AHC: Make the Great Lakes States the preeminent region in the United States

That's why I put the "relatively' disclaimer on my previous comment. Agricultural, lawncare, and mining runoff are big pollutant sources, as is industrial waste; but still better than much of the water quality in the southwest and certainly more abundant. For this part of the OP, I'm thinking more on Lake Superior as opposed to the downstream lakes. There will be "poachers" looking to use that water to support continued development in other regions, where the water resource has more problems. (I am NOT endorsing the idea of selling and piping water to the southwest)

The cynical side of me realizes that outside money impacts political decision making; and big money overrides local constituent concerns too often. We cannot keep pissing in our own bed though.


yeah. I agree There have been many heated arguments over shipping water out of the basin to other areas of the country. Honestly other areas of the nation need to come to grips with water usage. sure could some water be spared from the lakes. yup. will it turn into a giant siphon. yes. so I advocate a no on that, either less people in the arid regions or .. well.. less water.. take the pick.

The desert southwest is called the desert for reason ;)

Also as climate changes the Great Lakes water table will fall as well. less winter run off, less glacial melt from the north, plus our own usage in the region. People look at the lakes as a limitless bounty, but only in recent years have they really began to think that they are only temporary, and that we need to protect them. Look at the Arial and Caspian seas as prime examples of sharing the water ideas gone horribly wrong.

also worth noting that it has only been in the last 30 years that industry has been forced .. and I mean forced since they didn't give a rats ass to actually start working on limiting waste and toxins.

I remember the years in the 80's when the Titabawasse wouldn't freeze over around midland -10 and the water doesn't freeze?!... ( thank you dow chemical ). and the year the Cuyahoga caught on fire in cleveland! .. pretty bad when your river burns...

or taking the Chicago river and reversing its course since it was so polluted that it was causing drinking water issues for Chicago.

Asian carp are starting to make inroads. people don't realize but you can ride your tankers up the Mississippi and into the lakes or up the st. Lawrence.

The mighty Colorado, is but a trickle when it gets to the gulf of California..

If the Midwest is smart, it protects those lakes. those are the past and the future of the region.
 
OH, yeah? Sez who?
usually the parents who hate cleaning the bed ;) but in this case Canada who is equal share, along with many in the region who are actually respect what nature has given us ( and those numbers climb each year. ) at some point it will over take the idiots in Minneapolis, Madison, Springfield, Columbus, Harrisburg, and Albany and lansing. The lakes are a finite resource, that are bountiful if treated properly and or will quickly become useless if mistreated.

on the other hand, if people don't speak up and force the government and business to do what is right, there is another thread on American Disporia in Russia. we can all go there and talk about how we all had to leave our land from mismanagement and abuse.

also taking into account that there are lots of places that are environmental disasters either starting, well underway, or in the making not just in the midewest or the USA, but in Asia, India, Africa, Europe and elsewhere.
 
usually the parents who hate cleaning the bed ;) but in this case Canada who is equal share, along with many in the region who are actually respect what nature has given us ( and those numbers climb each year. ) at some point it will over take the idiots in Minneapolis, Madison, Springfield, Columbus, Harrisburg, and Albany and lansing. The lakes are a finite resource, that are bountiful if treated properly and or will quickly become useless if mistreated.

on the other hand, if people don't speak up and force the government and business to do what is right, there is another thread on American Disporia in Russia. we can all go there and talk about how we all had to leave our land from mismanagement and abuse.

also taking into account that there are lots of places that are environmental disasters either starting, well underway, or in the making not just in the midewest or the USA, but in Asia, India, Africa, Europe and elsewhere.

I don't know...the US has seemed incredibly competent at the shooting of one's own feet (actually the other, not so rich, guy's feet) for fun and profit, specially profit...
 
exactly, contrary to what people would like to think, the major thing is Detroit WAS one of the most important cities in the usa and on the planet. until it self destructed. it never recovered from its own internal racism, bad city management and corporate greed.

prime example. there are swaths of lands along rivers that are so polluted from PCB's that there are signs everywhere saying don't SWIM or EAT the FISH.

the Midwest issue has more to do with greed, racism and outright mis management than anything else.

also for note. Lakes Michigan and Huron are hydraulically one lake as well as lake st. clair. the only major obstacles to access on the lakes are the soo locks / st. marys river to and from superior and Niagara, both are dealt with with canals. lake eerie is the most heavily polluted

@Driftless take a cup and go take a drink ;) its not that pure anymore. run off from farming and industrial waste are major concerns. ( yes its relatively clean ) but the mismanagement and outright disregard for the environment is criminal. Lets not even talk about rivers in the state and region

That's why I put the "relatively' disclaimer on my previous comment. Agricultural, lawncare, and mining runoff are big pollutant sources, as is industrial waste; but still better than much of the water quality in the southwest and certainly more abundant. For this part of the OP, I'm thinking more on Lake Superior as opposed to the downstream lakes. There will be "poachers" looking to use that water to support continued development in other regions, where the water resource has more problems. (I am NOT endorsing the idea of selling and piping water to the southwest)

The cynical side of me realizes that outside money impacts political decision making; and big money overrides local constituent concerns too often. We cannot keep pissing in our own bed though.

So, there is a no-climate-change non-ASB dimension to consider! If "Midwestern Morals" included a more vigorous political populism, and were more inclusive of "nonwhites," the Midwest might be the central axis of the nation even yet--though to do so a lot of assertiveness over Big Money would be needed in some form or other. There are two sociological fault lines and letting both flow as OTL leads to Rust Belt. Both are elements of the "Jacksonian mentality." Americans are democratic and populist within the magic circle defined as "people like us," which in its classic 19th century early 20th century form unfortunately practically rotated around an axis of race--people descended from European immigrants count, provided they assimilate culturally; others are Out. And, the other crucial thing, the right kind of rich people are "people like us," only better; we all aspire to be the honest billionaire, the self-made captain of industry who represents the goal of the social game. For political purposes there are also bad rich people, but the point here is that there is nothing wrong with social stratification based on great concentrated wealth, only with the wrong kind of rich people abusing that power, but to attack the concentration of wealth as a problem in itself is to attack the very American dream.

So--with both of those elements in place, the doom of the Midwest is sealed, and even many political/ideological developments that somehow would attack both elements of the credo there is still a lot to go wrong. But if we don't attack the "divide and rule" norm that is part of racism, ugly acts of repression of people who are in fact needed for the sort of industrial wealth that makes the Midwest potentially central will lead to the kind of polarization that also tends to sustain the privilege of wealth. Doing that puts decisionmaking power in the hands of people who might well decide to reinvest in the Sunbelt or even overseas, abandoning the population now dependent on regional industry to sink or swim, and the major benefit of "swimming" comes to those who swim pathetically after the alienated capital, south and west to the Sunbelt if they are lucky--and their luck will be limited because the point of relocating industry to the Sunbelt is largely to take advantage of cheap ununionized labor.

To prevent the flight of capital, regional morals and laws must be such as to enforce a covenant of community on the powers that be--this could happen via extensive state regulation, or via a transformation of the paradigms of ownership, but the wealthy must acquiesce or be expropriated, or perhaps preempted by industrial growth following a different pattern from the beginning. Probably it is not possible to do this without a different moral-political order prevailing all across the nation.

I probably am overrestricting the solutions because I want it to be pretty; if we are prepared for dystopic elements perhaps the issue is more easily solved. But if the ruling classes are as unaccountable as they have been OTL, there will be nothing to check them from developing a region, then instead of facing the consequence that a useful workforce will use what leverage they can find to improve their own circumstances, either check such tendencies to maintain their capital paradise, or up stakes, abandon the part of their investment they can't uproot and take with them, and seed some other formerly neglected location. I think there is a better chance that the Midwest can sustain itself at a high level with high-minded politics; to the early 20th century mind, the later was not incompatible with a brutally racist regime, but I think that maintaining a paradise for whites alone would lay the groundwork for its own undermining--most likely by shifting power back into a rich minority's hands.

Now the region actually had a lot more populist agitation than one would give credit to it now; the question would be whether such movements could dominate and would adopt a consistently humane credo that includes accepting African-Americans, remnant Native people, and other immigrants who might be attracted in--Latinos, Asians and so on--as fellow communal citizens with the same rights and aspirations.

If we look into some of the strands of the forming Republican party in mid-19th century, we can see some hope for an ideology of reciprocity between rich and poor that might form the basis of an actively self-sustaining Midwest.
 
I don't know...the US has seemed incredibly competent at the shooting of one's own feet (actually the other, not so rich, guy's feet) for fun and profit, specially profit...
true story.. problem is eventually you shoot your own foot...
quo

one day .. hopefully before it is too late.. people understand that as uhm.. yeah.. quoting Trump.. would say.. "that S*#tHole" blue marble is the only place that all of humanity has ever called home.. every dream, aspiration, war, marriage, baby, death has occurred there. that's it.. the big E.. its all we know and have. Faster the whole planet realizes this.. the better ;)
 
I don't see how you can generate a common "Great Lakes" culture when there isn't really a historical ethnic or geographic contiguity.

Given the nordic migration to the states and progressive history, I think it could possible to establish a strong regional identity in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Michigan Peninsula maybe.

If you want to give the region an economic boost, make Duluth a bigger city. The city was a competitor with Pittsburgh at the beginning of the century IIRC.
 
So, there is a no-climate-change non-ASB dimension to consider! If "Midwestern Morals" included a more vigorous political populism, and were more inclusive of "nonwhites," the Midwest might be the central axis of the nation even yet--though to do so a lot of assertiveness over Big Money would be needed in some form or other. There are two sociological fault lines and letting both flow as OTL leads to Rust Belt. Both are elements of the "Jacksonian mentality." Americans are democratic and populist within the magic circle defined as "people like us," which in its classic 19th century early 20th century form unfortunately practically rotated around an axis of race--people descended from European immigrants count, provided they assimilate culturally; others are Out. And, the other crucial thing, the right kind of rich people are "people like us," only better; we all aspire to be the honest billionaire, the self-made captain of industry who represents the goal of the social game. For political purposes there are also bad rich people, but the point here is that there is nothing wrong with social stratification based on great concentrated wealth, only with the wrong kind of rich people abusing that power, but to attack the concentration of wealth as a problem in itself is to attack the very American dream.

So--with both of those elements in place, the doom of the Midwest is sealed, and even many political/ideological developments that somehow would attack both elements of the credo there is still a lot to go wrong. But if we don't attack the "divide and rule" norm that is part of racism, ugly acts of repression of people who are in fact needed for the sort of industrial wealth that makes the Midwest potentially central will lead to the kind of polarization that also tends to sustain the privilege of wealth. Doing that puts decisionmaking power in the hands of people who might well decide to reinvest in the Sunbelt or even overseas, abandoning the population now dependent on regional industry to sink or swim, and the major benefit of "swimming" comes to those who swim pathetically after the alienated capital, south and west to the Sunbelt if they are lucky--and their luck will be limited because the point of relocating industry to the Sunbelt is largely to take advantage of cheap ununionized labor.

To prevent the flight of capital, regional morals and laws must be such as to enforce a covenant of community on the powers that be--this could happen via extensive state regulation, or via a transformation of the paradigms of ownership, but the wealthy must acquiesce or be expropriated, or perhaps preempted by industrial growth following a different pattern from the beginning. Probably it is not possible to do this without a different moral-political order prevailing all across the nation.

I probably am overrestricting the solutions because I want it to be pretty; if we are prepared for dystopic elements perhaps the issue is more easily solved. But if the ruling classes are as unaccountable as they have been OTL, there will be nothing to check them from developing a region, then instead of facing the consequence that a useful workforce will use what leverage they can find to improve their own circumstances, either check such tendencies to maintain their capital paradise, or up stakes, abandon the part of their investment they can't uproot and take with them, and seed some other formerly neglected location. I think there is a better chance that the Midwest can sustain itself at a high level with high-minded politics; to the early 20th century mind, the later was not incompatible with a brutally racist regime, but I think that maintaining a paradise for whites alone would lay the groundwork for its own undermining--most likely by shifting power back into a rich minority's hands.

Now the region actually had a lot more populist agitation than one would give credit to it now; the question would be whether such movements could dominate and would adopt a consistently humane credo that includes accepting African-Americans, remnant Native people, and other immigrants who might be attracted in--Latinos, Asians and so on--as fellow communal citizens with the same rights and aspirations.

If we look into some of the strands of the forming Republican party in mid-19th century, we can see some hope for an ideology of reciprocity between rich and poor that might form the basis of an actively self-sustaining Midwest.


Biggest issue is that the problem is more than Midwest..Its how business and the human capitalist experiment in the USA has unfolded this is an issue of quality of life as you said, a covenant.. alas there is no covenant .. their is only make the best while you can .. then get tosses aside like last years iPhone.
 
If we look into some of the strands of the forming Republican party in mid-19th century, we can see some hope for an ideology of reciprocity between rich and poor that might form the basis of an actively self-sustaining Midwest.

"Hope for an ideology of reciprocity between rich and poor" already exists...as a dream for the poor and a PR ploy for the rich that allows them to continue their lifestyle in peace and quiet. What the entire country needs (not just the midwest) is not hope for an ideology, nor an ideology of reciprocity, but actual reciprocity between rich and poor. Once that's established, there's only one other question to resolve. Did the pigs grow wings, or attend flight school?
 
The largest impediment to a pre-eminent Midwest prior to 1900 is the concentration of power and early industrialist money in the east. As has already been stated much industry had moved or was moving to the Great Lakes by 1900 but the "Old Money," tradition, and center of political power remained in the east which prevented the new industrial giants of Midwest and Great Lakes from coming to fore.

With that in mind, what about a Reconstruction PoD where to better sow peace with the Southern states Congress agrees to move the national capital from Washington D.C.--a symbol of the Union but also, to the South, a symbol of Northern Tyranny--to a new location bereft of memories of the war. The location is hotly debated but it is agreed that it must meet several criteria: it must be more centrally located, needs existing rail and river access, and cannot be in a Northern State (doing so would just be moving the tyranny). Finally, St. Louis (or nearby) is selected. (EDIT: maybe Cairo at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers would be better?)

With the move of the nation's political center the wealthy industrialists and landowners also move their empires to be closer to the power. Since the south is still agrarian this means the nascent industry of the Great Lakes, the Upper Mississippi, as well as those of the Ohio River and other major tributaries become the business center of the nation, with the banks soon to follow.
 
An earlier St. Lawrence Seaway might help, especially if there's no concerns with relationships between the US and Canada going south.

A really cynical, and perhaps unconstitutional, way to get the area doing well: Air Conditioners are declared a "Luxury, with possibly dangerous side effects," and SERIOUSLY taxed, and/or require yearly registration. This brings money into the federal coffers, and makes living in the south more expensive. Base the rate schedule on capacity to spread it out, or base it per unit to let businesses and the rich only pay for a handful of big units, while the less wealthy pay through the nose as they most likely, at first, can only afford window units, and not central air. Retrofitting central air is easy if a house has forced hot air heat--VERY difficult, comparatively, if it doesn't have ductwork.

A significant tariff on imported steel and steel products could help, also.
 
Another way of looking at this AHC is this: The Great Lakes region has multiple Philadelphia-tier cities with perhaps Chicago and Detroit being a level above the rest. How does that happen?
 
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is how to make the states in the Great Lakes area the most populous and economically powerful region in the United States. That includes Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. How do these states draw immigrants, industry, and cultural capital to the point where there's considered a common "Great Lakes culture" in the same way there's considered to be a common Southern or Northeastern seaboard culture with a POD no later than 1900?

Bonus points if the POD doesn't require the destruction of a major city not in the region.

It's really difficult to do so because there are other lakes and harbours more useful than the great lakes. What you could do is stop manifest destiny, and have most rich landowners, especially rich landowners in the Deep South when rich enough move to the Great Lake states, and then Great lake cities like Detroit, or Chicago become the "Dubai" of America. You could also then have those rich people conducting the majority of business near ports, and the rivers. Foreign powers and Native tribes would use the Great Lakes as the hub of American trade.

But hey, at least I got those bonus points.
 
The largest impediment to a pre-eminent Midwest prior to 1900 is the concentration of power and early industrialist money in the east. As has already been stated much industry had moved or was moving to the Great Lakes by 1900 but the "Old Money," tradition, and center of political power remained in the east which prevented the new industrial giants of Midwest and Great Lakes from coming to fore.

With that in mind, what about a Reconstruction PoD where to better sow peace with the Southern states Congress agrees to move the national capital from Washington D.C.--a symbol of the Union but also, to the South, a symbol of Northern Tyranny--to a new location bereft of memories of the war. The location is hotly debated but it is agreed that it must meet several criteria: it must be more centrally located, needs existing rail and river access, and cannot be in a Northern State (doing so would just be moving the tyranny). Finally, St. Louis (or nearby) is selected. (EDIT: maybe Cairo at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers would be better?)

With the move of the nation's political center the wealthy industrialists and landowners also move their empires to be closer to the power. Since the south is still agrarian this means the nascent industry of the Great Lakes, the Upper Mississippi, as well as those of the Ohio River and other major tributaries become the business center of the nation, with the banks soon to follow.

St. Louis is a great capital for the United States, being rather near the center of the country while also keeping in mind the center of population of the country (and indeed, 1960 - 1990 the St. Louis metro area was indeed the center of population for the whole country). St. Louis is also a city which if it had better government, would have ended up a far better place even if Chicago would have always eclipsed it (an earlier POD could easily see St. Louis eclipse Chicago). With its position on the Mississippi and Missouri, St. Louis is IMO a pretty natural place to put a capital of a country like the US.

Although Cairo has better Southern credentials, it has the problem of needing massive levees and flood protection, since it's a fairly poor site as far as flooding goes. And besides, in 1870, Cairo had a population of about 6,000. St. Louis had over 310,000. The infrastructure is far better than in Cairo.

But if you moved the capital to St. Louis, although the area would remain far more vibrant (rather than the horrifying decay the area has seen, especially East St. Louis), I don't know how much the Midwest as a whole would benefit, like Chicago, St. Louis's rival which in some ATL, St. Louis could easily have switched places with. Or especially places even further away like Detroit or Cleveland.

An earlier St. Lawrence Seaway might help, especially if there's no concerns with relationships between the US and Canada going south.

A really cynical, and perhaps unconstitutional, way to get the area doing well: Air Conditioners are declared a "Luxury, with possibly dangerous side effects," and SERIOUSLY taxed, and/or require yearly registration. This brings money into the federal coffers, and makes living in the south more expensive. Base the rate schedule on capacity to spread it out, or base it per unit to let businesses and the rich only pay for a handful of big units, while the less wealthy pay through the nose as they most likely, at first, can only afford window units, and not central air. Retrofitting central air is easy if a house has forced hot air heat--VERY difficult, comparatively, if it doesn't have ductwork.

The St. Lawrence Seaway would definitely be a huge benefit. IIRC, it was possible in the 19th century (which could be improved as the years went by), yet Anglo/Canadian-American relations weren't the best at the time and the British feared the Americans using it to gain control over Canada (this is why the Canadian canal network wasn't as good as it could be since it was feared the Americans might use the canals).

But regarding air conditioners, that almost does seem almost unconstitutional. And if not, just almost ASB for a movement to develop. Government regulation was nowhere near as powerful in the early 20th century as it has since become. I can't think of a single ground to regulate/restrict air conditioning that wouldn't also restrict a ton of other things. Maybe energy consumption? But wouldn't that not be a good thing, since it would increase coal prices, say? Or even the demand for a TVA-style project?

It's really difficult to do so because there are other lakes and harbours more useful than the great lakes. What you could do is stop manifest destiny, and have most rich landowners, especially rich landowners in the Deep South when rich enough move to the Great Lake states, and then Great lake cities like Detroit, or Chicago become the "Dubai" of America. You could also then have those rich people conducting the majority of business near ports, and the rivers. Foreign powers and Native tribes would use the Great Lakes as the hub of American trade.

But hey, at least I got those bonus points.

I'm admittedly ignorant on the subject, but how many great Southern landowners actually moved out of the South to become absentee landlords? I'd assume that if I'm one of the richest men in, say, Mississippi, based on wealth from my cotton plantations tended to by huge amounts of sharecroppers and their families, and I possess a great amount political control over at the very least my county (if not the state of Mississippi), why should I move to Chicago or Detroit where I have no means of political control aside from my wealth (i.e. I don't have my co nnections and networks there) and I'm probably not as wealthy as those Yankee industrialists.

Also IMO Manifest Destiny was inevitable given the demographics of the trans-Appalachian region (mostly empty) and the Thirteen Colonies (rather populous) as a united entity (the US). Once the trans-Appalachian region fell to the Americans, it's basically impossible to prevent at the very least the Mississippi Purchase area from being gained (since it was empty and the Plains Indians were living on borrowed time). But this kind of belongs in pre-1900. Take the earlier discussion of Duluth, Minnesota, for instance--Duluth in the United States doesn't have that much particularly special, but if you have an independent French Louisiana (or any other state with similar borders) which can get a Great Lakes border, then Duluth automatically becomes the best outlet to the Atlantic in this nation (which has huge amounts of potential) and thus will gain immensely as a result.
 
Although Cairo has better Southern credentials, it has the problem of needing massive levees and flood protection, since it's a fairly poor site as far as flooding goes. And besides, in 1870, Cairo had a population of about 6,000. St. Louis had over 310,000. The infrastructure is far better than in Cairo.
Which is why St. Louis was the first location which came to mind. That being said, the lower population of the Cairo area may actually work in its favor. St. Louis may be too well established as a population and political center in Missouri for Missourians to want to give it up as a new D.C. East St. Louis, then, may be the better option, or move down river where the capital will have an easier "highway" (river-route) to the existing industrial and economic centers up the Ohio River. The flooding issue would hardly give much pause--remember the existing National Capital (D.C.) was built on a flood-swamp partially because the location was considered almost useless for anything else. As a symbol of Reconstruction the Cairo area has an additional benefit of being on (or near) the border of a four state: A Northern State (Illinois), a Southern State (Tennessee), and two "neutral" states (Missouri and within spitting distance of Kentucky).

I don't know how much the Midwest as a whole would benefit
why should I move to Chicago or Detroit where I have no means of political control aside from my wealth
The second question, if considered in the context of my proposal of moving the capital, address the first. Money likes to be close to power. Instead of creating bases of well funded lobbies in the Mid-Atlantic, those with real wealth would build it along the Mississippi. The Southern land owners would move north (or at least have a more northern base) to be closer to the center of National Politics, just as the eastern money would move west. The overall shift would migrate the average into the Midwest where the Great Lakes and Upper Midwestern states would see more attention and better built infrastructure. Better infrastructure to support the political machinery of the Republic equals better infrastructure for industrial machinery. Instead of shipping Minnesota iron east to Pennsylvania and eventually to Atlantic ports, better Mid-Western infrastructure would enable/encourage shipping down the Mississippi to leave through the Gulf (with the added benefit of not having to worry about Britain/Canada). This would change the flow of material toward the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers and would concentrate the Industrial power in the Great Lakes instead of sending it out the region. This route of resources becomes even more important when the oil boom in Texas (surpassing that in Ohio): fuel from Texas, steel from the midwest, all coming together in Louisiana and Gulf. Basically, the national power bases follows the Mississippi basin, being a funnel of material and power from the Greats Lakes and Upper-Midwest down the River. The East remains important, no doubt, but without Mid-West industry flowing through it it becomes less important. It wouldn't happen overnight, but I think with a mid-Mississippian National Capital, those central Northern states would be preeminent no later than WWII.

Take the earlier discussion of Duluth, Minnesota, for instance--Duluth in the United States doesn't have that much particularly special, but if you have an independent French Louisiana (or any other state with similar borders) which can get a Great Lakes border, then Duluth automatically becomes the best outlet to the Atlantic in this nation (which has huge amounts of potential) and thus will gain immensely as a result.
Except Duluth was not part of French Louisiana (at least not after the French and Indian War). But, yes, your point stands, Duluth only becomes truly important if it is a nation's sole major port on the Lakes. And then, it is only a viable port if the nation in question either controls the St. Lawrence, is allied with the nation which does, or is used as a major naval installation from where the nation can militarily control the Great Lakes.
 
Except Duluth was not part of French Louisiana (at least not after the French and Indian War). But, yes, your point stands, Duluth only becomes truly important if it is a nation's sole major port on the Lakes. And then, it is only a viable port if the nation in question either controls the St. Lawrence, is allied with the nation which does, or is used as a major naval installation from where the nation can militarily control the Great Lakes.


if said nation controls Duluth.. and not the Mississippi .. that is a mighty cold nation indeed.
 
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