alternatehistory.com

Hey, everyone, I'm still alive, and I've been working on this TL for quite some time. I'm afraid I probably I won't be able to update this as frequently as I did An Era of Limits, but I'll try to make the updates fairly decent. The POD, obviously, is the election of Henry Ford to the Presidency of the United States in 1924. As opposed to the scrapbook style of An Era of Limits, I've been using this fairly generic narrative, with the odd 'story' segment, which I think works fairly well, all things considered. It's been inspired in terms of layout by Jared's sublime Decades of Darkness and nightmarish classic For All Time, if anyone was wondering.
Anyway, without further ado, the first installment, really, just the introduction, to The History We Make Today. Later installments should be considerably longer, by the way, and I'll probably have the next- the first real one, I suppose- up in the next couple of days.

Enjoy!
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The History We Make Today








"History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history that we make today."

- Henry Ford, interviewed in the Chicago Tribune, 1916

The weather is reasonably pleasant, at least for March, and an impressive crowd had turned out to witness the inauguration. It’s noon precisely, and a smartly-dressed if nondescript old man—by no means physically imposing—stands to take the oath that will make him the next President of the United States. It’s an almost surreal scene, and, indeed, few of the illustrious figures that pack the inaugural stand can believe what they’re seeing. President—soon to be former President—Coolidge, in particular stares silently ahead with an expression of mild surprise on his face. Facing the Chief Justice, he raises his right hand—no nervous shaking, not for this—and repeats the oath, calmly and deliberately. “And will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” he finishes, lowering his hand, letting the triumphal roar of the crowd wash over him, and smiling softly. He strides to the podium; pauses for a moment to let it all sink in, and begins to speak. His voice, not as strong as it was when he was younger, but commanding nonetheless, booms across the teeming mall. “My fellow Americans,” he starts, “there is much work to be done.” The audience—a healthy mix of respectable business types, the homeless, war veterans, wealthy milquetoasts and more—scream their approval. Fists pump the air, and he pounds the podium. “The task of building a new era of peace and prosperity awaitsus! This task will not be easy; I know that better than anyone. But, my friends, today I say to you this—we shall overcome!” he finishes in a near-yell, again pounding the lectern. The crowd seem to like gesture—they again erupt into applause and raucous cheers. The President held his head high and raises both hands into the. “This is our destiny!!” he roars, slamming his clenched fists down with a vigour that surprised even him. He chuckles softly to himself as the crowd—his crowd, really—chant his name, scream their approval.

It has been a long, hard road, but Henry Ford has made it to the White House.









-No one really believes that Henry Ford legitimately won the election of 1924, but the Republican Party is reasonably happy with their new President. After all, Ford successfully reunited the party, the Progressive Party rejoining the G.O.P. after Ford appointed noted Robert La Follette Sr. ally and Wisconsin Congressman Nils P. Haugen to the Vice-President slot on the ticket.

-Ford did not win—or rig, perhaps—as large a victory as the decidedly more moderate President Coolidge would have, certainly. But the death of Coolidge’s son shortly after the Republican convention had had a marked effect on the man, and the shaken President had discontinued his campaign. The vulgar joy of the Democratic Party—their own faceless nominee, John W. Davis had looked certain to lose to the popular Coolidge in November—was soon muted as a certain Michigan industrialist and prominent Coolidge supporter took the President’s spot on the Republican ticket. Normally, protocol would have allowed Vice-President nominee Charles Dawes to take the position, but the President had little respect for Dawes, and Coolidge had quietly let it known that he supported Ford for the position. Dawes, for his part, was unceremoniously dropped from the ticket, and lived in quiet mediocrity for the rest of his life.

-The party soon coalesced around their new nominee—predictably; Ford ran a campaign based on economic issues as opposed to focusing on his almost non-existent political experience, which amounted to a failed Senatorial bid, as a Democrat, nonetheless, in 1918. It’s likely that Ford would have won the 1924 election by a much larger margin if he’d some degree of political experience, but it hardly matters when President Henry Ford delivers his inaugural address to adoring crowds on a mild March afternoon in 1925.

-If any introduction is necessary, Harry Bennett is 32 years old, a former boxer and ex-Navy man, and, prior to his boss being elected President, was best known as the head of the Ford Corporation’s notorious Service Department, a union-busting gang of thugs renowned for doing Henry Ford’s dirty work. Bennett is devotedly loyal to the new President, and was probably responsible for putting the states of Ohio and Pennsylvania in the Ford column, not necessarily by running a respectful and informative campaign. Bennett’s style is more along the lines of hiring some local gangs to beat the hell out of anyone who says a word against the Ford campaign, and throwing a little of the Ford money around to make a favourable count just that crucial bit more likely when the votes are tallied. Bennett, who will become one of the most notorious men in the country in the next few years, is appointed immediately to a lucrative advisor’s position in the Ford administration. Although the spot has no official responsibilities, Bennett’s influence will grow considerably…

-As of March 4th, 1925, Henry Ford is the 31st and current President of the United States and Nils P. Haugen is the Vice-President of the United States. Cabinet positions are still undecided, although Ford has expressed his admiration for a Senator named Theodore Bilbo, who bucked his own party by ardently supporting Ford during the election, for a powerful position of some sort in the fledgling administration. General Pershing will likely be given a token place in the Cabinet, as will a Mr. Ernest G. Liebold, Ford’s personal secretary. Liebold, known for his strong convictions on the race issue, may be given a new Cabinet position, as yet to be titled…

-“I believed”, Adlai Stevenson, then a 24-year-old Illinois law student, would write years later, “that the Presidency of Henry Ford would be uneventful. I had no love for the man—indeed, I wholeheartedly despised him, but Ford, I reassured myself, would be a mediocrity of a President, and would surely lose the next election. Certainly, he had no means of putting his wretched ideals into practice. While the inauguration of Ford represented the nadir of American politics, I did not for a second think that Ford’s Presidency could be much worse than I envisioned.”

“I hardly need to add,” Stevenson continued, “that things indeed got much, much worse.”
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