Hold the Fort: Rise of the Cooperative Commonwealth

Introduction
The Death of President Theodore Roosevelt

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The damaged presidential carriage in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on September 3rd, 1902.

On September 3rd, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt was visiting Pittsfield, Massachusetts, while on a tour of New England. When traveling through Pittsfield by horse-drawn carriage, Roosevelt and his party crossed a set of trolley tracks. To the occupants’ horror, a speeding interurban car, rushing to beat the President’s arrival downtown, failed to come to a stop and knocked the carriage forty feet down the road.

Most of the President’s entourage survived more or less unharmed. David J. Pratt, the driver of the carriage, was severely injured. George B. Cortelyou, the President’s Secretary, survived with severe bruising. Winthrop Crane, the Governor of Massachusetts, and George P. Lawrence, the Representative for the First Congressional District of Massachusetts, both survived with minor bruising. The Secret Service Agent accompanying Roosevelt, William Craig, was thrown clear of the trolley, escaping with only superficial injuries. President Roosevelt was not so lucky, being thrown out of the carriage and underneath the trolley. The President died instantly, being ground into an unrecognizable mass by the heavy machinery of the car.

At the time of Roosevelt’s death, Secretary of State John Hay, next in the line of Presidential succession due to the vacant Vice Presidency, was at his office in Washington. Hay was informed by an aide of the President’s death several hours after the accident. Though shaken by the news, Hay agreed to be sworn in later that day. At 9pm, on September 3rd, 1902, John Hay was sworn in by Chief Justice Melville Fuller, becoming the 27th President of the United States, the third person to hold the office within the previous year.

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Teddy Roosevelt nearly did die due to the trolley accident on September 3rd, however in OTL Roosevelt's Secret Service Agent, William Craig was thrown under the car. Here Roosevelt is sitting in Craig's seat and is killed by the interurban car as a result.​
 
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Chapter I: Biting Cold
Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902

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Coal Miners in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, in 1900.

The winter of 1902 was quickly approaching. The United Mine Workers’ strike in the anthracite coal fields of northeastern Pennsylvania dragged on into its fourth month, with no end in sight. The 1902 Anthracite Coal Strike began on May 12th, 1902, with the walkout of 147,000 workers after the collapse of negotiations, negotiations which had been organized by Mark Hanna and the National Civic Federation, between the UMWA and the operators, the most important among the operations being George Baer, President of the Reading Railroad.

The UMWA, led by President John Mitchell, laid out a series of demands, calling for recognition of the union; a 20% increase in wages; a reduction in the workday from ten hours to eight hours; and a system of weighing coal and paying for it by the ton rather than paying for it by the cartload.

However, the operators were not about to let themselves be pushed around by Mitchell. 5,000 Coal and Iron Police were enlisted to guard the mines, who were sworn, by law, to defend the interests of the companies. With the backing of the state government the operators expected the UMWA to back down, handing the companies an easy victory.

In response, Mitchell upped the ante, threatening that if the pumpmen, firemen, and engineers, who prevented the flooding of the mines, did not receive an eight hour workday within two weeks, they would withdraw from the mines and join the strike. The operators refused to back down and as a result the pumpmen, firemen, and engineers joined the strike on June 2nd.

Throughout the following months the conflict escalated, a 13 year old boy was shot and injured by police who were jumpy after a case of arson; threats of violence against scabs by strikers became commonplace; a man was shot and killed by the police, on July 2nd, as he did not obey an order to halt.

As a result, 3,000 soldiers of the Pennsylvania National Guard, under the command of Brigadier-General Gobin, were deployed to the coal fields. In a following incident 300 strikers stopped a train transporting guardsmen and police to the mines. When the train attempted to continue, the strikers hurled rocks and fired their guns. Gobin responded to the confrontation by ordering that if attacked, National guardsmen were to return fire. Adding weight to his order, 7,000 additional guardsmen were deployed to Northeastern Pennsylvania.

President Theodore Roosevelt was not blind to the dire situation. He conversed with Attorney General Philander Knox, a Pennsylvanian himself, if there was anything that could legally be done about the situation. Attorney General Knox told Roosevelt not to be concerned about the issue, as he legally had no right to intervene. The President confided to Mark Hanna, "A coal famine in the winter is an ugly thing and I fear we shall see terrible suffering and grave disaster."

However, before Roosevelt could act on his desires to intervene, he was struck and killed by a trolley on September 3rd. John Hay, now the President of the United States, had a far more traditional take concerning the strike, viewing it as outside his bounds to step in and intervene.

As the first frosts fell in October of 1902, the already tense situation escalated dramatically. The Hay’s administration announced that was the strike not called off, the National Guard would escalate its involvement at the anthracite mines and allow strikebreakers onto the job. The United Mine Workers held a snap convention to make a decision on the matter of a general coal strike. Earlier that year, in July, the miners had declined to call for a nationwide coal strike. However, with the looming threat of action by the federal government, the UMWA made a drastic move. On October 15th, 1902, John Mitchell called for coal miners all across the nation to walk off the job and join the UMWA.

Untold hundreds of thousands of men joined the strike throughout October. The situation was nearly revolutionary, with the newly founded Socialist Party of America recruiting from the ranks of the strikers. Socialist organizers were founding locals at a rate of twenty a day nationwide during the strike, the approximate membership of these locals skyrocketed from 25 to 340 each within a matter of weeks. By the beginning of November, the Socialist Party estimated it had over 60,000 dues-paying members, only 10,000 of those having been members of the party before the strike began.

The American Federation of Labor’s leadership did not take kindly to the miners' move to call for a general strike, having expressed their disapproval of the idea before the convention, as a result the status of the UMWA as a member-union of the AFL was suspended. Denying funding for the strike from AFL coffers. Mitchell was outraged at what he saw as a stab in the back by Gompers and the leadership of the AFL at-large. With funding from the Federation cut, the Socialist Party began a relief fund for the strike, as did the new American Labor Union, comprised primarily of the Western Federation of Miners.

However, without the funding of the AFL the strike quickly faltered and was called off by Mitchell and the leadership of the United Mine Workers on November 9th, 1902, with none of the strikers' goals met.
 
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Elections of 1902
The debacle caused by President Hay’s bungling of the General Coal Strike of 1902 lead to a noticeable slip in the polls for the Republican Party as the 1902 midterms loomed. In many races Democratic candidates, challengers and threatened incumbents alike, hammered on the issue to their advantage, lambasting the Republican Party for their incompetence in ensuring that adequate supplies of coal were available to average Americans, particularly in Northern cities, as winter approached.

Along with the Democrat’s increase in the polls, the Socialist Party seized the moment, with massively successful recruitment efforts occurring in mining towns across the United States, in addition to some disgruntled urban laborers turning to the Socialists as the coal famine took hold.

As voters went to the polls on November 4th, Republicans quickly realized the severity of the situation at hand. By the morning of November 5th it was evident that the Republican Party had slipped in the House of Representatives, as well as losing a good number of state legislatures, suffering a net loss of several governorships, and that Republican control in the Senate had been weakened.

1902 United States House Elections
The 1902 redistricting, based on the 1900 Census, saw the total number of seats in the House of Representatives increase to 386, up from 357 in 1900. A combination of factors allowed the Democratic Party to ride an electoral wave, nearly taking control of the House. The Democratic Party made a net gain of 41 seats whilst the Republican Party suffered a net loss of 7 seats. Notably the Democratic Party won a plurality of the popular vote, despite failing to win a majority of seats.

Democratic gains were concentrated in the Northeastern United States, with Democrats carrying every seat located in New York City, granting the Democrats a net gain of 7 seats in the Empire State, granting them a majority of the state’s delegation in the House of Representatives. Similar results panned out across the region, with Democrats doubling the size of their delegation in Pennsylvania, additionally making gains in Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. On the contrary the Heartlands provided the largest swings against the Democratic Party, with the Democrats suffering net losses in Illinois, Kansas, Montana, and Nebraska.

In the aftermath of the elections, the new Republican Speaker of the House, Joe Cannon, was left with a frail majority, with a great portion of the country weary of Republican leadership.

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House Election Percent by District
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House Election Margin by District
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1902/1903 United States Senate Elections

None of the 1902 Senate Elections were particularly contentious, with the state legislatures having clear enough majorities for one party or another to elect their nominee without difficulty. Similarly to the results in the House, the Republicans made gains in the Plains and Mountain regions of the nation. Democrats drew a net gain through gains in the Border States of Kentucky and Maryland; a pickup in the traditionally Democratic state of North Carolina; and a defection by Henry Teller from the Silver Republicans to the Democratic Party. The Silver Republican Party and the Populist Party both resultantly lost their last vestiges in Congress, with their defeats bringing in the end of an era.


Despite strong Democratic gains locally and in the House of Representatives, any potential gains in the Senate were blunted by the strong incumbent Republican state legislatures, who would not be diluted by newly elected Democrats until the next class of Senate elections.

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Senate Election Percent by State
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Senate Election Margin by State
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Senate Composition, March 1903
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1902 United States Gubernatorial Elections
In a reflection of federal races, with the collapse of the Populists and Silverites, Democratic influence in the Mountain and Plains states declined. Resulting in Democratic losses of the governorships of Idaho and Colorado to the Republican Party. However, the Democratic Party was able to make significant gains in the Western United States as well as the Northeast, enabling a net gain in governorships. The Democratic Party managed to pick up California, Oregon, New York, and Rhode Island from the Republican Party, whilst also picking up the governorship of Nevada from the Silver Party.

These regional trends were additionally reflected in state legislative races, with the Democratic Party making gains in the Pacific, Border State, and Northeastern states, whilst the Republicans racked up wins in the Plains and Mountain states.

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Governor Election Percent by State
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Governor Election Margin by State
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Governorship Composition, March 1903
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Finally got around to working on the timeline again, finals really screwed me up, and the election results took a while to hammer out.
 
So, is this a TL where Tommy Douglas becomes US President, or something? :)
(I was very confused when you started talking about the US and elections. Didn't see what that had to do with Canadian Prairie politics.)
 
Lol, I guess I just needed a title and the term 'Cooperative Commonwealth' was used by many American Socialists at the time.

I figure I'll get a post up soon, was busy with Church stuff the past few weeks.
 
I just came across the story of William Craig's death while in Wikipedia freefall, and searched here for any threads about TR buying the farm in the collision. I'm definitely interested in reading more...
 
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