kham_coc
Banned
Because by and large they axiomatically subscribe to the notion that government regulation is bad, ergo, removing it is good.
Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
Michelsen hasn't been governor yet, there's no record of that in the main threads. In 1913 when we last checked in on him before this weekend there's no mention of him being the sitting Governor at that time - it seems like he's just a regular private citizen, albeit one of some importance at the state and local level. There's also a line about him eyeing "future political opportunities" as of late 1913 in that same cited update, which wouldn't make sense if he's the current sitting Governor at the time.
In 1916 in this last update Lindbergh is mentioned as being the "new governor" so presumably he won in 1916.
In the extended universe thread (which is admittedly not always canon) Michelsen is listed as being governor from 1921 to his death in 1925 and he succeeds Lindbergh - who has already been established as winning election in 1916 per the last update in this thread. So Michelsen (again, assuming the EU wikibox is canon, which is not always the case) not only wins election in 1920 but re-election in 1924. If that's indeed the case - and why would we be spending so much time with the guy if he's not going to be someone electorally important down the line? - then Michelsen wins as a Liberal in safe Democratic territory sailing against massive headwinds...twice. If that doesn't tell you how hopelessly inept Minnesota Democrats are then nothing will.
ding ding ding!
I wrote a TL eons ago where I got them to the 2010s before a Yugoslav-style collapse, though I don’t know how realistic that is if they were able to make it that far haha
Good point - the OE will have an explicit interest in a post-Austrian Balkans
Way too many direct disputes to not eventually cause a conflagration or two
Pass the hat at Lutheran service
Haha you’re welcomeOne can never go TOO far into the weeds when discussing ethnic relations within local regions. I could read a whole book on this stuff
Also, lets take a moment to sympath for Governor Charles Lindberg who finally got elected, and now has to deal with this crap landing right on his lap (and though he's likely sympathetic to the striers, most are just gonna hate on him for being a Swede!)
Thanks! Not sure how much I helped in this case: but I'm more than happy to take credit where it is given
You’d definitely have many Indians decamping to other parts of the Commonwealth that will take them, yes. And like OTL you’d probably see Sikhism somewhat overrepresented in the diaspora compared to its proportion of Indians in India
Was the Finnish diaspora in Canada that large?
But, yes, you’d see plenty of Finns in Duluth in particular and across the UP
Keynesian consensus wasn’t really a thing (yet), though the Grain Board debacle will be a big piece of why it arrives earlier
Ill just hop in on the last comment in this thread to note that the OG Michelsen piece in the EU thread was more of a shitpost than anything serious and while he’ll eventually be a Governor of Minnesota thanks to his godlike status amongst the Norwegian diaspora that small, largely irrelevant throwaway post needs some reworking (especially on the dates that he serves)
I'm still baffled why Norwegians revere the guy. He's the same guy who, when he was PM of Norway in 1905, fled Christiania as "as ordinary people made barricades out of dining tables, school desks and pub chairs [which] sparked massive outrage and as the Swedish Army finally pushed into the city proper..."
I don't get it. He left the sons of Norway to fight and die while he bailed, and those same Norwegians still love him? It amazes me.
*insert standard Swedish banter about Norwegians and their intelligence here* 😜
In seriousness, though, Michelsen has a different, less favorable reputation in Norway proper than he does amongst the hard-nationalists in exile with whom he has more of a “he was the one who stood up to the Swedes” reputation
Not touching that Swede/Norwegian banter with a ten foot IKEA pole lol. You are on your own with that one.
Whenever Michelsen runs the attack ads write themselves. "He left your fathers to die while he ran away like a coward."
In OTL it represented c. 20% of the total Finnish immigration to North America pre-WW1 (c. 200 000 people).
The people who arrived between 1900 and 1914 had especially disproportionate impact to local politics because of their tendency to support various radical socialist movements and join forces with other local socialists groups: https://www.doria.fi/bitstream/hand...te-of-Finland-2017.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Lol what did you have in mind for the split second you were thinking that?
Eh was the site having issues I was clueless of or was the genre facing problems with far right fans again and getting a negative reputation because of the common trope, Nazis win World War II
Interesting… so maybe a third to half of those Finns wind up stateside instead
Well, that goes a long way to explaining how and why Duluth is even more radical than OTL.
Interesting fact: in the early 20th century, Duluth had more millionares living there per capita than any other city in the world. Whether this had any influence on the Socialists and Anarchists in the city, I will leave up to you
I expect we see an even more heavily Finnish UP as well, and we probably see spill-over into Northern Wisconsin as well (and since that area was a hotbed for Norwegian Progressives, I suspect they and the Finns will get along smashingly).
So an Iron Country, Copper Country and Northwoods that are even more heavily Finnish and Norwegian than OTL is going to be interesting: likely, even more than in OTL, that region will be seen as a cultural zone all of its own.
The region’s connection to Lake Superior specifically will probably be a major factor in its cultural connotations, too. And likely help drive Duluth’s rivalry with MinneapolisWell, that goes a long way to explaining how and why Duluth is even more radical than OTL.
Interesting fact: in the early 20th century, Duluth had more millionares living there per capita than any other city in the world. Whether this had any influence on the Socialists and Anarchists in the city, I will leave up to you
I expect we see an even more heavily Finnish UP as well, and we probably see spill-over into Northern Wisconsin as well (and since that area was a hotbed for Norwegian Progressives, I suspect they and the Finns will get along smashingly).
So an Iron Country, Copper Country and Northwoods that are even more heavily Finnish and Norwegian than OTL is going to be interesting: likely, even more than in OTL, that region will be seen as a cultural zone all of its own.
You know, in OTL there was a movement to create a State of Superior which would include the UP and, at least according to some plans, Northern Wisconsin (one called for the capitol to be in Wausau). I suspect in the Cinqo-verse there could be a imilar movement that would include the UP, Northern Wisconsin and Northern Minnesota with the capitol in Duluth. I doubt that this would come to much of anything, but it would be an important part of local cultural and social identity (think signs announcing one's entry in the Superior State, newspaper including the names, tongue-in-cheek books and shows playing up the region's history and culture, etc). Assuming a Rustbelt occures in the ATL, I'd expect it to gain in popularity and vocality when the region suffers economically, as it would be a way to vocalise anger and resentment at the bigger cities and the more populated southern regions.
There may be an 'Underground Railroad' that provides independent activists with false papers and travel. I also see the British backing more Missionaries and Christian schools and hospitals to 'Civilize' India.
A lot depends on the way Russian officials treat the Finnish autonomy, and whether the archaic and hidebound old estate system persists - the Finnish elites were just as coerced to make changes by the general strike and general unrest as the Russian government was in OTL 1905. Without such turmoil in TTL, the Grand Duchy will remain one of the most undemocratic and conservative corners of Europe, even in TTL. And that means that especially many Finnish working-class radicals will opt to emigrate instead. Note that the movement accross the Atlantic was back-and-forth for many individuals, all the way to Oskari Tokoi.
OTL Finns tented to gather to familiar-looking landscapes in the Upper Peninsula, but lumber and mining industries further westwards also got their share of Finnish immigrant workforce.
Huh, interesting.
There'll be a Rust Belt effect, just way less severe and more concentrated in certain areas (generally smaller metros more dependent on one company). Duluth could actually be fairly exposed to that considering its dependence on iron mining and steelworks. So perhaps the State of Superior is something of a left-wing analogue to the State of Jefferson out on the West Coast?
Definitely.
Thanks! Yeah, the Grand Duchy has its Senate with female suffrage but from what I've gleaned that still didn't mean much. So you'll definitely have a larger Finnish diaspora in the Americas, then.
Minneapolis General Strike (Part II)
"...Van Lear was Minneapolis' first Socialist mayor, elected on a platform of not only good-government reform (in other words, combatting the Swedish-American and Irish-American machine in the city, which appealed enormously to Norwegians and progressive middle class swing voters who had previously skewed Liberal) but also on a platform of tending to the veterans of the war returning in droves by November of 1916 from the front or discharged. By the Red Summer of 1917, as it came to be called due to the boiling-over political events on both sides of the Ohio, Minneapolis was awash in unemployed laborers whom Van Lear had made it a key of his political platform to help.
By the standards of Socialist candidates of the time, Van Lear was not particularly radical. He had been one of the party's most full-throated supporters of the war, in contrast with ultra-pacifist figures like Haywood who had with their stance driven themselves into irrelevancy. His program for urban reform looked more like that of men like former Cleveland Mayor (and Democratic Vice President) Tom Johnson than genuine iconoclasts like Milwaukee's Seidel or Seattle's Wells. Indeed, his main priority was growing the labor movement as a whole, butting heads with a city council narrowly controlled by the machine and its business allies and he refused to actively ban the IWW's activities in the city, or to prevent city unions from associating with it, which endeared him to Haywood.
The General Strike thus proved a crucial moment early in his two-year tenure as Mayor. Within a week of the first walk-off on June 1st, thousands of additional workers from all manner of industries had joined in on a massive sympathy strike, technically illegal under Minnesota law, even though they were technically only targeting General Mills specifically. For the first eleven days of the strike, the mood was peaceful and almost that of a festival atmosphere; children played under the supervision of their picketing parents, there were small cooktops brought out to make meals, and Norwegian and Finnish flags were flown alongside the American one and the red socialist banner as folk songs in native languages were sung. Van Lear made his critical choice on June 12th, when under severe pressure from the city council, especially its President, J.E. Meyers, he formally rejected a proclamation by the council demanding all strikers in Minneapolis immediately go home and attempting to compel the Mayor to deploy the police against the strikers. The next day, in a meeting with the head of the Minneapolis Police Association - one of the first cities where the police informally organized, if still unchartered and technically not a union - Van Lear made it clear that he would not retaliate against officers who joined the picket lines and would "look favorably" upon attempts to formally organize not merely as a chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police but as a genuine union after the strike if they would so please, a move that was popular with many of the rank-and-file but was vehemently opposed by the city council once word reached them of the meeting.
At this point, deep into the second week of the strike, sympathy actions had begun across Minnesota and even into northern Wisconsin and Michigan, now expanding to include Hormel Foods, another major agricultural producer in the region, as well as subsidiary mines in the Iron Range and Upper Peninsula that supplied US Steel or National Lead. Rail workers in Duluth went so far as to seize the railyards and declared that they would block all commerce coming in and out of the city until ARU members in Minnesota and Wisconsin were given a 20% pay raise to account for skyrocketing costs of consumer goods and agreed-upon wage controls during the war. The situation had rapidly spiraled out of control and was no longer simply a matter for Minneapolis; much of the Upper Midwest seemed ready to combust..."
- The American Socialists
"...politicians sympathetic to organized labor such as Wisconsin's LaFollette were hesitant to so openly embrace the strikes, especially as the incendiary Bill Haywood arrived in Minneapolis on June 20th to appear with the strikers and pronounced that the city was in a "revolutionary fervor" and suggested "the Lexington and Concord of the American laborer." The introduction of syndicalist organizing to the equation, and the considerably more radical direction that sympathy strikes were taking in Duluth and with dairy farmers hoarding their stock rather than sell it to Hormel across Minnesota, began to openly worry many leaders, and pressure fell instantly on Governor Charles August Lindbergh, a newly-elected Democrat who had been a long-serving Congressman and had been born in Sweden, making him the perfect profile for his state.
Lindbergh was a progressive Democrat whose sympathies had always lay with the outer bounds of policy ideas proposed by the agrarian wing of his party (he had supported William Jennings Bryan at the 1912 convention, for instance) but despite having represented a district in central Minnesota's farm belt had maintained good relations with the urban faction of the party, especially with "St. Paul Gang" which was regarded as the more conservative wing and was centered in the businesslike, professional state capital. As Governor, Lindbergh had entered office with an ambitious program of reform he had hoped to maneuver through factionalized but collaborative Democratic majorities in the state legislature, and he was loathe to see this agenda derailed by the strike. It was also the case that his sympathies were very clearly with the strikers, even as he stayed put in St. Paul and refused to "cross the river" to address the issue, maintaining until late in June that it was a matter for General Mills, Hormel and the United States Railroad Administration to solve with their employees. As such, he declined to intervene against Van Lear when the latter did not call out the police to crush the strikes as they grew increasingly rowdy and militant, and would also not call up the Minnesota National Guard to keep order.
Lindbergh's choice was probably wrong in the short term for him, though today he is well-regarded in Minnesotan politics for it. It was reflective of an increasing view amongst Democratic officeholders that held that the power of the state should not be brought about to bear to settle otherwise peaceful private disputes, and that the role of the government should be one of facilitator, arbitrator and negotiator, not enforcer. It was this thread that had brought about the Labor Board of Arbitration at the federal level in 1905 under President Hearst, and Minnesota's own boardmembers were hard at work trying to hammer out a solution, even as General Mills and Hormel dragged their feet as they were of the view that they would not negotiate until the strike ended (Minnesota law allowed arbitration to go on during a strike, not purely before or after one). Federal officeholders had different ideas, however, and the rhetoric emerging from Haywood and others in Minneapolis was starting to worry them. Accordingly, on June 28th, Attorney General Willis Van Devanter sought an injunction in the District Court of Minnesota against striking railroad workers in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and after securing it turned around on July 2nd and requested an injunction against the rest of the strikers..."
- Second Wave: The Postwar Progressive Revolution of 1917-31
By the standards of Socialist candidates of the time, Van Lear was not particularly radical. He had been one of the party's most full-throated supporters of the war, in contrast with ultra-pacifist figures like Haywood who had with their stance driven themselves into irrelevancy. His program for urban reform looked more like that of men like former Cleveland Mayor (and Democratic Vice President) Tom Johnson than genuine iconoclasts like Milwaukee's Seidel or Seattle's Wells. Indeed, his main priority was growing the labor movement as a whole, butting heads with a city council narrowly controlled by the machine and its business allies and he refused to actively ban the IWW's activities in the city, or to prevent city unions from associating with it, which endeared him to Haywood.
The General Strike thus proved a crucial moment early in his two-year tenure as Mayor. Within a week of the first walk-off on June 1st, thousands of additional workers from all manner of industries had joined in on a massive sympathy strike, technically illegal under Minnesota law, even though they were technically only targeting General Mills specifically. For the first eleven days of the strike, the mood was peaceful and almost that of a festival atmosphere; children played under the supervision of their picketing parents, there were small cooktops brought out to make meals, and Norwegian and Finnish flags were flown alongside the American one and the red socialist banner as folk songs in native languages were sung. Van Lear made his critical choice on June 12th, when under severe pressure from the city council, especially its President, J.E. Meyers, he formally rejected a proclamation by the council demanding all strikers in Minneapolis immediately go home and attempting to compel the Mayor to deploy the police against the strikers. The next day, in a meeting with the head of the Minneapolis Police Association - one of the first cities where the police informally organized, if still unchartered and technically not a union - Van Lear made it clear that he would not retaliate against officers who joined the picket lines and would "look favorably" upon attempts to formally organize not merely as a chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police but as a genuine union after the strike if they would so please, a move that was popular with many of the rank-and-file but was vehemently opposed by the city council once word reached them of the meeting.
At this point, deep into the second week of the strike, sympathy actions had begun across Minnesota and even into northern Wisconsin and Michigan, now expanding to include Hormel Foods, another major agricultural producer in the region, as well as subsidiary mines in the Iron Range and Upper Peninsula that supplied US Steel or National Lead. Rail workers in Duluth went so far as to seize the railyards and declared that they would block all commerce coming in and out of the city until ARU members in Minnesota and Wisconsin were given a 20% pay raise to account for skyrocketing costs of consumer goods and agreed-upon wage controls during the war. The situation had rapidly spiraled out of control and was no longer simply a matter for Minneapolis; much of the Upper Midwest seemed ready to combust..."
- The American Socialists
"...politicians sympathetic to organized labor such as Wisconsin's LaFollette were hesitant to so openly embrace the strikes, especially as the incendiary Bill Haywood arrived in Minneapolis on June 20th to appear with the strikers and pronounced that the city was in a "revolutionary fervor" and suggested "the Lexington and Concord of the American laborer." The introduction of syndicalist organizing to the equation, and the considerably more radical direction that sympathy strikes were taking in Duluth and with dairy farmers hoarding their stock rather than sell it to Hormel across Minnesota, began to openly worry many leaders, and pressure fell instantly on Governor Charles August Lindbergh, a newly-elected Democrat who had been a long-serving Congressman and had been born in Sweden, making him the perfect profile for his state.
Lindbergh was a progressive Democrat whose sympathies had always lay with the outer bounds of policy ideas proposed by the agrarian wing of his party (he had supported William Jennings Bryan at the 1912 convention, for instance) but despite having represented a district in central Minnesota's farm belt had maintained good relations with the urban faction of the party, especially with "St. Paul Gang" which was regarded as the more conservative wing and was centered in the businesslike, professional state capital. As Governor, Lindbergh had entered office with an ambitious program of reform he had hoped to maneuver through factionalized but collaborative Democratic majorities in the state legislature, and he was loathe to see this agenda derailed by the strike. It was also the case that his sympathies were very clearly with the strikers, even as he stayed put in St. Paul and refused to "cross the river" to address the issue, maintaining until late in June that it was a matter for General Mills, Hormel and the United States Railroad Administration to solve with their employees. As such, he declined to intervene against Van Lear when the latter did not call out the police to crush the strikes as they grew increasingly rowdy and militant, and would also not call up the Minnesota National Guard to keep order.
Lindbergh's choice was probably wrong in the short term for him, though today he is well-regarded in Minnesotan politics for it. It was reflective of an increasing view amongst Democratic officeholders that held that the power of the state should not be brought about to bear to settle otherwise peaceful private disputes, and that the role of the government should be one of facilitator, arbitrator and negotiator, not enforcer. It was this thread that had brought about the Labor Board of Arbitration at the federal level in 1905 under President Hearst, and Minnesota's own boardmembers were hard at work trying to hammer out a solution, even as General Mills and Hormel dragged their feet as they were of the view that they would not negotiate until the strike ended (Minnesota law allowed arbitration to go on during a strike, not purely before or after one). Federal officeholders had different ideas, however, and the rhetoric emerging from Haywood and others in Minneapolis was starting to worry them. Accordingly, on June 28th, Attorney General Willis Van Devanter sought an injunction in the District Court of Minnesota against striking railroad workers in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and after securing it turned around on July 2nd and requested an injunction against the rest of the strikers..."
- Second Wave: The Postwar Progressive Revolution of 1917-31