The issues facing the issues of Rural America in tight robe. Enjoy tonight and on the weekend, cspan2. A very warm welcome to the first lecture of the general society, labor, literature and landmark lecture series. I am karen taylor, Program Director of the general society. The labor, literature and landmark lecturere series are supported in part by public funds from the new York City Department of cultural affairs, in partnership with the city council. For those of you who may be less familiar with the general society and if you dont mind i will ask how many of you here f this evening will this be your first visit . Okay. Right, warm welcome and of course a welcome back to previous attendees. The general society was founded in 1785 by 22 artisans in today are 234 yearold organization continues to serve the people of the city of new york. Ek do this through our culturl and Educational Programs and they include our lecture series of which tonights lecture is a part of and general Society Library which is celebrating 200 years next year and our tuition free Mechanics Institute and the john m collection which you are welcome to visit after our talk this evening and that is upstairs. You will find more information on the blueandwhite postcard on your seats. We have such a wonderful start to this years lecture season. Pleasure of welcoming the critically acclaimed biographer susan ronald who tonight will discuss her biography of conde nast, the publishing legend of vogue and vanity fair and other illustrious publications i also want to mention if you have not already done so you will have an opportunity to purchase this wonderful book which it has a stunning cover later this evening so please be aware that you have this opportunity and i am sure susan will be happy to find the book for you. I also want to mention that cspan is filming this talk tonight so this program will be rebroadcast from book tv. When we do get to the q a portion i want to remind you that anyone asking the question that you will have the opportunity to be featured on book tv. T born and raised in the United States miss ronald has lived in england for more than 25 years and has come over especially this week to talk about her book. She is the author of a dangerous woman, hitlers arts thief, heretical queen, the pirate queen and shakespeares daughter. It is my considerable pleasure to reduce to you, susan ronald. [applause] thank you everybody. I hope our technical problems are at an end. You may see these thoughts there on the bottom and i decided to write about conde nast really because i tend to write about the power and greed and all the people average about before theres another book which is not on here happened for powerful people and some of have greedy and almost all of them have had some sort of brush with the law but after a dangerous woman about Florence Gould married to the youngest son of jay gould, many of you will certainly know of i decided that having written about someone who was incredibly powerful, incredibly devious and also the banker to human carrying by the end of the war and never, ever was tried for dastardly deeds i needed to cleanse myself i wanted to write about a really good person. So i told this to my agent and my publisher and they just kind of looked blankly at me and they said you write to have a look at the publishing industry, are there any good guys in publishing, sure enough he was right. So i decided that i was going to write a book about one of the most powerful people at the turnofthecentury and then going in to world war ii. Of course a lot of you know all of the magazines but they were not there the beginning, and wanted to give you what makes conde nast, conde nast. And for the circumstances mostly, i apologize for the quality of some of the photographs, there is his mother who is pictured on the right, unfortunately i do not have her as a young woman, this is only picture that the family still has in theirth possession. She was quite a lady in her own right. Her father, was a guy called Louis Bedwell and he settled in st. Louis in this lovely home, he was married three times and had 15 children. He was extremely wealthy, he was a banker and apparently a good guy. I know that does not go with the term banker but go with me he left several Million Dollars to his children whenll he died. As a child he remembers playing in his maternal grandfathers bedroom, it is currently still a Historic House on the outskirts of st. Louis mostly as a wedding venue today. But of course yes, sir, his mother only inherited 300,000 by the time the money came down her. On his fathers side, his grandfather was born in germany and immigrated to the United States as a teacher but was always a depressive and very serious he converted to methodism and became the father of german methodism in north america. His oldest son william was a man who wanted to be born with the silver spoon in his mouth but the family did not have any. So he decided he was going to go up to germany of the american consul and buy him a uniform so he could help. His father was absolutely beside himself. And then william fell on hard times because he also stole money from american citizens when he was there. He left germany very quickly and somehow met up with yes, sir. Conde was the oldest son had another brother named louis who is a great pianist but can you grow up without a father at the age of three, he decided he was going back to europe to make his fortune more like hard work but were for suckers before he was s e man of the family, he had two younger sisters that they called new women, new women were women who made their own rules who did not hang around with chaperones before the turn of the 20th century who actually were extremely independent. So was his mother, she had to be school she had to be to get theb family together until his father came away until he was 17 things got pretty tough in the end, the only member of the family staying close to them was williams younger sister. And she was actually quite a gal herself, she married into money, she loved fine things, she was very stylish in her own way and considering this picture taken in the 1880s you could see that she did like to look nice she married into the Gamble Family of proctoring gamble fame. She decided she was going to help out esther to an American College of without them on their way. When she went to visit louis was untidy and reminded her great deal of her brother who had abandoned the family, therefore she decided she would only send conde to georgetown university. Louis never spoke to his brother again. Here is conde is a graduate of. A very handsome young man. His best friend at college was bob collier, the heir to the collier library. He went a year or two to europe, england, oxford, came back and his father said i will give you his weekly because its failing. They only had enough dollars at the time. Bob had done a lot of work with conde at various clubs at georgetown and he went down tohe st. Louis and talked him into talk taking a 12dollar week job and he did considering he was the man of the family. Condes father had died and they were together very happily indeed for about 15 years. Bob collier pictured left was an innovator. He thought about making collier less of a generalized magazine but with conde pressuring him that we can sell advertising to create special issues. So you saw before that the other picture that i just showed you was Frederic Remingtons art. This was the issue that started the gibson girls going in terms of colliers magazine. He overpaid gibson double of what he would normally get of a journal so we can have it exclusively for a period of two years. That was something that conde learned about as well, collier was actually very navigating his great friend oval right on the right and together they set up the First Ever NationalMagazine Company that had its own Sales Network in every major cityin across America Conde understood to some magazines you had to make sure your customer wanted to read the ads, your advertiser had to feel like he was not wasting his money and also you are called ethical and what you sold. This was the era of medicines, almost every newspaper promise to give you Something Special, i dont think i would want to have any small group. I think that is pretty bad. But this product claimed it could cure absolutely anything. So collier joined with ladiess home journal to stop medicine advertising because they believe it was killing americans. This is a view of the other ads at the time you can have your diabetes readily cured. And it will strengthen your system and decrease her sugar and prevent diabetic shock. Wonderful. We wont go to his product slowly. You wouldnt believe it or not but cw post who founded posterior is another when selling cereals out of arv medicine. Heres to another year of steady nerves, clear brain and vigorous health. Bob collier is burned on by conde that he would sue them and he did anyone. He learned a great deal from his relationship with bob and bob introduced him to his first wife, i dont know if any of you remember the legal firm in new york said they had their offices on fifth avenue for many years but they came across america, George Washingtons friend they established as International Lawyers in america in the early 19th century yers in the early 19th century and larrys was part of new yorks 400. Conde was by now a wealthy man he was part of the 400. Conde was a wealthy man by 1902 when he married her. He was earning 40000 a year, the only a person in america anymore with Theodore Roosevelt as president , he earned 350,000. So she decided that she loved bob collier bob collier did not love her. So conde was a good second, he was after her money, but he understood that she held the with hand as far as exciting was concerned. The only probably conde understood that society was changing, their role was changing, they wanted to become independent, they wanted to vote, they wanted their thoughts to be recognize. While certainly clarice felt like that was for her to, she did not really like the idea of working for a living because that was beneath the member of the 400 on the social register. Instead after two years of marriage where she had two children, the son first and then the daughter. She decided she was going to go to paris and become a soprano. Of course she would because her Three Sisters lived there as well. One of them had been supporting the artist as his moneymaker basically for the previous 20 years. Now that is not very good for as marriage obviously. Conde decided 1904 that he was going to set up on his own, yes bob collier was paying him more money than he was worth, theres no doubt about it, 40000 a year in those days was close to a Million Dollars and essentially he decided he was going to take a plunge into womens fashion and he would say why womens fashion. Here he is as a National Magazine and theyre starting to go to the markets, conde had decided that womens fashion was going to be key to the changing role of women. Up until now womens fashion in terms of the closing that would be put into patterns had two distinct shortcomings. The first of course, all patterns were giveaways. Alongside the second which was even more incredible is the fact there was only one size and conde decided the new woman has many sizes, im going to empower her, i will empower women without money to make theirgo on clothing and all the sizes ofmo the coming and they should discard their corsets, enjoy life and be women. And of course he was right. He ended up allowing ladies home journal to label his own patterns. So Home Pattern Company was his first company, he is still working for bob colyer. But due to a number of circumstances, he ended up in 1906, 1907 was the first time he tried to buy vogue but he field. He went across europe to rescue his two children from paris and his wife, she decided that she wanted to stay on so they went across, picked up the children and n the nurse, clarice decided she would come home to but then in 1909 he bought vogue and clarice disappeared for six months, nobody in the family knows why but she did. He was lucky enough to buy vogue sadly because the owner a guy called author turner who is part of the coal years which is a big club forve publishers, he said t up very early on in 1995, he hired on a lady as a mail clerk on the left, her name is edna chase. By the time you see her on the right she had been the editor of vogue, the editor and chief for over 50 years. Conde kept her on obviously and it was his sister who was the editor of the time andnd got it and she left to a disagreement over money. In 1912 he decided to buy two more magazines and put them into one, something called house and garden and i think you refer to that. Now he is home pattern, vogue, houseno and garden 1912. By 1914 he decides he would like to set up an interNational Magazine empire dedicated to women and womens fashion. Unfortunately theres something called world war i that began in europe in 1914 and for america it began in 1970. Edna comes up and saysn i have this wonderful idea, i know were cut off from french fashion and from the british men fashion as well because of the work but why dont we have something called a Charity Fashion show and will get all ofow the near ive hundd involved and he said its skeptical, clarice doesnt like working, can you imagine these women working on a Charity Fashion show. She said give me a chance. And she made it a success. She went and was able to talk her into creating the fashion show and she immediately tells the disaster and it was a done deal. The only problem was it was going to be at the ritzcarlton in new york and all the models for all the fashions previously were tied to various fashion houses in europe not america. That they were able to cobble together a very interesting show of new yorkf fashion. Laugh. Here it is. The new York City Public Library just found some of the skills and if you go to the website you will see the fashions. As i said the models were tied to other places and as you can see fortunately conde was making close in different sizes because not all of them are models were they. So there is more of these apparently at the new York City Public Library and i thought it would be really interesting to see. Anyway, this upset another gentleman calledam william randl who just bought Harpers Bazaar. He sent his people out to badmouth vogue and conde as people wanted to get rid ofor entering european fashion and not reported to america anymore and only out to support new York Clothing designers et cetera et cetera. What happened condes representative arrived in paris during the war with a big fat check for the seamstress who is put out of work and so he lost the first trauma he was not going to give up, we all know he did not do that. Come 19152 things happen. The most important one was a lunch with a gentleman who founded the coffeehouse in the building frankfurt and shield. Frank was a great of modern art, he was everybodys favorite, he had miles and acres of friendscr throughout new york city and conde had lunch with him probably at the coffeehouse. I dont knowus where exactly and he said i have a problem, i bought two magazines called dress in vanity fair and i tried to edit them but im a publisher, im not an editor. Where do you think im getting wrong. Frank said its very simple. You have to make it fizzle, you have to make it a cocktail polity enter party where everybody turns the page they yoare joining you in a conversation, they are understanding what it is that everybody in society or everybody who we read about is thinking about. So conde decided to hire frank as editor for vanity fair on a handshake. He did his best deals on a handshake. They had one competitor at the time the editor in the smart set where they said one civilized reader is worth a thousand boneheads. [laughter] is smart set went out of business but they had a very friendly rival between them in a matter of fact george jean mason ended up working at vanity fair after closed. He believed in hiring the best people no matter what. It didnt matter whether they were gay, lesbian, jewish, catholic, whatever, black it did not matter. What mattered was talent, it did not matter if they weree known. So he hired a girl called dorothy to write captions for vogue. The one that caught his eye was the soul of laundry. [laughter] she kept dropping little poems to try to transfer over f from little vogue into vanity fair and finally he agreed to take her on. And then he also wanted to take on the vanity fair articles more substantial so he brought on the middle guy called robert. He was actually one of thebe funniest people ive ever read about and i read his own biography and its absolutely hysterical. Harvard graduate, he had been the editor of the Harvard Lampoon and he got the job because it was going to get very serious. I open the book with one of the incidents that happened while they were working there. Essentially by the way went on to win an oscar for show produced by mgm called how to sleep. [laughter] it is hysterically funny if you can ever get a hold of it. Dorothy of course would eventually go into other things but the third person in the picture ise a gentleman called Robert Sherwood who is about 6foot eight and he was fresh out of o the army in 1919 and ce to work he said hed was a very good writer, he wanted to believe him he had been very wounded during the war, he had been gassed, shot in the legs and as dorothy would say how did they miss his heart. This guy wassk enormous. And he would go one to win for poet surprised and become a speech writer for fdr. So these are all unknowns but they all misbehave t