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Part One Hundred Twenty-Three: Other Effects of the Great War
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Part One Hundred Twenty-Three: Other Effects of the Great War
A Diversion of Trade:
For the United States, the actual conflict zones in the Great War stayed on the fringes of the country, not reaching the American heartland. The war still bad a great effect on the region, however, in the form of a large economic boon that lasted for years after the war. Prior to the war, much of the iron, copper, and wheat produced in the northern Plains states and Marquette was sent east to the Great Lakes and through the Erie Canal to New York. When the fighting near Buffalo and Detroit began, many mines and farms feared losses from the closure of that route and sought a new route for sending their products to export. The most logical route, therefore, was down the Mississippi River.

The Mississippi River already saw a large amount of traffic as on of the main waterways of the country. But during the Great War, trade on the river exploded. Now instead of sending goods east, they were sent south to Saint Louis and Cairo. From there the freight either continued down the river to New Orleans or went up the Ohio and to Mid-Atlantic industrial centers such as Philadelphia and Baltimore. Irish and free black migration to Saint Louis and other cities provided plentiful labor for dockworkers. Tensions were heated in the early 20th century, and racial violence was not uncommon. In Cairo, the population according to the 1910 census was majority black, one of the few such communities in the North at the time[1].

One of the beneficiaries of the shift in trade was the Desloge family in Missouri[2]. The Desloge family made their fortune in the iron and lead mines of southern Missouri in the 1870s and 1880s. Firmin Desloge Jr. built up many of the mines around the towns of Potosi and Bonne Terre and as a minerals magnate headed one of the wealthiest families in Missouri. The Desloge Lead Company had many smelters in the area, and the offloading of iron and copper being sent downriver brought a boom to southeast Missouri. The city of Sainte Genevieve, being the nearest port to the Desloge mining towns, doubled from 15,000 people to 32,000 between 1900 and 1910[3].


The Olympics that Wasn't:
The length of the Great War and its expansion to a worldwide scope also influenced the world of sports. After the war began in 1906, there was some debate among the members of the International Olympic Committee on whether to continue holding the Olympics. However, after Theodore Roosevelt convinced the committee to go through with the 1906 Olympics, the preparations for 1910 began.

The problems involved in setting up the 1910 Olympics began straight away, as there was no clear location where the committee members from countries on both sides of the conflict could meet. At last, in 1907, the Olympic Committee began a series of meetings in Brussels. They immediately set out the requirement that if the Great War was not over by 1910, that the participants in the conflict would have to abide by the Olympic truce during the opening ceremonies. This was a great peace overture, but with the escalation of the war few of the countries involved signed the agreement. The Olympic Committee selected Amsterdam as a nearby neutral city as the prospective host.

Unfortunately as the war dragged on, the hope that the Great War would be over in time for the Olympics quickly faded. After the entry of the United States into the war, the Olympic Committee met again in Brussels in 1909 and announced that the planned Olympiad for the next year would be cancelled. However, the Netherlands still held a small sporting event in 1910 now known as the Neutrality Games. The participants were all smaller neutral countries, and athletes from the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland competed. The games were unofficial and the winners are not included in the medal count. Amsterdam went on to host the 1914 Olympics when the games resumed.

[1] In OTL Cairo was almost half African-American at the time, so just a little more push gives a majority.
[2] Firmin Desloge was one of the wealthiest men in the country because of the profits.
[3] For comparison, Sainte Genevieve County had about 10,000 people at this time in OTL.
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