Paul Bunyan and John Henry both died fighting the machines that started displacing the troublesome and nascent labor unions in the American West. The cost was ruinous for the companies; the new steam and clockwork technology had to be imported from Britain. But cost was nothing compared to being able to achieve dominance over the work force. With a few men running the machines, they were able to pay them enough to not ask questions. They also volunteered (in the spirit of patriotism, of course) to arm steam-mechanicals to act as the National Guard in the Western United States. Giving them their own, government sanctioned, private military.

Clarrence Darrow eventually moves west to help the labor rebellion, stealing plans from his bosses at the railroad companies to help them out.

Clattering clockwork steampunk mechanical American West labor rebellion. Steam and clockwork technology is not in the hands of the everyday person. This is the equivalent to the stealth bomber. The industrial revolution has hit, but we haven’t yet entered into a world where there aren’t still yeoman farmers the farther west you go.

America in the late 19th century, regardless of what you’ve heard or seen in movies, was an absolute shithole. The cities were dirty, and the politics dirtier. Tammany Hall, the election of 1876, the Free Silver movement. William. Jennings. Bryan. I totally need to re-write the ‘Cross of Gold’ speech to reflect steam and clockwork…

Have you ever heard that shitty seventies song, ‘Black Betty’? It was by Ram Jam, and it goes something like ‘Whoa Black Betty, bam bam bam” over and over. I thought this song was about a woman when I first heard it. But it’s actually about the whip that they used in Texas prisons of the era, usually on African-American prisoners. One of the dirty secrets of the post-Reconstruction South is that black folk were rounded up on a regular basis for ‘crimes’ such as jaywalking. They were sent to prison work camps, and basically re-enslaved on this basis.

You here a lot of fringe left and right wing people (and not so fringe) talk about the Posse Commitatus Act, which prevents the government from using the military to act as a police force. But what people either don’t acknowledge or don’t know is that it was a response to having Federal troops in the South. The Federal troops that were protecting some of the early black schools from being destroyed by people like the Klu Klux Klan. The Posse Commitatus Act was a part of the informal deal worked out after the election of 1876 in which the Democratic candidate won, but a committee of thirteen Republicans and twelve Democrats ended up awarding the election to the Republican candidate (go figure). Rather than start up the Civil War again, the Republicans said, okay, let us have the Presidency, and we’ll pull the Federal troops out of the South. Southern Democrats, eager to begin beating down on black people, readily agreed.

As stupid as American politics is today, few people realize how utterly fucked people were in the late nineteenth century. I mean, the American census had specialized terms for people who were one-eighth African-American. (If you were, you were an octoroon.) On top of this, there was almost universal grinding poverty, and a spectacularly bloody labor struggle.

The people were already covered in muck. Lets just add a little more soot. A Steampunk America that uses so much coal that it has to start importing it from overseas…China, if I remember my Henry Adams, had a lot of coal. A world were China gets industrialized quicker… Or what would be the Chinese equivalent of an emirate? Dependant on foreign coal?

Hmmm…All just ideas right now. I’m going to have to go back to some good American labor history. And thank God I bought the Oxford Companion to American History, because I can’t remember all of this shit. At a certain point, even I want to just forget it.

Technology is turning us all into a bunch of time-wasters according to The Observer, which reports that the beep of an email alert alone is costing the US economy $70 billion per year.

[From Distraction: Email "Ding" Costs $70 Billion a Year]

You know what I say to this? The productivity of the American worker has been increasing for something like the past fifty years. For the past forty or so years, wages have been declining.

So, yeah. Fuck you, boss. I’m checking my email. Again.

“Your a small man, Norm, and you shouldn’t forget that.”

Puglisi wasn’t a small man. He stood a good foot taller than Norm Green, Councilman of the city of St. Aquinas. He also had a good hundred pounds on him. He seemed even bigger at the moment, since Norm was sitting at his desk, apparently not having forgotten that he was a small man. He looked as though he was well aware of this fact, and also well aware of the fact that Puglisi was a very big man. But he did not look as though this fact impressed him.

“Lets start over here. What seems to be the problem?”

Puglisi glowered. “You’re supposed to be laundering our money through the public works projects, not skimming off the top for yourself. It’s unwanted attention that puts our investment in danger. We don’t like tricky investments. It gets tricky, we look for a different investment.”

“Look, I don’t know if you realize this, but I don’t really need your money to run a re-election campaign. I’m stepping down and taking over the Public Works. Just another bureaucrat, Puglisi. A poor public servant.” He grinned.”

“The Mayor can fire you…”

“The Mayor can’t shit without me telling him to.”

“So we find a different Mayor.”

Norm laughed, exceptionally hard. “No, I don’t think so. Because if you run someone against me, I’ll out him for being in your pocket. No one can trace anything to me. I laundered your money, and I made sure to launder the money that came to me. So…yeah. Good luck with that.”

Puglisi started to get red. “You’re turning into a big fish, huh? You’re a big fish in one of the smallest fucking ponds in the Midwest, Norm. And I think it’s time you remember that.” He started rolling up his sleeves.

“Oh, you’re going to steal my lunch money?”

Puglisi moved forward, leaning over the desk, forearms bulging. “Listen, cocksucker, you better call your spokesperson and tell them to let everyone know you were in a car wreck, because I’m going to…”

Puglisi vaguely registered the loud report of the pistol, then ceased all awareness. He fell to the ground, dead, bullet hole small in his forehead, yawning cavity out the back of his skull.

Norm, still sitting at his desk, calmly clutching the gun, looked at the two goons standing at the door who had come with Puglisi. They’d had no time to react, and now the man they were supposed to protect was dead.

“Anyone care to finish that little speech he was making?”

The two looked at each other, shrugged, and shook their heads.

“Good. I was hoping you’d be smart.” He leaned back, relaxing a bit, but still held the small pistol he’d pulled from his jacked. “I am a small man. And this is a small city. I have no illusions about being a big fish.” He looked out his window at the skyline of St. Aquinas.

“A man should be happy with things that suite his stature. And I’ll be happy having this city in my back pocket.”