Since I'm tired of waiting
Introduction
For those of you have followed and commented on
Reds!, this will at least in part be a retread of what you've already read. However, this is the revised, definitive edition of the timeline, so there will be changes, new material and retcons abound. I hope that this will make a more complete alternate history. Unfortunately, this will be distracting me from updates for some time.
However, Illuminatus_Primus and myself are collaborating on this retcon project, with the hope of accomplishing it as quickly and thoroughly as possible, so that we can continue to surge ahead with the rest of the timeline. This will be part of the overall transition of the TL from a one-person show (with heavy reader input) to a collaborative TL. This baby has grown too big for one person to manage at any decent rate.
So, without further adieu, I present the revised
Reds! TL.
The Central Committee’s Staff
The brainchild of PBS 7’s Aaron Sorkin,
The Central Committee’s Staff was a weekly television drama that detailed the lives and work of the men and women in the Central Committee’s senior staff. The senior staff of the Central Committee are responsible for the unglamorous but crucially necessary work that keeps the government of the UASR functioning. Often criticized for having an overly optimistic picture of the inner functions of socialist democracy at the union level, it remained a huge critical and viewer success on public television for eight seasons before drawing to a close.
Here follows an excerpt from a novelization of the pilot episode:
So begins another day at the Committee’s Office. With all of the activity in the lobby this morning, it is easy to forget that this is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the seat of the All-Union Central Committee for the Union of American Socialist Republics, and not a busy subway terminal. Amidst the hustle and bustle of the early morning activity, a stately man, advanced in age, walks briskly past the security guards at the entrance. He moves quickly through the lobby, weaving past a busy clerical worker as he walks towards the receptionist’s office.
As he passes the receptionist terminal, the attendant says “Nice morning, Comrade McGarry.”
“We’ll take care of that in a hurry, won’t we, Mike?” the man replies with dry sarcasm.
“Yes sir,” the attendant chuckles.
The man continues his brisk pace into the inner workings of the west wing of the old Pennsylvania House. He is Leo McGarry, the Chief of Staff to the Central Committee, and a personal friend of the First Secretary.
He quickly pushes through a set of white double doors, into the inner office. A woman runs past him quickly, pausing only momentarily to exclaim, “Don’t kill the messenger, Leo.”
“Oh, why the Hell not, Bonnie?” he replies as he grabs the morning’s memos. He passes quickly through the press office, making his routine morning acquaintances before calling out for his deputy. “Josh!” he yells.
Josh’s blond assistant responds instead. “Morning, Leo,” she says.
“Hey Donna,” Leo responds. “Is he in yet?”
She pauses from stirring her coffee, looking up at him coyly. “Yeah...”
“Can you get him for me?” he replies, clearly irritated.
She turns around in her seat and yells “Josh!”
“Thanks...” he sighs.
“I heard it’s broken,” she says, abruptly changing the subject.
“You heard wrong,” he replies, barely pausing from reading the memo.
“I heard it’s–”
“It’s a mild sprain,” he interrupts; “he’ll be back later today.” He begins walking out of Donna's cubicle, still skimming the memos.
“What was the cause of the accident?”
“What are you, from the NHS?” he sighed, “Go! Do a job or something!”
“I'm just asking-”
He anticipated her next question: “He was swerving to avoid a tree...”
“What happened?” she asked.
“He was unsuccessful.”
Leo walks though Josh’s open door just as Josh finishes his phone conversation. He asks “How many Cubans exactly have crammed themselves into these fishing boats?”
Josh responds as he busily jots down a note, “Well, it’s important to understand, Leo, that by and large, these aren’t exactly fishing boats. You hear ‘fishing boats’, you conjure an image of, well, a boat, first of all. What the Cubans are on would charitably be described as rafts. Okay? They’re making the hop from Havana to Miami in fruit baskets, basically. Let’s just be clear on that. Donna’s desk, if it could float, would look good to them right now.”
Leo begins walking out into the hallway, beckoning Josh to follow him. “I get it,” he says, “How many are there?”
“We don’t know.”
“What time exactly did they leave?”
“We don’t know.”
“Do we know when they get here?”
“No.”
Leo stops, turning towards Josh, and looks him straight in the eye. “True or false: If I were to stand on high ground in Key West with a good pair of binoculars, I’d be as informed as I am right now.”
“That’s true...”
“That’s the Foreign Office’s money well spent.”
“Well, having any sort of diplomatic relations with the exile regime occupying Cuba, we might have a better idea.”
“You look like Hell, by the way,” Leo sighs as he begins the walk toward his office.
“Yes, I do. Listen, Leo, did he say anything about it?” Josh asks timidly as he follows Leo.
“Did he say anything?!” Leo cries. “The First Secretary is pissed as hell at you Josh, and so am I.”
“I know,” he protests.
“We’ve gotta work with these people, and how the Hell do you get off strutting your--”
“I know.”
“Al Caldwell is a good man,” Leo scolds.
“Al Caldwell wasn’t there!”
“I’m saying you take everyone on the Christian Left, dump them into one big basket and label them stupid! We need these people.”
“We do not need these people...”
“Josh, if this minority government can’t get at least some votes from the Left Democrats, then we can’t govern. You know we have a whole lot better chance dealing with them than with the Socialists or the SEU.”
Excerpts from Sean Hannity, A History of the Worker's Vanguard in America, 1876-1946, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999)
The Socialist Labor Party grew respectably throughout the 1890s. Under the firm but often heavy handed leadership of the brilliant theoretician Daniel DeLeon, the party and the affiliated Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance increased it's influence within the American working class. However, there were notable setbacks in this period. German language sections of the Socialist Labor Party chafed under DeLeon's rigid ideological purity, particularly this centered around the
Newyorker Volkszeitung.
The real godsend came when the relatively young leftist organization, Social Democracy of America, chaired by Eugene Debs, folded into the Socialist Labor Party in 1898.[1] The young organization had formed out of the remnants of the American Railway Union, crushed by the bourgeois state during the Pullman Strike of 1894. It's members, most often relatively new to the politics of Marxian socialism, represented a diverse spectrum of left-wing radicals, from industrial unionists like Debs, to city sewer socialists, to Owenite utopian socialists. After rejecting initial plans for co-operative colonies as unfeasible, the dialogue developed with delegates from Socialist Labor would ultimately prove fruitful.
Debs himself engaged in a lengthy series of correspondence with DeLeon. While the two never found much personal affection for each other, both recognized the importance of an alliance between the two organizations. The potential for a resurgent American Railway Union within the STLA was far too politically important for DeLeon to let slip by. Likewise, Debs immediately recognized the importance of the organization that Socialist Labor had spent the last two decades building, from the myriad working-class newspapers, to the socialist clubs and party locals.
After the whirlwind romance, the short history of Social Democracy of America concluded. On June 14, 1898, the group's National Convention dissolved itself into the Socialist Labor Party by a overwhelming vote. Dissenting delegates associated with Victor Berger of Wisconsin left the organization, and attempted to form an independent Social Democratic Party of America later that fall. The Social Democratic Party would prove short lived, out performed at the ballot box by the Socialist Labor Party throughout it's decade long history. Finally, in 1908, the two organizations made their peace, with both formally endorsing Eugene Debs' presidential bid that November. Within a few months, the dissident Social Democrats accepted the logic of socialist industrial unionism, and joined Socialist Labor.
...Eugene Debs was unequivocally the rising star within Socialist Labor. His rapid assent to the national executive of the party confirmed his status as DeLeon's foil. The two would form an uneasy diumvirate over the party until DeLeon's passing in 1911. Perhaps the first recognition of the new consensus within the party was the 1899 compromise with the opposition faction, which softened the party's perhaps overly confrontational attitude towards the then dominant labor union, the American Federation of Labor.[2] These changes reflected Debs' own power base within the party. As a union man at heart, Debs chief early contribution to the Socialist Labor Party was the growing parity of the STLA with the political organizations of the SLP. In time, the STLA would grow to become an equal partner with Socialist Labor, leaving DeLeon's shadow and growing to become an impressive political force itself.
In the 1900 presidential elections, Socialist Labor's ticket of Eugene Debs and Joseph Maloney won an respectable 165,000 votes, placing the party in 4th place on the national electoral stage.[3] While still dwarfed by the dominant parties of the day, Socialist Labor was finally beginning to reach a national audience, allowing it to fulfill it's role in developing and organizing class consciousness among American workers.
Excerpt: A selection of posts from the alternatehistory.com discussion titled “WI: McKinley Assassinated in 1901”, dated May 1, 2009.[4]
RedAmerican said:
So I was just reading through The Daily Worker today when I found a very interesting article. Apparently, when a family in Detroit, Michigan SR were digging through their attic looking at old family heirlooms, they stumbled upon the diary of their great-great-grandfather, a son of Polish immigrants named Leon Czolgosz.
Apparently, Leon’s diary had confessed that he had attempted to assassinate the President of the old United States in early September 1901. He made his first attempt on September 5th, but was unable to get close to the old imperialist. He was going to try to catch him on the next day of the exposition, but he was arrested that night by a racist Buffalo cop who had a grudge against Poles and other immigrants.
So what would our world look like today if Leon had managed to assassinate that bourgeois dog?
SeriousSam said:
Well, that’s interesting. If I remember correctly, McKinley’s VP at the time was a noted progressive... I forget his name though. Anyway, he’s not a very important person in history, so I don’t think you’ll find too much on Wiki about him.
LeninsBeard said:
I think his name was Theodore Roosevelt... *wikis*
Yup, Theodore Roosevelt. Apparently, he was a politician of some progressive sympathies at the time, and McKinley picked him for his deputy because it would help him fight off the influence of the populists and the unions. The corporatist establishment kind of marginalized him afterwards, and he faded into relative obscurity.
If McKinley were assassinated, then Roosevelt would become president, which would definitely give a boost to the progressive movement. While it might lead to short-term gains for the working classes, ultimately it might butterfly away the Red May revolution in ’33. It was the complete defeat of the progressive wings within the Republican and Democratic Parties that ultimately gave the Socialists the long-term support base they needed.
The Socialist Labor Party as a national party
National Platform
Socialist Labor Party of America
Adopted by the Eleventh National Convention, Chicago, May 1904
And approved by a general vote of the party’s membership.
*
The Socialist Labor Party of America, in convention assembled, reasserts the inalienable right of man to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
We hold that the purpose of government is to secure to every citizen the enjoyment of this right: but taught by experience we hold furthermore that such right is illusory to the majority of the people, to wit, the working class, under the present system of economic inequality that is essentially destructive of their life, their liberty, and their happiness.
We hold that the true theory of politics is that the machinery of government must be controlled by the whole people; but again taught by experience we hold furthermore that the true theory of economics is that the means of production must likewise be owned, operated and controlled by the people in common. Man cannot exercise his right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness without the ownership of the land on and the tool with which to work. Deprived of these, his life, his liberty and his fate fall into the hands of the class that owns those essentials for work and production.
We hold that the existing contradiction between the theory of democratic government and the fact of a despotic economic system—the private ownership of the natural and social opportunities—divides the people into two classes, the Capitalist Class and the Working Class; throws society into the convulsions of the Class Struggle, and perverts Government to the exclusive benefit of the Capitalist Class. Thus labor is robbed of the wealth which it alone produces, is denied the means of self-mastery by wagedom, rent, debt, interest, usury; and, by compulsory idleness in wage and debt slavery, is even deprived of the necessaries of life.
Against such a system the Socialist Labor party raises the banner of revolt, and demands the unconditional surrender of the Capitalist Class. The time is fast coming when, in the natural course of social evolution, this system, through the destructive action of its failures and crises on the one hand, and the constructive tendencies of its trusts and other capitalist combinations on the other hand, will have worked out its own downfall.
We, therefore, call upon the wage workers, toilers and yeoman of America to organize under the banner of the Socialist Labor Party into a class-conscious body, aware of its rights and determined to conquer them. And we call upon workers everywhere to join in the campaign of socialist industrial unionism in the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance to stand as one against the foes of human labor. And we also call upon all other intelligent citizens to place themselves squarely upon the ground of Working Class interests, and join us in this mighty and noble work of human emancipation, so that we may put summary end to the existing barbarous class conflict by placing the land and all the means of production, transportation and distribution into the hands of the people as a collective body, and substituting the co-operative commonwealth for the present state of planless production, industrial war and social disorder—a commonwealth in which every worker shall have the free exercise and full benefit of his faculties, multiplied by all the modern factors of civilization.
Important Events of Interest
1897:
February 10: The Western Federation of Miners breaks with the American Federation of Labor, following the sobering experience of the Leadville miner's strike.
March 4: William McKinley is inaugurated President of the United States, succeeding Grover Cleveland.
June 1: American mine workers begin a strike that successfully establishes the United Mine Worker's Union.
June 15: The original American Railway Union's final conclave begins in Chicago. The new organization, Social Democracy of America, is openly courted by delegates from the Socialist Labor Party following its quick and decisive repudiation of utopian colonization schemes.[5]
September 10: The Lattimer Massacre: A sheriff's posse kills more than 19 unarmed immigrant miners in Pennsylvania.
October 4: At the close of the first national meeting of Social Democracy of America, the organization ratifies a general endorsement of industrial unionism, as the first step towards an eventual union with the Socialist Labor Party.
1898
February 15: The USS
Maine suffers a catastrophic explosion in Havana's harbor, sinking with nearly all hands. Though the cause of the explosion is unknown, the press, particularly those under the ownership of William Randolph Hearst, portray the sinking as a result of nefarious Spanish treachery.
April 22: The United States is at a de facto state of war with Spain, as the US Navy begins a blockade of Cuban ports and captures a Spanish merchant ship. A formal declaration will come three days later.
May 1: The Socialist Labor Party organizes small pro-labor, anti-war demonstrations in its strongholds in New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh and San Francisco. While there are minor clashes with the police, the demonstrations fail to gain much public attention.
June 14: Social Democracy of America votes to dissolve the organization and its meager assets into relevant sections of the Socialist Labor Party and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance.
July 7: The United States annexes Hawaii.
August 12: Hostilities end in Cuba between American and Spanish forces.
October 1: Victor Berger and other dissidents from the now defunct Social Democracy of America hold their first convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where they form the Social Democratic Party of America.
November 8: New York state office elections: the Socialist Labor candidate Benjamin Hanford makes the parties best run yet for the office, winning close to 30,000 votes, approximately 2.5% of the total.
December 10: The Treaty of Paris is signed, formally ending hostilities between Spain and the United States.
December 31: By year's end, John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company controls 84% of the USA's oil, and most American pipelines. The age of monopoly capital has begun.
1899
January 6: The American Railway Union is reassembled as a member of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. Eugene Debs returns as national chair during the reorganization period.
February 4: The Phillipine-American War begins following the outbreak of hostilities in Manila.
February 14: The US Congress authorizes the use of voting machines for federal elections, providing endless amounts of fun for future corrupt corporations and conspiracy theorists.
April 17: Following the firing of 17 union employees at the Bunker Hill Mine in Idaho, 250 workers affiliated with the Western Federation of Miners occupy and demolish a mill at the mine. Following a major bribe by the United Mineowners, the National Guard is deployed by the Governor to Coeur d'Alene. After a violent confrontation, over 1,000 miners and their families are herded into makeshift prisons. Many will never be charged, and won't be released from the concentration camps for many months.
June 1: The Socialist Labor Party's 10th National Convention begins in New York City, to review the integration of the Social Democrats into the party organization.
June 18: At the close of the SLP's 10th National Convention, the leadership of Daniel DeLeon and Henry Kuhn concede to ARU president Eugene Debs' proposal for increased parity between the STLA and the party administration.
June 19: The Newsboys Strike begins in New York. Delegates from the SLP National Convention, inspired by the impressive initiative of the all children Newsboys Union, agree to help the child laborers organize their strike.[6]
June 24: The use of brutal strikebreaking tactics on the Newsies begins to backfire, as the Newsies begin selling working-class alternate press cleverly disguised as more famous newspapers, which bring full exposés of Hearst and Pulitzer's brutal tactics.
August 21: The Newsboys Strike ends, with the recognition of the union, and a return to the pre Spanish-American war bundle price of 50¢. The Newsies will join the STLA by the end of the year.
October 10: Samuel Clemens, alias Mark Twain, has a chance meeting with young, up-and-coming writer Jack London in San Francisco. Clemens, a newly baptized anti-imperialist, befriends the young Socialist Labor activist, though he remains steadfastly opposed to joining the party.
December 2: The Battle of Tirad Pass: Filipino forces successfully commit to a delaying action against the US military, guarding the retreat of Phillipine President Emilio Aguinaldo before being wiped out.
1900
January 3: The US Census estimates the country's population to be approximately 70 million.
January 8: Following reports of miner revolts and lawlessness, President McKinley places the Alaskan territory under military governance.
March 5: Two US Navy cruisers are sent to Central America to protect US interests following a dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
March 15: The Gold Standard Act is ratified, placing the United States currency on the gold standard, ending the era of bimetallism.
May 15: The II Olympiad opens in Paris, France, as part of the Paris World Exhibition.
September 13: Filipino resistance fighters overrun a large American column at the Battle of Pulang Lupa.
November 6: Republican incumbent is William McKinley is re-elected President over Democrat William Jennings Bryan. The Socialist Labor Party places a distant 4th, with 165,000 votes, approximately 30,000 shy of the 3rd place Prohibition Party.
1901
March 2: The U.S. Congress passes the Platt Amendment, limiting the autonomy of Cuba as a condition for the withdrawal of American troops.
March 4: United States President William McKinley begins his 2nd term. Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as Vice President of the United States.
May 17: The US stock market crashes.
June 12: Cuba becomes a US protectorate.
July 5: The Western Federation of Miners adopts a socialist platform, calling for collective, worker control of the means of production, and a program of industrial unionism to further that end.
September 6: Leon Czolgoz is arrested in Buffalo, New York for vagrancy. President McKinley attends the day's festivities unimpeded.
November 28: The new constitution of the State of Alabama incorporates literary tests for voters in the state.
1902
February 18: The US Attorney-General brings a suit against the Northern Securities Company, a railroad trust, under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, in order to allay middle class outcry over the very public machinations of the schemers of the trust. In private, the President has expressed his support to the owners of the trust.
May 2: The Coal Strike of 1902. 150,000 miners in the anthracite coal fields of western Pennsylvania from United Mine Workers of America go out on strike, demanding shorter hours, higher pay and increased control over their workplaces.
May 20: The Republic of Cuba begins
de jure independence. In reality, the country is an American puppet.
June 2: The Coal Strike deepens as maintenance and clerical workers affiliated with the mines join the strike in solidarity.
July 10: The Rolling Mill Mine disaster in Jonestown, Pennsylvania kills over 100 miners.
August 1: The Coal Strike: The owners appeal to the federal government for aid in defeating the strikers, as the Pennsylvania National Guard is not sufficient to maintain security of the mines and suppress the strike. Coal stockpiles have been exhausted, and by now, the entire coal field has joined in the strike.
August 22: President McKinley becomes the first American president to ride in an automobile today in Hartford, Connecticut.
October 15: President McKinley deploys units of the U.S. Army to suppress the Coal Strike. Over four dozen miners are killed in the resulting battles. The strike ends by early November, with the beaten unionists agreeing to return to work in exchange for modest pay cuts and a chance to keep their jobs.
November 30: The leadership of the United Mineworkers of America, radicalized by what they saw as the blatant betrayal of the people by the government, push for the adoption of a socialist platform at the next union national convention.
1903
February 11: The Oxnard Strike of 1903 becomes the first time in U.S. history that a labor union is formed from members of different races.
March 4: Turkey and Germany sign an agreement to build the Constantinople-Baghdad Railway.7
March 11: The Hay-Herran Treaty, granting the US the right to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, is ratified by the US Senate.
May 31: Following Columbia's rejection of the Panama Canal Treaty, President McKinley orders the dispatch of a cruiser squadron and a contingent of Marines to support the Panamanian independence movement.
June 1: The Butte Copper Strike begins in protest over low wages and the firing of known union leaders from the mine. The strike, jointly coordinated by the Socialist Labor Party local and the Western Federation of Miners, quickly shuts down the city's crown jewel industry.
October 6: The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty is signed by the US and Panama, giving the US exclusive rights over the Panama Canal Zone.
October 11: In spite of sporadic violence, the Butte Copper Strike ends with a minor victory for the miner's union. While they fail to achieve all of their goals, the union wins pay raises and and a reinstatement of fired workers.
November 23: Colorado Governor James Hamilton Peabody dispatches the state militia to the town of Cripple Creek to quash a miner's strike. The Colorado Labor Wars begin.
1904
January 31: The American Federation of Labor faces its first major reversal, the product of campaigns waged by employers for “open shops.” The employer and government back push starts with a legal injunction against United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners.
March 14: The Supreme Court delivers it's verdict in
Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197: The Sherman Antitrust Act is overturned as an unconstitutional overstretch of the federal government's authority to regulate interstate commerce due to a violation of the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment. The 5-4 decision represents a major blow to progressives in both major parties.[8]
March 30: The US Army Corps of Engineers begins work on the Panama Canal.
April 8: The
Entente Cordiale is signed between the UK and France
May 1: The Socialist Labor Party's National Convention begins in Chicago. The convention nominates Eugene Debs and William Wesley Cox to run on the party's presidential ticket.
June 6: The First Industrial Congress of the STLA opens in Chicago, to promote a national industrial union federation. At the Congress, the Western Federation of Miners amalgamates with the United Mine Workers, joining the STLA. With swelling membership, the STLA can, for the first time, stand as a legitimate alternative to the reformist AF of L.
July 1: The III Olympiad opens in St. Louis, Missouri.
August 14: In the final vote before the Congressional Recess, a revised antitrust bill fails 40-44. The bill, tailored to attempt to pass the Supreme Court's scrutiny following the overturn of the Sherman Antitrust Act, withers under criticism that it will still fail to pass legal muster.
November 8: Republican presidential nominee Charles Fairbanks defeats Bourbon Democrat Alton B. Parker.
The 1904 US General election, in brief
1904 would prove to be a tumultuous year in politics. Nowhere was this more the case than in the Republican Party. Strong voices of “Progressivism” in the party, among them Vice President Theodore Roosevelt and Wisconsin Governor Robert La Follette have become deeply dissatisfied with the state of American politics. With the overturn of the Sherman Antitrust Act, the lack of will to challenge the courts in the party, and the McKinley government's overly cavalier attitude in dealing with organized labor, they feel that the federal government and the state administrations controlled by the party have done great damage to the nation, and have aggravated a growing class war.
In spite of the vulgar rhetoric thrown at them by the conservative branch of the Republican Party, the Progressive Republicans were not socialists; or even social democrats at that matter. Almost none of them are opposed to trusts on principle, and many have no love for organized labor. However, they do recognize that a state overtly colluding with the masters of capital on such a grand scale is tearing the nation apart. In their nationalism, they believe that a reconciliation between classes must be achieved; the excesses of capitalism must be restrained, the people must have some democratic voice in their governance.
However, the class collaborationists were unable to convince the rest of the Republican Party of the logic of their position in this campaign. Theodore Roosevelt, though carrying considerable popular support going into the convention, is unable to defeat the retrenched conservatives in the presidential nomination. In a heated series of ballots, the conservative Charles Fairbanks sweeps aside Roosevelt, clinching the nomination.
As his running mate, the party selects a relative moderate, William Howard Taft. In the aftermath, the Progressive Republicans themselves faced internal conflict over the proper course of action. The “Legalist Progressives,” represented among the professional politicians, civil servants, in the law schools and bar associations, argue that the movement as a whole needs to change tack and adapt to the new conditions. The majority of GOP Progressives, their intellectual center has adopted a kind of proto-corporatist philosophy. Now that breaking up trusts is no longer on the table, they argue that the government must take an increased role to manage the excesses of capitalism in a more cooperative manner. The cartels will be need to be “guided” by the federal government to produce socially desirable outcomes, regulating prices and quality, with the government serving as the umpire between organized labor and large capitalists. Heavily influenced by political scholar Woodrow Wilson's treatise
Congressional Government, the Legalist Progressives believe some form of constitutional form, likely pro-parliamentary, is necessary to reduce the “politics of personality” for the health of the republic.
In contrast, the “Populist Progressives” have become embittered by what is seen as a betrayal of the principles of the Grand Old Party of Lincoln. Government of the people, by the people, they argue, cannot be achieved through rational scientific management of the opposing classes of society. Without some material leveling, a republic itself is fast becoming an impossibility. Embittered and defeated in the post-election era, many of the faction feel they have been driven into the political wilderness.
The Democrats, at their St. Louis national convention, would ultimately thrust New York Appeals Court Judge Alton B. Parker into the limelight. A man with immaculate credentials and an air of seeming incorruptibility, Parker turns the party's campaign against “the rule of individual caprice” and “the presidential office's growing abuse of authority.”
The party platform would condemn the excesses of monopolies, high government expenses, and corruption within the executive departments. In spite of some of these paeans to populism, the party's platform remained essentially Bourbon in nature, favoring the gold standard, free trade and a relatively laissez-faire government attitude. While this put the Democrats at cross-purposes with the growing Legalist Progressives faction of the GOP, some common causes were found in the reduction of corruption and the limitation of presidential authority.
In spite of great enmity between Democrats and Republicans, relations between the two parties were relatively cordial this election. Both Fairbanks and Parker were quite conservative, having very similar philosophies about the role of government in society. Without William Jennings Bryan's decidedly class war laced campaign, the 1904 campaign proved to be quite amiable. And, at the very least, both candidates equally denounced the “radical anarchistic crusade” of the growing Socialist Labor Party.
1904 would be American Railway Union chairman Eugene Debs' second run for president. A brilliant, charismatic orator capable of uniting both AF of L supporters as well as his own STLA union's constituency, Debs gave “socialist treason” a human face. Supported by SLP stalwart William Wesley Cox as his running mate, Debs would greatly expand both the SLP's membership rolls as well as it's vote share through the course of the campaign.
The 1904 campaign saw the first chink in the AF of L's armor as well. Defiance of AF of L president Samuel Gomper's explicit voluntarist philosophy became more common among union locals of AF of L affiliates, particularly among teamsters, brewers and locomotive engineers.
The SLP also expanded into the traditional rural domains of the People's Party. Shattered by collusion and subsequent betrayal by the Democratic Party, the remnants of the Populists' organizations largely signed on to support Debs' call for a broad producers' alliance between industrial labor and yeoman farmers. However, this alliance is not yet universal, and many Populist groups do not actively endorse Debs' candidacy or make alliances with industrial labor. However, with the disintegration of much of the Populists' national organization those opposed to alignment with the SLP are unable to run a Populist candidate in the election.
Presidential Results
Candidate..............Party Popular.........Vote............Percentage.........Electoral Count
Code:
Charles Fairbanks Republican Party 7,415,312 55.51% 336
Alton B. Parker Democratic Party 4,987,123 37.33% 140
Eugene Debs Socialist Labor Party 705,235 5.28% 0
Silas Swallow Prohibition Party 248,482 1.86% 0
Congressional Results
House of Representatives
Majority Leader: Joseph Cannon
Party: Republican Party
Leader's Seat: Illinois-18th
Last Election: 207 seats
Seats won: 251
Seat change: +44
Minority leader: John Sharp Williams
Party: Democratic Party
Leader's seat: Mississippi-8th
Last election: 176 seats
Seats won: 135
Seat change: -41
U.S. Senate(9)
Majority: Republican Party
Last election: 57 seats
Seats won: 58
Seat change: +1
Minority: Democratic Party
Last election: 33 seats
Seats won: 32
Seat change: -1
- This is the first major divergence of in the TL.
- IOTL, this is the major issue that ultimately caused the split in the Socialist Labor Party. That rift is patched over and the split averted ITTL.
- Other than the OTL's Social Democrats and SLP's vote totals combined, there is no real change in the election outcome.
- This was the POD from the draft version of the TL. While the divergence still occurs, it is no longer the specific POD.
- This is the new POD: with a slightly greater turn-out of industrial unionists at the Social Democracy of America's opening meeting, it adopts policies more in line with the SLP, and soon falls into its orbit.
- This is included more for my own amusement than anything. The idea of militantly socialist newspaper boys just tickles me.
- This event, IOTL, had dramatic consequences for great power relations. Ultimately, if completed, it would give Germany access to developing Turkish oil supplies, and ensure that the threat of a naval blockade on Germany couldn't force her capitulation. This is one of the many factors that led to the First World War.
- The case went 5-4 the other way IOTL, validating the break up of the Northern Securities Company. The dissent, written by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and joined by Fuller, White and Peckham, held that the act was unconstitutional.
- Prior to OTL's 17th Amendment, the U.S. Senate elections were determined by the state government. In most states, the state legislature elected Senators. A few western states and those with stronger progressive groups had added some form of popular electoral component, though few provided for true direct elections.
