Part I: The Rise of Bipartisan Consensus
Chapter I: An Overview of Politics, 1901
For good reason, the period of American history from the election of conservative Republican William McKinley in 1896 to the election of the Progressive-Socialist Party in 1928 is generally known as the Conservative Age, or to political historians as the Fourth Party System. It is generally known as a dark epoch, one in which any attempt by workers to gain their natural rights was met by failure and ignored by the government and in which coalitions of businesses, or trusts, controlled prices and formed monopolies on various industries and refused to let competition and corporate selection lead to improvement of products and efficiency. It is known as being an era in which wealth was concentrated amongst a few businessmen such as J.P. Morgan or John D. Rockefeller who earned literally one million times the wage of an average worker and no attempts to reform this flawed pure capitalism was able to succeed or even come to prominence. Despite the emergence of a class system and simmering discontent, many considered this age to be a great era and the beginning of a powerful USA in more than just economic power. The American victory in the Spanish–American War, which merely lasted for just over three years before Spain sued for peace after being beaten like a drum and having its colonial empire – or rather what remained of it after the Latin American Revolutions – taken by the US, led many to believe that perhaps the twentieth century would be just as dominated by America as the nineteenth was dominated by Britain.
The election of 1896 was a realigning election. The conservative Republican candidate William McKinley formed a coalition of fellow conservatives and the bourgeoisie to oppose populist Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan. He would not only win, but he won in a landslide, the likes of which were unseen since Reconstruction, breaking the deadlock seen from the previous elections. The successful three-month Spanish – American War in 1898 – which led to the US asserting itself as an international hegemon and gaining huge amounts of land and proving its military prowess – led to McKinley seeing even greater popularity than before and winning reelection in another landslide against Bryan, bringing the Republicans to political domination unseen since Reconstruction.
William McKinley, President of the United States (1897-1905)
But not all was good in the US. Urbanization led to the majority of the peasantry going to work in urban areas and becoming members of the slightly more educated proletariat. Those workers began to realize how bad their lives were and fought with the upper classes and bourgeoisie to gain what was rightfully theirs. In the US, this movement began to threaten the power of the bourgeoisie and as a result the ruling classes were working towards crushing any workers’ movements. It is commonly believed that nearly everyone in government at the time turned a blind eye towards the proletariat.
However, this assertion that everyone in government other than a few minor politicians ignored the plight of the average worker is false. As a matter of fact, in both the of the two major parties of the time, there were major bourgeoisie reformist movements. Although it most certainly was true that these movements had ulterior motives, they did attempt to improve the lives of the workers.
The Democratic Party was populated by large numbers of populists, who focused more on the farmer than the worker, while the Republican Party was populated by large numbers of progressives, who focused on issues faced by the industrial workers. The populists were generally anti-establishment and would briefly become a major political party, peaking in 1894 when they captured ten percent of the vote before endorsing Bryan in 1896 before being absorbed into the Democratic Party, while the progressives were pro-establishment and would form largely within the Republican Party. However, both of these movements only formed a minority in their respective parties and their efforts were stymied by the establishment, who saw both of these movements as threats to their power.
Both populists and progressives gained tremendous amounts of support. On the populist side, the notable politician William Jennings Bryan reached a great following and would ultimately clinch the Democratic candidate in 1896. However, as a result of the Panic of 1893 that would result in the Long Depression occurring under the Democrat Grover Cleveland, he would lose 1896 in a realigning landslide that began the Conservative Era. Bryan would try to run for president again in 1900 but he would lose once more in a landslide to the Republicans.
On the progressive side, businesses would be threatened by the progressive message of reform. They achieved far more support from the people than the populists did and as a result they were supported by more politicians. The most popular progressive was a politician named Theodore Roosevelt. Despite being a war hero in the Spanish-American War, he was considered by many to be a threat to the establishment.
As a result, he was selected to be McKinley’s running mate in 1900 and after McKinley used Machiavellian cunning to establish a bourgeois coalition amongst those that had concentrated the rich wealth of the worker, Roosevelt became Vice President, an almost useless post that had a tendency to stagnate political careers. His only role was to act as “back-up” if McKinley were to die. However, the likelihood of such an event occurring was low and it looked like Roosevelt’s political career was over. However, he would have been thrust into the presidency if a single event went another way.
On September 14, 1901, an anarchist by the name of Leon Czolgoz almost killed President McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, but he missed and killed a bystander(1). He would be arrested and executed soon after, as anarchism was – and still is – a controversial political ideology that is considered evil. If the bullet had hit its mark, Theodore Roosevelt would have become President and he would most likely bring about many reforms done by the Socialists and those reforms would avoid the collapse of the Democratic – Republican Party system. But tragically, the shot missed, and the proletariat lost this missed opportunity to achieve many of their rights much earlier than they did in our world.
However, it did not and it took a unified effort of Socialists almost three decades after this near-assassination to destroy this conservative party system and give workers what was rightfully theirs.
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1 – This is the POD for this TL.