Post by Catsmate on Sept 16, 2019 10:39:43 GMT
A vignette.
It was a cool Monday morning when they started work. Directed by a thirty-something man who looked more like a lawyer than an engineer about two hundred men started to dig up the road and prepare for the installation of the tram rails.
Trouble started a quarter-hour later as the city police arrived to stop them. Waving a piece of paper the man in charge, who was in fact a lawyer, demanded that the police stop interfering in lawful business to no avail; he was informed he was under arrest. Fearful of the workforce, and the gathering crowd who supported them, the police chief made an attempt to arrest other workers.
Suddenly a struggle broke out when an officer grabbed a tall, bearded workman by the shoulder. Turning suddenly the worker flattened the cop with one punch. Two others stepped back and draw Colt revolvers, pointing them at the pick wielding man
This was the sign
Within seconds a dozen guns were drawn and brandished, and the outnumbered police mostly fell back, carrying the unconscious body of their comrade with them. The crowd, perhaps a thousand strong even at 7AM, were hostile to them and supportive of the lawyer and his plan. The police chief had disappeared, perhaps to summon reinforcements.
A group of workmen carrying picks moved towards a trio of police blocking them from the continuing their digging. One of the officers raised a revolver and a shot rang out, then three more. Before anyone realised the police hadn't fired, the men charged them, picks raised. More shots, and two workers fell, followed by a cop with a pickaxe in his head.
The crowd split and moved for cover, several of the armed bystanders fired at police with pistols, who fired into the crowd and at the workmen. In thirty seconds fourteen men lay dead or mortally wounded.
Fifteen. In the rush few people noticed that the lawyer who'd been in charge of events had been the first to die, dropped by a bullet of unknown origin.
William Gibbs McAdoo, lawyer, was dead at the age of thirty three.
William Gibbs McAdoo wasn't a particularly nice person. Best known for his failed attempt at the Democratic nomination for the US Presidency in 1920 and 1924 he's was also the son-in-law and Treasury Secretary to President Woodrow Wilson. Under Wilson McAdoo (and fellow Southerners Albert Burleson and Josephus Daniels) reintroduced racial segregation and discrimination into the Federal government.
However McAdoo made one very significant contribution to twentieth century events; he created the modern US economy and made the USA the dominant financial power.
How?
In the hot, chaotic, summer of 1914 the European powers, who'd supplied much of the capital used to expand the US economy in the previous decades, were cashing in their US holdings for gold and shipping the metal home to pay for the war. There was no US Federal Reserve or central bank in 1914 (despite seven years of attempts to create one). Plus J. P. Morgan, who'd previously functioned as a sort of private central bank, was dead.
McAdoo acted quickly and decisively; creating economic policy as he went. He ordered the New York Stock Exchange to close from 31 July 1914; it remained shut for four months. A draconian, and probably illegal, move that stopped the capital flight
The Aldrich-Vreeland Act of 1908, which had authorised the creation of the Federal Reserve but was mired in disputes, had established an emergency currency that banks could access in times of need. McAdoo made a public spectacle, with armoured convoys to deliver gold and currency, to the Treasury building in New York under heavy guard. This created a feeling of reassurance in the jittery markets.
Finally he arranged a bailout for New York City, which owed vast amounts to European creditors and was essentially bankrupt.
It's unlikely that a different Treasury Secretary could have acted as quickly and decisively after the outbreak of the Great War; the Entente powers remove five billion dollars in gold and the already shaky US economy collapses rapidly into a severe Depression.
No US intervention in the Great War, hostility towards the Entente, probably a Central Powers victory and huge social and economic unrest in the USA. Wilson is a one-term president.
Earlier in his career as a Tennessee lawyer and transport mogul McAdoo was indeed involved in a stand-off with police, firemen, bystanders and bystanders in Knoxville in which a man was killed; known as the Battle of Depot Street (wiki) it happened on Monday 01MAY1893 it was the culmination of years of corruption and political machinations. McAdoo lost and moved to New York.
A fascinating (to me anyway) possible alteration in history.
Now your players need to find who sniped McAdoo and why. Was it a plan to effect the course of twentieth century history? Who's behind it? What other plans do they have? What resources can they deploy?
Or was the alteration utterly unrelated to McAddoo's presence?
What happens in 1914? Does Germany win the Great War? Does the USA devolve into chaos and Civil War 2?
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
It was a cool Monday morning when they started work. Directed by a thirty-something man who looked more like a lawyer than an engineer about two hundred men started to dig up the road and prepare for the installation of the tram rails.
Trouble started a quarter-hour later as the city police arrived to stop them. Waving a piece of paper the man in charge, who was in fact a lawyer, demanded that the police stop interfering in lawful business to no avail; he was informed he was under arrest. Fearful of the workforce, and the gathering crowd who supported them, the police chief made an attempt to arrest other workers.
Suddenly a struggle broke out when an officer grabbed a tall, bearded workman by the shoulder. Turning suddenly the worker flattened the cop with one punch. Two others stepped back and draw Colt revolvers, pointing them at the pick wielding man
This was the sign
Within seconds a dozen guns were drawn and brandished, and the outnumbered police mostly fell back, carrying the unconscious body of their comrade with them. The crowd, perhaps a thousand strong even at 7AM, were hostile to them and supportive of the lawyer and his plan. The police chief had disappeared, perhaps to summon reinforcements.
A group of workmen carrying picks moved towards a trio of police blocking them from the continuing their digging. One of the officers raised a revolver and a shot rang out, then three more. Before anyone realised the police hadn't fired, the men charged them, picks raised. More shots, and two workers fell, followed by a cop with a pickaxe in his head.
The crowd split and moved for cover, several of the armed bystanders fired at police with pistols, who fired into the crowd and at the workmen. In thirty seconds fourteen men lay dead or mortally wounded.
Fifteen. In the rush few people noticed that the lawyer who'd been in charge of events had been the first to die, dropped by a bullet of unknown origin.
William Gibbs McAdoo, lawyer, was dead at the age of thirty three.
William Gibbs McAdoo wasn't a particularly nice person. Best known for his failed attempt at the Democratic nomination for the US Presidency in 1920 and 1924 he's was also the son-in-law and Treasury Secretary to President Woodrow Wilson. Under Wilson McAdoo (and fellow Southerners Albert Burleson and Josephus Daniels) reintroduced racial segregation and discrimination into the Federal government.
- Wilson set the tone as much as anyone. He opposed a Federal anti-lynching bill, screened the Birth of a Nation in the White House and declared (to a delegation of Black civil-rights leaders) that "segregation is not humiliating but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen".
- I believe the quote attributed to him in White Darkness, on the invasion of Haiti in 1915, is apocryphal, but utterly in character: "Haitiʼs only six hundred miles from Florida, and right in the middle of the Indies. Now, I donʼt want their niggers giving our niggers any funny ideas."
However McAdoo made one very significant contribution to twentieth century events; he created the modern US economy and made the USA the dominant financial power.
How?
In the hot, chaotic, summer of 1914 the European powers, who'd supplied much of the capital used to expand the US economy in the previous decades, were cashing in their US holdings for gold and shipping the metal home to pay for the war. There was no US Federal Reserve or central bank in 1914 (despite seven years of attempts to create one). Plus J. P. Morgan, who'd previously functioned as a sort of private central bank, was dead.
McAdoo acted quickly and decisively; creating economic policy as he went. He ordered the New York Stock Exchange to close from 31 July 1914; it remained shut for four months. A draconian, and probably illegal, move that stopped the capital flight
The Aldrich-Vreeland Act of 1908, which had authorised the creation of the Federal Reserve but was mired in disputes, had established an emergency currency that banks could access in times of need. McAdoo made a public spectacle, with armoured convoys to deliver gold and currency, to the Treasury building in New York under heavy guard. This created a feeling of reassurance in the jittery markets.
Finally he arranged a bailout for New York City, which owed vast amounts to European creditors and was essentially bankrupt.
It's unlikely that a different Treasury Secretary could have acted as quickly and decisively after the outbreak of the Great War; the Entente powers remove five billion dollars in gold and the already shaky US economy collapses rapidly into a severe Depression.
No US intervention in the Great War, hostility towards the Entente, probably a Central Powers victory and huge social and economic unrest in the USA. Wilson is a one-term president.
Earlier in his career as a Tennessee lawyer and transport mogul McAdoo was indeed involved in a stand-off with police, firemen, bystanders and bystanders in Knoxville in which a man was killed; known as the Battle of Depot Street (wiki) it happened on Monday 01MAY1893 it was the culmination of years of corruption and political machinations. McAdoo lost and moved to New York.
A fascinating (to me anyway) possible alteration in history.
Now your players need to find who sniped McAdoo and why. Was it a plan to effect the course of twentieth century history? Who's behind it? What other plans do they have? What resources can they deploy?
Or was the alteration utterly unrelated to McAddoo's presence?
What happens in 1914? Does Germany win the Great War? Does the USA devolve into chaos and Civil War 2?
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?