Cinco de Mayo

[KingSweden24]

Never forget that Roosevelt presided over a treaty that basically bullied the newly-independent nation of Panama into giving up the Canal Zone.

And that (accurate) description barely does that snaky episode enough justice; the whole scheme was cooked up by a shady Frenchman looking to recoup his losses on the original French canal that went kaput.

Teddy also almost invaded Morocco because some idiot American tourist got kidnapped there. He was a blustery man

Wilson is a bit young to write such a textbook, though I could imagine him writing one of the first textbooks to be openly critical of Forrest and the Democratic machine, preferring instead a strong parliamentary system. He could even be seen as the ideological precursor to those in a modern Confederacy who would like to reduce the powers of the Presidency (though like all figures at that time, supporters would need to overlook his racial opinions, depending how awful the modern CSA is for Black people).

The Confederate Presidency is fairly weak, though; not only is more power reserved to the states in practice (and it’s Constitution) than in the USA, the Senate is where those states really exercise their will. This is one reason why Tillman begrudgingly accepted not getting the office thanks to his idiot nephew

Somewhat funny that Hanna/McKinley relied heavily on Southern delegates to win the nomination as at the time Republicans were well in the minority in the South yet during the nominating process a delegate counts the same no matter where they are from. Shades of nowadays, when Democratic delegates from, say, Idaho or Wyoming are disproportionally important despite there being only a handful of Democrats in those states.

Oh absolutely! See also successful “caucus based” primary strategies. It’s smart to be innovative with getting paths to the Presidency and those Southern Republicans of the time had for years felt roundly ignored when it came time for nominations; it’s surprising nobody thought to indulge them earlier to secure the nom

 

[HonestAbe1809]

And that (accurate) description barely does that snaky episode enough justice; the whole scheme was cooked up by a shady Frenchman looking to recoup his losses on the original French canal that went kaput.

Teddy also almost invaded Morocco because some idiot American tourist got kidnapped there. He was a blustery man

It's such a shame that history books often lack that context. They usually describe it in reductive terms like "there was no canal. And then there was one". History is usually weirder and more complicated than what we are taught.

It may have been one of his most famous quotes, but Theodore Roosevelt didn't really believe in the whole "speak softly" part.

 

[Kennedy Forever]

"...the historic collapse of the Liberal Congressional majorities - most stunningly in the Senate, hypothetically more immunized from public opinion - had created a wrinkle in the 1904 contest for the Presidency on the Democratic side that had not existed in previous cycles: genuine aggressive competition for the top job, with a Democratic victory and supermajorities in Congress seeming inevitable, especially after the Wall Street meltdown mere weeks before the conventions. Anywhere upwards of a dozen viable candidates arrived in St. Louis and another dozen who stood no chance threatened to sully up the early ballots and potentially, by accident, eliminate contenders.

Hearst and his chief confidant, former New York state party chairman Edward Murphy (who was the runner-up to serve as Vice Presidential nominee four years earlier but nearly seventy years of age had forsworn any Presidential ambitions of his own), intended to leave nothing to chance. They had spent much of late 1903 and the entire spring of 1904 leading up to the unusually early June conventions securing commitments from the various state delegations, partially through persuasion and partially through pledging financial support and "joint financing," a modern innovation uncommon at that time. Despite the severe effect the financial panic the previous month had on Hearst's net worth, he intended to follow through on his promises and thus was not going to be beaten at the convention again because he hadn't lined up a heft delegate haul in advance. In particular, Hearst had focused his energies on the Western states, especially those beyond the Rockies, positioning himself as a native Californian who had become a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker and thus was one of the rare figures in American politics who could cleanly appeal to two crucial regions. The gambit worked; entering the convention, Murphy had secured for him not just his home state delegation after cutting a deal with Tammany Boss "Silent Charlie" Murphy [1] who was primarily focused on embarrassing the vanity nomination attempt of Roosevelt but also those of the three West Coast states, Montana, Colorado and Nevada as well as Idaho and Utah territories, and had gotten to work on whipping up support from skeptical Midwestern attendees. [2]

Hearst was profoundly frustrated that Roosevelt had decided to leverage his few months as New York Mayor into a nomination he was almost certain not to get but kept his anger to himself; the episode was the start of a slow rift between the two men both personally and politically, for 1904 had obviously been Hearst's turn and Roosevelt had shown little ability to measure his words and keep a level head in a number of important occasions already in city politics and threatened the crucial relationship with Tammany as the state and city's major political organ. [3] Thankfully, most delegates saw it the same way, and Roosevelt's stature as Mayor and newspaperman failed to get him past the third ballot.

No, the real threats to Hearst were Nebraska Senator William Jennings Bryan, who by now spoke for the former Populists absorbed into the party and stood as the Senate's utmost radical [4], and General Nelson Miles, who had successfully brought the Utah Uprising to a close and then successfully commanded the American Expeditionary Force in China and had emerged as "the next General Jackson or Custer" to a party that had indulged campaigns by former military officers with glee in the past. Bryan placed first on four consecutive ballots and Hearst and Miles were close behind in a tight one-two-three; on the twelfth ballot, finally, Hearst broke ahead as the candidacy of Iowa's Horace Boies collapsed as it had in 1892 and 1896 and on the fourteenth ballot he had put enough distance between himself and Miles, with Bryan now falling into third, that it was obvious what would happen eventually on the eighteenth set. Ed Murphy had been invaluable, working not just the floor but the hotel rooms, saloons, parlors and even brothels of St. Louis tirelessly all week to sway every last delegate. With his triumph on the eighteenth ballot, William Randolph Hearst had been nominated to be the next President of the United States on behalf of his beloved Democratic Party, aged 41. Somewhere above the convention hall in St. Louis, his father the old Senator was surely smiling. The family's moment of triumph was at hand..."

- Citizen Hearst

[1] Lots of Murphys! (That was my golden retriever's name incidentally)
[2] This is meant to evoke the successful strategy Mark Hanna used in OTL 1896 to secure William McKinley the nomination; by the time that convention had rolled around, McKinley was effectively unstoppable after having diligently lined up delegations, especially in the South, for close to a year.
[3] The Cult of Bully both on this site and elsewhere has done much to paper over that Roosevelt was a temperamental hothead, a legendary egomaniac and a more than a bit of an asshole
[4] Ignatius Donnelly being dead and all; now THAT was a character. Wikipedia him for a wild ride

Lots like Hearst is well on his way to become President! Just wondering who was chosen to be his running mate?

 

[KingSweden24]

Lots like Hearst is well on his way to become President! Just wondering who was chosen to be his running mate?

That's the next update!

Starting with the 1904 elections the major personalities of the Democratic Party are going to start being much more important than the same gang of crusty old Liberals we've been following for the last decade or so and I wanted to give the St. Louis Convention its proper due from multiple perspectives

 

[AristideBriand1925]

That's the next update!

Starting with the 1904 elections the major personalities of the Democratic Party are going to start being much more important than the same gang of crusty old Liberals we've been following for the last decade or so and I wanted to give the St. Louis Convention its proper due from multiple perspectives

So probably not Marshall but maybe someone like Smith or McAdoo

 

[KingSweden24]

So probably not Marshall but maybe someone like Smith or McAdoo

Thomas Marshall? He wouldn't have been elected Governor of Indiana yet, though he'll have a small role to play in the TL eventually.

 

[AristideBriand1925]

Does the return of the liberals mean a return to liberal dominance? Even if they don't go all in on laissez-faire liberal ideology. Maybe they reflect a longing for stability after the unrest post GAW? Or is the competition for power more evenly balanced? If Hearst = Wilson, is it safe to assume that the next Democrat will be elected in the 30s?

 

[Darth_Kiryan]

Considering that Hughes seems to be touted as the pinnacle of American exceptionalism I am wondering if he will break the two-term rule

 

[KingSweden24]

"..."born of the radical clay of the New West, but his teeth cut in the prize-fighting ring of Albany politics," was how Ed Murphy, announcing Hearst's nomination for the convention, introduced the new Democratic nominee after eighteen exhausting ballots. Sulzer's acquiescence would come with a price, however; the Speaker of the House, having already dominated the architecture of the party platform and read much of it on the first day, had ideas of his own on how the ticket should be balanced.

Sulzer's position as Speaker and as the prime antagonist for over a year of the Foraker administration had given him a solid base of power with the Democratic National Committee and he had already predicted that Hearst would eventually become the nominee when all was said and done. The men had had an adequate and cordial relationship in years past; their worlds had not particularly overlapped, with Sulzer having gone to Washington and ended his Assembly career years before Hearst plowed his way into Albany on the back of a campaign of youthful energy and fervent campaigning, but Sulzer had considerably more fully formed ideas about what matters would meet the moment than he suspected "that Fifth Avenue dilettante" did. Hearst to him seemed all hat and no cattle, as ranchers in the Great Plains would phrase it; a man of considerable flaws both personal and political, whom one could nevertheless draw a straight line to in terms of style and ideological inheritance from Jackson through Douglas and finally Custer. This populist, progressive hour was the natural evolution of the Democratic legacy and Hearst, for all his eccentricities, was a vessel to be used.

Sulzer thus deduced privately that his working relationship with a Hearst administration would be dependent on helping shape that administration to corral that mercurial man; much of the success of Hearst's reform program in Albany had been driven by Murphy (Ed, not "Silent Charlie" the Tammany Tiger, whom Sulzer outwardly loathed) and a group of close confidants but also a disciplined and invigorated new Democratic majority in the state legislature delivered alongside Hearst in late 1898. That process would start with the Vice Presidency. Though outgoing Vice President and fellow New Yorker Francis Black had mostly been a warm body after 1902 and a presiding tiebreaker in the years before, the legacies of Joseph Foraker and David Hill before him had suggested more activist roles for that office, with influence on personnel and agenda. An eminence grise of progressivism in the office would be critical to steer Hearst and push him in the direction the country needed, as a nucleus of innovative policy ideas as the old laissez-faire orthodoxy seemed to be crumbling not just across the thirty states but now in Washington, too. Many of the Plains Democrats wanted Bryan for the job, lobbying aggressively for him, but the party bosses had not forgiven him for costing Stevenson the race (arguably) in 1900, and Bryan himself wanted to be an advocate from the Senate floor rather than "go vanish in the obscurity of the deep halls of the administration." Sulzer began to ponder what names out of his own caucus he could put forward as a compromise candidate as a number of delegates balked at the suggestion of elevating Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison to the ticket, or Senator Boies of Iowa to appease the soft-Weaverite faction.

The end result was a complete and total fluke. Appointed Ohio Senator John Lentz suggested not a Congressman but another "man from beyond Congress who has risen with today's tide of reform" - Tom Johnson, the Mayor of Cleveland and a key figure in the growing Democratic machine in that state. A progressive star in a historically Liberal city, Johnson was an utter dark horse who was presented purely in an off-the-cuff remark from Lentz but Sulzer, quite familiar with Johnson's successful municipal agenda and his hailing from a key swing state, viewed it as a tremendous opportunity and his relative obscurity to the American public diminished the chance he would outshine Hearst (an impossibility, naturally) and also meant that Hearst himself would not be threatened by his ticket-mate's notoriety. Sulzer quietly suggested to a number of his rank and file that they should support Johnson late in the night when many party bosses had gone home, and grumbling over the attempts of Midwestern bosses to foist Boies upon them, the quorum of delegates flocked to the anti-machine Johnson and prevailed him by two votes in balloting. Murphy was surprised but acquiescent to the choice, not wanting to anger the crucial Ohio delegation.

The Hearst-Johnson pairing, thanks almost entirely to Sulzer's machinations, was now set..."

- The Other Bill: Revisiting the Legacy of William Sulzer

 

[KingSweden24]

Does the return of the liberals mean a return to liberal dominance? Even if they don't go all in on laissez-faire liberal ideology. Maybe they reflect a longing for stability after the unrest post GAW? Or is the competition for power more evenly balanced? If Hearst = Wilson, is it safe to assume that the next Democrat will be elected in the 30s?

Those would all be huge spoilers! You'll see soon enough

Considering that Hughes seems to be touted as the pinnacle of American exceptionalism I am wondering if he will break the two-term rule

Bear in mind that some of these textbook sources are... rather slanted. All I'll say is that by the time his Presidency is over, Hughes will be very tired of the job and wouldn't want to run for a third term even if he was nominated for one.

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the practical distinction between serranista and primista had largely died with the two men behind the Glorious Revolution and instead had come to simply infer a vague description of fluid factions within the dominant National Liberals, with the former generally suggesting the more moderate, conservative wing of the liberal movement and the latter its more progressive inclination, but both claiming to speak for the intellectual bourgeoisie and that class's ideological obligations to the working class. According to who one asked, Canalejas was either the most democratic and reformist of serranistas or a reactionary hiding in the clothes of primismo; as was the case in the sclerotic big tent of the Prime Minister's party, he was of course a bit of both and more, something to everyone, ideologically flexible but committed to suffrage, the peaceful and longstanding political settlement with the Church and democratic constitutional monarchy.

The progressist inclination of primismo had never gone away fully, however, even with the rise of Serrano in the wake of the wars of the early 1870s and the Count of Reus' own death in 1887 or the political failure of his chief protege, Cristero Martos. Interior Minister Segismundo Moret had been a key cabinet officer in every government since the Revolution save that of Montero Rios, which had influenced his inclusion in government by Canalejas, and was most famous for being the key figure behind the abolition of slavery and the incorporation of the insular Caribbean as autonomous provinces of Spain rather than colonies. As such, he was a figure of profound standing within the National Liberal Party and had genuine progressive and anti-imperialist credentials, and had been one of the few men in his party to support Philippine reforms during the controversy over the matter after the Weyler Memorandum. This was Moret's hour.

Canalejas, per dispatches from Foreign Minister [Miguel] Villanueva, had stayed on top of developments in Amsterdam even as the Spanish streets came alive in outrage. Anarchist, syndicalist, socialist, nationalist, Carlist, separatist - if there was an oppositionist group to the broad but thin centre of Spanish politics, it was out protesting, rioting or threatening to bring down the regime. Canalejas promulgated a draft plan of constitutional reform to be submitted to the Cortes after the negotiations with the Great Powers was finished and in the meantime unleashed the Guardia Civil and Army, only to find that many gendarmes and soldiers refused to put down the riots this time. Barcelona was effectively lawless, and Valencia, Havana and Cordoba were not far behind. The risk of a putsch as humiliated Spanish soldiers and sailors returned home haggard and well-aware that their government was treating with a Japan that had gleefully beheaded their countrymen for sport [1], and angrily demanded that the government stand firm. "Es necesito que nos muerte por algo!" went the chant - It is necessary that we died for something!

Canalejas had little choice - he elected to stand firm and telegraphed Villanueva his "reservations" regarding several provisions of the draft treaty, thus prolonging the negotiations and hopefully earning time with the Spanish street. Moret and his cadre of ascendant primista insurgents had seen enough: with internecine warfare within the National Liberals just as bad as the ugly violence now occurring even in Madrid, it was time to act. He presented Canalejas with a letter informing him that as many as ninety members of the party, nearly half the majority in the Cortes, would immediately exit the National Liberal organization and form a coalition government with the Radicals and the regionalists and independent socialists if he did not immediately either accept the provisions of the Amsterdam Treaty as is and at last end the war, or resign as Prime Minister if his honor dictated he could not and allow Moret to take over instead. Canalejas was stunned and insulted, and immediately went to see the King. Leopoldo, tired and exhausted and unwilling to sack an entire Cabinet again, encouraged Canalejas to do whatever he felt "just." The Prince of Asturias - no longer the handsome young cavalry officer who Spanish ladies swooned over but now a middle-aged, pudgy and reactionary Germanophile - had a different suggestion, which was for Canalejas to sack Moret and his instigators from Cabinet, call his bluff on the assumption that "not even half of ninety" would cross the floor and instead rule in a coalition with Maura's Conservatives and Nocedal's Integrists until the matter could be settled at the next election.

Canalejas may have been a moderate, perhaps even a conservative in a temperamental sense, but he was stunned at the suggestion and by the heir's wading into politics beyond what his father had down a decade prior during the Salmeron Affair. Such a coalition was perfectly permissible under the statutes of Spanish law but Canalejas was old enough and liberal enough to remember the final Carlist conflict and its impact on politics, and he'd be damned if he let Nocedal within even earshot of power as some kind of ad hoc confidence and supply arrangement. Honor demanded neither signing his name to the document that would complete the collapse of the Spanish Empire or allowing the wolves into the flock, but if Moret wanted to knife him, he would have to follow through and knife him and then own whatever consequences came next. Canalejas announced to the Cortes to a mix of cheers and boos that his government could not accept the treaty as "per the voices of the people of Spain" and that negotiations would continue. Moret, it turned out, was not bluffing; he requested a vote of no-confidence as he and half the Cabinet resigned, and Canalejas was defeated on that vote, and Moret would be called reluctantly by Leopoldo to the palace to form a government, for no more crises could be afforded.

Moret kept Villanueva in his role so as to not interrupt the negotiations but commanded him to accept the French compromise, and the Treaty of Amsterdam passed the Cortes of Spain by a margin of two votes; its failure would have triggered an even greater crisis than that of its passage. Moret now entirely owned what a large segment of the Spanish public viewed as a betrayal and a substantial majority saw as a national humiliation, and his takedown of Canalejas after only four months only further destabilized the previously placid Spanish politics and deepened his unpopularity with National Liberal supporters even though he had retained the confidence of half the party's caucus..." [2]

- Hispania, Hispania!

[1] Exaggeration and the Spanish walked into it with their butchery in the islands but this is the live perspective on the Spanish street
[2] So for those keeping track at home, the serranistas have basically collapsed thanks to getting into the war with Japan and now the primistas have made it worse by accepting the shit deal for Spain that the Treaty of Amsterdam represents, even though practically there was no way for them to keep the Philippines at all. Of course, geopolitical nuance is often lost on angry rioters!

 

[KingSweden24]

"...much as Mukden, Yingkow and Harbin began to look and sound like Russian cities with the massive flow of capital and personnel to Manchuria with the near-completed railroad, Russification was a delicate matter with clear limitations on its efficacy as the example of Finland in June of 1904 demonstrated. The Finnish constitution had been gradually curtailed under the 1890s and its legal code, educational and political systems increasingly brought into alignment with those of Russia, erasing a number of distinctions between the Grand Duchy and the Motherland. This had, unsurprisingly, not gone over well with Finns who had been amicably oriented towards St. Petersburg otherwise and indeed one of the least restive corners of the Empire thanks to the generous terms of the personal union. By 1904, Helsinki had become a tinderbox as liberal Finns turned to nationalism and the working class to socialism, both trends embodied in the Young Finns movement and the mass riots in the 1904 Finnish Revolution - which, of course, failed under the boots of Russian soldiers - triggered by the assassination of deeply unpopular and autocratic Governor-General Nikolay Bobrikov while leaving the Finnish Senate..."

- The Bear Looks East

 

[KingSweden24]

"...for all their rivalries perhaps the Germans looked to the Belgians as inspiration; using similarly bloodthirsty tactics as they had deployed in China during the Boxer War and would soon rediscover the utility of as they crushed the Moro rebels of their new East Indian colony, the Germans beginning in the summer of 1904 engaged in the practice of shooting Herero (what they called "hottentots") males in Southwest Africa upon sight and driving the women and children into the desert to put down a rebellion and make clear the order of things in one of their sole African territories. Overshadowed by the savagery of the Congo, the Herero Genocide killed nearly 90% of the indigenous population in a horrific campaign of ethnic cleansing never formally sanctioned by Berlin but widely tolerated and never properly condemned..."

- The African Game: The European Contest for the Dark Continent

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the last decade of Abdulhamid's life was marked by an increase in repression and paranoia; his competing spy agencies and networks took turns escalating their activities against legal liberal, secular and soft-nationalist political parties and the Senate became full of his cronies rather than statesmen or elder clergy as had been intended. The most infamous episode, in late 1904, was his decision to sack a third of the Navy's officers and ban all naval reviews in Constantinople, out of a terrible fear that the Ottoman Navy was plotting to overthrow the Sultanate, or at least install one of his relatives, and that fleet days were the excuse to do so. The quality of Naval officers declined dramatically afterwards, in tandem with their budget for newer and more modern ships..."

- The Hamidian Era: The Ottoman Empire 1876-1914

 

[Kurd Gossemer]

"...for all their rivalries perhaps the Germans looked to the Belgians as inspiration; using similarly bloodthirsty tactics as they had deployed in China during the Boxer War and would soon rediscover the utility of as they crushed the Moro rebels of their new East Indian colony, the Germans beginning in the summer of 1904 engaged in the practice of shooting Herero (what they called "hottentots") males in Southwest Africa upon sight and driving the women and children into the desert to put down a rebellion and make clear the order of things in one of their sole African territories. Overshadowed by the savagery of the Congo, the Herero Genocide killed nearly 90% of the indigenous population in a horrific campaign of ethnic cleansing never formally sanctioned by Berlin but widely tolerated and never properly condemned..."

- The African Game: The European Contest for the Dark Continent

Damm, somehow even more brutal than OTL Herero genocide

 

[KingSweden24]

"...it was not just plantations in the Confederacy that Harry C. Smith began to identify the American owners of in his Cincinnati Gazette, but also investors in textile and sugar mills, tobacco factories, fruit packing warehouses, anything that slavery could potentially touch. Big names of course predictably appeared - Morgan, Baker, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Mellon - but the "name to shame" push by the Boycotters was broader than that. Over the past forty years, the United States had viewed the Confederacy often as a minor geopolitical rival in the Caribbean but primarily a potential trade partner and market for finished goods; relations were occasionally strained but had never been genuinely hostile, at least not from north of the Ohio. Even supporters of abolition and political benefactors of Smith such as Joseph Foraker had effectively made peace with slavery's containment in the Confederacy even as they advocated what WEB DuBois dismissed as "liberty in theory, so long as nothing need be done about it."

That was why high society types were targeted in the campaign, too. The late President Hay's daughter, Helen Hay Whitney, was a particular object of scorn by Boycotters for her husband's plantation in North Carolina (which he was adamant held no men or women in bondage, but the implication and embarrassment was enough). The Whitney affair made plain what the Boycotters eventual aim was - to destroy slave power by cutting the economic ties from the United States that sustained the extractive economy built on the backs of chattel first and then expand to across the Atlantic, where a similar grassroots movement was starting to bubble up in Britain, to so starve the Confederacy of capital that it would eventually have to choose pariah status and economic collapse or do away with slavery through means constitutional or otherwise once and for all..."

- Beyond Bondage

 

[KingSweden24]

Damm, somehow even more brutal than OTL Herero genocide

Not by much though; OTL's was estimated to have still killed 70-80%

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the coalition of anti-Imperialists that won the Hungarian elections of 1904 did so under a severely restricted franchise - barely a quarter of Hungarian men were eligible to vote under one of Europe's most restrictive property qualifications - and still rejected the pro-Viennese government of Tisza Istvan in a landslide. The oppositionists who came to power were an eclectic bunch, with the largest grouping outright separatist nationalists but now having to find a way to govern the Transleithnian half of the Empire with right-wing clericalists of the Christian Social Party, liberal dissidents under the Constitution Party, and a number of other minor factions. It was not a government that promised stability and focus.

Nevertheless, the mood in Vienna at the Schonbrunn was one of outright panic. Franz Ferdinand in particular advocated for "direct rule" - that unless the autocratic and aristocratic Liberal Party was restored immediately, the Emperor should rule by fiat in Hungary. Franz Josef was baffled at the suggestion but refused to let the Kossuthites have the reins of power, and instead identified pro-Compromise but anti-Tisza liberals as the most logical choice, calling Szell Kalman, a former Prime Minister who had mollified Hungarian passions in the aftermath of the double murder of Rudolf and Stephanie, to head a compromise Cabinet [1].

Szell's priority was building a Cabinet that could function with the very different views on government, policy and even the position of Hungary within the Dual Monarchy, but he had previously secured an Ausgleich renewal through 1907 and in the eyes of the establishment, could do so again. Nevertheless, the results of 1904 suggested that Hungary was much, much more complicated on the ground than thought..."

- The Arson of Austria: Understanding Central Europe's Conflagration

[1] Franz Josef was not this deliberate in OTL and appointed a military loyalist over the heads of the Hungarian Parliament. Here he's a bit more clever, though the Constitutionalists are still not the dominant Coalition partner. Szell is the choice rather than Werkele Sandor, but the effect is the same - anti-Tisza, ex-Liberal PM brought back as a compromise choice

(I want to thank @Fehérvári for letting me pick his brain for info regarding Hungary specifically and the Habsburg monarchy generally during this time period and for turning me onto the 1905-10 Hungarian political crisis/debacle)

 

[KingSweden24]

"...Leandro Alem's return to the Presidency for a second time came concomitantly with a law foreclosing any successor from doing so; shortly after his inauguration in September of 1904 the Civic Union-dominated Congress passed a constitutional provision that limited all future Presidents to a single lifetime term, still of six years, much like the Confederate States of America and Chile (five rather than six). The new law was ostensibly passed out of concern of Julio Roca or another conservative National Autonomist coming to power and establishing a personalist dictatorship, but the fact that Alem was returning for another six years as the dominant force in the UC was surely a factor.

But Alem had supported the law, and under his second Presidency, one held under considerably more political stability than his first, many of the accomplishments for which he is most celebrated were achieved. The radical republic's universal manhood suffrage, liberal electoral system and progressive constitution had made it a model and leading light to the United States and Britain in South America, a position she eagerly took advantage of and Alem basked in the prestige he had internationally as one of the world's liberal champions. It was thanks to this place of admiration that his foreign minister, Luis Drago, was able to articulate a doctrine that no sovereign nation should be invaded or occupied to pay a sovereign debt to private banks, and seeing the United States tacitly condone the stance; this already on its own marked a major shift from the geopolitics of the 19th century.

Argentina also had perhaps the world's highest levels of immigration during the second half of the 1900s decade, particularly from Spain, Italy and Greece, due both to the booming agricultural and industrial sectors but also in part to Alem's completion of Irigoyen's [1] promulgation of the Americas' first Code of Labor - a compendium of laws [2] codifying various labor rights. The first six Instruments of the Code were expanded upon with four more, these guaranteeing the right to strike, mandating minimum pay laws (the first of their kind in the world for a national polity), creating a government commission to regulate and certify union elections, and formalizing the structure of work councils by establishing the right of union members to serve in management and for employers to appoint at least a quarter of the members of a union's governing council. They were the most robust worker protections anywhere on Earth, and had been passed not by socialists but by middle class reformers and liberals, suggesting a path for a future in which organized labor and liberalism could coexist as equal partners to combat oligarchy.

Alem's program of bold but unconfrontational reformism continued with his expansion of military academies for the positivist and thoroughly democratized Army and Navy, both of which had by the mid-1900s accepted total depolarization and civilian control [3] and enjoyed prestige and popularity with the populace, but the real core of Argentina's economic export boom was his banking reform, in which laws were passed allowing cheap, long-term loans not only for industry - financed by Banco Britanico or Banco Londres, both British institutions - but indigenous banks such as Banco Nacion or Banco Hipotecario, which began financing 20-year mortgages at low interest rates. This banking-led boom, a mere decade and a half after the disastrous Barings panic, led to a surge in home and land ownership by "smallholders" and created a wealthy middle class in Buenos Aires and elsewhere in the commercial cities of the Rio de la Plata and Pampas.

Of course, the unprecedented windfall of prosperity that made Argentina the fastest growing economy in the world was not equal. Alem, in 1906, would describe the Argentine nation as "increasingly bifurcated," as the modern and prosperous Platine and Pampas regions had standards of living comparable to the United States and much of Western Europe, while regions on the extremity such as the northwest and south were still poor backwaters with tremendously rough livelihoods..."

- The Radical Republic

[1] Bernardo, not Hipolito (who's last name was spelt Yrigoyen)
[2] This may not come across super cleanly in the text, but stylistically I'm trying to write this as if it was translated from Spanish to English
[3] This may sound overly utopian for South America but per many of @minifidel posts regarding Argentina at this time, it actually was the case

 

[KingSweden24]

1904 United States elections

1904 United States Presidential election​

William R. Hearst of New York/Thomas L. Johnson of Ohio (Democratic) - 55.6% Popular Vote, 355 EVs

New York - 56
Illinois - 36
Ohio - 32
Missouri - 24
Indiana - 20
Michigan - 20
Iowa - 18
California - 18
Wisconsin - 17
New Jersey - 17
Minnesota - 15
Kansas -13
Maryland - 11
Nebraska -10
West Virginia - 9
Dakota - 7
Colorado - 6
Washington - 6
Oregon - 5
Montana - 4
New Mexico - 4
Delaware - 4
Nevada - 3

Charles Fairbanks of Indiana/Benjamin Odell of New York (Liberal) - 38.1% Popular Vote, 101 EVs

Pennsylvania - 47
Massachusetts - 22
Connecticut - 9
Maine - 8
Rhode Island - 5
New Hampshire - 5
Vermont - 5

Eugene Debs of Indiana/Benjamin Hanford of New York (Socialist) - 3.8% Popular Vote, 0 EVs

1904 United States Senate elections​

Though Democrats build off of the landslide of 1902 and the commensurate pasting of Charles Fairbanks in 1904, the successes of previous cycles have in many ways already manifested and their gains in the Senate are somewhat limited, merely maxing out their near-term potential and even losing Delaware over yet another case of bribery and chicanery in that state's legislature that sees George Gray, once thought of as a future President, ousted for corrupt industrialist J. Edward Addicks. The story of the autumn, though, is the generational and ideological shift in the caucus that sees it become even younger and more progressive, as old-school conservatives like Cockrell and Sprigg are defeated or step aside for rising stars and sticks in the mud like Bliss are bounced for Hearst's favorite fixer, Edward Murphy, with the promise of a lucrative Cabinet job [1]. The most important thing? The Democratic Senate in the 59th Congress will have 41 out of 60 seats, giving them a true, veto-proof supermajority. Among the Liberal turnover, Danzell's progressivism is punished with the elevation of outgoing AG Knox to the Senate as one of the few major events of note.

CA: Stephen Mallory White (Democrat) Died in Office 1903; Theodore Arlington Bell (Democrat) ELECTED
CT: Joseph Roswell Hawley (Liberal) Retired; Morgan Bulkeley (Liberal) ELECTED
DE: Georgy Gray (Democrat) Retired; J. Edward Addicks (Liberal) ELECTED (L+1)
IN: Charles Fairbanks (Liberal) Retired; Benjamin Shively (Democrat) ELECTED (D+1)
ME: Eugene Hale (Liberal) Re-Elected
MD: William Pinkney Whyte (Democrat) Re-Elected
MA: Henry Cabot Lodge (Liberal) Re-Elected [2]
MI: Woodbridge Nathan Ferris (Democrat) Re-Elected [3]
MN: Charles A. Towne (Democrat) Re-Elected
MO: Francis Cockrell (Democrat) DEFEATED for Renomination; James A. Reed (Democrat) ELECTED
NE: William V. Allen (Democrat) Retired; Richard Lee Metcalfe (Democrat) ELECTED
NV: William Morris Stewart (Democrat) Re-Elected
NJ: William McAdoo (Democratic) Re-Elected
NM: Antonio Joseph (Democrat) Re-Elected
NY: Archibald Bliss (Democrat) Retired; Edward Murphy (Democrat) ELECTED
OH: Asa Bushnell (Liberal) Died in Office; John Lentz (Democrat) Appointed and Elected to Full Term (D+2)
PA: John Danzell (Liberal) DEFEATED for Re-Nomination; Philander Knox (Liberal) ELECTED
RI: William Sprague (Liberal) Re-Elected
VT: Redfield Proctor (Liberal) Re-Elected
WV: Joseph Sprigg (Democrat) Retired; Thomas S. Riley (Democrat) ELECTED
WI: Joseph W. Babcock (Liberal) DEFEATED; James William Murphy (Democrat) ELECTED (D+3)

1904 United States House elections​

Democrats build on their landslide from two years earlier and despite the economic depression find that they are getting close to maxing out their gains; nonetheless, House Democrats under the Sulzer speakership also earn a supermajority by defeating 25 Liberals (including Minority Whip James Tawney of southeastern Minnesota) and nearly ousting another dozen where they lost by narrow margins (including just barely losing to Minority Leader Sereno Payne in upstate New York, in what could have been two consecutive cycles of defeating the Liberal House leader). Socialists manage to defeat a single New York Democrat to double their House representation from 1 to 2 but remain largely irrelevant both nationally and in the House. Ending up with 284 Representatives, the Democrats have the largest House caucus in the history of the Republic and the first House supermajority in decades.

59th United States Congress​

Senate: 41D-19L

President of the Senate: Tom Johnson (D-OH)
Senate President pro tempore:
Chairman of Senate Liberal Conference: William Frye (L-ME)
Chairman of Senate Democratic Conference: William McAdoo (D-NJ)

California
1. Theodore Arlington Bell (D) (1903)
3. James D. Phelan (D) (1903)

Colorado

2. Thomas M. Patterson (D) (1901)
3. James Bradley Orman (D) (1903)

Connecticut
1. Morgan Bulkeley (L) (1905)
3. Orville Platt (L) (1879)

Dakota

2. Fountain Thompson (D) (1901)
3. Richard Pettigrew (D) (1903)

Delaware
1. J. Edward Addicks (L) (1905)
2. Richard R. Kenny (D) (1901)

Illinois
2. Shelby Moore Cullom (L) (1881)
3. Andrew J. Hunter (D) (1903)

Indiana
1. Benjamin Shively (D) (1905)
3. John W. Kern (D) (1903)

Iowa
2. Horace Boies (D) (1895)
3. James B. Weaver (D) (1891)

Kansas
2. William A. Peffer (D) (1895)
3. William Harris (D) (1897)

Maine
1. Eugene Hale (L) (1881)
2. William P. Frye (L) (1881)

Maryland
1. William Pinkney Whyte (D) (1869)
3. Isidor Rayner (D) (1903)

Massachusetts
1. Henry Cabot Lodge (L) (1893)
2. William Moody (L) (1901)

Michigan
1. Woodbridge Nathan Ferris (D) (1902)
2. Julius Caesar Burrows (L) (1895)

Minnesota
1. Charles A. Towne (D) (1893)
2. Knute Nelson (D) (1901)

Missouri
1. James A. Reed (D) (1905)
3. James T. Lloyd (D) (1903-)

Montana

2. Paris Gibson (D) (1901)
3. Joseph Toole (D) (1892)

Nebraska
1. Richard Lee Metcalfe (D) (1905)
2. William J. Bryan (D) (1895)

Nevada
1. William Morris Stewart (D) (1895)
3. Francis Newlands (D) (1903)

New Hampshire
2. William Chandler (L) (1889)
3. Henry Blair (L) (1873)

New Jersey
1. William McAdoo (D) (1887)
2. James Smith Jr. (D) (1895)

New Mexico

1. Antonio Joseph (D) (1887)
2. Octaviano Larrazola (D) (1901)

New York
1. Edward Murphy Jr. (D) (1905)
3. George McClellan Jr. (D) (1903)

Ohio
1. John Lentz (D) (1904)
3. James R. Garfield (L) (1903)

Oregon
2. John M. Gearin (D) (1901)
3. George Earle Chamberlain (D) (1903)

Pennsylvania
1. Philander Knox (L) (1905)
3. Boies Penrose (L) (1897)

Rhode Island
1. William Sprague (L) (1863)
2. George Wetmore (L) (1895)

Vermont
1. Redfield Procter (L) (1881)
3. William P. Dillingham (L) (1897)

Washington

2. George Turner (D) (1889)
3. Eugene Semple (D) (1888)

West Virginia
1. Thomas S. Riley (D) (1905)
2. John J. Davis (D) (1893)

Wisconsin
1. James William Murphy (D) (1905)
3. Robert La Follette (L) (1903)

House: 284D-109L-2S 395 seats

House Liberal Caucus Chair: Sereno Payne (L-NY)
House Minority Leader: Frederick Gillett (L-MA)
House Minority Whip: James Mann (L-IL)

Speaker of the House: William Sulzer (D-NY)
House Democratic Caucus Chair: Dennis Donovan (D-OH)
House Majority Leader: Champ Clark (D-MO)
House Majority Whip: Marion De Vries (D-CA)

[1] Again - inspired by Mark Hanna
[2] Unfortunately, because fuck this guy
[3] As always, "coolest name" wins the day when I'm picking future Senators. Theodore Arlington Bell thus narrowly beat out California Governor Franklin Lane Knight