Fergus Cain

Ferghus Cain was the 3rd Premier of Lathadu, serving from 1890 to 1900. A labor organizer and revolutionary leader, Cain served in the Lathadun Diet for 20 years, beginning in 1870 until his being unofficially selected as Carmac Kneale's successor as Premier in 1890 by Kneale himself and other leadership figures in the Democratic Laborer’s Party.

Cain was born into poverty in a lower-middle class Gundiagh family in southeastern Lathadu. He was an active member of the region's nascent worker's movement, beginning as a leader among local bricklayers to become amongst the most influential figures in Lathadu's southeast. He thoroughly opposed the Teige Government, and quickly joined forces with the growing Anti-Aristocrat Movement in the early days of the Silent Years. He led men at battles against Loyalist forces in the battles of Mairgiau, Soailley, and Drundin Foain. Cain was elected in the first round of elections for the National Diet. Throughout his service, he firmly supported hardline Wheelerist policies and gained a reputation as a skilled orator.

At the 1889 DLP National Convention, delegates chose Cain at the extreme urging of incumbent Premier Carmac Kneale. He pursued a low-key campaign and faced little in the way of serious opposition. His accomplishments in office included a crackdown on the Gundiagh Cloan crime syndicates, advocating for improvements in agricultural and industrial infrastructure, and improvements in the young republic's educational system.

Early life (1848-1862)
Ferghus Cain was born the youngest of five children in the fall of 1848 in a farmhouse near what is today Sailleyr, in Lathadu's marshy southeast. His father's family traced their ancestry back to the time of the Long Walk, having been forced south in the middle ages by Salian conquest. His father, Finlo Holt, was born in Sheeargysyjiass, a small village to the southwest of Ushteyghoo. Holt moved to the Sailleyr area to woo his childhood sweetheart, Sissott Stowell, only to find her already married. He instead wed her sister, Tissot. Ferghus was named for an earlier son of Tissot and Finlo who had died in infancy.

In 1851, a small Ayekist temple was erected on the site of what would become Sailleyr. Finlo and Tissot joined the congregation almost immediately, a decision that would go on to influence young Ferghus' life. Following the discovery that Finlo had been conducting an affair, a scandalous divorce was awarded to Tissot. Ferghus and his siblings were raised in poverty by his strong-willed mother. He was generally considered to be her favorite child, and the two remained close for the rest of her life. Ferghus took his mother's side in the divorce, and noted his father's 1897 death with satisfaction in his diary. From his youth he enjoyed his mother's stories about their ancestry, especially those about his warrior ancestors who had battled against Salian and Ordrish occupation.

Labor leader and militant (1862-1870)
Cain left home at age 14 in 1862 and found work in the port of Ushteyghoo. He worked on a canal boat, managing the mules that pulled it. After only six weeks, Cain found work at a nearby brickworks and quickly rose in popularity amongst his workmates. At 16 in 1864, he led his fellow workers in a strike that was brutally repressed by Loyalist paramilitary forces under the command of Bann Tiege. To avoid death, Cain and other ringleaders fled Ushteyghoo back to his native southeast. The next year, he made contact with other Anti-Aristocrats in the area and began setting up a local cell. He later said of his childhood, "I lament that I was born into poverty and strife, and in this chaos of childhood, seventeen years passed before I found my true purpose. . . a precious seventeen years when a young man in a time of peace and plenty might have become fixed in manly ways."

Cain spent the years of 1865 to 66 training and climbing the ranks of the Anti-Aristocrat forces in his region, organizing them as they had not previously been. He excelled as a leader and appreciated the power a speaker had over an audience, writing that the speaker's platform "creates much excitement. I love agitation and investigation, and glory in defending complex truth against common error." At this time, Cain is said to have taken many lovers among the Anti-Aristocrat and civilian ranks, both male and female. However, the constant need to go from town to town to get supplies and avoid detection aggravated Cain, and he developed a dislike for what he called "home-seeking," which became, he said, "the law of our lives." As a young man, he had originally attended religious services more to please his mother than to participate, but in his late teens he underwent a kind of religious awakening. He attended many camp meetings, even allowing himself to be submerged in water on the banks of the Aarnieu River in 1867 by rebel cleric Donal Hendull, a popular Ayekist spiritual leader amongst the Anti-Aristocrats.

Following a renewal of offenses by the Anti-Aristocrats across the country in 1868, Cain and his forces made formal contact with the main body of rebel forces under Carmac Kneale. Recognizing his success and dedication to the cause, Kneale commissioned Caine as a colonel in the 44th Republic Infantry regiment. The 44th consisted at the time mostly of a small circle of his battle-hardened veterans, so Cain's first task was to fill its ranks. He did so quickly, recruiting many young men and women from the countryside in the country's southeast. Following a trip from Forbes, Ordrey to purchase rifles and other supplies, Cain led his forces in a protracted campaign focusing on the Aarnieu and its banks in the southeastern part of the country. Their victories at Mairgiau, Soailley, and Drundin Foain severely weaked Loyalist forces' presence in the Aarnieu Delta, and paved the way for Anti-Aristocrat forces under Aedan Forrest to capture the key strategic point of Fort Cannell. Following his forces' victory over a numerically superior garrison of Loyalists at Drundin Foain, Cain was promoted to brigadier general.

Member of Lathadun Diet (1870-1890)
While the war began to draw to a close in 1869 and 70, Cain worried that he and other ranking generals would receive obscure assignments after the war's end, and believed that running for office would allow him to continue his political career. In 1870, he succeeded in being elected to the newly-formed National Diet. Days before his term began, Cain lost his mother and became anxious and conflicted, saying his "desolation of heart" might require his return to "the wild life of the army." He also thought he could expect a favorable command, and decided to meet with then-Premier Carmac Kneale. During their meeting, Kneale urged that he take his seat in the Diet, as there was an excess of generals and a shortage of administration legislators, especially those with knowledge of military affairs. Cain accepted Kneale's suggestion and resigned his military commission to do so.

Kneale met and befriended Minister of State and Defense Edard Corlett at this time, who saw Cain as a younger version of himself. The two agreed politically and considered themselves to be part of the Radical wing of the Anti-Aristocrat (now Peasant and Laborer's) Movement. Once he took his seat in 1871, Cain was frustrated by what he saw as Kneale's reluctance to press the former landowning class hard. Many radicals wanted all such lands confiscated, but Kneale preferred a more gradual approach to allow for local syndicates to form naturally and threatened to reject any more drastic measures. In debate on the Diet floor, Cain supported such legislation and, discussing the expelling of the Salians and the separation from Ordrey, hinted that Kneale might even be thrown out of office for resisting what he described as the "inexorable progressive advance of history." He not only favored expropriations, but also believed that the Loyalists had forfeited any rights. He supported the confiscation of their lands and even exile or execution of Loyalist leaders as a means to ensure a permanent end to their cause. Cain felt that the Diet had an obligation "to determine what action is needed to achieve equal justice and prosperity to all loyal persons."

Cain showed leadership early in his legislative career; he was among the first to propose an end to the use of bounties in military recruiting. Some financially able recruits had used the bounty system to buy their way out of service, which Cain found personally reprehensible. He gave a speech pointing out the flaws of the system, especially in peacetime when their needs were less dire. Under Corlett's influence, Cain became a staunch proponent for state-funded improvement of infrastructure to boost economic growth. He voted with the Radical Wheelerists in passing the Wade-Quayle Bill, designed to give the Diet more authority to authorize expropriation of former Loyalist property, but Kneale vetoed the proposal. CaIn is said to have privately questioned Kneale's worthiness of reelection following the veto, but never expressed such sentiments publicly.

Cain attended the party convention in 1881 and supported Corlett as Kneale's successor in the office of Premier. Despite initial praise, Cain spoke less and less of Corlett's administration as time passed, not wishing to contribute to the growing schism between Corlett's newly moderate wing of the party and Kneale's radical old guard. He did not consider Corlett a good candidate, but is quoted as having said, "he will probably be our man, although I think we could do better." By 1884, he had joined the rising tide of party loyalists wishing to return Kneale to power, and succeeded in doing so. Cain proved crucial to Kneale's winning the southeast, and Kneale promised not to forget his longtime ally once they had recaptured the government. Now an influential party member in his own right, Cain praised Kneale's new efforts to break up trusts that had formed in the Lathadun economy, saying in a speech that his acts, "have conferred on the working man the care of his own destiny, and have placed their fortunes in their own hands."

Premier of Lathadu (1890-1900)
As Kneale's third term as Premier came to a close, Kneale and others in the party leadership began to consider a short list of successors. Not wishing to repeat the mistake of appointing a world-be moderate like Corlett, Kneale tightened the list past the initial candidates before landing on Cain. Despite Corlett's resounding defeat five years' previous, the party remained split into Moderate and Stalwart factions, and Kneale wished to find a successor who could balance both groups' needs without threatening to split the party. As the 1889 convention began, Stalwart rising star Ewan Owell proposed that all delegates pledge to back the eventual nominee in a general election. When several southeastern delegates refused, Owell sought to expel them from the convention. Cain rose to defend his colleagues, giving a passionate speech in defense of their right to reserve judgment. The convention turned against Owell, and he withdrew the motion. The performance delighted Cain's allies and Kneale in particular, who became convinced that he was the only candidate with whom to move forward. By the third round of votes, Cain had won a majority of the convention's delegates without even announcing his candidacy.

With Kneale's personal backing, Cain won the election of 1890 in a landslide, even with growing divisions within the party. Before his inauguration, he was occupied with assembling a cabinet that would engender peace between the party's two factions. As an olive branch, Ewan Owell was nominated as Secretary of State and Defense. Owell was not only among Cain's closest advisors, but was also obsessed with knowing all that took place in the halls of government, and allegedly posted spies in numerous buildings in his absence. Despite the distractions of his first acts in government, Cain delivered an inaugural address before the Diet that was described as "a compendium of virtues." At one point, he emphasized the rights of the individual worker, saying "Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of the virtuous citizen."

Shortly after taking office, Cain worked with the Diet to create the Ministry of Justice, allowing his Attorney General and the new Solicitor General to prosecute the infamous Gundiagh Cloan. Although the previous two Premiers had taken extensive action against the crime syndicate, Cain and the Diet went further and passed a series of laws known as the Enforcement Acts. Using the power vested in his government by the Enforcement Acts, Cain crushed the Cloan and initiated prosecutions across the country of Cloan members and their alleged collaborators. Thormot Calcotte, originally appointed by Kneale in 1875 to lead the charge against the Cloan, was empowered by the Enforcement Acts as well. Cain would eventually recall Calcotte to Calleebane in 1905, well into his second term. In 1891, Cain announced a plan to revitalize Lathadu's industrial and agricultural infrastructure, with the maintenance and construction of numerous levees, dams, and canals. One initiative announced as part of this overall plan was the Four Sisters Initiative, a plan to plant fruit and vegetable gardens in and around many of Lathadu's newer industrial communities in hopes of fighting malnutrition in its worker populations. Although the program took some years to yield full dividends, it proved to be among the most popular and long-lasting of his administration's successes.

In his second term, Cain took a closer look at improving the nation's public education system. According to Lathadu's republican constitution, education was a constitutional right to all people, to be provided through state schools and universities. The reality, however, left much to be desired. During the Silent Years and the time of the Revolution, Lathadu's schools were left mostly to their own devices due to the domestic strife, and most advances in schooling made since had been made by the various guilds and syndicates in the areas of occupational training. In 1895, Cain announced his program "For the Liquidation of Illiteracy in our Country." That same year, all types of schools came under the direct control of the Ministry of Education, and were divided into two levels.

The first level was for children 7 to 13, and the second for children 14 to 17. Cain and his allies recognized that the foundation of their system would depend upon an educated population and development in the broad fields of engineering, natural sciences, life sciences, and social sciences, along with basic education, and therefore sought the improvement of each. In 1897, schools were further divided into three separate types, designated by the number of years of instruction: "seven-year," "four-year." and "nine-year" schools/ Seven and nine-year schools (secondary schools) tended to be more scarce compared to four-year (primary) schools, making it difficult for pupils in some regions to complete their secondary education. Once students finished seven-year studies, they had the right to enter guild-affiliated technical schools. Only nine-year schooling led directly to university-level education.

Later life (1900-1917)
After leaving the office of Premier, Cain remained for some months in Calleebane, advising his replacement Paton Hayward in the assembly of his cabinet. As with his predecessors, Cain had personally selected Hayward as his successor, believing him to be a fitting successor to the mantle of Premier. In 1901, he returned to the Sailleyr area, finding it much changed from the time of his childhood. He was honored with large public celebrations along the way and paid for the construction of a modest home adjacent to the grounds on which he and his siblings had lived. Some expected Cain to run for the National Diet or even Premier, but his private life was embittered by the suicide of his brother Robert in 1909, and he never returned to public life. In 1913, Cain contracted cholera during an epidemic but eventually recovered, although it left him severely weakened. Four years later, he suffered from a series of strokes and eventually died in his sleep.

Legacy
Regarded as among the founding figures of the Republic of Lathadu, Cain had a wide influence on the early development of Lathadu as a modern nation. Historian T. Bowgen wrote, "in some ways-because he was on the winning side of every important issue facing the young republic-Cain was among the most successful and influential of the nation's founding figures." As the successor to the leadership of the Democratic Laborer's Party, he assured its continued dominance in the nation's politics. Various rankings of historians and political scientists tend to rank Cain as an above-average Premier.