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A brief history of Chlymidia Mountains various governments

     In 1835, the loose collection of settlements in Central Leatherstocking NY's Schoharie County, known as Crumm Mountain, officially became an incorporated village.   The village charter provided for a Mayor and Village Council to be elected every two years.  The primary objectives of the municipal government were to keep law and order and plan the development of the town.  In 1835, Samuel Weller was elected Mayor.   Samuel Weller was a college educated City planner, and had designed and built many of the existing roads and infrastructure of the town.   Weller planned to build an infrastructure suitable for the development of industry.   Samuel Weller served as Mayor until 1849 at which point he resigned.   Replaced by Melvin Blunk.   Although Blunk was committed to the idea of industrial development, he was also interested in taking advantage of the benefits of high political office.   Blunk took payments from all kinds of interests in return for access to power and even high level village positions.   By this time, the population of Crumm Mountain had grown enormously.    In 1854, The Wyckoffs Feed Company opened up a factory in Crumm Mountain which made 500 jobs available.   People flocked from all over to work these jobs.  With this sudden population growth, all kinds of new businesses began to sprout up.    A period of prosperity followed the opening of the plant.   For the jobs paid well, and the city's economy expanded.  After a while the Village became insufficient to handle the demands of the inflated population.   Village Mayor Melvin Blunk led the call to make Crumm Mountain officially a city.   Of course he only did so because it meant that he would control more money and more jobs.   So in 1861 the state made it official and Melvin Blunk was elected the first Mayor of The City of Crumm Mountain.   Nine years passed and relative prosperity ensued.  Melvin Blunk continued to win re-election despite allegations of corruption and malfeasance.   In 1870, the city caught the attention of one Raymond Manchester, a banking and agribusiness magnate from Schenectady, NY.   Manchester, a cranky old millionaire, was simply looking to buy up as much of everything he could.  He was interested only in building a profitable empire.   In 1870, Manchester bought the Wyckoffs Feed Company out from under it's original owners, using dirty banking tactics.   Almost immediately upon acquiring the plant Manchester lowered wages and increased productivity demands.   Workers were displeased, but what could they do?   
     So impressed with how profitable the Wyckoffs Feed plant was, Manchester decided to open another plant.   And thus Manchester Mills was open for business in 1874.   The new plant brought with it, 500 new jobs.   Of course, wages weren't great, and the hours were long, but atleast it was work.  As a direct result of Manchester's low wages, the local economy of Crumm Mountain began to wane, at the same time Manchester's personal fortune skyrocketed.   Local citizens began to take notice of this.   One such citizen, Carla Karas, a factory worker who quit Manchester Mills to start her own newspaper,  The Agitator,  spent hours documenting the poor conditions of Manchester's factories.    Many articles for this paper were, in fact written while she and her co-workers were locked in the factory.  
     During this period several individuals rose to prominence through championing the downtrodden workers and criticizing unfair economic treatment.   James Harroway, a local union-instigator had tried several times to organize the workers, but failed after being beaten by hired thugs.   Another such individual was Bart Podpadic.   Podpadic was a naturally charismatic person, with very striking features and a gift for communication and oratory.   Despite his natural talents, Podpadic put very little faith in words alone, and used much of his abilities to incite people to direct action against their oppressors.  Podpadic had taken notice of economic hardships at a young age and read widely authors such as Karl Marx, Peter Kropotkin, and Mikhail Bakunin.   These writers helped to shape George Podpadic's anarcho-syndicalist tendencies.   For several years Podpadic was involved in various workplace sabotage schemes, destroying property, monkeywrenching machinery, cutting into profit margins, anything that hindered the exploiting capitalist class.   In 1882, these individuals decided to work together and formed the Council of Industrial Workers.   The original Council consisted of Podpadic and Harroway, as well Cassandra Karas, Herman Szary, E.W. Winzler, Luther Winegard, and Ed Larson.   United, the radicals formed a formidable group.  Combining the both political and terrorist tactics, they were able to make a serious dent in the existing social order.   Later on they would do more then that.   In 1884, Raymond Manchester passed on, leaving his Crumm Mountain holdings to his son Harold Manchester.    Harold ran the cities factories a lot crueler then his Father did, in fact at one point the conditions even compelled Mayor Melvin Blunk to publicly denounce Manchester.   It was no use.   Manchester continued to pay low wages and require long hours.   Gradually Manchester began increasing his influence in the City.   He bought the Bank of Crumm Mountain, he purchased the local newspaper, and even started a real estate company.   Throughout the 1880's the economy of Crumm Mountain began to decline rapidly, of course not for the wealthy bankers and bureaucrats who had been doing the exploiting, no they were living it up, in Josephs Heights, a wealthy neighborhood, developed by Manchester's real estate firm.    With these developments, the workers in Crumm Mountain were beginning to get awfully resentful.   A series of unsuccessful strikes got the workers nowhere throughout the 1880's.  Until, 1889 when the Council of Industrial Workers organized two simultaneous strikes, one at Manchester Mills, and the other at Wyckoff's.   The general strike lasted eleven days.   National Guardsmen were called in, but couldn't force the strikers down.  Eventually the strike ended with the Council of Industrial Workers in control of the plants.   Essentially the workers had expropriated the factories, and instead of Manchester selling the products they produced and pocketing the profits, the workers themselves would sell the products and distribute the profits evenly among themselves.   Unfortunuately, this arrangement didn't last, and the plants were returned to Manchester, a little less then a year later.   Although conditions had improved greatly after the expropriation, Crumm Mountain workers had had a taste of revolution and didn't want to give up that easily.   So for the next four or five years, the workers battled management with strikes, sabotage, and sit-ins, this struggle eventually made running a profitable enterprise impossible.  As a result, the city began losing revenue and the locally economy began to dry up.   But the workers didn't care, because they had seen none of the prosperity they were now denying Crumm Mountain.  Only the rich had benefitted.   In 1894, Melvin Blunk resigned as Mayor, totally frustrated at not having any revenue to play around with.   Over the next three years, conditions in the city began to rapidly deteriorate.   As the city ran out of money, basic city services went unprovided.  Eventually the state ordered the city to hold an election for Mayor.  1897 Harold Manchester ran for and won.   Manchester got asked the state and federal government for a bailout and got it.  Eventually the city was put back on it's feet.   At this point, Podpadic and the Council of Industrial Workers had to step back and reassess their strategies.  
The CIW realized that if they were going to    



1975-New city charter established, creating City Legislature, Mayor, and simple judicial system.  


1950-City Charter established, very pro-business, gave Mayor very little power, with most going to the Common Council.