“What the fuck is the Alaska Syndicate?” I hear at least four of you think, in the future, because I am special. And no, this isn’t some strange meth drug ring based in Alaska you’ve never heard of, most Meth distribution in the US is done by Mexican cartels and freaks in basements, so don’t worry about that.
The Alaska Syndicate was a conspiracy in 1906 between J.P. Morgan (The actual person, not the Bank, mind you, American banks count as persons these thanks to the US Supreme Court being corrupt as fuck) and the Guggenheim family. That’s right, and actual conspiracy, not a theory, a fact.
And what was the Grand Goal for the dastardly manipulation of the United States of America? Why, to prevent Alaska from getting statehood.
Why? You may ask, I shall regale you with a fairly simple story, by keeping Alaska as a territory, the Syndicate only really had to manipulate the Secretary of the Interior and whatever Senators happened to handle whatever subcommittee in charge of US territorial Oversight.
If Alaska got statehood, they’d have to deal with local politicians, depending on a native electorate, rather than various Apparatchiks in Washington.
The Syndicate managed to get the Secretary of the Interior Richard A. Ballinger to favour them fairly heavily, unfortunately, they got to greedy, and when the Secretary transferred large chunks of a National Forrest to the Syndicate, including land he owned himself, the gig was essentially up.
Well, kinda, the Syndicate’s ownership of various mines would continue until the Great Depression broke the prices of Copper and pretty much everything else.
The Syndicate liquidated their mines and vanished back into the pages of history, Alaska got statehood in 1959, so the Syndicate failed in their secondary purpose of keeping Alaska out in the cold.
They didn’t fail in their primary purpose though, they made an absolutely staggering amount of money, one mine giving up some two hundred million US dollars, in the 1920s.
Not bad at all really. The lesson? Give Puerto Rico Statehood already you racist motherfuckers.