The Messenger - Unit VI

Two men dock a store in a Hooseville

11/03/1933 Seattle

Two homeless men rob a small shop near the port armed with an ax

The event took place shortly before 7:00 p.m. on March 6, when there was only one person on the place. The 16-year-old boy saw two men, in their 40s, enter, one carrying an ax. As soon as they arrived, the two subjects began to scream, demanding all the money there was and threatened by breaking a table. The boy tells how he gave the money raised, near 8 dollars, and the thieves left without anyone noticing the noise.

Surely the police will do nothing, they are not usually involved in what happens in the Hoovervilles, where homeless people and unemployed people live on the threshold of absolute poverty. Since the stock market crash a few years ago, these neighborhoods have been spreading on the outskirts of all the big cities in the country, without going any further, Seattle has 8 different ones.

But how could the situation end up like that? Let's go back a few years. In 1919, United States won the Great War and became the first world power, ledding to what is possibly our best and most rewarding decade, the roaring 1920s. Back then, Charles Mitchell created a system where people could pay a bond and, after some time, the State would return the money with interests. Banks saw this as a good idea and are starting to market new products and helping people access this capital. Everyone wanted to try, but not all of them could because they didn’t have experience, so Mitchell opened brokerage agencies, places where anyone could invest in the stock market, you paid and they gave you a paper to validate your process. This access was very simple and anyone could get into it, getting in debt with this system. In this way, large profits could be obtained with a small capital, money that was usually lent but since you were going to earn a large part, you could pay off that debt without any problem. According to calculations, almost 2/3 of the money invested in Wall St. was borrowed money. The stock market could go up or down according to the demand, but people were willing to pay, demand grew a lot and stock increased. Everything was going great, but this was inflating the prices each time and "an inflationary bubble" started to appear later in 1922, Paul Warburg warned the people that this bubble could break due to the absurd increase of the actions, but nobody listened to him while the were following their "American dream". But the bubble continued getting bigger. 

Wall St.´s stock market on 23rd October 1929

One of the many suicides occurred to the situation

On October 23 the stock market suffered a great blow as the value fell in a single session by 7%, but this was only the first warning of what would happen next day. Next day, people wanted to sell more than 1 million in a few minutes, so the price ended being a third of their value and there were hardly any buyers, and it was impossible to cover the titles purchased with previously since no one could afford them, banks could barely give 10% of what they should. On Tuesday, October 29, the stock market index fell as it never had before. Factories were being closed, leaving people without their jobs and most of them ended up on misery when their lost their savings as the banks went bankrupt. This spread to South America, Europe and even Australia, increasing unemployment and poverty.

Some workers unemployed demanding work

Heads of the banks, like Thomas Lamont, Albert Sigan or Richard Whitney tried to save the situation, and they succeeded. For a few days. The previous president, Herbert Hoover, didn’t know how to handle the problem, causing him to lose the elections and leaving the situation to his opponent, Franklin D. Roosevelt. He has not been in power for more than a few days and has already applied quite severe measures from his New Deal program, which seeks short-term measures, such as the exceptional closure of all banks or the Emergency Banking Act, now we can only wait and hope that the situation improves.

HISTORICAL JOURNALISTS - UNIT 6

          Thursday, 18 July, 1918

HE finally fell

The final of tzar Nicholas II 

His fall started with his abdication on behalf of his son Alexis a year ago but then, due to his medical condition he couln't accept the charge and all the familly decided going into exile.

British government offered the family asylum on 19 March 1917, but they retracted and France decided that the Romanovs would be unwelcome in their country.

Alexander Palace

The final decision was made by the Provisional Government and they decided to send them under houser arrest  to the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo. The Imperial Family were then confined to a few rooms of the palace with total privacy and were strictly  watched over by a guard with fixed bayonets. The regime of their captivity, worked out by Alexander Kerensky himself, envisaged strict limitations in the life of the Imperial Family: an isolation from the outer world, a guard during their promenades in the park, prohibition of any contacts and correspondence apart from approved letters. Due to an increasingly precarious situation in St. Petersburg, the leader of the provisional government, Alexander Kerensky, made the decision to move the Romanov family out of the palace into internal exile in Tobolsk in far away Siberia.

Governor's Mansion

That summer, the failure of the Kerensky Offensive against Austro-Hungarian and German forces in Galicia led to anti-government rioting in Petrograd, known as the July Days. The government feared that further disturbances in the city could easily reach Tsarskoye Selo and it was decided to move the royal family to a safer location. 
The selected town was Tobolsk in Western Siberia. The family left the Alexandra Palace late on 13 August and they reached Tobolsk on 19 August. There they lived in the former Governor's Mansion in considerable confort. On 26 March, when 250 ill-disciplined Red Guards arrived from the regional capital, Omsk. 400 Red Guards were sent to exert their influence on the town. A man called Vasily Yakovlev to bring Nicholas to Moscow, but the family was remove to Yekaterinburg. 

Ipatiev House

They arrived Yekaterinburg on the morning of 30 april and they were imprisioned in the two-storey Ipatiev House. Here the Romanovs were kept under even stricter conditions; their retinue was further reduced and their possessions were searched. Yakov Yurovsky was appointed to command the guard detachment. On 16 July, the Yekaterinburg leadership informed Yurovsky that they had been decided to execute the Romanovs as soon as approval arrived from Moscow. After in Moscow the order was sent,  Yurovsky had organised his firing squad and they waited through the night at the Ipatiev House for the signal to act.

Place of execution

In the early hours of 17 July, the royal family was awakened around 2 am, got dressed, and were led down into a half-basement room at the back of the Ipatiev house. All the family with their doctor and three of their servants were joined and commanded by Yurovsky were shot and bayoneted to death, finishing with that scourge. The bodies have not been found, but offial sources declare the execution.

THE EXPLORERS NEWS UNIT-6

                                                                                                                   23/01/1905

BLOODY SUNDAY IN ST. PETERSBURG

Hundreds of people die in a manifestation

  Yesterday, in the city of St. Petersburg, there was a manifestation of 140.000 women, men and children (most of them where peasants) which resulted in the deaths of more than a hundred people. The protesters, who carried religious icons and portraits of the tsar, where leadered by priest Gapon, next to which they headed towards the Winter Palace. Their objective was to ask the tsar for improvements in their laboural conditions such as an eight hour journey and minimum salary of a daily ruble. They also wanted everyone to be "equal and free" by convening a democratically elected constituent assembly.

    At first everything went on peacefully, but the tsar Nicolas II was not inside the Palace as he had gone to spend the weekend outside. In charge of the palace was his aunt the Duke Vladimir Aleksándrovich who ordered the Royal Guard to fire against the crowd, regardless sex or age. This is the reason why the troops fired against the protesters, causing hundreds of deaths and wounded.

   But how did all this situation start? Well, we have been informed and, as you may know, last year ended with several strikes in the city. In the Putilov Factory, the Workers Association was shut down by the patronal. On the 3rd of this month, the workers of this factory went on strike and, on the next day, more and more factories joined. Finally, on January 7th, an amount of 120 000 workers had gone on strike. From then onwards, the idea of a manifestation started to set among the people.

Putilov Strike (December)

   If we go further in time, after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, a new peasant working class emerged in the cities of Russia but, as the peasants couldn't even talk to their employers, they worked for long hours, low wages and lack of safety precautions, facts that had led to strikes during the last 40 years. Thanks to those strikes, some changes were made, such as the obligation of specifying the working conditions for the peasants before the hiring or the appearance of the work inspectors and, finally, the working hours per day were restricted to 11 and 30 minutes.

   But, all of those measures still weren't good enough and, because of that, the priest Gapon decided to create the Assembly of the Russian Factory and Mill Workers of the City of St. Petersburg, whose main objective was to defend workers' rights and to elevate their moral and religious status without violent disruption.

   On the January 19th-20th night, the decision of going on a manifestation was took by the Assembly, where the main problems and opinions of the workers were made clear to state them during the protest (the main ones were the improvement of working conditions with fairer wages and a working day of eight hours). Before going into the manifestation, it was also made very clear and important that it was not a revolutionary or violent protest. But, in an unexpected way, the tsar left the day before yesterday (21st) for Tsarskoye Selo and, before going, he ordered to deploy the troops around the Winter Palace, hoping that with his absence in the city and the presence of the army, the protesters would stop the manifestation.

The Winter Palace (yesterday)

   But it wasn't like that, the protesters kept their idea and, knowing the aforementioned departure of the tsar, the response they obtained was a violent repression that resulted in hundreds of demonstrators killed and thousands injured. 

   This reaction will probably cause a great stir among the peasants, possibly leading to the tsar eventually giving up and giving them what they ask for and deserve so much.

   Whatever happens, The Explorer News will keep you informed.

FIRST NEWS Unit-6

           

                ONE YEAR AFTER RASPUTIN'S DEATH

       First anniversary of the murder of the mystic who led the country to ruin

On a day like today, December 30th, but in 1916, the Russian Grigori Rasputin was assassinated.

The man was just peasant born in 1869 (Pokróvskoye) who hardly knew how to write. However in 1897 he made a pilgrimage to the Verjoturie monastery where he learned a little theology.

He had a great personality, a deep charisma, a very penetrating gaze and a grat power of oratory. 

So despite his rough appearance and unscrupulous sex, he was even able to reach the Royal Family.

This happened due to hemophilia suffered by Zarévith Alekséi Niloláyevich Románov, heir to the Russian Throne. Tsarina Alejandra and Tsar Nicholas II sought help in Rasputin since Alekséi was their only made chils. From 1907 Rasputin became the savoir of the Royal Family, because he was able to calm the disease. But not because he knew, but because he was able to calm the family, which in turn calmed the child.

However, his reputation fell due to countless relationships he had with aristocratic women. And even members of the Church broke into him, they even tried to cut his penis.

Because of his bad influence on the Royal House, discontent among aristocrats was increasing.

So that day they decided to murder him. The plan was to lure Rasputin to Yusupov's palace.

He went there, despite having received a warning of dager.

Once there, Yusúpov made him wait for the grand duchess, while she was supposedly serving other guests, in a basement room where he was served wine and some cyanide-poisoned cakes.

When Yusúpov saw that the poison didn't take effect he decided to shoot him with a Browning pistol. after this, the body was taken to be thrown over the Bolshoi Petrovsky Bridge into the Neva River, where, according to the autopsy, he died of drowning.

His death was good for the majority of aristocrats, including the other members of the Royal Family who after it distanced themselves from the Tsars. and it was bad for some peasants who felt that Rasputin was also a martyr.

The Messenger- Unit IV

Manifestations, Marx and Engels

22/03/1848 Paris

"A spectre is hunting Europe: the spectre of communism."

The names of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels have begun to become popular in the philosophical world because of the controversial of their ideas, such as their satire to German ideology or to the status of work in England, but it is their most recent work that is causing them the most problems, like Marx being expelled by Belgian police.

The Communist Manifesto emerged as an idea of the League of the Just to write a catechism that taught their communist principles and Engels wrote it, although he ended up modifying it because of how unconventional he was. Marx then reviewed the draft and published the 23-page pamphlet at the end of February in Britain, although the text was in German.

Karl Marx (Left) and Friedrich Engels (Right)

But, at the end of February, France was busy with other issues: the revolution. The government of Guizot, elected in 1846, banned all meetings of those who disagreed with them, although it found a way to pass up these talks for normal dinners. On 22 February the situation became unsustainable. Students and workers went out in masse on the streets, calling for universal suffrage and a change of government. Thousands of soldiers took to the streets the next day, but that did not stop the people, the king dismissed Guizot from his post and, although it seemed positive, the day ended in the death of 65 people by the soldiers. The next morning and with lots of new people, like some small business' owners, the demonstrations passed to liners, robberies and fires, causing the king to abdicate and the republic to return. The low bourgeoisie had joined the proletarians to fight for better conditions and prosperity, having success and overthrowing an entire government. Marx and Engels' definition of conservative socialism.

The burn of last king's throne

It's been less than two days since the copies of the manifesto have arrived to the city, and they haven't had much relevance either, and they may never have it. But the ideas they keep were already important before their existence. There are many thoughts that do not please the people and that sound unnatural, but, although some don’t want or can’t see it, some bases of those thoughts may already be with us, with the whole continent, invisible, unmissable, but they are still there, like a spectre that is just watching.