The Mandarin is away on business, standing in the middle of a desert, covered in white dust, with a silver coat on and huge goggles, holding a clipboard while watching a large fiery red cloud mushroom upwards while muttering approvals to himself of his Very Good Work. While he is away for the next couple of days, feel free to enjoy this post of his from December 15, 1921.

Your Mandarin is peeved, peeved, that once again the unions seem to grow unfettered. In Kansas, you may have read, striking union coal miners at the Pittsburgh (Kansas) mine employed women to attack non-striking miners under the false assumption that the miners would be unwilling to defend themselves against them. Wrong! The Kansas national guard is called in, and four of the women were arrested.

Please, the Mandarin knows that Alex Howat is behind the entire thing, and I would not be at all surprised if he winds up getting arrested for it. He has been thumbing his nose at the Harding administration for too long, and POTUS29 will only tolerate organized labor for so long. Howat is lucky that Coolidge is not president, because the Gormogons understand that he is even nastier toward labor. If he ever becomes President, and there is something afoot that the Volgi is working on (hush!), we will see if this is true. Coolidge might indeed prove to be a great president for it.

It boils down to this: if we do not do something to stop the spread of the unions, the Mandarin predicts that they will just about tank the growing economy of the 1920s.

Anyway, screw Howat. He’s a jerk who needs his stomach kicked. Let us hope there is a judge out there willing to do it.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.