The First Sniper Rifle

Gunpowder weapons have been used in wars for hundreds of years, but for most of that time, they were highly inaccurate and were fired in the general direction of the enemy, relying on the mass volume of missiles used to inflict damage rather than being aimed at a specific target.  This was particularly true for the individual weapons used by the common soldier.

Mass volleys were the attempt to compensate for lack of precision.   Smoothbore muskets, used widely from the 16th to 19th centuries, had limited effective range (typically 50-100 yards) and poor accuracy that was due to the lack of rifling and inconsistent ammunition.  Armies used tactics like line infantry volleys to maximize the impact of collective fire, aiming at enemy formations rather than at individual targets.

Colonel George Hanger served in the British Army during the American Revolution and later wrote:

"A soldier's musket, if not exceedingly ill-bored (as many are), will strike the figure of a man at 80 yards; it may even at 100 yards; but a soldier must be very unfortunate indeed who shall be wounded by a common musket at 150 yards, provided his antagonist aims at him; and as to firing at a man at 200 yards with a common musket, you may just as well fire at the moon and have the same hopes of hitting your object.  I do maintain and will prove, whenever called on, that no man was ever killed at 200 yards by a common soldier's musket, by the person who aimed at him."

The British Brown Bess musket, used during the American Revolution, had only a simple round brass bead at the end of the barrel, with no rear sights.  Soldiers were told not to aim the weapon, but to present it.  Soldiers were drilled not for marksmanship, but simply for loading and firing the weapon as rapidly as possible. 

The French infantry under Napoleon, for example, received limited training in live-fire practice due to logistical constraints, cost, and the greater focus on drilling for formation tactics.  Training was more about maneuvering, reloading speed, and maintaining discipline under fire than about honing individual aiming skills.

The manner in which war was conducted in Europe decreed little need for a more accurate infantry weapon.  Armies were seen as instruments of statecraft, and wars were often waged more for diplomatic leverage than for annihilation.  Aristocratic officers were not present to participate in the fight directly, but to command the troops.  The deliberate killing of such an officer—particularly by a sniper from concealment—was considered assassination, not combat.  There was also the common belief that without the controlling hand of an aristocratic officer, the common soldiers would run amok, committing atrocities.

This understanding of war began to change by the end of the 18th century, particularly during the American Revolution, when better rifles meant that snipers could pick high value targets on the field—such as officers or the troops manning the artillery.  Slowly, sniping began to be seen as an effective battlefield tactic rather than a war crime.

At the start of the 19^th century, a few specialized units, like sharpshooters and riflemen, used early rifled firearms for more accurate, targeted shooting, though these were not the norm.  The British Army began to form a few small units that were equipped with the Baker Rifle—a weapon that, while it was slow to load, was effective at ranges up to 200 yards.

Following this lead, while the American Army in the Mexican-American War still equipped the majority of the soldiers with muskets, a few of the soldiers were issued the 1841 Mississippi Rifle, a weapon that was accurate out to 300 yards.   Military leaders were reluctant to adopt the rifles en masse because the weapons were slow to load and the longer barrels made them fragile.

At the start of the American Civil War, both the Union and the Confederate armies still relied on the old smoothbore muskets,  with their limited effective range of only 50-100 yards.  This rapidly changed during the war, as both armies began to use rifled muskets—weapons that were still breech-loaded, but whose rifled barrels allowed for greater accuracy when firing conical bullets such as the Minié ball.  (Commonly called the Minnie Ball; one of my students wrote on a test that “Minnie Balls was a woman who fought in the war disguised as a man.”)

While these rifled muskets had a much greater effective range, there was still a need for a weapon with a much longer reach.  For the Confederates, the gap was closed by the Whitworth Rifle, the first military sniper rifle.  Manufactured in Great Britain, the Whitworth rifle was spectacularly accurate, with a maximum effective range of 1000 yards.  (Some marksmen claimed this was a conservative estimate.)

Although it was still a muzzle-loading percussion rifle, the Whitworth rifle’s innovative hexagonal rifling and its precisely engineered ammunition made it significantly more accurate than a standard rifled musket.  Unlike conventional rifles that used circular grooves, the Whitworth featured a hexagonal bore that matched the shape of its elongated bullet, allowing the projectile to fit tightly and spin consistently without deforming.  This precise mechanical fit dramatically improved the stability, velocity, and trajectory of the bullet in flight.  In addition, the Whitworth had a smaller bore (.451 caliber) and a tighter twist rate, which increased the bullet's spin and extended its effective range. 

Each of these early sniper rifles cost the Confederacy approximately $400, the equivalent of about $10,000 today (and the cost was even more than that if the rifle was equipped with an early model telescopic sight).   After purchase, each of the rifles had to be smuggled into the South, past the Union Army.   These difficulties meant that the South only managed to import, at most, 150 Whitworth Rifles, which were issued to Confederate sharpshooter detachments who specialized in targeting officers and artillerymen from extreme distances.

The new sniper rifles proved to be effective not only in combat, but were effective in changing the behavior of Union officers.  Since the specially shaped bullets produced a whistling sound as they passed, the Union knew that the South was using snipers, creating a growing fear of long-range sharpshooting, which forced changes in officer behavior and battlefield positioning — such as ducking, staying mounted less often, and using cover more carefully. 

Occasionally, however, an officer would fail to realize that warfare was changing.

At the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House on May 9, 1864, the Union Army suffered one of its most stunning battlefield losses—not in terms of numbers, but in the death of one of its most respected commanders, Major General John Sedgwick.  A veteran officer known for his calm demeanor and devotion to his men, Sedgwick commanded the Union VI Corps during General Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign.  That morning, as Sedgwick prepared his artillery placements, Confederate sharpshooters armed with Whitworth rifles took up hidden positions nearly a thousand yards away.

As Sedgwick supervised his men near the front line, Confederate snipers began firing. Union soldiers instinctively ducked, prompting Sedgwick to chastise them. “What? Men dodging this way for single bullets?  What will you do when they open fire with the whole line?” he scolded.  Then came his final, now-famous words: “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.”

Moments later, Sedgwick was shot beneath the left eye and died instantly.  He was the highest-ranking Union officer to be killed in combat during the Civil War.

No High-Speed Rail for the Southwest

Any American who has traveled in Europe or Asia is in awe of the train service there.  Train service is cheap, clean, and efficient.  It is remarkably easy to travel from country to country by train, even if traveling with small children.

If you wish to travel around the American Southwest, however, you’re obliged to go by car.  Depending on the time of year and your destination, it can take all day to cross a hot desert.  It is almost impossible to make that trip without wishing for a European-style high-speed rail system.

Well, that is not going to happen anywhere in the Southwest, except possibly in California.

While there are no hard and fast rules for predicting when rapid intercity rail transport becomes feasible, there is a set of guidelines, and using those guidelines, the American Southwest doesn’t even come close to making such infrastructure profitable.  Let’s look at the possible routes, step by step.

The first requirement for building high-speed rail is corridor distance—the number of miles between the starting and ending points of the line.  Using the existing, successful high-speed rail lines as a guide, the sweet spot for profitable lines is more than 150 miles and less than 600 miles.  For shorter routes, it is hard for a railroad to compete with cars, and for longer routes, it is generally cheaper and faster to go by air. 

Possible routes that are far too long for high-speed rail include those from any city in Texas or New Mexico to any city in California.  Routes that are too short to be feasible include Tucson to Phoenix, Las Cruces to El Paso, and Albuquerque to Santa Fe.   With the exception of California, the distances between many towns in the Southwest are multiples of 35-50 miles—the distance a steam locomotive could travel before needing to stop and take on water.  Longer stops—at roughly 150 miles apart—accommodated crew changes and maintenance needs.  For most cities in the desert Southwest, neighboring cities in the same state are simply too close together to make high speed rail feasible.

The next criterion is terminus to terminus population.  As a general rule, each end of the route should have a population between one and three million people, with a total population along the route between 8-10 million people.  If we follow this rule strictly, we eliminate any high-speed rail in New Mexico, Utah, or Nevada.  Even the Los Angeles to Las Vegas route does not meet this guideline because the population of Las Vegas is too low.  The only remaining possible routes are Phoenix to Los Angeles and the already-proposed California High-Speed Rail (CAHSR) system that links Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Both of the remaining possible routes meet the next guideline hurdle: Competitive travel time.  High-speed rail should be at least 20–30% faster, door-to-door, than driving and should be competitive with flying (including airport delays).  This usually means train speeds of 150–220 mph with minimal intermediate stops.  The Phoenix to Los Angeles route meets this easily, while the proposed California route only passes because California freeway traffic could only be slower if every car were driving in reverse.  As it is, on just the Los Angeles to San Francisco route, California is estimating a time of 3 hours, give or take 15 minutes (depending on whether the train is an express or stops at any of the ten intermediate stations).  The same trip by car would take twice as long, even if the train were to stop at every intermediate stop. 

The next guideline is load capacity.  For a high-speed rail project to operate profitably—ignoring initial construction costs—the train needs an average daytime load above 70% (not just at peak hours).  Even the most generous estimate eliminates the Phoenix to Los Angeles route.  (Nationwide, existing passenger rail lines average only 40%)

The last guideline is estimated ridership.  The break even on operating costs is approximately 35 million riders per year.  According to the State of California, that number of riders for the future CAHSR is absolutely assured.  On the other hand, if you listen to several independent analysts (by such entities as the California High-Speed Rail Authority or third-party analysts) the proposed California system will be lucky to have half that number of riders. 

There are a few other minor considerations.  If the town to be served by high-speed rail is also served by existing slower rail facilities, that is a plus.  In the case of the American Southwest, Amtrak connects to Albuquerque, Tucson, El Paso, and Los Angeles.  Amtrak does not go to San Francisco, Las Vegas, or Phoenix.  It may surprise you to learn that the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad was started without a connection to Santa Fe.  Eventually, there was a connecting spur line, but Amtrak does not connect to Santa Fe.  None of above make the success of high-speed rail in the Southwest any more likely.

There is a theory that building a commuter railroad will foster development, and that ridership will gradually increase until the new railroad is profitable.  This was exactly the reasoning behind New Mexico’s building the Railrunner Express that links Albuquerque and Santa Fe.  Setting up the line cost the state $635 million.  Since the line opened in 2006, ridership has actually decreased to approximately 1,900 riders a week.  Fares currently account for almost 4% of the annual operating costs, which do not include interest on the debt.  Another 4% of the operating cost is donated by the federal government.  At the current level of ridership, the New Mexico taxpayers would save approximately $40 million a year if the state paid for each of the riders to take an Uber instead of the train.  The riders would also arrive at their destinations faster.

If you are interested in math, economists actually have a formula (at right) for evaluating whether a transportation project is fiscally sound.  NPV is the net present value and r is the interest rate, which is normally between 3-7% for transportation projects.  C stands for Cost and B is for benefits.  Setting T for the time period of 40 years, if the NPV is greater than 0, the proposed project is fiscally sound, but if the NPV is below 0, the project is unsound and will be a drag on the taxpayers. 

I started to work out the NPV for the New Mexico Railrunner Express, but the results were just too tragically depressing, so I decided to run the numbers for Phase I of the California High Speed Rail using 4% for the interest rate.  As you might expect, the answer was a little under 0.  Actually, it came out to a negative $65 billion.  And that was if the Federal Government continued to help fund the project at the present rate, something that seems increasingly unlikely.

What about all the other Southwestern states that, defying all logic, are still talking about building their own high speed rail systems?  Let me give you some advice:  Call Uber instead.

The Overlooked Nazis

Certain words are so overused that they lose all meaning.   No matter what I write about, somebody, somewhere writes to call me a socialist, a Nazi, a fascist, or a secular humanist.  Without exception, the writers are incapable of defining the terms they bandy about. 

If we call everybody a Nazi, this means that we don’t react when we learn there are REAL sneaky little Nazis—over two million of them—rapidly taking over Germany, spreading across borders and spilling into every bordering country.  Eighty years after the end of World War II, these menaces have invaded both Russia and France.

To properly inform you about this new menace, I’ll start at the beginning.

Hermann Göring, the flamboyant Nazi leader, fancied himself a forest expert with a flair for the dramatic.  Appointed Reich Master of the Hunt in 1933 and Master of the German Forests in 1934, he took these titles to heart, strutting through woodlands like a medieval lord.  His passion for hunting fueled his self-image as a guardian of nature, and he instituted forestry law designed to create forests that would resemble the private hunting preserves of monarchs instead of natural forests.

Göring’s beloved Schorfheide Forest, where he set aside 100,000 acres as a state park, became his personal playground. There, he built Carinhall, a lavish hunting lodge, in which he hosted grand feasts amid the trees, cementing his forest-king persona.  His aristocratic upbringing and love for pomp—think five daily uniform changes—fed his belief that he was destined to rule over nature itself.  While his expertise was more theatrical than technical, Göring’s charisma and knack for self-promotion made him genuinely popular, convincing even himself that he was a woodland sage.  In his mind, the forest wasn’t just trees—it was a stage on which his larger-than-life ego could shine.

This dream of royal hunting preserves led to Göring’s authorizing the release of raccoons in Germany, in Hesse.  Yes, that’s right:  Göring released turncoat American trash pandas into the wild in Germany, in 1934.

Ostensibly, this was to “improve the fauna” of the region.  Translated from bureaucratic nonsense, Göring wanted something else to hunt.  To be fair, the fur from raccoons was also in high demand for coats.  Fur-farmers (Yes, that is the correct term for someone who raises raccoons, minks, or chinchillas for their fur) were already raising raccoons in Germany, so Göring authorized the release of two females, both pregnant, into the forests of Hesse.  The idea was that it would be easier on the baby raccoons if they were born in the wild.

As you can imagine, Göring didn’t commission an environmental impact study before setting the little garbage gremlins loose…Not that the idea of turning critters loose on the countryside is all that strange:  I live in a state where ibex, oryx, and Barbary sheep have all been released and are happily reproducing out in the desert somewhere.  (And it would crack me up personally to see Red Kangaroo added to that list).

Since the only natural predators left in Germany at that time had shiny bumpers under the Mercedes Benz logo, these bin burglars enthusiastically multiplied.  This one release was more than enough to set off a population explosion, but in 1945, when an Allied bombing raid struck a fur-farming facility at Wolfshagen, near Strausberg, just east of Berlin, at least 25 more raccoons escaped from stalag. 

Today, biologists have taken genetic samples and the ringtails in the northern and western areas of Germany are descended from the 1934 release, while the bandits to the south and east are descended from the later escapees.  Together, the two populations number between 1 and 2 million little Nazi bin burglars.

Over decades, these two separate populations have extended and met, and masked dumpster divers are now firmly established across much of Central Europe.  They have been recorded in France, the Low Countries, Denmark, Poland, the Czech Republic, and beyond, as spillovers from the thriving German population.

There are now areas of Europe that have as many raccoons per square mile as there are in North America. 

Germany views the little scramble squirrels as an invasive species that needs to be eradicated.  With no natural predators and with a serious knack for mischief, these sneaky garbage snackers have thrived as they crash garden ponds, loot birds’ nests, and ransack attics like it’s their day job.  Environmentalists worry they’re a disaster in a fuzzy disguise—devouring eggs, threatening endangered amphibians, and competing with native wildlife for snacks and shelter.

Meanwhile, the locals are torn:  Some want to cull them, while others post raccoon selfies online.  One pawed prowler in Berlin reportedly starred in a viral TikTok before stealing someone's currywurst.

Despite their cartoonish charm, these masked menaces are on the EU’s naughty list of invasive species.  Think of them as cute ecological chaos with opposable thumbs.  And while hunters now bag over 200,000 a year, since that number is well below the reproductive rate, the raccoons just keep coming.  After all, in Europe’s lush new buffet of backyards, being a raccoon is a five-star experience.

Europe’s only hope of stopping this new masked menace is to get NATO involved. 

London's Hydraulic Age

Late nineteenth century London was a mixture of old and new:  there were horse-drawn carriages, but also, many of the wonders of the industrial age.  The benefits of the industrial age and steam engines had changed the way that people lived, how factories were powered, and how efficiently factories worked, but there were limits to how much mechanization could be used in the city.

There were elevators in large buildings, giant mechanized printing presses, water pumps, and heavy machinery of all types…but how did they power them?  The ultimate source of power for all of these were steam engines, but many businesses didn’t want a noisy steam engine on site, with constant wagon loads of dusty coal queuing up to unload.

Take, for example, the Savoy Hotel on the Strand.  It is hard to imagine having Peach Melba prepared by Auguste Escoffier and overseen by hotel manager, César Ritz, while the entire hotel rattled from a noisy steam engine in the basement.  The Savoy needed something to operate the “lifts” and the adjacent Savoy Theatre needed something to open the massive curtains for the debut of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado.

If only there were some way of piping in power as easily as water or gas could be brought in.

Actually, there literally was a way!  Buried beneath the streets of London were cast-iron pipes that carried water under high pressure—as much as 800 psi.  In fact, there were a total of 180 miles of such pipes connecting businesses to the pumping stations operated by the London Hydraulic Power Company.   This was a for-profit utility company, chartered by Parliament, that sold shares, issued bonds, and charged customers for the service.  The rates customers paid were calculated by meters that measured the pressure and quantity of water used.

To make the system work, five pumping stations were scattered across the city, located—if possible—near a canal or the Thames River, to accommodate coal-bearing barges.  Inside the pumping stations, massive steam engines operated large, horizontal three-cylinder water pumps that sent filtered water to accumulators.  Built vertically as tall as three stories, the accumulators were pistons with 50 tons of iron weights on top to maintain and regulate the pressure.

But how exactly did that pressurized water become useful mechanical energy at the point of service?

The answer lies in the clever application of hydraulic actuators and motors—devices that converted the water’s pressure into motion.  The most common of these were hydraulic cylinders, essentially long, reinforced tubes with internal pistons.  When the 800-psi water entered the cylinder, it pushed the piston forward, creating linear motion.  This mechanism was the backbone of many installations across London.  In grand hotels like the Savoy, hydraulic cylinders smoothly lifted guests in early elevators.  In theaters, the same principle raised and lowered entire sections of the stage, including trapdoors and orchestra pits.

Other applications required rotational movement, which was achieved using hydraulic motors.  These devices allowed pressurized water to spin a rotor, generating torque and rotary motion. This kind of setup was used in more complex mechanisms—like revolving theater stages, winches, and shop display turntables.

London’s docklands and warehouses benefited particularly from hydraulic cranes, which used both linear and rotary hydraulic components to lift and swing heavy cargo with precision.  The power was reliable, consistent, and clean—an enormous advantage in the smoke-clogged industrial city.

Unlike electrical systems, which transmit energy via electrons, hydraulic power transmitted energy via fluid force and volume.  The water—after doing its work—was usually discharged into drains, not recirculated, which made the system simple, though not especially water-efficient by modern standards.

The brilliance of this system was its modularity: a single pressure line could run an elevator in a hotel, open or close the curtain in a theater, open a heavy bank vault door, or run a printing press in Fleet Street.  All the end user needed was the right hydraulic actuator.

In short, Victorian London didn’t just rely on steam and gaslight—it ran on water that was pumped and pressurized beneath its streets.  It was a quiet force—almost invisible, yet utterly vital to the daily rhythm of the modern city.  And since the system worked so well, it was copied in other large cities:  Birmingham, Glasgow, Antwerp, Geneva, Melbourne, and Buenos Aires.  Even New York briefly experimented with such a system.

Over the years, electric motors replaced many of the functions of hydraulic power.  Electric elevators, for example, moved faster and more smoothly than hydraulic elevators.  The changeover to electric motors was slow, in part, because hydraulic systems are mechanically simple:  hydraulics had no spark risk, had fewer moving parts, and produced high torque at low speeds.  Thousands of buildings had lifts, hoists, and theatrical or industrial machinery, that was built around hydraulic actuation, that was installed from the 1880s to the 1930s. In many cases, it was cheaper to keep using hydraulic power than to replace the equipment.  Converting these systems to electric motors would have required extensive retrofitting which would have been both expensive and  structurally invasive, so most businesses held off as long as possible.

Eventually, the London Hydraulic Power Company just could not afford to maintain the heavy equipment with so few customers and so it ceased operation in 1977.  All that remains is the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, which is the last of the pumping stations.

London’s Hydraulic Age, so brief that few even noticed it, was over.

The Collapse

By now, there has been more printer’s ink spilled about the causes for the North’s victory in the Civil War than blood was shed by the actual combatants.  If you want to write about a new theory, the opportunities are few.  Even as you read this, somewhere, some poor doctoral student is desperately trying to finish a dissertation citing as the definitive cause for the Southern defeat its lack of faith healers, bell-bottom pants, and Swedish meatballs. 

Among the well-trodden topics is the North’s superior use of railroads to move men and supplies during the war.  

When the Civil War broke out, the Union had something the Confederacy sorely lacked: a network of iron spaghetti stretching from Maine to Missouri.  The North had about 22,000 miles of track compared to the South’s paltry 9,000—and while the Confederacy was trying to figure out how to fix broken rails with chewing tobacco and hope, the North was running military-grade logistics like a 19th-century Amazon Prime.

Trains let the Union move troops faster than you could say “General Sherman’s coming.”  While Southern armies marched through swamps eating hardtack and despair, Union forces rolled into battle with fresh boots, bullets, and beans.  While the North could reinforce a front in days, the South might need weeks—assuming the rails hadn’t been torn up, stolen, or repurposed into garden trellises.

Then there was the problem of standardized gauge.  The North mostly used one track width, which meant one train could go from Pittsburgh to Atlanta without a layover. The South? A patchwork of gauges meant trainloads of supplies sometimes had to be unloaded and reloaded onto different trains, while the army prayed nothing spoiled.  Spoiler: it spoiled.

By the time General Sherman started torching Georgia, he wasn’t just burning cities—he was turning Confederate railroads into twisted sculptures called “Sherman’s neckties.”  Artful, yes.  Useful? Not anymore.

So while the South had heart, grit, and generals with glorious beards, the North had trains—and in the end, steel wheels beat steel nerves.  The Union ran a war on rails, but the Confederacy never really got out of the station.

Some of the credit for functional railroads should also go to Abraham Lincoln.  Realizing that the various railroad companies would undoubtedly put profit before patriotism, Lincoln threatened to have the military take over the railroads if the companies did not voluntarily begin cooperating.  This scared the railroad companies so thoroughly that they voluntarily cooperated through the entire war.  In the South, the few companies that existed refused to deliver even vital military cargo without payment in advance.

The American Civil War should have been a “Road to Damascus” moment for every country’s military.  The lessons were very obvious:  The days of cavalry charges were absolutely over (at best, mounted troops should ride to battle and then dismount and act as infantry).  The sword and lance were made obsolete by rifles.  Artillery turned siege lines into slaughterhouses.  And—I bet you are way ahead of me—railroads changed the way warfare was to be fought.

You can make an argument that the last point was only temporary.  The war between Russia and Japan was actually started over a railroad and it didn’t play much of a role during the actual fighting.  And railroads were not pivotal in World War I.  But, for the remainder of the 19th century, it was obvious that the effective use of railroads was crucial in warfare so that every country with an intelligent military began making plans in case of war.  

Naturally, this did not include France.  The French military does best when it is led by someone who isn’t French.  Or is a schizophrenic teenage girl.   By the time the American Civil War was over, France was led by Emperor Napoleon III, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte.

France’s failure to study the use of railroads in the American Civil War led directly to World War I.  Let me explain.

Napoleon had declared himself emperor in 1852, after a coup in 1851.  Though this made him technically commander-in-chief, the Emperor was just smart enough to leave the military to his military leaders…at least for a while.  He had almost nothing to do with the army when England and France fought Russia during the Crimean War (where a British-built seven-kilometer railroad leading from the docks to the Sevastopol front lines was key for the Allied victory.)  

When he led France to war against Italy in 1859, he personally commanded the French army during the Second Italian War of Independence against Austria, even being present at the Battle of Solferino, where sheer dumb luck gave him an exaggerated view of his own tactical skills.  Over time, he became more hands-on with military affairs, appointing loyalists and shaping doctrine, but not overhauling the system.  By overhauling, I mean he ran off all the good men, appointed sycophants and toadies, and generally created an army that his uncle would have proud of in 1805, but was practically useless in 1870.

In 1870, Napoleon III was increasingly unpopular in France and thought the best way to boost his ratings was to engage in a little ‘wag the dog’ action:  start a small easy to win war and depend on nationalism to rally the people to the flag.  At the same time, Otto von Bismarck was trying unify the Southern German People into a united Germany and knew that if there was a war, the people in those small German states would also respond patriotically.

With each side believing the war would benefit itself, it wasn’t surprising that in July 1870, both countries eagerly went to war.  Prussia had an extensive battle plan, prepared and practiced, and began moving troops toward France.

France on the other hand—despite having a better railroad system—had no plan, had no central authority and far worse, had Napoleon III leading the army.  Gunners arrived at the front with no artillery, Infantry trains were sent in the wrong direction, cavalry arrived at the front with no horses, and train cars were loaded and unloaded several times without even leaving Paris because there were multiple people giving conflicting orders simultaneously.  When train cars did reach the front, they couldn’t be sent back because the tracks were too crowded with incoming trains.  And, despite the distance from the French capital being relatively short, some troop trains did not even arrive until days after the battle.  

Not surprisingly, the Germans advanced easily, capturing French trains and supplies as they went.  The war lasted only six months and ended with both Napoleon III being captured and the Prussian Army shelling Paris.  France lost its last emperor (so far, anyway ) and a united and stronger Germany was created.

France was humiliated by the peace treaty, having to pay billions of francs in indemnities and having to give up Alsace and parts of Lorraine.  The desire to recoup those territories was one of the main reasons France entered World War I.

Émile Zola wrote La Débâcle (The Collapse) in 1892, to capture the catastrophic unraveling of the French Second Empire during the Franco-Prussian War and to expose how corruption, incompetence, and blind nationalism led to national humiliation.  

Zola was politically engaged and deeply disturbed by France’s collapse in 1871.  Like many liberals of the time, he believed that the Second Empire under Napoleon III had decayed from within.  Its aristocratic rot, administrative bloat, and militaristic posturing had fatally hollowed the state.  Zola wanted to show that France didn’t simply lose a war—it imploded from a long buildup of arrogance and dysfunction.

In the final chapter of his book, Zola writes of a French train full of eager young troops that is speeding towards the front.  Unbeknown to the passengers, both the engineer and the fireman have fallen from the train, which is hurtling towards disaster.  

Zola’s runaway train in La Débâcle is symbolic: the French army was a machine in motion with no one in control, racing toward disaster.  The scenario is not based on a single real incident, but it’s rooted in the widespread logistical chaos of the French war effort.  

Now that summer is here, I recommend Zola’s book.  If you have a Kindle, Amazon will sell you the complete works of Zola for only $3.  

The Ace of Spades

No one is exactly sure when people began using playing cards—it was probably in China somewhere between 1000 and 1100 years ago.  There are references to a “leaf game” that used pieces of paper with block printing stamped on them, but whether it was a true card game or the pieces were used in a board game is unknown.   

About a century later, there are references to printed pieces of paper being used in a drinking game.  This is absolute proof that—against all logic—the college fraternity was invented almost a century before the first college was founded in Bologna, Italy in 1088. 

Those first playing cards were fashioned after Chinese paper money and the values and types of currency may be the origin of the suits and values of today’s playing cards.  By  the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), a trick-taking game called Madiao was being played with a deck of 38 cards that had four suits (and the local authorities were already worried about the use of cards in gambling).

Playing cards made their way across Asia into Europe, probably through Muslim-occupied Spain.  By last decades of the 14th Century, there were two fairly common traits about the cards.  First, the cards had four suits, each with 10 numbered “pip” cards and 2 or 3 “court” cards, depicting royalty.  Second, small-minded religious leaders (who were terrified that somebody, somewhere was enjoying himself) probably urged civil authorities to ban their use.

The four suits had a lot of variations depending on the country, but the most common early suits were cups, coins, polo sticks, and swords.  Over time the cups and coins were replaced with hearts and diamonds while swords slowly changed into spades.  Since polo sticks were not common in early Europe, they changed into war clubs that over time became the symbol of clubs that we use today.  

By the end of the 19th Century, the 52-card deck (or French Deck) featured four suits of 13 cards each, with reversible court cards, four Aces, two Jokers (an American invention that originally featured a dog in a doghouse, see right) that came in a “tuck box” sealed with a stamp.  By 1937, the boxes were wrapped in cellophane to prevent tampering.

Which brings us finally to the subject of aces.  (Forgive me, it is hard for me to get directly to a subject, I feel compelled to give the backstory of everything before I start.)

The word ‘ace’ comes from the latin “as”, the name for the smallest Roman coin, one-tenth of a denari.  In France, this became the name for the lowest possible roll of a die.  As the word traveled into England, it was pronounced “ace” and since the lowest roll of a die was losing in most dice games, it was associated with bad luck.  Evidently, the Ace of Spades was destined to be associated with bad luck even before it existed.

When playing cards arrived, the cards with a single pip were called aces, and since in most of the early card games, the ace was the lowest possible card, it was still associated with losing or bad luck.  It was not until trump-taking card games became popular, early in the 19th century, that the rank of the ace climbed higher than the king.  

In 17th-century Britain, the government had a bright idea: tax playing cards!  And how would you prove you had paid?  Simple: the Ace of Spades would be stamped with an official tax mark.  No tax, no ace — and no ace, no legal deck.  Over time, the Ace of Spades grew fancier and fancier, loaded with coats of arms, crowns, and enough scrollwork to make a medieval scribe blush.  The card became so important that forging it could even get you the death penalty.  Yes:  forging the Ace of spades to avoid a very small tax could literally cost you your head.  Cue the spooky music.

Naturally, with stakes that high, people started looking at the Ace of Spades a little differently.  It wasn’t just another card — it was the grim-faced tax enforcer of the deck, the brooding sheriff among cheerful hearts and dashing diamonds.  Play a seven of clubs and everyone’s smiling, but slap down an Ace of Spades and you could practically hear a ghostly breeze.

Fast forward again, this time to the battlefields of the 20th century.  Soldiers — always traditionally fond of superstition — took one look at that dark, ornate Ace and said, "Yep, that’s our card."  It appeared on fighter planes, helmets, and, most famously, scattered over battlefields during the Vietnam War by the US soldiers. Some troops even requested crates filled only with Aces of Spades to use as psychological warfare, leaving them on enemy bodies like grim calling cards. (Never mind that the Vietnamese didn’t actually associate the card with death — it’s the thought that counts, right?)

Over the years, the Ace of Spades cemented its reputation: mysterious, dangerous, fatalistic, and a little bit theatrical. Musicians, motorcyclists, and magicians adopted it. It found its way onto leather jackets, album covers, and more tattoos than we can count. Somehow, what began as a coin for a loaf of bread became a universal symbol of bad omens and rock-and-roll rebellion.

Today, when you see that bold black spade staring up from the table, it’s hard not to feel a tiny shiver — and maybe a chuckle. After all, it’s just an overworked playing card that got wrapped up in taxes, war, and a dash of good old human drama.

So next time you draw the Ace of Spades, tip your hat to the centuries of gamblers, tax collectors, soldiers, and rock stars who made it the legendary “death card” — and then go ahead and win the hand anyway.

Who Pays Tariffs?

One of the first things you learn as a student majoring in Economics is that the average politician could not pass the midterm in any of your freshman classes.  The realization is that most of the members of Congress have almost no understanding of the basic facts about our economy is rather frightening.

Luckily, most of the members of Congress have very little to do with drafting legislation:  they are far too busy fundraising and searching for the next camera.  Most legislation is actually written by Iron Triangles, cooperative groups that—though they rarely make the news—are the real power in Washington.

These triangles have three parts:  Congressional Committees are the members of Congress (especially subcommittees) who write laws and control agency funding. They want expertise, support, and campaign donations.  Bureaucratic Agencies are the government departments (like the EPA, FDA, or Department of Defense) that implement laws.  They need budgets and legislative authority to do their jobs.  Special Interest Groups include corporations, lobbyists, unions, and professional associations.  They want favorable policies or regulations, and they offer expertise, lobbying, political support and (most important) the campaign funds needed to keep the members of Congress from running off in search of a press conference.

Here's how it works:  Interest groups draft or heavily influence legislation.  Bureaucrats shape the policy in regulations or provide technical language.  Congressional committees then adopt it (usually word-for-word, because that saves time and pleases donors).  These triangles become self-reinforcing loops, as Interest groups support Congress, which in turn funds the agencies, who enforce the rules favoring the special interest groups.

You’ll notice that nowhere in the above have I mentioned the constituents—the people like you and me—who pay taxes and naively think our votes and opinions matter.  Oh well, I’ll play along.  The hot topic on the news right now is tariffs and who pays them, and it won’t surprise you when I tell you the news channels aren’t telling you the whole story.  News reporters keep you interested by relying on the fallacy of a binary choice—difficult problems rarely only have two options.

However, before we can talk about tariffs, we have to talk about one more variable factor: price elasticity of demand.  I promise the lecture will be painless.  Mostly.

Elasticity of demand, as it refers to price, is a fancy way of asking: “How much do people freak out when prices change?”  Imagine you’re shopping for chocolate.  If the price doubles and you say, “No thanks!” and walk away, your demand is elastic — it stretches and changes a lot when price changes.  But if it’s coffee and you must have it, no matter the cost, then your demand is inelastic — it barely budges.

Examples of inelastic demand products include insulin, cigarettes, sugar, and gasoline.  No matter what the price is, people will come up with the money and pay for goods that they “have to have”.

Economists measure this using a number. If the price goes up 10% and your quantity demanded drops by more than 10%, that’s elastic.  If it drops by less than 10%, it’s inelastic.  A perfectly elastic demand would mean nobody buys it at all if the price rises even a little.  A perfectly inelastic demand?  People buy the same amount no matter what it costs.

Why does demand elasticity matter? It tells businesses how much they can raise prices without losing customers.  It tells governments who really pays when they add taxes—think tariffs.  And it tells you whether you can really justify that $12 latte.

Demand elasticity is how sensitive people are to a price change.  If a small price increase makes you stop buying something, your demand is elastic.  If you’ll keep buying no matter what (like gas or insulin), your demand is inelastic.  Think of it as the “ouch” factor — how much a price hike hurts your wallet and affects your willingness to pay.  Elasticity depends on things like availability of substitutes, on whether the item is a necessity, and on how much of your budget it takes.  So, demand elasticity is just how much price changes mess up your next trip to the grocery store.

A great example of an iron triangle and price elasticity of demand working together is the story of Epipens, the autoinjectors of epinephrine for people with serious allergies.  In 2007, Mylan bought the exclusive marketing rights for the Epipen from Merck, then launched an expensive lobbying campaign for legislation requiring schools to stock epinephrine auto-injectors, effectively increasing demand for their product.  Additionally, Mylan raised the price of a two-pack of EpiPens from about $100 in 2007 to over $600 by 2016, despite the actual cost of epinephrine being around $1 per dose.  That the president of Mylan was the daughter of a U.S. senator was not a coincidence. 

So what does elasticity have to do with tariffs?

Tariffs are taxes on imports, but who bears the burden?—The foreign producer or the domestic consumer?  The answer depends on relative price elasticities of demand.  If demand is inelastic, consumers are less sensitive to a price increase and they will pay most of the tariff.  If demand is inelastic and the foreign country can’t find a different place to sell the higher-priced goods, then producers will bear more of the tariff to keep the customers buying.

Let’s put this simply:  If our government puts tariffs on products we must have (and there are no other sources for them), then we, the consumers, will pay the tariffs.  On the other hand, if tariffs are placed on consumer goods that we don’t really need (or there are other goods we can buy instead), then the foreign country will have no choice but to drop the price, thus effectively paying the tariff, in order to keep us buying the product.

I could explain the two graphs, but I think you get the idea.  I’ll leave you with three takeaways:

• If a political party says that tariffs are paid only by the manufacturing company, it is wrong and should probably shut up and sit down.
• If a political party says that tariffs are paid only by the consumer, it is wrong and should probably shut up and sit down.
• Regardless of who ends up paying the tariffs, fewer goods will be sold.  (C’mon!  Look at the graphs!). There will be shortages.  It is possible that these shortages will spur domestic production.

Okay, now that you know more about tariffs, go ahead and write to your elected representatives.  If you put a check in the envelope, it might even get read...by someone.

The Hunt for Yellow

For centuries, artists sought a yellow pigment that could capture the richness of sunlight, the warmth of skin tones, and the golden glow of sacred imagery—without turning poisonous, slowly fading into a grayish brown, or muddying the canvas.  The problem was simple: yellow was everywhere in nature, but hard to trap in paint.  A beautiful yellow pigment could be made from the mineral orpiment, but came with a deadly side effect—it was laced with arsenic.  Others, like lead-tin yellow and Naples yellow, were more stable but equally toxic.  Earthy yellows, such as ochre, were safe, but far too dull to capture vibrant light or glistening fabrics.

What artists craved was a pigment that was both brilliant and reliable—something that would layer beautifully in glazes, maintain its color over time, and not kill the painter in the process.  This desire only intensified during the Renaissance and Baroque periods, when oil painting flourished, and the play of light became central to artistic technique.  Painters needed a yellow that could hold its own against ultramarine skies, deep crimson robes, and luminous flesh tones.  

Until the 20th century, artists often worked barehanded, ate or smoked in studios, and used solvents in poorly ventilated rooms, thus, unknowingly exposing themselves to a wide variety of poisons.  Caravaggio, Francisco Goya, Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Georgia O’Keeffe, Edvard Munch, and countless other artists suffered ill health because of exposure to such toxic chemicals as lead, mercury, and arsenic.  Since the pigments were used in dyes for everything from clothing to food, consumers also suffered.  An arsenic-laced green wallpaper may well have even led to the death of Napoleon.  (No, I don’t mention Napoleon in every blog.  I counted and he is only mentioned in 81 of the 825 posts.  So far.)

By the end of the Renaissance, there were a few yellow pigments available but all were either highly toxic or the pigments slowly changed colors and turned dark over time.  

Into this golden gap entered India Yellow—a mysterious, glowing pigment that promised just enough brilliance, transparency, and permanence to feel like an answer to centuries of frustration.  The pigment could be easily mixed with linseed oil to produce a smooth oil paint, with gum arabic to make a transparent watercolor, or with an egg yolk to produce a fast-drying and durable tempera paint.  Best of all, the pigment was non-toxic.

During the nineteenth century, oil painting became increasingly popular as prepared oil paints were available in tubes.  Artists such as J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, and John Singer Sargent all used India Yellow in their paintings and Vincent van Gogh used India Yellow in The Starry Night.

India Yellow was a little more expensive than other yellow pigments, and slowly, there surfaced rumors that the method of production was not ethical.  There were occasional news stories that said the process of gathering the pigment was cruel to cows.  Finally, in 1883, T.N. Mukharji was commissioned by the British government to investigate the authenticity of the India Yellow production methods.

Mukharji reported that local producers fed cows exclusively on mango leaves, resulting in a distinctive yellow urine.  This urine was collected, concentrated, and dried into foul-smelling yellow balls known as "purree," which were then exported as pigment.  He noted the poor health of the cows subjected to this diet, since mango leaves are slightly toxic.

India Yellow was not the only ethically challenged pigment being sold at the time.  Artists could also buy tubes of Egyptian Brown, a pigment made from grinding up the mummies of both humans and animals removed from Egyptian tombs.  Several companies sold tubes labeled as “Genuine Mummy.”  Or you could purchase a tube of Tyrian Purple, a rich, beautiful pigment whose production process required a quarter of a million sea snails to produce an ounce of pigment.

Happily (at least for the cows), when this report was published in English newspapers, popular sentiment grew against the use of such pigments.  Within a few years, most companies no longer produced either Egyptian Brown or India Yellow.  (Supposedly, Winsor & Newton buried its last stock mummy in the courtyard of its London offices.). India Yellow was replaced by new pigments such as cadmium yellow.  Though some companies still produce paints labeled India Yellow, the modern synthesized pigments have nothing to do with either cows or mangos.  

If you are interested, you can still buy Tyrian Purple that is made by the traditional method.  A German company, Kremer Pigments, will sell you an ounce of the pigment for about $125,000, roughly 55 times more expensive than gold.