Three States of Alaska

This post is an extension of the timeline created by Allen W. McDonnell in his "Alaska Provision added to the Immigrant Act of 1929" on Today in Alternate History, in which the Last Frontier's gates are opened to a new generation of immigrants escaping the coming war in Europe.

January 3, 2009, celebrated the semi-centennial anniversary of the third state created from Alaska Territory to enter the Union. Two had already been created in the south, which was quickly populated after the 1937 "Opening of Alaska" to immigrants eager to flee increasingly fascist Europe. Valdez had exploded from a town of one thousand to one hundred thousand, and the efforts of hardworking immigrants with little property were combined with a large population of wealthy Jewish immigrants who readily invested in their new home. The maritime climate proved suitable for farming, reinvigorating the "160 acres" American dream that had settled the West.

Many Americans in the Lower 48 were suspicious of the influx of foreigners (even installing restrictions that immigrants remain in the Alaska Territory until they become citizens, although children born there were granted immediate citizenship), but the Alaskans proved their loyalty in the Battle of Dutch Harbor in June of 1942. The naval base there, along with the Army's Fort Mears, were well warned by fishermen (the largest industry in what would become known as Kodiak) before they came under the assault of two Japanese aircraft carriers along with support cruisers and destroyers. Over the following months, militia joined US troops in the Aleutian Campaign, which reversed the Japanese gains on the islands and threatened their empire's northern flank. Attention to Alaska competed with headlines of Guadalcanal, where newsmen nicknamed Alaska the "icicle in Tokyo's side."

After the war, the more peaceful eastern part of southern Alaska, now well populated for a decade, organized itself into America's 49th state in 1946. Thanks much to the military boosts in its economy during the reconstruction of the Pacific and increasing military standing against the Soviet Union, Kodiak gained statehood in 1949.

Cold War politics arguably rushed Seward to statehood, too, in 1959 despite being thinly populated. Few were dismissive, however, at seeing Seward's great natural resources better supported as a state than as a territory. The center of learning that had built up in the fittingly named College, near Fairbanks, featured physicists such as Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, who championed the construction of a particle accelerator built on cheap land under a reindeer ranch. Seward proved itself invaluable to the energy requirements of the nation not only through experimental nuclear power and the established hydroelectric dam in Rampart Canyon, but also in the extensive oilfields discovered first in Prudhoe Bay and then throughout the North Slope.

Through the efforts of hardworking Americans who carved out a new life in a new world, his words proved true when U.S. General Billy Mitchell stated to the U.S. Congress in 1935, "I believe that in the future, whoever holds Alaska will hold the world. I think it is the most important strategic place in the world."

Karl Marx Gets a Raise

This is a companion piece to Today in Alternate History's "Passing of Horace Greeley" in which we explore a world where Marx wasn't radicalized.

While he spent his free time exploring new facets of scientific study into economics and social science, German-exile-in-London philosopher Karl Marx made his living (or what could be called one) as a correspondent for newspapers, most famously the New York Tribune, where Editor-in-Chief Horace Greeley defended him to critics with, "Mr. Marx has very decided opinions of his own, with some of which we are far from agreeing, but those who do not read his letters are neglecting one of the most instructive sources of information on the great questions of current European politics."

Greeley supported Marx's voice, but Managing Editor Charles Dana would later be described by biographer Franz Mehring as "a hard-boiled Yankee business man" in practice despite his socialist leanings. Their employer-employee relationship was largely one-sided in power: "not only did Dana immediately put Marx on half pay at the first sign of slacking sales, but he paid only for those articles which he actually printed as Marx’s work, nor was he bashful in throwing out whole articles when their general line did not suit his purpose. On occasions it happened that for three weeks, and even six weeks on end, all the contributions which Marx sent over found their way into the waste-paper basket."

Marx's frequent collaborator Friedrich Engels (who was independently wealthy and often helped out the Marx family), "In a fit of anger ... once declared that Dana’s socialism resolved itself into the lousiest petty-bourgeois cheating, and in fact, although Dana was well aware of Marx’s value as a contributor and did not fail to advertise that value to his readers, he showed Marx every form of ruthlessness which a capitalist exploiter feels himself entitled to show towards exploited labour-power dependent on him for its existence. By no means his worst offence was that he often stole the contributions Marx sent in and published them in a garbled form as editorial articles, a proceeding which caused their real author understandable annoyance." When he had calmed down, Engels decided to put his words on paper in a letter to Greeley. Feeling that he might lose one of his most fascinating voices (and knowing a goodwill story when he heard one), Greeley determined to rectify the poor payments and encouraged Marx to use his own position as an example to others in calling for fair wages.

The argument between Greeley and Dana proved to be the end of Dana's time with the Tribune; he left to join the war effort. While Marx was more in agreement with Dana's opinions that the Civil War should be fought and won as opposed to Greeley's calls for peace that would later be used as campaign fodder calling him treasonous in the 1872 election, Marx was forever grateful. His coverage of European perspectives of the war became ignored on the homefront, prompting Marx to move his family to New York in 1863. There he wrote extensively about the plight of newly liberated slaves during Reconstruction, making numerous tours of the South, as well as criticizing the early "Gilded Age" and routinely returning to Europe. When Greeley passed in 1872, Marx wrote his widely applauded obituary for the Tribune.

The relationship between reporter and editor was remembered by President John F. Kennedy a century after Marx's raise, speaking to the American Publisher's Association, "If only this benevolent New York newspaper had treated him less kindly, we would not have had one of our strongest voices among the cries for workers' rights; history might have been different. And I hope all publishers will bear this lesson in mind the next time they receive a poverty-stricken appeal for a small increase in the expense account from an obscure newspaper man."