So we can get your questions recorded as well as our authors answers. Lastly, at the end, if you could take a moment, fold up your chairs, lean them against something solid, that will give you more space for the book signing and help us get back to bookselling, all of that good stuff. Welcome to politics and prose. My name is abby fennewald. I run all of our events in the story. If you are not familiar with p p, i would definitely invite you to take a moment and sign up for our weekly email or pick up our may calendar of events, see Everything Else we have going on. We are now operating inside three busboys and poets locations around town, and we are going to be doing events in all those spaces as well, so we are doing more than ever. I would hate for you to miss out on any of it. With that, onto why you are all here. We are so happy to have eric burns back with us i think we said you have been here four times before to talk about his new book, 1920 the year that made the decade roar. This is absolutely not your typical history book, and he is not your typical academic sort of historian. He brings his journalists eye to the topic, just as he has done with his previous books. He is a former nbc news correspondent and was the former host of fox news watch and has won an emmy for media criticism. In his new book, he strips away a lot of the glamour that surrounds our concept of the 1920s and is able to really show more about what everyday life was like through talking more and more about people who maybe we do not remember as much of the history books but were important in their day. So im going to turn it over to him to tell you more about all that. We are so happy to have him back here at politics and prose. Please join me in welcoming eric burns. [applause] i do not drink coffee. I do not like coffee, and i always thought the reason was the taste. And it may be instead my lack of coordination. So i would like to ask your forbearance if i stumble somewhere. I am a flawless speaker, but i may just be done in by a coffee stain. 1920 was a remarkable year in and of itself, not just because of the events of that year, but because events of that year were harbingers. They were harbingers of events that would happen later in the decade, later in the century, and even two events which happened in this century, two of the major events of this century. Thursday, september 16, 1920, Trinity Church on wall street. The final bell from the tower sounds the noon hour. At that precise instant, a horse that had been standing in front of the jp morgan bank, which was across the street from the Trinity Church, explodes. A horse explodes into so many pieces that none could ever be found. I will not be questioned. The horse had been attached to a cart and inside the cart was the equivalent of 100 pounds of dynamite, in addition to 500 pounds of castiron sash weights, which, when the explosion occurred, had the effect of shrapnel. It was lunch hour. Lunch hour had just begun. Wall street was full of hungry and hurrying men and women in the Financial Institute who were going to restaurants, who were going to park benches to sit and eat their lunches. 38 were killed, more than 400 injured, and a few of those who were injured would die in a hospital within a week. It was the first terrorist attack ever in the United States, and it was the worst until Timothy Mcveigh detonated the lives of 168 people in Oklahoma City in 1995. Legislators back in 1920 started talking about homeland security. They did not call it homeland security, but they started talking about making it more difficult to pass through the porters of ellis island. Who set off the bomb . Why . Were they ever caught . 1920 was the only year in which two amendments to the constitution of the United States took effect. The first was the 18th amendment, which made it illegal to sell, buy, or manufacture but, curiously enough, not to drink alcoholic beverages. Of course, we know it as prohibition. It started on january 16 at 12 01 a. M. It ended, for all practical purposes, on january 16 at 12 02 a. M. Many people made their own ersatz versions of the beverages they used to know and love so well, most commonly beer, which people called homebrew. For this reason, prohibition became the greatest doityourself project in the history of this country, and it brought the family closer together than it had ever been before. A poem from the time mothers in the kitchen washing out the jugs. Sisters in the pantry bottling the suds. Fathers in the cellar mixing up the hops. Johnnys on the front porch watching for the cops. [laughter] Americans Still respected the law generally, but this one specifically was just too contrary to human nature to be obeyed on a widespread basis. Among those who dissipated were rotary Club President s, pastors, doctors, veterans of the great war, and, on one bizarre occasion in our nations capital, a lawmaker himself. In the lobby of the Office Building of the house of representatives, a congressman named Fiorello Laguardia invited friends, fellow legislators, tourists, reporters, newsreel cameramen, and even, perversely, the Capitol Hill Police force to watch a demonstration. Here is how historian Geoffrey Perret describes the demonstration. Laguardia blended two parts malt tonic, heretofore of interest only to anemics and easy to obtain at any drugstore, to one part near beer. That was a beer with minimal alcoholic content and thus it was legal under prohibition, although some reports from the time say that the taste was Something Like dishwater left in the sink overnight. Laguardia stirred the ingredients and allowed a few seconds to pass to heighten the suspense. Then he drank up and licked his lips. The camera zoomed in. A brewmaster was standing by to sample the mixture. He pronounced it delicious. I think he was on laguardias payroll. Laguardia started passing on samples of his Second String beer, and he even said that the police should try it, and he had people in the crowd pass glasses back to the police, who were confounded about whether they should arrest this man who was breaking the law. He was a congressman. Everybody broke the law. They did not know what to do. So they fled. Chances are, at least some of them ended up in their favorite speakeasies, drowning their frustrations for the embarrassment that laguardia had caused them with a better quality of beverage than the congressman had produced himself. In addition to near beer, industrial alcohols were legal under the 18th amendment because they were used in various manufacturing processes. They were indispensable to various manufacturing processes, but as Beverage Additives industrial alcohols were poison. They were blended with real alcohol to increase quantities and thus increase profits. In addition, they increased deaths. In some cases, to sell bootleg hooch to people who could not afford better was to commit murder. In the words of some people, government sanctioned murder. One of the many destructive products that was used at the time, concocted by gangsters, was called jamaica gin or jake. If you drink too much jake, there was not much of a chance you would die, but what it did somehow was weaken tendons in your ankle so that you could not walk normally. You walked as if you had a clubfoot. You were called a jake trotter or a jake stepper. Imagine this in studying the various recipes for jake, american scientists learned some of the principles that would lead german scientists develop nerve gases in world war ii. The Second Amendment that was passed in 1920 was surprisingly controversial and long overdue. It finally gave women the right to vote, despite bribes to the contrary that took place right out in the open, right up to the last minute. There were occasions when, in the middle of the aisles of various legislative houses, state legislative houses, you could see a lobbyist give a handful of bills to a legislator who would then nod his head. He was signifying that his opposition to suffrage was now bought and paid for. But momentum trumped money in this case, and the 19th amendment was added to the constitution in the summer of 1920, ironically just a few months before the First National election in which women would vote. Women joined men and they had no choice in voting out of office the first female president of the United States, and so far the only female president. She was not really the president , but she was the president de facto, lets say, as opposed to du jour. Most americans did not even know about it. As i look out here, i see most americans dont know about it today. The Political Community in washington knew about the woman in the white house. Senator albert fall of new mexico was enraged. We have petticoat government, he said, and the Diplomatic Community in washington knew. The french ambassador to the United States reported back to parents that he was dealing with mademoiselle president. The greatest misunderstanding about 1920 is that it was the first year of the most carefree and wealthy decade we have ever had in this country. Well, it was not carefree because Americans Still lived under the shadow of the great war, which of course is what world war i was called then, a conflict at once so brutal and nonsensical that we could not help but fear it would break out again. As the case of the exploding horse demonstrated, this time and might even break out on our own soil. As the case of the exploding horse demonstrated, maybe it already had. So 1920 was not a carefree year and it certainly was not a wealthy one, unless you were one of the socalled robber barons and their allies. Keep in mind this was their era, the era of morgan, mellon, rockefeller, the vanderbilt descendents, among many others. The era of men who made millions of dollars from the bent backs and aching shoulders of men and women and children, the era of vicious employers, helpless employees. Some of the men had recently returned from fighting a war that enriched the robber barons all the more since it was they who had manufactured some of the arms, ammunitions, and airplanes for the allies. At the same time, other men, who were not nearly so fortunate, had been part of the socalled great internal migration, which consisted mostly of africanamericans departing from the cotton fields of the south for the factories of the north, desperate for a better life but finding a life just as punishing, the hours just as long, the pay just as minimal, and the future just as depressing. It is not easy to calculate, but considering the minimal income tax that existed at the time, it is probably true that the earnings gap between the richest of americans and the poorest of americans was greater in 1920 than it is today. Scott and zelda might have pranced through the fountain in new yorks plaza hotel, drunk and soaking wet and laughing hysterically, but the men who worked in steel mills and coal mines for a few dollars a week, the women who worked in sweatshops for a few coins a day, the young boys who got up in the middle of the night to deliver blocks of ice that weighed almost as much as they did, or the young girls who earned their pennies by spending 12 hours a day, six days a week, sewing collars onto blouses, forced to stand up and eat their lunches so they could keep working these people these people were the truer symbols of life in america in 1920 than scott, zelda, and the flappers. Carlo Pietro Giovanni guglielmo tebaldo ponzi, otherwise known as charles ponzi, was an immigrant to United States, and he was determined not to live the kind of life i have just described. He did not. There were times, however, when he might have been better off if he did. A few people actually made money from ponzis financial machinations, which, by the way, were legal when he began to offer his financial product. The initial ponzi scheme was misunderstood in several other ways, too, which i will mention in a few minutes. Before long, so much money was being made by a few people that a law was passed that made his dealings a criminal activity. When ponzi kept selling his now worthless paper, he became a crook and the ponzi scheme became a reality. Late in the 20th century, thanks to a man named bernie madoff, the scheme was reborn and in 2008 madoff went to jail for the rest of his life. I suspect i do not know, but i suspect that ponzis name might have been in the newspaper more in 2008 than it was in 1920. Most of us think that the ponzi scheme is a kind of chain letter, but its in its original form not that at all. Its much more complicated than that, and it involved postal rates in Different Countries in different parts of the world. I dont really understand it completely, and i wrote about it in a book. So if you buy the book and you come to that section, you may be assured that what i wrote is true. Its just that youll be confused, too. Bernie madoffs version of the ponzi scheme lasted almost a decade. Carlo ponzi didnt even last a year. Early in 1920, he was a small time hoodlum trying to impress his mama, who he loves dearly, his italian mama back home. He wrote her letters saying he was doing so well in america. He was doing better, becoming more successful all the time. Figuratively, the streets here really were paved with gold if you knew what streets to take. In fact, by the fourth of july in 1920, ponzi was a multimillionaire. Before the year was over, he was a jailbird. Things moved very quickly for this most famous of scam artists. But i have this surprise for you. You will not believe it now, but just wait. If you read 1920 the year that made the decade roar, by the time you finish, you will not despise charles ponzi. You will sympathize with him. You will feel for him. Charles ponzis story is one of the saddest tales of a crook, of a man, ever put to paper. In 1920, warren g. Harding, a republican senator from ohio, defeated james cox, the democratic senator from ohio, and some years later harding was voted the 29th best president in the history of the United States. You see whats coming, dont you . [laughter] at the time, america had had 29 president s. None, however, had presided over an administration as corrupt as hardings. One member of the administration was perhaps and this was a fellow whose office was next to that of the attorney general he was perhaps the leading bootlegger in washington and committed suicide when he feared that he might be exposed. A cabinet officer, a friend of hardings and a despicable man, was put in charge of veterans affairs, and he stole supplies from veterans hospitals. This is, you know, a year or two after the war. Veterans hospitals were full and needed their supplies as much as ever. He stole them, sold them for his own profit, and then, with hardings approval, escaped to europe. He was never prosecuted. His top assistant feared prosecution. He committed suicide. The attorney general was indicted for fraud. And albert fall, foe of petticoat government, was appointed secretary of the interior, whereupon, for a kickback, he sold military oil reserves to friends of his for private profit. The scandal was called teapot dome because of the shape of a rock formation under which most of the oil resided. Teapot dome was probably the most ignominious transgression against justice in American Government until 1972, when the first and greatest of the scandals ending in gate was revealed. Meanwhile, harding was setting records for adultery that would not be eclipsed until john kennedy came along. One day, a tour of the white house was being conducted and the visitors heard something that sounded like two people banging off the walls of a tiny janitors closet next to the president s office. Mops were sliding down the walls. Buckets were tumbling over. A male voice joined a female voice in a chorus of lustful panting. Usually, Janitorial Services do not inspire that degree of enthusiasm. [laughter] the tour guide asked his group to walk a little faster. They were happy to oblige. Now, the most important event of 1920, in my opinion, was also the most important event of the 20th century, in my opinion. It took place in a small shack on a roof of a factory just outside pittsburgh, pennsylvania. In that shack, the american mass media, of which there is no force more influential, began. What Radio Station kdka did on the first tuesday night in november of 1920 was broadcast a news event live. Never been done before. It was the hardingcox election returns. Neither the country nor the world would ever be the same again. Although few people could have imagined that radio would one day lead to something called television and no one could have imagined keeping up with the kardashians. [laughter] small towns were always thought of as the home of virtue, and then, in 1920, Sinclair Lewis wrote our town. And American Literature was never the same again. The stage was usually the home of entertainment that was fluffy and moralistic, and then, in 1920, Eugene Oneill won the first of his four Pulitzer Prizes with beyond the horizon. And the theater was never the same again. Poetry was the home of romance and bucolic scenery, and then, in 1920, t. S. Eliot and Carl Sandberg came along. And verse was never the same again. With the exception of some of irving berlins work, popular songs were insipid. They had titles like daddy, youve been a mother to me, when the moon shines on the moonshine, and who ate napoleons with josephine when napoleon was away . [laughter] real titles, real songs. Then, in 1920, out of nowhere, a woman who virtually no one had ever heard of named mamie smith not bessie, but mamie smith released the record crazy blues. It became, against all odds, the number one song in the country, and the jazz age had officially begun. And, with the harlem renaissance having already begun, music and literature, poetry and prose alike, changed all the more, revealing that a great many of the countrys priorities had changed and would never change again. The roaring 20s are the most famous decade in the history of the United States. They are the only decade that has its own name, its own adjective. But without these and other events of 1920 to jumpstart the decades engine, it might have been quite a while before history heard so much as a sputter. And that is the end of what you will hear from me tonight about 1920 the year that made the decade roar. [applause] thank you. We do have some time for questions. Yes, i was going to say that is not true. That is not the last youll hear from me, but now it will be up to you to decide what you will hear. Very interesting. I thought that there were terrorist attacks, or at least one, by the anarchists before 1920. Wasnt there some anarchist who threw a bomb into a carriage in new york with elegant ladies coming back from shopping . He said Something Like what you paid for your gown could support my family for a whole year. Could you repeat the question . Werent there anarchist attacks in this country before 1920 . In 1919, there was a wave of package bombs sent. One person died, and it was the person who was delivering the package. The worst entry beside that was a maid handling a package lost her hands. These package bombs were sent to mayors, to judges, to members of the establishment. I do not know about the case you are talking about, but yes, there were, on a small scale, a lot of individual incidents. There had never, however, been anything that killed and injured as many people as the attack that i told you about. My aging hearing im going to be 90 on thursday may account for this, but i did not hear you mention mrs. Woodrow wilson, the second mrs. Woodrow wilson, as the unelected president you referred to, but obviously it was she. Well, i am sorry you brought that up. I was being cute. I was this is not an analogy that i am crazy about, but it was like this was basically a serious talk, but the format was like jokes without punchlines, which was the voice of commerce in my ears saying, make them buy the book so they will find out. You have come up to the microphone and ruined of course. Fortunately, you have just ruined one of the questions that i did not answer. The second one is oh, good. [laughter] in regard to ponzi, this may be oversimplistic, but i studied his con game many, many years ago, and i reduced it to what his appeal was, a sales appeal, that he was engaging in what we would Call International postage rate arbitrage. Right . That is a good term for it, yes. Thank you. It is. It is. It is a very good term. You said you didnt even understand it. I dont. I mean, that is a good term, but i do not think it explains exactly what he was doing. It is just a nice way he was obviously collecting far more money than he could pay out, but the sales talk was postal rates are different in 100 Different Countries around the world. I am able to buy these postal certificates from various countries and then trade them off in another country where the postal rate is different. I make a profit and you get the benefits. That was his pitch. My understanding, and im not sure that in my reading i have not seen this, is that he more than likely did not go into that kind of detail for fear of confusing people. Maybe he never even engaged in it, but i thought that was his sales pitch. Well, his primary sales pitch was that i will give you a 50 return. It is. Whenever you want your money, i will give you a 50 return. Ok, thank you. You didnt do too much damage. I apologize for blowing your teaser. That is all right, sir. I would like to make a correction, i believe, and then a question. You said that Sinclair Lewis wrote the book our town. I think youre referring to main street. Oh, for heavens sake. And thorton wilder, of course, wrote our town. This gentleman caught a foolish mistake, my saying that Sinclair Lewis wrote our town. Of course he wrote main street. Now for the question. Did you watch boardwalk empire, by any chance . No. Ok. My question was how realistic did you think it was, but you do not know. I have no idea. I am sorry. I had a question. I think i read somewhere not too long ago that it may have been 1920, although maybe it was not exactly that year, that, in the midst of all this turmoil, i think you had one of the largest, if not the largest, demonstration actually down on the mall at that time. Is that correct or was that maybe a slightly different year . There were so many convening things veterans, anger about the war, prohibition come all these things. I was just wondering does that come out too much . To the best of my knowledge, nothing like that happened in 1920. What was the reason for the demonstration . The bonus army. The bonus army . That would have been later. Thats 1930. Quite a bit later. You think it was a little later . Yes, it was. Protests did not occur much then. Interestingly enough, i did not go into there was not time to go into everything i did not go into labor unrest and strikes. There were, in 1920, 3000 strikes. 20 years before that, there would have been none. It was a massive change and an indication of how terrible working conditions were that the strike became a staple of the american workplace. Yes, sir. It is probably a naive question, but i will ask it anyway. What were the Political Forces arrayed against women voting . What was so people were giving money because of what fears . I have no idea. I have no idea. There is no logical reason for it. I can tell you a great number of the people who opposed suffrage were women, and explanations that i have read about women in particular opposing suffrage had to do with their roles. I mean, they sounded like the worst of chauvinistic men. That it is not our place to be in the voting booth. We have our places. Our husbands and other men have their places. This is not a good idea i do not think they would have used a term like this, but it is not a good idea to confuse the roles. That was the general idea behind it. Again, this is coming from women, and certainly from men. Go on. Theowup question 18th and 19th amendment. Hand, womenthe one who opposed suffrage, but also among the women who were the most diehard activists. Them, aan awful lot of lot of prominent leaders, who. Eemed to be making deals they were very active in the Temperance Movement and supportive of the 18th amendment as well. Do you talk about that in the , the political bargaining that seems to be going on between the two groups to get both of those amendments the same year . I have written at length in another book about the 18th amendment. It is my feeling that that was a very minor factor. The answer is no. I do not think that had much to problems ofbasic the 19 to the minute 19th amendment. Could you talk about the harlem renaissance and the state of Race Relations in 1920 and its connection with the harlem renaissance, which was popular among certain people . The harlem renaissance was a glorious thing and it is wonderful to read about it. The effect that it had on whites generally was nonexistent. The harlem renaissance was funded, for the most part, by jewish merchants for manhattan, who would drive up in their limousines at night and enjoy the pleasure of an exotic culture. It was not, by any means, a tourist attraction. Fromd not draw people other places. The people Duke Ellington was playing for were almost exclusively new yorkers. , althoughton club blacks sang and played, they were not allowed in the door to. E customers Duke Ellington was asked about that. As you might imagine, had a very unsatisfactory answer. As powerful a man as he was, he could have said something about it. Then again, the cotton club was who was in jail at the time for various murders. With hisne went along racial dicta. Notharlem renaissance was particularly widespread in its effect on Race Relations. In terms of how it changed music , literature, yes, it had an effect. In terms of how the average white looked at the average black, it did not have much of an effect. It is just a wonderful period. I do not know if you people for hly adoration mencken, who to me is the most interesting journalist this country is ever produced, but he was a leading figure in the harlem renaissance. He was somewhat antisemitic and jews were among his best friends. Againstrejudiced africanamericans, but he worked very hard with africanamerican writers. Theyy say about him idolized him. Hed come up more than anyone else, took it upon himself to make sure that the harlem renaissance succeeded. Much more than you asked. Is that it for questioning . Thank you so much. [applause] thank you very much. Thank you all for coming. If you have not had a chance to get a book, you can bring it back here. You are watching American History tv, covering history cspan style with event coverage, eyewitness accounts, archival films, lectures in college classrooms, and visits to museums and historic places. All weekend, every weekend on cspan3. Monday is Martin Luther king jr. Day. Here is a clip from our archival film series, reel america. Cochairmen reverend Martin Luther king. The supreme hope of this , rendered in temples decisional language, a which will long be stenciled on the mental seeds of the generation. This may 17 decision came as a end the long night of human captivity. Hope toas a light of millions of disinherited people throughout the world who has. Ared only to dream of freedom this decision has. Ot gone without opposition this opposition has often risen. O ominous proportions most urgent request to the president of the United States and every member of congress is to give us the right and we will no longer have to worry about our basic rights. Give us the ballot and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an antilynching law. We will come up by the power of our vote, we will, by the power of our vote, write the law on the statute books of the south and bring an end to the dastardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence. Give us the ballot and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens. Willus the ballot and we quietly and nonviolently, without bitterness, implement of Supreme Court decision may 17, 1954. American history tv is on cspan3 every weekend and all of our programs are archived on our website at cspan. Org history. You can watch lectures in college classrooms, tours of historic sites, archival films, and see our scheduled upcoming programs. That is cspan. Org history. Tv,ext on American History a panel of holocaust scholars talk about recent scholarship trends as well as new findings. They focus on the brutality of regime and the relation of the holocaust to world war ii. This was part of the world war ii museums annual conference in new orleans. The month of was june, 1944. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Topic tom a dark probably the darkest of all also is led by some of the worlds leading scholars period. It is, of course, the holocaust. For this session, we have a asked dr. Alexander ritchie of our president ial counselors to lead
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