Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 211, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1915 — Barbed Wire In War [ARTICLE]

Barbed Wire In War

When Joseph F. Glidden, a farmer of DeKalb, 111., back In 1872, got the Idea of making wire fences with barbs on them, he had no more harmful design than to teach horses, cattle and hogs, by the pricks they might receive, that wire fences were meant to keep them in or out. When Uncle Sam, on December 24, 1874, gave Farmer Glidden the Christmas gift of a patent on his new device his idea was heralded to the world. The western prairies, with their lack of fencing materials, had tried single strands of wire, but they availed little, and the whole consumption of wire for fencing in 1874 was only fifty tons. Glidden’s barbs made the cattle think, and the farmers soon saw their worth. In ten years the wire fences had increased ten thousand fold, and in ten years more the growth had been the foundation of the wire trust But Glidden reaped small reward from his invention till February 29, 1892, when the United States Supreme Court upheld his claims and he was able to collect royalty on all the fences that had been strung before. He lived fourteen years to enjoy it, and died in his home town in 1906, at the age of 93. Quite naturally some animals enclosed by Glidden’s fencing gashed themselves on the barbs. Just as naturally men and boys tried to climb over or under these fences and have their clothes and their flesh torn. These wounds upon man and beast, and the suddenness with which Glidden’s barbs halted all living things, came to the attention of military men, and the barbed wire entanglements of which we now read almost every day in the war news was born. And it may be said here that soldiers who have been halted by wire entanglements while making a charge or maneuvering for a new position say the devil never invented anything nastier. Bullets and bayonets make wounds that cause more suffering, or that shock sensibility, but barbed wire tears and annoys and gives no escape.

Possibilities seen by American military students in barbed wire were soon carried to the armies of Europe and engineers in every country in the world were put to work devising means for using this new device. Natural forerunners of the barbed wire entanglement has been in use from the earliest times. Roman soldiers had defended their positions with abatis. They had held off their barbarian enemies by felling trees, sharpening the ends of the branches and maiming them with their points turned away from the Eternal City. Fralnses sharp-pointed piles—had been planted in hte earth in front of armies for their enemies to wound themselves against or to halt the onrush of a charge till the piles could be removed or scaled. Nobody outside of the European armies now at war knows how they are using barbed wire entanglements or in what form they are building them, for the engineers of each army are constantly devising new methods, and these new ideas are not divulged even in times of piece. But the despatches tell of cavalry and infantry running headlong into meshes of unyielding steel thorns that rouse the imagination to the horror of the wounds they inflict One use for barbed wire that seems to be new is reported from Belgium. There certain roads that it was desirable to have passable to the people of the country were made impassable to an army by building zigzag fences from side to side. The peasant going to market might pass by traveling slowly and double distance, but an army could not thread such a maze and must halt to destroy it—New York Times.