- TURTLESHROOM LABOR THREAD NAVIGATION:
- PART ONE: You're looking at it.
- PART TWO, COUP D'ETAT: http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic ... 4&t=361265
- OOC THREAD: http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic ... p=27140627
- PART THREE: http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic ... 4&t=363999
- PART FOUR: http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic ... 4&t=364605
- PART FIVE: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=417442
NATIONSTATES
THE TURTLESHROOMER LABOR THREAD
The economy was slumping as engagement with TurtleShroomer tankers and cargo ships exiting Dire Dire Docks were intercepted near Paradoxian waters by forces like Allanea and Urmanian. Throughout TurtleShroom, company towns were facing leaner times, as uranium and petroleum booms in other nations in the Region forced competition and lower prices for TurtleShroomer goods. Deprived of the gravy train yielded by oil and mining, exports shifted to TurtleShroom's famed agricultural goods, such as cotton, spices, tea, coffee, vegetables, oats, and natural rubber.
Well, that was the plan, anyway. The sky didn’t really like this idea. This was the Wet Season in TurtleShroom, and the country was facing record monsoons. With a few solitary days of interruption, rain had pummeled TurtleShroom since the start of February. Cabin fever was setting in and farmers watched with teary eyes as their livelihood simply washed away. Sorrow and resentment entered into the hearts of the rich and the poor alike. Businesses had to furlough their employees when no one came in because of the rain. Everything that could have gone wrong, did.
Company towns couldn’t afford to make their tenants work and have their exports sit clogged at the train station. All across TurtleShroom, residents were informed that the company store would have to either reduce or halt the sale of coveted luxuries like coffee or multimedia equipment such as radioes, batteries, and portable video games. Even the computers in the recreation centers had to be rationed.
Tenants in company towns, the unquestioned bedrock of all of TurtleShroom's heavy industry, were without entertainment and without purpose for weeks on end. With nothing to do, these employees, desperate for something to stave the boredom, got their umbrellas and headed to the big cities to find something to do. Compensation checks in tow, these creatures provided an influx to city tourism, but not in the way it was expected. The cities were hit hard by the economy as well, and restless company town employees found little to do there, as well.
That’s when the nightmare scenario began. The rain was not the only storm torrent in TurtleShroom. A much bigger storm, a perfect storm, was imminent.
When TurtleShroomers get really bored and have no immediate entertainment, they tend to coalesce together and talk politics, economy, religion, and society. Even the most uneducated TurtleShroomers had opinions and loved to share them.
This was a problem, though, because these normally simple folk were also in big cities. Any nation knows that cities are hives of anti-status quo tomfoolery and left wing ignorance, no matter how conservative or even reactionary the populace is.
As they attended free civic centers and free debate halls, fiery leftists found a new audience, bored and bitter, to spread their propaganda.
This was especially the case in and around the City of Shroomville. The unincorporated outskirts of the city, and a vast supermajority of its employees, were truck system tenants. Shroomville was one of the hardest hit in the economic downturn, and there was no short of radicalism from famous agitators, particularly Ashton Fish*.
-and it was there, that the nightmare began.