Shipping and handling. For the next hour, a book tv exclusive, our citys four views new poor, rhode island. We have traveled the u. S. Cities ringing the book seem to our viewers. You can watch more of our tours tiestour. Org ci we are here at the library in newport, rhode island. We have been here since 1747. We were founded and the library was built in 1750. We have a correction ranging from the earliest period up to donations from of rare books from the present about 16,000 volumes. My coworker and i have pulled up some of the treasures of the Redwood Library and aetheneum, from our oldest holdings into our original founding collection. Variousumenting at the foundation of the redwood abraham redwood, the founder, asked for books to be brought back from england that were useful in everyday life and would be useful to the members, in addition to adjust being intellectually stimulating. Sterling,at 500 pound the agents for the library were sent to london with a list of books that the members would like to see as a part of the library. He purchased those books. They are organized here in at this catalog, which was handwritten in 1750, at the same time the Library Building was completed. The books are arranged by size. It started with the largest and as you go into through here, some of the things that the members were interested in. There is a lot of history. There is a translated karate qumran. Some of the original members of the library. John thompson was given an honorary membership to the library. Religion was one of the funding sounding interests of many members of the library. As just for personal use but a means of setting the world and different parts of the world. And , the library rianary and libra government together to donate money to purchase a particular version of the bible. On the front page we have the names of the men who gave money, including abraham redwood. It was a bible that was printed in antwerp. It was christopher plantains bible. There is hebrew and greek. The greek is a translation of the hebrew. Each of these languages have their own latin translation. At the bottom is an aramaic translation of the bible. On the opposite side is a latin translation of the aramaic. Just on one page the variety of different languages that are here. Ezra stiles was learning hebrew at the time from the leader of the local synagogue and a friend of his was helping him learn. Studying. Erested in early libraryw members were interested in forming a community of study and collaboration to bring new books to newport and to Work Together to study. Some of the earliest colonial rhodes of long island island were leaving the Massachusetts Bay colony. It was it it was heavily. 10. Heavily puritan. They formed to be settlements in rhode island that they hoped would be more open to different religions. The was a large quaker settlement, a large jewish population. Island becameode places of religious tolerance for the 18th century. For the 18th century. Newport was a thriving port city. It had international trade. This is a beautiful and rich example of such a useful book. Astrological and matchesical chart that very nicely with some of the sea charts, that were also bought. This is a beautiful record of the kind of book that would be both a mark of status for wealthy merchants and have utility in their work and in making navigation possible. Here, there are extensive instructions for how twodimensional representation of the heavens and turn it into a threedimensional model for navigation. These three diaries are part of a collection of diaries. Thomas Benjamin Hazzard was a man who lived in kingston, rhode island, just outside of newport. He was the grandson of our founder. He documented his daily life in these diaries. They range from 17781830. Theyre just a fraction of our collection. They have been digitized online. 17781782st one from includes a note about somebody who visited newport. On march 6 of 1781. Wind, went tot tell oak hill, general washington went to newport today, the town was eliminated. You can see how something that was a big event for a lot of people was just a note in his diary. The weather,uments the wind patterns, births, deaths, minor offense, town gossip he mentions over 6000 people in the collective diaries. They are all slightly different. This one is bound in a sail cloth. Than leather. They are all written in a similar form. Our collection is not only about the most valuable people pieces are the men who brought them here. It is about revealing different pieces of newport life through the centuries that we have existed here. It was possible through the mapsals, the army letters, and many scripts and photos and whatever has found its way to the red word Redwood Library. This building is essentially the first purpose built Library Structure in america. We often talk about franklin and his Library Company in philadelphia. Freestanding, purpose built Library Structure. That is very important. The others, we are still operating as a lending library. People have been coming through the door for 270 years. Besides the church, the Redwood Library is the only Cultural Institution that is unbroken to the colonial program. Period. Ial newport was one of the key five commercial ports of colonial america. It was on par with philadelphia and new york and others. In many ways, the Redwood Library is a culminating civil structure that represents the ambitions and aspirations of city, it is not just a mercantile powerhouse but also an intellectual center. That was the conception. Then and now, money and permit us commerce is always tainted with a certain kind of creed grteed. It was a strategic decision to civilize newport and its mercantile operations and make it, not only a financial hub, but also a learning hub, so to speak. Between 17 was built of 15 it is the fruit years of discussion among the newport intelligence. It is the forerunner of the Redwood Library as it library. He had a host of gathering his thoughts and resources to create a college in bermuda. He waited for the check from england, it never came. Friendships, he created a group that would meet weekly and , pressingilosophy issues of the day. Over time and that became a sort of core group, including abraham redwood, the pooled their resources and conceived of the library. It opened in march of 1750. Abraham redwood was a plantation owner in the caribbean. He owned a sugar plantation in antigua. He was a slave owner. As you can imagine, america was englandd culturally to and the continents. Continent. T trade centered in paris and london. Agentm redwood had an that was sent over to london with a book list. It is important to think about redwood was a quicker. They were very practical. They had pressing needs for knowledge and learning. The kernel of the collection is , 18th century additions both in the original language and in translation of important texts, there is also a more practical strand of the original collection which is include such things as beekeeping, animal husbandry, carpentry, all of that kind of thing. It is very democratic in that sense. It wasnt because it is 46 of redwoods friends. They held a certain class. White males of the commercial class. It was tor intent, provide a forum where interested citizens could come and get basic learning on anything. It is important to note that literacy in colonial america picked up in 1760. The Redwood Library is a part of that movement. It was open to everyone, but with a tacit understanding that it was men of a certain stature. It was opened on thursday afternoon for two hours and you would come in and put a deposit down on of the books. You can only borrow one book at a time. In that way, a it was a community resource. What was public then is not what is public now. That has always been the critique of the public sphere. It was exclusive in a lot of ways. Years, there has been renewed cycles of attention on maintaining the library. That is an important point. The Redwood Library has undeniable historic importance. It is the oldest continuously the oldest classic structure. It has enormous symbolic value today. We are besieged with fake news, tweets, soundbites it stands for intellectual pursuit, lifelong learning, curiosity, and ultimately for an educated citizenry as the basis of democracy. That is what redwood intended. That is what we try to continue in the mission that we are pushing currently. Particularly for an economy like we have, the middle class has been the centerpiece. It is our dna. It has become our Central Nervous system. When it prospers, the whole rest of the economy prospers. When it does not, it tends to create a barbell affect. A few people get really rich and the poor get really poor. The balance between these two, the key fulcrum position is the middle class. Any questions about the size of the middle class i made chicken because it is almost impossible to identify now. 50s, beginning, in the the middle class was a chunk of granite. It was largely white. It could be defined easily by what people earned. Where they lived, and what they spent. With you can say, here is the middle class. The face of america has changed so dramatically in the intervening years that all of out thempts to map middle class have gotten much more fat confounding. Some people do it on earnings power. That is an imperfect guy. What you learn in new york is different than what you might need in montana. Some people say, what can you learn plus borrow . Availability of credit comes and goes. I think the most effective definition came from a task force that president obama and Vice President biden set up. Waystook a look at all the you can imagine looking at the middle class. The Heritage Foundation says break them into quintiles, fits. Cannot the top bid and the bottom fifth and everyone else is the middle class. I get that but it is not terribly worked on. What the biden panel came up with was a very useful way to answer the question. Aspiration as a way to define this group. What did they aspire to . What are the aspirational elements of the middle class . House, a car, education for you and your children, great health retirement, and one more thing, the satisfaction of knowing there is a likelihood that your kids will be better than you are. I like that. I think that is a much more useful definition. Most people who are watching this will be or have been members of the middle class. It is most of us. It has become a much more dynamic organism. There is much more flowing in and out of the middle class. Everybody knows there are Something Like 4050 million poor people in the United States. It is entirely too many. That justhanged is above the seam of the poverty line, there are a number 40 Million People who are hovering poor. Listre just a whisker, a of life away from an experience in poverty. One of the leading causes of bankruptcy in the lower middle class is a cancer diagnosis. It can be a car accident or illness of your child. Is, the middleng class has gone from being an under chunk of granite to a very dynamic molecule with people coming in and out of the middle class. There are charities and public want to take people and push them above the poverty line and then we can say our job is done. That no longer is sufficient. These hovering poor will find havingople in our nation this experience of poverty. 40 of our children will come in some part of the life, be on food stamps or supplemental nutrition assistance programs. That volatility, that moving in and out, makes working with the middle class a lot more difficult. One of the things you asked is, how does the middle class happen . One of the great things i discovered in researching this book is that i have had in my own mind a notion that the middle class and america is so entwined that it must be a natural thing. Nothing could be further from the truth. , when 60d war ii million american men and women return from various theaters of , suddenly everybody came back. When they came back they faced something extra ordinary. The rest of the World Manufacturing was largely in ruins. They were bombed. All of mainland sittings remained intact. Mainland our manufacturing remained intact. Everyone had a sense that we needed to do something special. Out of respect and a sense of duty to the 60 million men and women. Extraordinary expression of unity, we all pulled together. Everyone had a feeling that we wanted to welcome these people home and give them a chance. We invested in their education, all across the board. Many ways to help them build, create, buy homes. We did a lot of things to help these people start out. What did the American People do . They rose to the occasion. As we saw our Economic Growth from just after the war through the next several decades, we to afrom a 200 million gdp hundred billion gdp in 30 years. We kept rolling. By the 1950s, we were the number one power in the world. Nobody had more agricultural produce. We were the number one manufacturing power in the world. By the late 1950s, we were the Number One Service provider in the world. By 1958, most of the people who went to work in the United States were whitecollar. These are middleclass jobs. People educated and worked and found their way out with lots of support from the government. It was anything but a natural, organic thing. This was a self designed and created attempt to bring these men and women, their children, into the flour of the middle class. It was created. That is important we look at what the world is doing now. Today, we are letting are middleclass founder flounder for itself. You hear a lot of vocalization of tax cuts for the middle class. Tax cuts alone will not begin to satisfy the needs of this middle class that i have described. The first cracks in the facade of the middle class happened in the 60s. It began with social unrest. The were a lot of people who were uninvited to the middle class. It was an africanamerican issue at first and then it became a youth issue as people began to divide along the lines of vietnam and the ways that racial and other kinds of inequality equality were being embrace. You cannot have a chunk of people who were supported by all to be in the middle class and a whole lot of other people with their noses pressed against the glass. What happened at that time was our economy started to falter, just as other economies in the world were coming on strain. We did not adjust very well. Happened thathing shivered all of our tempers. The arab oil embargo. Suddenly we found ourselves locked in a battle with the three uglies. Earlyhe 70s up to the 80s, we faced doubledigit unemployment, doubledigit Interest Rates, and doubledigit inflation. ,hose three uglies conspired along with the social unrest, to bring the middleclass miracle to a grinding halt. An example. You we are 30 years after the big crash of 87. We are very good at analyzing crosses that happen in one or two days. A broaderk at it from context, which is how i like to read my books and think about these things, from 1966 until the early 80s, the stock market lost 25 of its value. That is a big number and it is pretty tough. You factor in doubledigit inflation and you look at it in , a dollar invested in 1966 had lost more than half of its value by 1982. That was an agonizing crash will not see widely reported because it happens an inch at a time. Here you have an economy that is stuck. You have wages and inflation and a whole lot of other things taking off. Economists were totally bewildered. What we call list . This . They called it stagflation. Economys document even as inflation and other things are taking off. We do not know what to do about it. How does it show itself . It show itself in a really pointy way. Pointed way. Wages gear after year and decade after decade are flat. You have this incredible gap that is created where all the things you want to buy cost more upey, their prices are going over 8 a month, and your wages stay essentially flat for three decades. Dge came home to roost on the heads of the middle class. That was the big issue that brought us into the position of what we do now in the early 80s. One of the things that Ronald Reagan figured out when he got into office is that you cannot have wages stagnant. And unemployment of double digits. And Interest Rates at double digits. And inflation at double digits. And hope to do anything other than pontificate from your bully pulpit. He said, what we have to do is take very difficult, austere medicine. Team decided that the first and ugliest of the three uglies he had to take on was inflation. You cannot have prices going up a percent a month is that builds in an expectation that my income has to go up like that. You have to figure out another way around it. He said, we have to do what every whatever we can to slow the economy down. How do you do that . You spike inc. Interest rates. The prime rate went to 21. 5 . Most people do not even borrow prime. If you are borrowing to buy a house right car, your interest context, in todays went up 2 per month payment. If you bought a house, you had to pay 25 of the value of that house every year. What it did was kill any business that required borrowing to prosper. The Automotive Industry went right to help. Chrysler ultimately failed. The housing industry came to a screeching halt. People were horrified at the impact. , reaganaordinary thing gets maligned for a lot of things, inflation went from a 13 . By 1983 it slowed to 3 . People were saying, what can we do . We have no one else to send to work. Junior may be working at mcdonalds but we do not have a way to create more income. How can we possibly come as into the 90s, how can we sustain our middleclass lifestyle . Like a son on a clear day, yet it came to them. Borrow. In 1957, there was only a handful of credit cards. A hundredhere were million. By 2007, the were a billion credit cards. By 2008, Consumer Debt was at 12 point eight 5 trillion. 12. 85 trillion. We are talking about 13 trillion of Consum