, but for promoting them as something they are not.

I once owned a home in Chevy Chase, Maryland that my wife and I had purchased in 1999 after we returned from a six year stint in Liberia during the midst of the country's civil war.  During October 2002 while we were residents in the house, the Washington area, of which Chevy Chase is a neighborhood, was terrorized by a sniper, who murdered 10 people over a three week people with a Bushmaster XM-15 rifle.  The sniper was taking people out in parking lots, bus stops, and gas stations.  People lived in fear throughout the region.  

After about ten days from the start of the murders, I received a call in Chevy Chase from a friend named Brownie Samukai who called from western Tanzania in East Africa near the country's border with the nation of Burundi.  Brownie, who is now the Minister of Defense in Liberia, was at the time a security official for the United Nation High Commission for Refugees.  He and some of his colleagues had been watching CNN reports on the sniper, and as he had my number in Chevy Chase on his phone, he decided to call me to make sure I was OK and to find out how we were coping.  I have never quite gotten over the irony of a security official calling me from east Africa to make sure I was OK in the United States from people on the rampage with a military weapon.  For six years in Liberia I lived with the ever present threat of AK47s, .50 cals, and M60s, which all shot up my house and office in 1996 and nearly got me.  Brownie was in Liberia then too, and I think both of us thought we would be just a bit safer out of Liberia by 2002.  So Brownie got a job with the UN, and I went back to Washington.  But one of Bushmaster's fine and efficient killing products, which can be bought freely in the United States, made everyone in the capital city of the United States watch their back at all times, everywhere, for nearly three weeks.

I am certain that more than a few readers will mumble something to the effect that guns don't kill people, people kill people, and all that.  These are shallow thinkers.  There is a reason we all don't have anti-aircraft guns at home.  At some point our society has drawn a line.  The question is where and why, and why do the people that defend assault rifles not protest their lack of ability to acquire high caliber guns like anti-aircraft guns?  As a society we have already drawn a line.  

The line needs to start with values, and the glorification of assault rifles as an aspect of manliness and machismo.  Consider the the advertisement below that might have been read by Adam Lanza:

Above is an advertisement for a Bushmaster rifle, written and paid for by those that want you to think that your manliness is equated with owning one of these things.  What?  The numbers of dead in Connecticut are part of a much larger tally of dead that the current stories don't mention.  I've seen way more children and other innocents cut apart by rifles like these in Liberia and Sierra Leone to know that manliness has nothing to do with the people firing these things.  So many of the murders in those countries were committed by children themselves, shooting unarmed people.  Their AK47s hardly made them men, only effective murderers.  How much more of a man is Adam Lanza now that he has killed all these children?  I accept the fact that we are always going to have guns like these made by companies like Bushmaster.  But mass marketing like this?  Shame.

*****

In 1978 the British band Gang of Four recorded the song Armalite Rifle.  I was something of a punk rockphile back then, and this song was one of my favorite records as a high school kid.  

Merry Christmas from 1898 Revenues

Christmas Card from the Luedinghaus-Espenschied Wagon Company

Merry Christmas from the management and staff of 1898 Revenues:

******

Luedinghaus-Espenschied Wagon Company bill of lading on the Steamboat Sydney for "One Farm Wagon complete, with seat", for $800.

Bog Hohertz sent in this scan following yesterday's L-E Wagon Company post.  Thanks Bob!

Happy Thanksgiving!

1898 Thanksgiving Day cartoon.  Uncle Sam carving Turkey for the "new faces" at the table, including the Philippines, Cuba, Porto Rico, and Hawaii.  Pictures of the Generals that won the Spanish American War hang on the wall.  

Happy New Year 2012!

FREIGHT OFFICE

L. S. & M. S. Ry

JAN  1  1900

SO. CHICAGO

ILLS.

*****

Happy New Year!    2012 will continue with our ongoing series on New York and other stock brokers, but will begin with a series on New York and other bankers, banks, and trusts.  Somewhere down the line I will revisit documentary printed cancels.  I can't say much more about what 2012 holds for the site; planning isn't really my strength as a blog publisher.  However, I've got lots of proprietary printeds to rollout, and a discussion to start on the Joyce/Buford lists of proprietary printed cancels.

A new addition for 2012 is this feature page on stock broker cancels. At this page, you can find a list of links to posts on stock brokers and their cancels, compiled in alphabetical order.  I will endeavour to keep this list up-to-date on a bi-weekly basis.  Nearly 70 brokers are listed on this links page as of today.

Thanks to all the regulars and occasional visitors to this site.  I wish you all the best for the New Year.

Merry Christmas from 1898 Revenues

Baboon Cliff, overlooking Lake Nakuru, The Great Rift Valley, Kenya

Happy Thanksgiving! President McKinley's Proclamation for Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1898

Proclamation 426 - Thanksgiving Day, 1898

October 28, 1898

William McKinley

President of the United States of America

The approaching November brings to mind the custom of our ancestors, hallowed by time and rooted in our most sacred traditions, of giving thanks to Almighty God for all the blessings He has vouchsafed to us during the year.

Few years in our history have afforded such cause for thanksgiving as this. We have been blessed by abundant harvests; our trade and commerce have wonderfully increased; our public credit has been improved and strengthened; all sections of our common country have been brought together and knitted into closer bonds of national purpose and unity.

The skies have been for a time darkened by the cloud of war, but as we were compelled to take up the sword in the cause of humanity we are permitted to rejoice that the conflict has been of brief duration and the losses we have had to mourn, though grievous and important, have been so few, considering the great results accomplished, as to inspire us with gratitude and praise to the Lord of Hosts. We may laud and magnify His holy name that the cessation of hostilities came so soon as to spare both sides the countless sorrows and disasters that attend protracted war.

I do therefore invite all my fellow-citizens, as well those who may be at sea or sojourning in foreign lands as those at home, to set apart and observe Thursday, the 24th day of November, as a day of national thanksgiving, to come together in their several places of worship for a service of praise and thanks to Almighty God for all the blessings of the year, for the mildness of the seasons and the fruitfulness of the soil, for the continued prosperity of the people, for the devotion and valor of our countrymen, for the glory of our victory and the hope of a righteous peace, and to pray that the divine guidance which has brought us heretofore to safety and honor may be graciously continued in the years to come.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this 28th day of October, A.D. 1898, and of the Independence of the United States the one hundred and twenty-third.

WILLIAM MCKINLEY

Read more at the American Presidency Project: William McKinley: Proclamation 426 - Thanksgiving Day, 1898  http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=69247#ixzz1eY1e4lUZ

M. C. R. R.

NOV   24  1898

Michigan Central Railroad cancel on Thanksgiving Day, 1898

Happy New Year from 1898 Revenues!

L. S. & M. S.

JAN  1  1901

RY. CO.

The New Year by 1898 Revenues time zones:

John  GMT +3   Nairobi

Bob GMT -6    Minnesota

Frank GMT -7   Arizona

  

******

I spent New Year's Eve here.

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM 1898 REVENUES!

Happy Thanksgiving from 1898 Revenues!