Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20240622

Its now by distinct honor and privilege to introduce dr. Sally mcmillen, he babcock professor of hit in Davidson College in north carolina. She earned he ph. D at Duke University and we learned today got a degree in library science. She has been one of the most important and productive scholars of 19th century womens history. Their many books include motherhood and the old south southern women black and white and seneca falls and the origin of the womens Rights Movement. Her brand new book which we are celebrated tonight and received a wonderful review in the Los Angeles Times is entitled losey stone an unapologetic life. A path breaking activist whose life has been hidden too long. Losey stoned a last has a biography worthy of her inspired and inspiring life. Please help me welcome to Franklin Library society. Dr. Sally mcmillen. [applause] thank you so much, rich, and i just wanted to sea its an absolute delight to be here. I want to thank rich for inviting me and for the Library Company for also inviting me, and its just a pleasure to be in philadelphia. Its a great city, and i actually have heard of the Library Company of philadelphia but never been here before. Got my own personal tour this morning and its an exceptional place. So you are very lucky to have this. So let me start on lucy stone. In the rotunda of our nations capitol stands an impressive monument celebrating three remarkable 19th century william, important in winning universal suffrage for women. Lucretia motte indicate a stanton and susan b. Anthony but this woman is every bit as deserving, loseyston. She was equally dedicated to the womens Rights Movement as were these three women and also a celebrated passionate orator for the Antislavery Movement. Her absence from the monument says volumes about how we tell our history and whom we celebrate. Tonight i want to chisel lucy at least temporarily into that mary marsh marble. I my yet for commented i seemed to enjoy writing about people and should condition a biography. Losey stone immediately came to mind. For men areas in my teaching i talk about and use lucy stone as an example of not only a great woman but also how often we leave important people out of our past. So i plunged in, using lucys and her family lazy correspondence convention reports and the widespread newspaper coverage she generated. What was especially fun was with my husband visiting several places where lucy had lived and died. Even to the none of her Homes Remains stand actually being present at these various cites sites and imagining her living there gave me a better sense who she was. Born august 13 1818, near the village of westbrookfield, massachusetts, she grew up on farm the sixth of seven children. Er father, francis embraced patriarchal he expected obeadsens from his wife and their children. As lucy later wrote there was only one will in our home, and that was my fathers. Like most farm children lucy and her siblings helped plant crops, gardened, hauled wood and water, canned food, drove cattle milked cows, cooked, laundered, and and sewed. Lucys mom was a pieos woman who instilled in her children the meaning of right and wrong and insisted they become good christians. Francis and hannah believed in education, and lucy, like her siblings, attended Common Schools until she was 16. But lucy sensed the need for further education. In order for her to lead a more purposeful life. When shed asked her parents if she could continue her schooling they said, she had to have more than enough education to find a good husband. Which of course was the goal for nearly all young women at that time. Lucy however had little interest in marriage and began teaching school, and intermittently attending september messsters at a number of private academies in the area including the newly opened female seminary. She learned of a new college in ohio founded in 1833 that was doing the absolute unthinkable at the time, accepting women and africanamericans. She was determined to attend. So francis had sent two of lucys brothers to college. He refused to help pay her way since she was a woman and in his eyes and the eyes of most americans, had absolutely no need for Higher Education. So lucy caught stool saved moyer, and in 1843 with 92 traveled 650miles to attend owner lean. One can only imagine the raised buy eyebrows when fellow travelers learn she was alone and headed to, of all places the First College in the nation to accept women. She scrimped and saved and worked to earn enough money to pay her expenses. At one point she worked three jobs and slept only four hours a night, and she studied and she studied. Lucy stood out not only because she was brilliant and outspoken but unlike most students and factually at obeliny she was supporting theyed of Williams Lloyd garrison, one of the nations most rad cap abolitionists, and while obelan was remarkable for aid emptying women and africanamerican is embraced traditional ideas how women should behalf. The school did not believe women should be seen in public, and after lucy delivered a electric tire to village residents as they celebrate haitis Independence Day she was reprimand by the ladys committee. Women students were not allowed to speak in public, take rhetoric classes or participate in mens debating societies. So she and her best friend, anthoineette brown founded a womens debating society the very first in the nation. As a senior, and at the top of her class, lucy was invited by the fact till to write an essay to be delivered at graduation. She was told, however that while the could write the essay it would be absolutely unseemly for a woman to appear on stage and read what she had written. A man had to do that. A principled, proud lucy refused to participate but she graduated in 1847 at the age of 29, becoming the first Massachusetts Woman and one of the first women in our nation to graduate from college with a bachelors degree. In researching lucy stones life i could not help but wonder what set her apart from other farm girls in the nation who did not become reformers activists of suffragists. How to explain her belief in Higher Education for women and her commitment to the Antislavery Movement and womens rights. For one then she had good genes. Some of their for bierers were ground breaks, so. Such as a forefather who defended a women accused over witchcraft and a graph two fought in the american revolution. All the an lowe bow legislation isists subscribed to anded and rare gain soyuz antislavery newspapers. Lucy was the only Family Member who rebelled against womens inferior status and the laws that kept women especially married women in a state of submission. Women were not allowed to vote, hold public office, serve on juries sign contracts attend college, or pursue professional careers. When married they fell under the legal control of their husbands and were expected to remain at home. But lucy became especially sensitive and affected by mens oppression of women. She saw how her father treated her mother, how stingy he was even though hannah worked as hard as he did and how abusive he was when me drink too moisture side. Lucy attended a Church Meeting to decide whether to expel a member who was deeply involved in the abolition movement. When lucy raiser head hand to vote on this very matter, and defend the man the minister told the vote counter to ignore her, for even though she was a church member, she could not vote because she was a woman. Lucy observed a neighbor woman mashed to a domineering alcoholic, adulterrest woman and she didnt understand why the woman couldnt when the womans father tried to rescue his daughter remember lucy objected to passages in the bible that insisted on womens silence and she decided to learn greek to understand the language certain that bible passages had been mistranslated. In 1837, new england ministers were aghast when two South Carolina sisters angelina and sarah, lectured on antislavery to men and women. Ministers wrote a formal protest which lucy heard read in church and she was incensed by their effort to try to silence these two women. She vowed at that point to dedicate her life to ensuring womens right to speak in public. While a senior at college and over the objections of her parents and sister, lucy decided to become a public lecturer for the Antislavery Movement, an unthinkable occupation for a woman at at that at that time. Today its impossible to imagine hour daring and challenging that career was for a young woman. Lucy had no money no name recognition, beyond her home, but in the spring of 1848 the Massachusetts Antislavery Society hired her as a speaker and she gave her first talk on womens rights, actually several weeks before the first Womens Rights Convention met at seneca falls, new york. Lucy moved to boston and lived with a family, barely making enough to live on. Within a few months, she add womens rights to her talks for she told fellow abolitionists im a woman and of course theyre my cause too. Early on, lucy shared the stage with many wellknown men. Ralph Waldo Emerson the reverend parker pillsbury. Frederick douglass. Soon show was lecturing on her own and attracting large crowd. By the early 1850s lucys tone had become a spell binding orator and one of the most famous women in the nation. She attracted audiences by the hundreds and in a few case even by the thousands. And there was an admiring press. Journalist were amazed that lucys magic in influencing a crowd. Up like the rantings of abby foster and the shrill grating voice of susan b. Anthony loses where voice and manner were mesmerizing. From these conditions one learns that lucys musical voice could silence mobs and protesters who came to mock and drown out speakers. Her intensity of purpose and ability to move her listeners were profound. One example of her intense commitment to the Antislavery Movement was in the early 1850s she joined garrison and some of his followers by demanding the radical idea of disunion urging northern states to separate from Southern States, in other words to secede and thus create a nation free of slavery. And we always of course blame the south but she was saying it first. Mores effective moments were the stories she shared about evils of slavery and oppression of women. There was something compel whats she said. Initially she and others charge node entrance fees for they wanted to attract as many people as possible. But lucy and others realized that people were willing to pay to hear them, after all this was 19th century entertainment at its best. To try to get this into my students theres no internet or tv. She was still earning a substantial income and her financial worries ended. Whether those in the audience were supporters or opponents of her two radical causes everyone wanted to hear lucy stone. The press made her a household name. She had become a star. But public lecturing was a dangerous profession especially for a woman addressing two radical causes. We often forget how many people, even in the north opposed abolition and womens rights. Mobs gathered to protest. Men heck eled and hassled in 1838 protesters burned down brand new lecture hall philadelphias Pennsylvania Hall for free ducks to protest the biracial gathering of women. Men threw rotten vegetables and hymenales at lucy and into speakers and in one instance they doused heir we ice cold water by forcing a hose through a window behind the stage where she was speaking. A resolute lucy grand her shawl and kept on talking. Another time while on cape cod an angry missouri moved towards lucy and two male ore tore trying to force them off the stage, lucy declared that this man would protect her. He did just that. Leading her through the melee. He den placed already on a tree stump outside and stood there defending her while she finished her speech. Lecturing was also exhausting and challenging, 19th century travel conditions were often primitive, going by horse train, coach or even foot. Sometimes in blizzards and driving rain. For several years, lucy traveled across new england and the middle atlantic states, and undertook a major lecture tour across the midwest and even to the slave states of missouri and kentucky. She stayed overnight in hotels, dirty boarding houses or homes where she might sleep on filthy sheets separated only by a curtain from men who slept in the same room. But as lucy always maintained no great cause was won without great sacrifice. And her efforts even challenged female fashion. In the early 1850s lucy, elizabeth, katy stanton and other women adopted the bloomer costume, short dress and pant aloans which lucy wore with exitment thrilled at the comfort of dressing without corsets and skirts and petty coats. But public outcry was so enormous women gave it up. Realizing that people were paying more attention to what they were wearing rather than to the message they were trying to deliver. From this point forward lucy dressed simply in a black silk dress and white color and no corsets. Chev attracted people to her lectures and causes. Some came reluctantly simply to hear the famous lucy stone but then left as converts to her cause. Most all of her sketches were extemporaneous, major tragedy for historians since we depend on the written word. Fortunately describes and journalists were often at the conventions and lectures and at least took notes on her talks. She was also an expert at responding to retorts and holding her own when challenged by rude commentses from the floor. At one event a man shouted out by accusing her of being a disappointed woman. In this one of her most famous comments seized the moment to admit she was indeed a disappointed woman disappointed by a nation that prevented women from achieving equal rights, and disappointed bay nation that accepted slavery. In 1853 she gave a series of lectures in kentucky on womens rights a bold act in the Southern States that embraced womens inferior status. There she went over hundreds of people who won over hundreds of people who came to hear her. Her kentucky hosts were charmed best them this woman and her bold arguments. Dozens if not scores of people, joined the womens Rights Movement because of lucy, including susan a. Been thousand, julia howell, francis willard, and clara barton. But the mid1850s she was far getter known than were Elizabeth Katy stanton and susan b. Anthony, but lectures was only one batter of her life in addition to speaking, in 1850, she and seven other women decided to advance womens rights by holding a national convention, one larger and more inclusive than the regional meetings at seneca falls and new york and a couple towns in ohio. The First National Womens Rights Convention was held in worcester, massachusetts in october 18 50 and attracted hundreds of people from across the nation. From then until 1857, lucy played a central role in organizing these annual national Womens Rights Conventions selecting a location, finding speakers and entertainers, raising money and publicizing the meetings. The press and most americans identified lucy as head of this Young Movement which operated without a budget, an office, officers or a newspaper. But her life altered significantly in the mid1850s. Two major moments occurred at the height of lucys career and her earning power. Her marriage and two years later her becoming a mother. For years lucy had publicly and privately rejected the idea of marriage though a few young man courted her. She abhorred the laws that defined women as made them legally subservient to their husbands. Upon marriage, women lost their claim to their own property and wages. The inability to sign contracts or to act as independent beings. Sub servens was not something lucy had ever envisioned for herself, for she learned to act on her spoken had created a rich fulfilling life. But she also yearned for intimate si and the close of family she had known as a child. It was Henry Brown Blackwell who heard lucy speak at an antislavery convention, and determined he would marry her. Despite garrisons warning to blackwell that lucy would never marry, he ban his pursuit. He was seven years her junior and at that point a partner in a cincinnati Hardware Store but struggling to find a more meaningful career. And henry was used to strong women. An older sister, elizabeth blackwell, who was the first woman in the country of Everybody Knows this to graduate from medical school and become a doctor. Younger sister emily did the same a few years later. For two years henry courted lucy with astonishing relentlessless mostly through correspondence. His letters were pages long, written in his beautiful tiny hand writing often cross hashed when you write across the page and then up and down and offer as a researcher you i know theres nothing in this letter i want to read excant read it. He shared this belief in a marriage of equals, promising lucy she could continue her career denouncing laws that oppressed married women, celebrating haas heroines and discussing literature. Reading these letters and aread them all is a fascinating experience, to the at times i want tote shout out gate life, henry. Henry, whose career path hads been rather aimless was drawn to lucys devotion to unpopular causes her strength in finding facing opponents he independence, her resoluteness and her fame. Henry, a people pleaser, homes lucy would become a beacon for him to lead a more inspired life. Eventually lucy gave in, though not without experiencing a great deal of stress, for she was abandoning one of her basic principles but henry kept his word insist that lucy create a legal contract to keep her own money, and future earnings separate from his. To be able to purchase property in her own name to travel, attend conventions and lectures. They wed in the Early Morning of may 1 1855, at the stone family farmhouse. The word obey, was removed from the service. Immediately after the ceremony, the couple published in several newspapers a protest theyd had composed that objected to all the laws that removed rights from a wife and put power in the hands of a husband. While suffragists heralded this protest, the press had a field day. Wondering hugh couple could marry and then censor the very idea of marriage. A year late are after consulting with lawyers lucy took a radical step by keeping her maiden name. After all since men kept their names when they married, why could women not do the same . And on the front of this cover it says, a quote from lucy it says wife should no more talk her husbands name than he should take hers. My names my identity must not be lost. It think it was 1921 when there was as organization found is the lucy stoners of women who kept their maiden names. Henry had no objection to this. But the only time this worked against lucy was in the 1880s when massachusetts women gained the right to vote in schoolboard elections. She showed up to vote but was told she could not register as lucy stone. She had to use the name, lucy stoneblackwell. She refused. And her only opportunity to vote was lost. But lucy put her antislavery and womens rights work on hold in 1857 after giving bauer to daughter alice. She trade to find time to lecture bus the nurses she hired proved incompetent. Also she was overwhelms by nursing and attending alices many childhood illnesses. Finances were a problem for the family. Henry never proofed a consistent bread winner. He sold his partnership in the Hardware Store and tried to learn their sugar beet business. After the civil war his land sold and finally gave the Family Financial security. Domestic life game even more difficult when henry left their new jersey home to work in chicago for five months, selling agricultural books. Alice was not yet a year old. In 1859, the three moved to chicago for henrys job and there lucy gave birth to a premature baby boy who died. Though she wrote very little about his havent wrenching event, one senses she became ever more devoted to caring for alice. Lucy pulled back from lecturing and the Womens Movement to back fulltime mother. During the civil war she devote much of her attention to raising and caring for the Family Members who were ill as well as fighting to end slavery. After the civil war lucy returned to her causes as a member of the American Equal Rights Association which fought to create a truly just nation, insisting that both former slaves and women gain the right to vote. Congress did address black male citizenship and black mens right to vote through the passage of the 14th and 15th 15th amendments. This action had major repercussions on lucys life, for it led to major split in the Womens Movement. Stanton and anthony opposed both amendments stanton in particular was outraged by Congress Action but a politicians let black males suffrage trump womens suffrage. She pointed out in very racist language that most freedman 0 could not even read or write while owed indicate, whited white informed women like herself had been demanding the right to vote since the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Ultimately lucy supported both amendments hoping a 16th 16th amendment would soon follow and give women the right to vote. Of course, that did not happen. Instead, this situation split the Womens Movement in 1869 and led to the creation of two organizations, both seeking womens suffrage. Stanton and anthony first creating the National Womens Suffrage Association and a few months later losery, henry organizing the american womens Suffrage Association. Lucy found she could not work with these two women who did not support equality for all even though she too was upset with congress for ignoring womens demands. That same year, lucy decided the family should move to boston. She had many friendses there and she wanted to distance himself from the nwsa which was headquartered in new york. She decided to start a newspaper covering womens issues, hoping this new pursuit would create an easier calmer life, for as she put it, snug home. She henry and alice moved to boston purchasing a large home atop a high hill in dorchester, popular sub bash. They raised 10,000 from friendss supportunders to start a womens journal. A weekly paper who is first issue was january 8 1870. For two years Mary Livermore served as the journals editor but when she left to pursue a lecture career, lucy took over the paper aided by henry, jewel use, and later alice. The journal proved to be a greater challenge than lucy imagined published every saturday without fail, with lucy in charge until shortly before her death. She had never pursued this type of work before, but with her typical determination she pounded the streets to raise money, sold advertising space sought new subscribers and writers, and wrote many of the editorials. At times she was certain the paper would fail, but it lasted until the 19th amendment was ratified and women finally won the right to vote in 1920. The paper was seen by some as playing an influential role in the fight for womens suffrage. But it was hard oregon lucy. She hard on lucy. She often had to forego Family Vacations and a trip 0 europe because the newspaper came first. The work affected her halve and she suffered under the strain, resumism, irregular heartbeat and sciatica, sisterinlaw insisted that loses absent herself from the womens journal and all duties southerned with the american womens Suffrage Association. Rarely did lucy pay heed for she could not imagine leaving the paper or the organization. This is only a brief summary of lucys life but i want to discuss a few issues that change challenged me in researching and writing her story. One topic i that to confront was henrys alleged relationship in 1869 with a mrs. P, which a few scholars have awe vowed was a fullblown affair. I am less certain. What was the nature of that relationship . A close friendship . A anywhere addition or adultery . Having a sexual relationship for any woman was extremely risky because through was no absolute means to prevent a child other than abstinence. If mrs. P was the person historians assume her to be, she was a beautiful young woman married to a much older very wealthy man. She was Abby Hutchinson patton, a member of the Famous Family of singers who enter attended at Womens Rights Conventions. They lived near lucy and henry when the lafd in new jersey and were couple friends in 1869, lucy was distracted, upset and busy, consumed with womens issues and founding of the awsa. Henry was a needy, affection nat spontaneous man in contrast to other serious focused hard working wife. One can imagine he might have been tempted to stray. Whatever happened was upsetting to lucy and 0 tonerys sisters0. Only a few scattered remarks exist in letters mentioning mrs. Pooh p and earthly. From lucy no doubt much of lucys anguish over the heartbreaking event must have been discussed in private. Other letters may have reveals the details balls house fire in 1870 destroyed most of the letters henry received. After her parents died, alice destroyed all correspondence that reflected poorly on the family. In any case, henry and lucy were able to rebuild their marriage, though it took time. Henry may have agreed to move to boston out of guilt a sense he owed this to lucy, or to remove himself from temptation. I tried to tread carefully and not be absolute and defining this for all marriages have issues and much of what occurred does so behind closed doors. Another matter was the acrimonious relationship that developed between lucy and susan b. Anthony. The 1850s the two women were close, supportivefronts and come patriots in the fight for womens suffrage, often expressing very tender feelings in their letters to one another. Their friendship began to unravel in 1867 and ended in 1869 we are the formation of the would womens suffrage organizations. Letters by bowling women revealed nasty hurtful comments. I wish i could claim that lose was more charitable but a both woman took after one another. Human behavior at its worst. This press observed the two womens intolerance toward one another. Lucy could be prickly and though she correctly tied anthonys determination to lead the Womens Movement, railroading through ideas despite strong oppositions. One example of anthonys elevated sense of self was her hiring a woman to writemer biography, work that expand teds three volumes with every word having to be approved by anthony. Now in another important point as i conclude. Why lucy stone has such a limited presence in the history of the 19th century Womens Movement and in the Antislavery Movement and why she is not acknowledged as one of the nations major heroines. Her absence reveals much about how history gets recorded and remembered. Most an legislation isists who loom large in our history such as William Lloyds garrison, Frederick Douglas Harriet Beecher stowe and others, wrote articles and books or published their speeches. As i mentioned lucy almost always spoke extemporaneously and even as mitted she disliked writing. Thus we have few actual written records of her many speeches and significant role in the Antislavery Movement. She never wrote about herself. The Womens Movement was another matter. In the early 1880s Stanton Anthony, and jocelyn gauge embarked upon a huge project to produce the history of the Womens Movement. Stanton has written a couple of articles and essays on the topic. Now the three gap a massive work by collecting sources newspaper accounts speeches, convention reports, letters government documents, and they asked dozens of womens in the National Womens Suffrage Association to write auto buy groove cal entry. Stanton asked lucy to contribute but she refused, a she refused every journalist and author who wanted to write about her. Throughout her life, lucy possessed a heightened sense of humility and a desire to avoid the limelight. She never kept a diary or wrote a memoir, and unlike stanton and anthony, who loved public attention and parties, never welcomed celebrations to honor her. For lucy it was the movement. Not the individuals leading it, who mattered. She also had a keen sense of history, believing it was far too soon to write about a movement whose goal had yet to be won. Nor did she live to be associated with a written account she sensed and rightly so that would be biased and celebrate the conclusion oses it editors and the National Womens Suffrage Association. Volume one of the history of womens suffrage appeared in 1881, and covered the Womens Movement up to 1861. Reviews were generally positive, even in the womens journals. Volume 2 covering 1861 to 1876 was another matter. For it presented a skewed view of the movement. Featured were Stanton Anthony nwsa members and that organizations activities. There was no mention of the 1869 split of stantons racist comments on the 14th and 15th amendments, or of unfortunately incidents in the early 1870s when a very disreputable, to the colorful Victoria Wood briefly became the poster child for the National Womens Suffrage Association. When stantons daughter, harriet, arrived from england to assist with the second volume, she was astonished to find that the aws and lucy were absent. She convinced her mother that volume 2 would be suspect without covering them. So it was harriet who poured through the womens journals, newspapers, eggs says and speeches to compose a final chapter that covered the awsa as best she could. But this one chapter at the end of volume 2 was an afterthought. Thus volumes contain an amazing collection of materials that preserve womens history theyre extremely one sided and all but rerace the movement erase the movement, lucy stone and the work of the awsa. These are the very primary sources the schools typically refer to when researching the 19th century Womens Movement are and still used today as primary source material in most scholarly accounts, stanton and anthony loom large, as does the National Womens Suffrage Association, and lucy and the american womens Suffrage Association are mere shadows. Historical accounts invariably give in the nwsa the eventual credit for winning womens suffrage and almost myth the staybystate approach of the awsa. But lucys health was declining. After suffering weeks of pine she died of stomach cancer on august 13, 1893. More than 1100 people crowded into the church to attend her funeral. But even in death lucy was a path breaker. She passed she decided to be cream mated a form of burial that was just beginning to be accepted in the country. Every humble ever humble, her reason was that she did not want her body to take up much space on earth. Bostons beautiful Forest Hill Cemetery did not yet have a crematorium so it had to build one in order to lucy to be cremated and her ashes buried there. Henry, who had been making a name for himself in the womens Rights Movement, finally fining the work that gave his lifes manning meaning was inconsolable for at least a year after lucys death, retiring to his bedroom for hours each night. He helped alice edit the womens journal and lectures on various occasions womens suffrage. He died peacefully at home in 1909. Alice retained her rolfe as editor of the womens journal and never married. A brief relationship she had with an armenian theology student ended when he died unexpectedly on a trip home. Eeventually alice moved and lived in cambridge. Besides working for womens suffrage she took other reform work such as temperrans, the naacp and armenian causes. Unfortunately, an unscrupulous financial agent lost most of her savings with with the women withhim like Eleanor Roosevelt she managed in much reduced circumstances to live on. She died diedin 1950. Her ashes and henrys were dieted beside lucys. Lucy left no off spring to carry on her name and there is scants val evidence of places she cared out her work. She deed 27 yours before women finally gamed the right to vote she never lost hope that universal justice would be achieved. As she wrote we know it is only waiting to bless the world. She was ever grateful that she lived a long life to devote to this cause. This brave passionate woman deserves more prominence in our history books inch writing this biography of lucy i know i cant resculpt the marble monument but i want to give her the space as one of the major figures in the womens Rights Movement and antislavery and most important in our nations history. Thank you. [applause] i will be happy to answer questions. I know its always hard to be the first one. New jersey is a quarter mile that way or 99miles that way. Where in new jersey . Well, im blanking. Montclair. Which was not named that it had a different it want incorporate when she first moved. Then they actually had two different homes. They moved and that home was destroyed for a Church Parking lot. As asphalted over. What was your primary resources . My primary sources first of all, was this extensive correspondence of the blackwell family which is at the library of congress and also at the schlessinger library at radcliffe. So even though despite the fact that so many letters were lost, the blackwell family and lucy stone, even though she didnt write about herself she wrote hundreds and hundreds of letters. She was i dont know how she had time to al correspond west as mean people but its animations collection, on mike myke crow film. Some day i hope there will be an volume online. That was the principle means and then newspaper accounts of her and just recollections about people who knew her well. But the letters were the primary source. Yes. You mentioned that she was unknown and untested when garrison or the Massachusetts Antislavery Society invited her to become a speaker. What was it that they saw in her that would allow her to speak even in front of promiscuous audiences chev was famous brut not known then. Not known then, thats right. But she had contact with Abby Kelly Foster, who was speak only abolition, and Abby Kelly Foster encouraged her to become a public lecturer. The Massachusetts Antislavery Society was looking for people. They really welcomed more speakers. They paid them very little so they werent out a lot of money. The other thing dish dont know how much infliction this had but when lucy graduated from college, William Lloyds garrison was there. He was actually there for an Antislavery Movement meeting and he heard about lucy, because she was such a outstanding student and enthough she went able to give the talk, based on her essay she never wrote for the graduation ceremony, he heard about her and he actually theres a letter he wrote to his wife commending on this sort of miraculous lucy stone whom he had heard about. I dont know the entry enteric cassies of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society but the went to boston to talk to whoever was head of it as well as talking to Abby Kelly Foster, who probably put in a good word for her. So im guessing that was it. But they only paid her like, six dollars a week. So they didnt put out much money for her. Yes . I dont remember if if the two societies eventually did merge. I think they did. You mention in passing state by state work and to expand on that issue did its style of presuming the clause reflect lucy stones style and personality in your opinion . Well, actually i was just hearing from another womens historian today who wish shed could be here but she said the a really good history of northwestern womens centuriage association has yet to be written. We do not know that much about them. I think that dichotomy of the sort of National Approach of the National Womens Suffrage Association and the statebystate approach of the american is probably overstated because susan b. Anthony in particular was often present when states were trying to add womens suffrage to their constitutions, usually failed. So i think thats probably not a hard and fast rule to show the differences between the two organizations. I dont know if it reflects lucy but you have to remember that it was up to states to determine voting rights. That states had traditionally been the ones to determine who could vote in the state. And so i think probably she it just sort of a traditional approach. She was fed up with politicians. I think maybe that has another thats another reason perhaps why she took the statebystate approach. She wanted to get out to the people get out to the male voters, but she was totally fed up with both democrats and republicans because neither would support womens rights. You have to remember that for both Political Parties having women vote did neither one a lot of good because women would vote sometimes some would vote democratic and some republican, whereas in pushing for black male suffrage north only was that done because slaves had been oppressed for centuries but also because the Republican Party knew that those men would vote the party of lincoln. Vote republican. But i am guessing that lucy probably didnt want to spend a lot of final in washington dc dealing with politicians whom she had no use for basically. She did not trust them. She wanted them to support womens suffrage. Do you think theres any connection between her graduation speech experience and her unwillingness to write out her speech for someone else to read and her later unwillingness to write out her speeches . The graduation speech was basically on principle. Theres no doubt that was done, and she wrote about that and she wrote her parents about it and he got comments from them, and they were all proud of her for not doing that, and not having a map read something that she had written. I dont i think her reason for not writing out her speeches was, first of saul, she was so good at extemporaneous speaking, and also she wrote shen she was at obeln there was a letterer to parents about how much chev disliked writing which was interesting for someone whod didded a newspaper for so many areas, but she actually said she disliked writing and in fact i did have there are payments where she wrote a paper for a class but she created in in the form of a newspaper. Which i felt was kind of interesting. That was her essay as if she were writing for a newspaper which fores what she was later interested. The great situation speech was on principle and she did she never thought about writing about herself. She was incredibly humble. Everybody knew that about her. At the very back. I think she was absolutely correct. Hl americanin said the difference between the democratic and the Republican Party is between twiddle deand diddle dumb. She was at this stage of American History far more advanced than a lot of the other people in terms of analyzing the political system. I would agree yes. Is was frustrating when they were trying so hard to get at least one Political Party to stand behind womens suffrage. Yes . The Library Company has in it collection the prepared toship album of Amy Matilda Williams which is signed by lucy stone. I wonder if you might Say Something about her relationship with prominent africanamerican women who traveled in the abolition and other reform circle some of woman were also graduates of oberlin. I dont know much about her relationship with other africanamerican women. Do know that she was celebrated bity africanamerican community. I dont know about cassy in termed 0 never found those letters youre talking about. Be great if i had. But she she stood in a very prominent position in terms of her true feeling about human justice and human equality. And there was an interesting situation, and i was talking to earlier about this, where lucy was invited to speak at the got to get his name right to speak at the Musical Fund Hall in philadelphia, in early 1854. And this was all arranged by james motte lucretias husband and lucy came to speak and just hours before she was to speak she suddenly learned that africanamericans were not be allowed and she earlier that afternoon had distributed tickets the africanamerican community. Of course, wanting them there. And some of them showed up, expecting to hear her and they were barred from attending the hall. And actually it was Frederick Doug losses who what really upset with lucy because she went ahead with her speech and gave. I but at the end of her speech she said never again will i speak in his hall or any hall that will not allow africanamericans. And so Frederick Douglass got upset with her for going ahead but james motte depths her and said people in pennsylvania and philadelphia they ride on bus that dont allow africanamericans. Theyre various places where jim crow prevails, and this is just one of those unfortunate incidents. But two years late sher was invite ited by the same hall to speak and she turned them down. This is a nice followup to this question. I was just wondering whether lucys differences with stanton and anthony, as you mentioned were over the 14th and 15th 15th amendments but also her refusal to compromise on her abolitionist beliefs . She seemed like such strong abolitionist, her whole idea of lecturing for abolition on n the week and womens rights of the weekend. That commitment stayed with her right after the civil war too and that could be one of the reasons why most africanamerican women also tended to sympathize with the American Association more than the National Association so the different that abolitionis commitment was something that she and Abby Kelly Foster did not seem to lose the way stanton and anthony did very quickly. They were not that involved . The movement yes in fact stanston admitted. I have some sense in the book where stanton said that the cause of antislavery was dearer to lucys heart than it was to her. Susan b. Anthony did lecture on antislavery, too but lucy stone stood absolutely clear on her views about an legislation abolition all the way through. What exactly did she do during the civil war . She must have been appalled by the carnage. Im sure the didnt believe that men should fight to death. Its amazing how little i found on her years during the civil war. You look for everything, and of course i wanted to find more material but i would say if theres a sort of moment in her life when i didnt have much information, it was during the self war. She was not that involved in terms of thinking about it. She wrote about. She occasionally mentioned the carnage, but for instance, hen trispent the 300 in order to find a substitute to serve for him, and she very much supported that. She hated war. She absolutely hated war and hated the war but during the war, she was also consumed her mother died right before the civil war. He father died after the civil war. She was very consumed with take caring of henrys mother, one of his sisters ill. She was taking care of young alice so a lot of those four years were spent on family. She was pretty much consumed witch that. I teach Civil War History and im like, with why isnt there more on these years . I think just family issues and kind of overwhelmed her. Last question. Okay. Im kindve struck because Lucretia Motte gets so much attention but she also spoke extemporaneously ashamed discoursescourses on one women in 185 but very little written what she said but Lucretia Motte is a star the history and lucy stone, although im familiar with her history but others her name is lost, just youre wondering why its a comment rather than a question. But also if you look in the history of womens suffrage and those volumes Lucretia Motte plays a large role. She remained friends with an stanton and anthony. She and stanton had been two of the five women who started the Seneca Falls Convention, and lucretia was an amazingly fairminded woman. Also friends with lucy. But her i think that longstanding tie with stanton kept her in the limelight and she was very much part of those volumes im talking about that basically saluted losey. Lucy was responsible for her admission. She did not want to contribute but she had good reasons why she is not in those volumes but its amazing how much historians have depended on the volumes to write about the 19th century Womens Movement. So i hope, i hope, shell get back front ander in . Our nations history. Thank you for being a great audience. [applause] thank you so much, professor that was a really wonderful talk. On they score hopefully lucy stone will remain in your consciousness women have books for sale at a discount out front. Lucy stone an unapologetic life there the front desk if if you want more information please look for us online at Library Company. Org, thank you for supporting this great institution. Have a great night and see you soon. Thank you. [applause] youre watching booktv, television for serious readers. You can watch any program you see here online at booktv. Org. On sunday, august 2nd book tv is live with medea benjamin, cofound over the Group Code Pink on in depth, our live monthly callin show. She is the author or editor of nine books including an investigation into the use of drones for military purpose drone warfare. Other titles include the greening of the revolution which examines cubeys use of organicking a to all agriculture, and her other books cover topics such as how to aid People Living in the third world, profiles of inspiring women, and further examinations of cuba. Medea benjamin, live on booktv sunday, august 2nd in in depth. You can send questions or queens to facebook. Com book tv, on twitters, booktv, or call in. Booktv recently asked Senate Majority liter Mitch Mcconnell was on on his Summer Reading list. Earlier this year i read a terrific book, edward larson, history professor at pepperdine, called the return of orange george washington, after the revolution war he went home thinking his responsibilities were over and it was clear during that period, from 1783 to 1787 that articles ofphone kid racing were just not working, and so his his return was to preside over the Constitutional Convention and led to the american constitution which has soards vive a couple hundred years. Then i followed that with an interesting book called the kens kens kens kens kens and the churchills. About the relationships between the Kennedy Family and the churchills before churchill became prime minister, and of course Joseph Kennedy was ambassador to the u. K. At the outbreak of world war ii, and was widely credit seats i because he was very sympathetic with the germans. Not that he wanted the germans to win but he didnt think we could win and wanted to keep america out of it. Wellresearched book about the relationships, right up until the time when churchill was still alive and kennedy was assassinated. To tracks that who period from Joseph Kennedy to jack kennedy. And now im going back to my favorite period, which is around 1850. A book by called the american debate. About the compromises of the 1850 and the efforts of clay and douglass and the rest to hold the country together after we had won the mexican war and had all this New Territory to the pacific. And the big question, would the new states be slave or free . At that point, there were 15 slave states and 15 free states. Even balance. [inaudible conversations] thank you everyone for coming. We are excited to have this wonderful panel together. You can see its called women on top women and leadership in publishing. Its a presentation of the womens media group. The media group was founded in 1974 a new yorkbased notforprofit association of women to support prominent women in achievement in the media world, and we also do have fellowship for underprivileged deserving women to help them get into the media world and you can find out more about that and become a member by signing up in the back or taking the sheet of paper and emailing us and ed has more details of the womens Leadership Group or leave your Business Card and we will send you information. We will have a panel of 50 minutes we will try to do 40 minutes of qanda and then followed by a short qanda where you can ask questions. We are going to be recording this and we will find out where we can find that when it will run it. We do have a hash tag if you would like to share. And we are thrilled to have our speakers. I will start with Bethlam Forsa Pearson Learning Services managing director of the learning Services Globally and before joining she was the executive Vice President of Global Product Development Operations Command a partner at venture for 12 years. But one is an active member member in the Startup Community and sits on the board of directors of leibrafi and well be talking tomorrow on the group. We have Madalyn Mcintosh now president of Penguin Publishing group, Penguin Random house where she oversees the adult Publishing Businesses in the u. S. Previously madeline does the president and ceo president and ceo of Penguin Random house and prior to the merger co. We have lisa sharkey the director of Creative Development at harpercollins. She joined the company in march of 2007 after more than two decades as a Television Producer where she was a twotime emmy winner and fourtime president of our work or entertainment as well as a senior producer at Good Morning America and inside edition. Thank you all for participating today. I know youve are all very busy. Lets get started with some questions about your leadership style. This one could you start by describing your leadership style . Thank you lisa and good morning everyone. I would describe my leadership style as very authentic decisive passionate about what i do and very much a change of agent. Great. Madeline . I should start by saying the way that we prepared his scrambling things on paper probably over breakfast this morning but when i was reading the questions out loud in my apartment this morning, one of my 11yearold said he you are a tyrant. [laughter] thank you. But half of my colleagues here wouldnt think that rings true for me to. I grew up a very shy girl who learned to compensate for the fact that i never really wanted to talk about being a good listener, so i tend to use my strength in listening and asking questions. My ideals i have strong people working for me and thats what i help do is get decisions made and help them flourish. I would say my management style at home with the part tyrant and partly a neurotic mother but at work my style is Something Like a den mother. I consider myself someone whose job it is every day to help bring younger people to the forefront and help teach them and train them in creativity and knowing that their ideas are important and that they need to come up with new ones on a regular basis. This can make the stomach the descriptions are different than if we had some men up here do you feel that you manage differently . Seem absolutely. There are inherent differences and i think that those are going to be absolutely apparent. Before the Publishing Industry i worked where it was fairly dominated by men. Even the recruiting process and for other Management Consultant type of jobs when they start recruiting process where all of us come out of coverage is our Business School and and so forth it is about 50 50 and throughout the process you will see the reading out if you want to use that word come and i think that enough process as i was coming up the ladder so to speak i worked most of the time for the part where is. I will tell you our style of management and other overall approach on how we deal with clients or otherwise is very different and i think that we are sometimes decisive and nick did a decision the dick decision and go forth. Im willing to say it is very decisive so i think a lot of things that we do are very different and sometimes i think that we try to be like men and in my old age ive realized i dont have to do that, i am very comfortable in who i am with the light effects and i think we do manage very differently. Anyone else want to comment on the . I came from a different industry so i came from news where when i was coming up in the news they were known to try through typewriters around the road and even as a woman and a business it was a situation so i would sneak down the back stairs so that i could leave around 8 00 at night with the hope that maybe i would see one of my children off to bed. I will say i think that men and women are just as capable of being nurturing were too domineering and i dont necessarily see if divided on the lines of text that is just more personality type. I work at harpercollins. His boss is brian murray and they are both wonderful leaders that dont through typewriters or computers across the room and i previously worked for Jean Friedman who would say what is more demonstrative in terms of affectionate somebody that would hug you when she sees you but still very strong leadership and i think that you can be a bad leader as a man or woman, but i would agree with you especially if you are trying to manage a family or a business you have to learn and get a busy person a task and they will get it done quickly and i tend to think that women can make decisions extremely quickly. Great. Lets go to the next question. How did you build your leadership skills . I feel that ive been incredibly lucky to work in the trade Book Publishing. And you have both come into Publishing Firm clearly different sectors with very different gender balance is. I dont think that its just random house and penguin which have been at the two faces. Its generally true in the publishing that these are, you know, the majority female companies, and i think the leadership has been also very significantly done by women women so its hard to think about is my style different because im a woman or would it be different if i were a man and ive had extraordinary male bosses and terrible mailboxes and extraordinarily extraordinary and terrible female boxes. So i have a hard time identifying the gender as a lot of people and room have in the room have about working in a very female environment. Its a constraint on the industry. Building the leadership skills and building my leadership skills , i think there was one particular experience for me was in my late 20s and i was given a really big promotion to be the head of this. I was given a big promotion to be the head off sales for a large part of the Publishing Business and i was in my late 20s and i have people reporting to me who had been selling books since before i was born and it was terrifying certainly to me. And my boss who gave me this opportunity, he really believed that i could do it or was willing to take a chance. He probably had nobody else in mind. He gave me a really long wrapup to wrap up to that moment. He tells me six months ahead of time this is something i want to do and we will spend this next period of time. Nobody is going to suspect you youd be doing online sales so it will give you a good chance to see whats going on and still despite all of the preparation, the big day came and there were a lot of tears. Again some of these people that were going to have to report to me were like youve got to be kidding me. And so i was definitely scared and the most important piece of advice has held true for me throughout was the most important thing these people are going to need is to make decisions. That doesnt mean that you make them haphazardly or when you dont have enough information to the most important thing that you can contribute to them is whether its to help them make the decision or to keep things moving forward. That key element of the fact that really adds thats what youre responsibility is to do, and that ended up becoming something that i really rely relied on and developed as a strength that helped me through the later parts of my career. Would you like to comment on how you develop your skills . Trial and error. I learned from it. There was no perfect formula. So it is through that process in terms of i grew up very much in a different approach and people took rest and i learned to take risk on other situations i felt like at the beginning i needed to know everything and make sure that i cover everything and so forth but its okay i dont have to know everything. In fact i dont. I try to learn from others and leverage my strength and use that as a way to make decisions or enable a discussion so that we are all making the decisions together but it is trial and error. Any comments . I had to learn to soften my personality especially in producing the local news is hardcore and if something goes wrong you have millions of people that are looking at a television with nothing on the screen and so i was a screamer and i came up with screamers and over time i realized that was pretty insensitive to people and i really when i came into the publishing i asked my boss is to please connect me with somebody that would teach me the ropes and with Book Publishing is about and this woman was amazing. She sat with me once a month and i would say that it was helpful for me and now as the parent of two College Graduates ive been trying to inform them to manage down and managed across and i thought that was sucking up but its important to get us to know people at the level as it is to get to know your peers and i would have paid much closer attention to. You have a mentor when you went into the publishing. Would you like to talk about any mentors or people that were influential in your career . Its great now both working at paying one penguin but he was a seminal figure for me very early on and its not necessarily to say that we have similar styles or personalities or anything like that. They saw the potential in me and forced me to big thinker think bigger in a way that i wouldnt have taken the leaps if it were not for him. In terms of the mentor i was lucky people took a lot of risk on me and i felt that they were taking aim of risk once the individual is the president and i was working at the center as a partner. He recruited me and hired me to be the recruiter of the school division. Think about how different. We had a lot of background in the Publishing Industry but still it is pretty different approach. My background being in the Strategy Technology and overall content and transformation of an industry he basically saw that i could parlay that into joining in a Publishing Organization and the publisher of the school division, so i took that role. And he was a great mentor and somebody that had a love of high expectation that gave you complete freedom which helped me to fail but in a much more padded and easy ways that i could learn from that and it was frankly transformational in terms of what it did for my career and others. We hear a lot about the Glass Ceiling. Did you ever feel like there is a Glass Ceiling in your industry i felt as though hard work and book smarts were going to get us to the top and i didnt experience that at all. Good to hear. What about personal and professional sacrifices that are necessary obviously you work hard. I tried to get them on a Conference Call and it was impossible, so should we start with that bethlam. Im sure we all make sacrifices regardless of where we are in our career. [inaudible] i took this role to save my gosh im pregnant and i felt a huge strength that was like something i did. I rendered the first three months i was trying my hardest to hide the fact i was pregnant. This was like 2009. I was. I said okay but my boss im pregnant and he said well i know. You stop Drinking Coffee and you are eating more than ive ever seen you eat. The first thing that i said im telling you im going to give birth and come back right away. I have no idea what i was committing myself to. I did come back. Literally exactly two weeks later i did come back. I didnt know what i was doing at the time but i felt i did need to work and i needed to come back. Nobody else but the pressure on me but it was a sacrifice that i needed for what i felt was the right thing i must do for my career. Came back to separate director of independent authority. The former secretary of education of the first meeting coming out of that if you call it Maternity Leave. I didnt see my son because i had a global role traveling all traveling all over the world when i had an intent at home. I didnt see him come all these magic moment do not have those. It did get me to that but id like to say is we can balance multiple things and so forth and its hard. I felt i was very lucky that i have a very strong support system, and as a result of that the sacrifice may be never felt as much to sacrifice even though they were but i think that in a very Strong Network my husband and super didnt feel abandoned. I wanted to say not so much a sacrifice but certainly the feeling of juggling, which is not at this day and age is the feeling that everybody that has children in the works i have twin sons that are now 11 and one of them thinks im a tyrant but when i gave birth and i took the full Maternity Leave at that point my husband was still working in the office and we had a nanny and he had to leave and had to be out of the door so she could get home to her family which meant i had to walk out of that office at 5 00 and that period was about two years where it was constantly the feeling of the stress of time and i became so impatient with any conversation and any meaning taking a long and so its how frankly a lot of the time time we time we spend in today is not the most efficient use of time and do so was that a sacrifice to leave the office at 5 00 . Not really. I was surprised at couple of years later one of my colleagues who had a child a couple years after i did and she said that she had really so value with the fact that i was just explicit about the fact i was leaving at 5 00 and i was missing the leadership position and that wasnt a problem and that gave her a sense of comfort that this was okay. It never occurred to me that it wouldnt be okay but i really appreciated that she told me that it mattered to her. A lot of the sacrifices are similar. When my daughter was four weeks old i worked and he needed me and i brought her to work and stuck her on a blanket on the floor next to my desk in the edit room to the complaint of the editor that went to hr and said this woman is nursing a baby and thats the kind that women didnt time that women didnt have a baby she went on and we think the moment she behaves, but i used to bring my kids to work when i could. Might operate almost never saw her in the morning or when she went to sleep. And she was excited, she would come with me to the green room as a toddler and hang out and eat fruit loops when i worked at cbs news and was producing debates the news director would feed my sunny giant kit a giant kit kat bar. I ask them at this point do you feel there was a time you wish i hadnt been working, and i think they think im a happier bother than they would have been if i stayed at home. They are proud of some of the things that ive been able to do in my career and theyve gotten fun perks meeting people and going to book signings and television shows, but there is a chairman this feeling of guilt on both sides. You are guilty because other people can stay at work later and accomplish more adept than other mothers are showing up at school dropoffs and wearing a tennis skirt and carrying a yoga mat and you are definitely not doing that. So you sort of get it coming and going but at the end of the day i think they are pretty darn happy that youve been able to accomplish something in the world and if they had to do things on their own and it causes enough to be a helicopter parent and so does sacrifice i think has benefited. Thats great. Now looking back to the corporate life, what qualities do you look for when hiring . When you are hiring junior level people, the one thing i love to see on a resume is if somebody has been a waiter or weech rest i always think that is the best experience or working in any corporate situation like the ability to juggle workers and deal with clients. Beyond that, i look forward for the sense of curiosity, and is there somebody that has questions about the world and has taken the time. Nothing is worse than when you take the time to interview someone and theyve clearly theyve done no homework to understand what you do or what the company does, so that is an immediate no. What i look for curiosity for people who are articulate and who feel like they are going to engage in what is a very holy call colegial setting. I look for honesty. They are comfortable enough to say what they know and dont know thats one. And perseverance is important to me. Its an important component on how i look. You learn a lot from your success and failing to openly speak about it and what you learn is important so those are the qualities i look for. I have given my staff stationery as christmas presents. What kind of advice would you give for young women starting out in their career . Actually, thats an interesting question. I will say stretch yourself. Go do something different. Take the risk. Take the road less traveled, frankly. But i think that will be probably the most important thing. And know what is important to you personally and how that fits in your overall what in terms of the road map you have for your own career. Dont be afraid to manage your career. Men do that a lot better than us. Dont by afraid of doing it. Madeline . I think what i try to encourage is getting young women to think big. To think broadly about opportunities that exist to understand that a successful career path is not something that gets laid down in front of you and its not like you just get an email that says, this job is available and would you like a reply for it . You really need to think about are you at a point where you maybe are getting close to have learned everything you income your current position, instead of waiting or some something to be presented to you to look for opportunities, which doesnt mean look for jobs that are already posted. Think about what problems node to be solved in the organization and how might you help solve them. And getting people to really, particularly young women to take responsibility for their careers is really important and to think big and bold. Theres a assault difference particularly for understanding those who have managed some millenials understanding theres soughtle difference between you can get a sense of entitlement and its important not to think that the world owes you something. Its not about that. Its that you owe to yourself to go and create the opportunities. I would say that work with the home at your level because youre growing up with them in the industry. So the more people you meet and get to know, and know them more than just in a business sense see if you can make friends in the industry that youre really interested in, and also write an intention town how youd like to see your career take off and tweak that as time goes, and write it as big as you dream it, and really i do believe in the power of that, and i also think that its important to make sure to not forget to have a personal life. Certainly in the news business, there are many people that i grew up with who failed to connect with another human being as a soulmate or wanted children but didnt have time for that, and at the end of your life, when you look back, its going to be your family and your close friend that remember you its not necessarily going to be what title you had or how what percentage you increased business. So just try to keep that worklife balance. When workedded a random house a great book called women dont ask. From cho women oh had done a residence ton ph. D today. Do you find women need to be encouraged to ask for more money, ask for promotion ask for a new role . Do you find that . Are women asking more . I dont know. I feel like you always hear that. I think women do ask this day and age. Maybe we have a different way of asking but i think they do ask. I think theres a when i read wolf hall, not that anybody should take leadership but there was a great repeated phrase that Thomas Cromwell says to himself throughout which is dont ask dont get and i think that is essentially saying the same thing. Nobody is going to just present you with the answer, and if you dont particularly ask for it. I agree. I think that more often than not women and men are seem much more comfortable with asking for what they want. One great thing, at least at our company is the annual review process. So that sort of forces you as a manager and forces them as a to have that conversation, and outline what their goals are how they felt they have achieved them the Previous Year and what theyre looking forward to doing the next year. That has been very helpful in getting even the most reluctant people to step up to the plate and figure out what it is that they are looking for. So thats been really helpful. I went a little quickly over the question. I dont think everyone had a chance to answer, if there was a professional experience that was very formative in your career. Did anyone else want to give us some fun example . I think i answered. You answered very clearly. Probably switching into Book Publishing from television news. That was an extremely informative for me. It was i had done about as much as i thought i could do in television and i started getting disenchanted with news about five years before i ended up moving into Book Publishing and start realizing the books in the newsroom were far more interesting to me than the news in the newsroom so i started a series of conversations with jane freedman, because i started getting behind the scenes and working on books for no money for no good reason other than i was passionate about it and then watched them become best sellers and she asked me, who are you . What are you doing at abc news hem helping our books . I said aid like to get into the book business. Then i had a series of conversations for five years. She kept saying were not ready for you and then one day she said now were ready for you. That was it was scary, and i felt for me i had to to this day i still feel like i maintain alien status. I come from another planet, basically, and i sort of like i like that feeling but i always have to rates my hand, always have to ask about things i still am a little unclear of because its a completely different world but a wonderful one. Bethlam did you have any other fun stories . For me it was in terms of professional experience that was most formative i grew up i was born in one continent drew up in many different parts of the country. My mother worked in the unites nations so where i grew up is was multicultural environment. I went to an International School where people were from all over the world and i felt like the roads i have taken have been global, and the ability to work across culture was critical. So thats something ive made a difference and was formative. So i would say the cultural experience and the global perspective. Excellent. Well why dont we up it up for questions from the audience and ill repeat the question to make sure everyone can hear. Heres one. I know that you stepped out of the win to another company. And then came back. I wonder if you could talk about that kind of decision you ahead to do that and you made to do that. Probably everyone heard that but just in case, madeline left randomhouse for a while and worked at amazon and then came back so esther wanted to hear about that experience. I suppose that definitely counts as a formative experience. I left random house i guess get the chronology mixed up but it was 2008. It was a period where things felt stale in what i was doing. I was the audio publisher, which was part of the reason i made the switch to go into audio because i was interested in what was happening in digital and as we know, everything that happened in digital later with textbooks happened first in audio, and so i had this really good experience there but it felt like nobody in the rest of the company was taking digital very seriously and id been there a long time at that point. I wanted to certainly interested . Stretching my wings and earlier on id been one of the first people who actually sold books to amazon, so i always knew the team there. And started a conversation, and they offered me the opportunity to move to luxembourg to lead up the content acquisition for taking the kindle internationally, and i bent home and proposed this to my husband and the first thing we both had to do is truly go look at a map to figure out where lux. Boring was, what it was was its city . It is a city in a country also called luxembourg and the only grand dutchy the world. So now you know. Again, one 0 the thing is really have benefited from was having an extremely supportive husband who was also had the fortune of had been an editor but was interested in going free lance and starting to experiment with riding. He has only ever lived in new york and said, sure, heat do this. Seems kind of crazy but all right. So we take our fouryearold twin sons and moved to europe, and it was a particular experience because i was there i was really the only person in the office who was working on the kindle. And only a couple of people in europe working on the kindle. So i had this very definitely stressful experience of spending the day in lux. Luxembourg take talking to people in london so a lot was on the phone and then email, then would run home, occasionally be able to have dinner with my family and then spend the next five hours or so on Conference Calls with seattle because the time difference was thats what it was. And that was a very i mean, it was hugely challenging experience. I was there 18 months. So a brief one. And i learned more in 18 months than i thought was possible. I dont have a graduate degree. I was a art history major and i felt like in the 18 months i get an engineering degree and a business degree. To really learn truly how to communicate with engineers and how to explain to them, this really is how the system of territorial copy right is this weird patchwork thing and we have to Pay Attention to it and understanding how to take complex business things and simply identify it into something that could be coded. Was hugely valuable. It was a very male environment. So that was certainly a time when i was not surrounded by women. I didnt particularly mind that. At all. But it was also this odd thing of being in a being a satellite, of being almost on my own all the time. And that wore on me after a while. I would have probably happily stayed at amazon for a long time but there had been a lot of change that had taken place at random house while i was gone. Marcus came in to be the ceo and he invited me to come back to the choi and back to the company and take on a role that would have responsibility for both physical and Digital Change for the company. And i honestly felt like i came back with a degree of confidence about what i felt we needed to do in digital i never would have had if i just stayed in my audio spot. At the were learning about pricing and royalties and terms of sale changes that are faked by digital. I was stepping out of the context and then coming back into it that gave me the fortitude to navigate what was then a couple of tough years in the digital transition. Another question. In the back there in the red. Madeline said that Publishing Industry had [inaudible] the feeling among women authors were not taken as seriously as men are. Do not necessarily get the same treatment, the same respect the whole diva thing. Women are at the top of the Publishing Industries why arent women writers at the top. Why arent women writers being treated as well as men writers. Well, i dont know how much of that comes down to how theyre published. A lot of those have been really very very importantly pointing out the disparitiys that take place in terms of reviewing. My personal experience, if i look through our list at penguin, we have an extraordinary list of very successful female writers and male writers of were very conscious that the majority of book consumers in this country are women and therefore i havent done a set of statistics on this but i think that the majority of novels we publish are probably by women and i really dont think that we do anything that would be seen as publishing books by women at a lesser status or with less importance than those by men. There can always be unintentional bias, which id be happy to be given examples of if theyre there. I would say as well, i dont see that at all at Harper Collins itch feel like the majority of our authors are women, and we all know that the majority of the bookbuying public is certainly of the female variety. So im surprised in a way to hear that because its not something that is really comes up at Harper Collins. Another question. Over here. Hi. All three of you have children and families and you all [inaudible] you find within yourself and others around you any sort of bias for [inaudible] more family activities and whether that been a factor [inaudible] so, just to reiterate are there some prejudices possibly against women who want a more Flexible Work schedule, possibly work at home more often to be there with the family, have a more blend family work life. Does that hold them back in the business. At pearson we have a very Flexible Work from home, basically plan, and we are very accommodating of that type of a model. Man, woman. So i actually would say absolutely not. I think, at the end of this day in this day and Age Education publishing much more Technology Driven in this day and age it doesnt matter where you are located as long as youre able to do the work. My team is all over the country and when i was running the global part of it, all over the world, and even today north america, we have a lot of staff work from home who are not in an office location. Its more of the skill set. The capability that the individual brings to the table. As long as youre able to get on a Conference Call, it doesnt matter. I dont believe in this day and age theres actually a bias towards that. Inherently not being in an office potential setting you may miss some of the informal aspect of certain thing that can happen because that does exist but i will say absolutely not issue dont think its an issue. I think that part of the way i look its i dont think im unique is that we benefit this is true bright penguin and random house separately and together employees have a long areterm commitment to working at our company and that really means that for me as manager of an moneyee exhave a longterm investment in that employee and if there is a particular period that theyre going through where they need more flexibility or theyre going to be they need a different kind of creative solution i again im not going to penalize them for that at all. I think that the fact is, as you said with technology, particularly were in Different Office locations anyway, so often theres really to way would know if somebody was calling me from connecticut or from uptown. But at the same time there is the reality of the fact that we also the work that we do is very much people work. Its theres a lot of our work that just is not when everybody is on a Conference Call the quality of ideas and interaction are not necessarily as good as when were sitting there around a table looking each other in the eye. And so i would tend more towards being very flexible in terms of helping somebody get through particular issues they may have to deal with that might be short term but in john i really like for the people who are working together in a team to actually be there together physically for the most part. I would agree. I have somebody on my team who just had her second baby, and after her first baby, who is now two and a half, she decided to work part of the week at home, and her work load has not changed, and she was promoted through all of that, and she is going to continue to do that, and im thrilled for her pause i value her as a human being and i value her as a member of my team. And anything that i can do to support her Creative Process is something i would do. That said, we live in a world where were losing personal interaction at a fast rate due to our obsession of looking down at small phones. There are i do believe that anytime that we can all be together and lock each other in the eye we now moved downtown and we have more of an open office plan, and even the people that have offices the walls are glass, and its so exciting to be able to see somebody walk by and remember that you had an idea that you wanted to discuss with them, and just either shout their name out or run over and grab them and walk with them to the elevator you cant do that from home. So i think that working from home parttime if you need to is okay. If you really want to be a full member of a team, its important to be able to be there actually in person. We have time for one more question. Kelly. [inaudible] [inaudible question] she thank them for being so fabulous which well applaud. But have they ever had a colleague try to sabotage their work and how did they deal with it. I had that happen in news and i debt with it by going into Book Publishing. If i did have a colleague i was never who did that i was never aware of it so i guess dealt with it by being clueless. I think oh, yeah, i wouldnt know if it happened. Thank you very much. Thank you panelists. Wonderful session. [applause] i do just want to let you know we have another womens media group panel tomorrow in the same room at 9 30. Women entrepreneurs learning from crowes startups about the difficulty of having a startup and we have someone pointing at something at the beginning we have the handout sheets in the back about womens media group. And also, we are having a digital meetup today at 4 00. That is Charlotte Abbott organized in the Digital Space and we understand theres going to be 110 Digital Women there so should be a very exciting party. Thank you for coming. This weekend were in lexington, kentucky, we the help of the local cable partner time warner cable. Next university of kentucky professor shows us the been historic highway used as part of the underground railroad. The mainsville road was one of the major routes into kentucky into the appalachian west. The inner blue grass was regarded as the most coveted land west of the appalachians. There were a lot of people interested in moving here, a lot of people from virginia with land grants. This was the routh route on the North Passage by which they came. Henry clay was sponsor of the american plan, and part of the american plan was internal improvements. You improve the economy by improving roads. He proposed that the maysville rod from lexington to maysville be supported by federal government money to turn it into a hard surface turnpike. Hard surface meaning stone covered. And in an engineered road rather than a mud track across the countryside. And his argument was that it would serve a larger area, and it would serve commercial traffic. Andrew jackson in his literal interpretation of the discussion, did not see the argument that way. He said that the constitution said that any project that was essentially local in nature could not be supported by federal moneys. And so Andrew Jackson saw the road the 67miles from lexington to the ohio river as a local project even though the turnpike signs that later are going to list nashville tennessee, and florence,alabama, on them, suggests its a regional road if not a National Road but a it was connect with new orleans. So we have two sides to the debate. The side that sees the larger picture, and sees the maysville road as one sex of a much larger highway thats going to connect the pittsburgh area with new orleans on the one side, and a literal interpretation of what they thought the constitution was calling for on the other side. We are in the center of the village of mays lick, and mays lick is about 14 miles south of the ohio river south of maysville. Its a logical stopping point. Were far enough south of the ohio river so that stage coaches might want to water their horses or change horses on a stage coach line. This is going to become a very important farming area, some of thy the richest land in the state of kentucky is in mason county where we are. As we leave mays lick and head south well be on a section of the road that dates from 1920s and 30s and right beside the road is going to be another small section of the old original limestone trace. Its called an alley now, and its runs right in front of a couple of houses, well below the level of the present road. There used to be many businesses along the road. There would have been 15 to 18 taverns or inns along the road. The tavern was built 1806 as a rest stop, a tavern, an overnight stay, for people moving along the maysville road. There were between 15 and 18 such taverns along the road. Between maysville and lexington. This particular building, the Main Building is on the left. The larger building, the family home youll notice the lower building to the right has two different doors to it. Those would have been individual doors to individual rooms. Youll also notice that theres a stairwell leading up to an attic area where there would have been another room. So this building is a great treasure in a sense it gives us a really good idea of how these taverns were erected how they were placed along the road for easy access, and then how they were spaced out in such a way that it made sense for stage Coach Companies who needed new horses every ten miles or so. Up to your right this would have been a mill site and part of the old mill is still here. Tobacco warehouse right here. This was a major tobacco wholesaling center, Auction Center by about 1905, 1910. There would have been major distillery standing right here and that is the old stillry warehouse right there. Certainly in the united states. One of the least appreciated aspects in american geography is the infrastructure that has been built to make this possible. None of it would be possible without roads. Roads are the backbone on which the National Economy is built. Nothing moves without roads until you get the railroad and steam boats on the rivers everything is moving by road. If you are not connected to the road. Everyone and everybo