alternatehistory.com

Update time again finally!

Part Ninety-Nine: Roosevelt's First Years

The Kingmaker Becomes King:
When Theodore Roosevelt was elected president in 1904, encountered a political situation that was unprecedented in American politics as a party entered the presidency without having a substantial representation in Congress. While the Progressive Party had won an overwhelming majority in the presidential election, many of the state and Congressional elections were still dominated by the other two major parties. During the 1904 Congressional elections, the Progressives did gain seven seats in the House and four seats in the Senate. Two notable victories for the Progressives were in Itasca where Frank Kellogg was elected, and in Connecticut where Simeon Baldwin gave the Progressives their first Northeastern senate seat. During their terms as senators, both these men would be influential in pushing the Progressive agenda in Congress.

One way that Roosevelt attempted to overcome the lack of Progressive representation in Congress was by appointing Democrats and Republicans to some cabinet positions. This also made up for the lack of Progressive politicians with legislative and executive experience at the time. Roosevelt nominated Republican William Howard Taft as Secretary of War following Bryan's presidency, and Lousiaian Democrat John Avery McIlhenny[1] as Attorney General. Roosevelt also nominated fellow Progressives Henry Wallace Sr. as Secretary of Agriculture, John Muir as Secretary of the Interior, and Elihu Root[2] as Secretary of State.

The first priorities of Roosevelt's administration was civil service reform and regulating against trusts, two major policies of the Progressive platform. Extending early anti-trust laws passed during the Edmunds administration, Roosevelt led the creation of a Bureau of Business Regulation under the Department of Justice. During Roosevelt's administration, Attorney General McIlhenny and William Mason[3] pursued over forty allegations of violating antitrust laws. Two of the more famous antitrust cases were against the United States Steel Corporation and the Southern and Rio Grande Railroad[4]. In both cases, the two companies were deemed as having formed illegal monopolies. US Steel Corporation was broken up into smaller regional companies, including Southern Appalachia Steel Company headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama and the Ohio Steel Company, two of the country's biggest steel corporations today. The Southern and Rio Grande Railroad was forced to sell its shares in a number of other American railroad companies including its 30% share in Union Pacific.

On the matter of civil service reform, Roosevelt's administration attempted to reduce the influence of the party machines in many states. After Roosevelt's experience with the Democratic and Republican machines in New York while police commissioner of New York City and later as governor, this became one of Roosevelt's personal goals in the presidency. It was also one part of the platform where Roosevelt and the Progressives found resistance from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. At first, Progressives pushed for a comprehensive civil service reform plan that would affect government employees at both the federal and state levels. However, after an uproar by many members of Congress, the plan was restricted to federal employees. In 1906, the Flinn Civil Service Act was brought to Congress[5], proposing to require examinations for potential public servants, and that employees of the civil service had to refrain from partisan political activity. The act was narrowly passed through Congress after the concessions were made that it would only apply to civil servants of the cabinet departments. While it was minor, the act took a first step toward overall reform and the end of 19th century machine politics.


Expanding Statehood:
With the election of Theodore Roosevelt as president, some of the remaining territories looked once again at gaining statehood. While the McKinley administration had rejected the admission of any new states during the last four years, Roosevelt and the new Congress was more open to consideration. Shoshone and Pahsapa territories had been steadily growing over the past decades after the transcontinental railroad was completed. Meanwhile, the discovery of gold in the Rockies near the Salmon River and in western Washington Territory in the 1890s had led to a boom in population in those regions. Due to this, the House of Representatives drafted the 1905 Enabling Act to admit Shoshone, Pahsapa, and Washington as states. The states were admitted in October of 1905. The territorial seat of Boise became the capital of Shoshone, Laramie became the capital of Pahsapa[6], and the town of Bannack became the capital of Washington. In 1923, the capital of Washington was moved to nearby Boulder City[7].

Along with the admission of the three new states, the Enabling Act finally granted a territorial government to the Unorganized Territory along the Rio Bravo. After the First Mexican War, the people of the region petitioned Congress several times over the next years for the creation of a territorial government. However, objections by members of Congress over the small number of people in the Unorganized Territory outside the city of El Paso blocked the official formation of a territory for years[8]. Finally in 1905, the Enabling Act granted the region a government under the El Paso Territory. The territorial government was centered in the city of El Paso where over half of the population of the territory's 24,000 people lived at the time.

[1] McIlhenny was a fellow Rough Rider and friend of TR's in OTL.
[2] Root switched parties between 1900 and 1904.
[3] Mason was an Illinois senator who argued for the Sherman Antitrust Act in OTL.
[4] Formed from the merger of the Red River Southern and the South Carolina Railroad.
[5] Proposed by Pennsylvania senator William Flinn, and somewhat based on the OTL Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1878.
[6] Laramie is OTL Capser, Wyoming.
[7] Virginia City, Montana.
[8] Slight retcon here I think. I can't remember if I definitely said whether El Paso was in the unorganized territory or not, but as of now it is/was. It also now includes Ciudad Juarez in the city limits, since El Paso Del Norte was originally founded by the Spanish on the south bank of the Rio Grande.