With our partners at Elliott Bay Book company. Our civic series in our inside out theories at town hall is a special year for reasons i make clear in a moment supported by the true brown foundation. Our civics programs are sponsored by boeing, the Realnetworks Foundation and partnership. Doctor white will speak 35 or 40 moments and will have time for questions. The mike will rotate that way and be available to you for the q and a later. I would ask you keep your questions concise and in the form of a question so we get to as many folks as possible over the course of the evening, youre sure to have many questions. We have copies of the republic for which it stands available for purchase purchase and Richard White of signature back there. It is a big book, he will cover a lot of material with plenty left unread and unheard. If you dont want to pick up a copy, that is a sales pitch, it is the truth. I want to acknowledge the obvious, this is not townhall. It is a townhall program. As you know our historic home is closed for 27. 2 million renovation including seismic stabilization, new heating and cooling, acoustic improvements, 17 new restrooms. That always gets some applause. And an entrance to a completely reconceived downstairs performance base. Thanks 1000 supporters across the community we garnered today and surpassed 22 million raised for the project, thank for the applause. It is staggering actually. We have 3 million that we will finance the last little bit. New dipper jars, magically maneuvers out 25 or something. Theres more detailed information in the powerful sales pitch at townhallseattle. Org. Check out our digital stage, extremely data like that is where we host audio and video archives. I learned tonight at the event will be the first and only event he does for this book until january when he arrives in new york city. If you like what you hear and wants to revisit it or share with friends go to seattletownhall. Org and share it so they can share with their friends too. We reopen townhall. This is part of the experiment inside out season, neighborhood collaborators building programs around things they are interested in hearing and actively collaborating on programs together. Is this your time Editorial Program . Thank you for being here, we appreciate it. I cant help myself, we have a membership program, 45, and the calendar in the mail tells you everything we are up to and that will help pied piper be back, the old building, the new old building on the other side of the inside out, if you like what you experience tonight join us for more programs by becoming a member. I would like to thank the summit event for hosting us tonight. I want to call out a couple events that may be of interest, sunday evening, the neuroscience behind the power of our brains to influence one another, not through active persuasion but little queues the brains pick up. On 4 october, peter will explain how sea ice is the canary in the coal mine of planetary climate change. On thursday, 5 october, the musical traditions of mali, the second concert in the series. Said that mark dowden on the turning point of the vietnam war, the return of saturday family concerts tomorrow, with casper baby pants. We can talk literary apples with Stephen Greenblatt on adam and eve, being interviewed by leslie hazelton. What it means to have a good death with a celebrity mortician and Rising Star Chamber music, benjamin, and concert hall. That is the taste of insideout this year. Past president of the organization of american historians, Richard White, a historian and professor at stanford and the author of notable books on the american west, native American History and the environment. That implies there were less notable books and he is the author of that not what i meant at all. The ones that i am aware of the recipient of the existing whispers are is professor ward and former professor at the university of washington, his work has won numerous prizes and has been a finalist for the pulitzer prize. He was the former director of spatial history project at stanford which implement Digital Technologies and analyses to illuminate patterns and anomalies for research. He is the author of numerous books including railroaded, transcontinental, and the making of modern america in 2011. 1991, the middle ground, indian empires and republics and the great lakes region. And the organic machine on the remaking of the columbia river. His latest is the republic for which it stands the United States during reconstruction and the gilded age, 18651896. Which is published by our good friends at oxford press and the subject of tonights talk. Join me in offering a warm welcome to Richard White. [applause] good to be back, i taught here in the 1980s in 1990s, we refer to that as a graduate student in the 1970s as i came back this time with Something Else i hadnt thought of in years, first time i came to seattle, the traffic inspired me to think about it. The first time i came here in 1969 i was driving a volkswagen van, fishing rights activists for franks landing near olympia. Somewhere around tacoma we lost our breaks. I remember saying we lost our breaks, i remember them saying keep driving. Which i did. It is a testimony to my own stupidity that i kept driving and also to seattle traffic who made it into seattle and Still Standing there today. In a talk about the book, which is as Everybody Knows a very big book, as a matter of fact, the daughter of one of my friends said it was the biggest book she had ever seen in her life. It is the biggest book i ever intend to write. You might think that Oxford University press commissions these books by the pound and in a sense they do. They are meant to be big books. A short Attention Span theater version of the book. You will get the big themes and the take aways but i wont go into a lot of details. You can ask about those and the questions which is the part that i look forward to the most. There is no lack of american historians who want to write about the civil war, world war ii, the new deal. But the gilded age, 1865 to 1896 is usually flyover country. It is remembered mostly as the golden age of facial hair which we see here, these are the american president s who are the most forgettable in American History, ulysses s grant, rutherford b hayes, james garfield, the immortal Chester Arthur who there is a new biography about, benjamin harrison, grover cleveland. There is an age of jackson, and age of lincoln, an age of roosevelt, there is no age of benjamin harrison. We should be careful before we consign this period to a backwater because if it is a backwater we are living in one today, we are living in a second gilded age. A parallel has often been made and it is a very good parallel. I could start with parallels that are obvious and abundant. Partisan stalemate, check. Immigration ends reaction, check. Corruption in both politics and business, check. Rising inequality, double check. Environmental crisis, check. Claims of white supremacy, check. Attempts to restrict suffrage, check. All of these things were true then, all of these things are true now and i could go on. The period did not produce important political thinking. Not that there werent important figures, even when they were engaged in politics, perhaps the most adroit politician of the time was francis lewis, the womens christian temperance which is now parodied which is a Political Organization in the 19th century. Not only couldnt hold office but couldnt vote. Political activity went beyond Holding Office and holding votes. By virtue of gender, there is nobody in the 19th century who did more to lead the attack on lynching, she did farm work far more than any elected official. In literature, the great age of american realists. Mark twain, william james, william dean howell, a guide through this book. Edith wharton, charles chestnut, if it is a Popular Culture, a period of Buffalo Bills wild west, which is a massive spectacle, a tour for 30 years. Buffalo bill cody is the only real genius ever produced in the American Waste that is west. It is the rise of mass press and is the rise of professional sport. And american Popular Culture which from then until now, the most influential thing about this. The key to the period, the phrase william dean howell used, sufficiency, this is an age obsessed with lincoln. David kennedy, general editor of the series, the only great president and the only hero in my book was Abraham Lincoln and he died on the first page. That is true. Anybody remotely like lincoln, the point was by the end that doesnt matter. It is the insufficiency of the uncommon insufficiency of the common, if america means anything at all, sufficiency of the common, insufficiency of the uncommon. In a democracy, the sufficiency of the common is all that matters, if a common fail in a democracy, it is all over. The uncommon. It seems a thin thread during turmoil of the gilded age, in the second gilded age. Things did not work out as people imagined, they were astonished to find themselves living in a world many of them predicted never intended to produce. A feeling we could have sympathy with today, in 1865 the civil war ended with the north triumphant. The Republican Party was in the south. Theres only been one other time in American History the new deal held power. The republicans knew what they wanted to do. What they wanted to do was create the world of a homogeneous citizen. A cartoon thomas would not stick to his whole life but the idea was unlike before the civil war, everyone entitled for citizenship in the United States, would have an equal set of rides and they were guaranteed by the federal government, that is the same federal government which spread 3 labors across the entire United States. The age of slavery and coerced slavery was supposedly over. Along with them would spread the sovereignty of the United States. The americans claimed the whole continent, they didnt control. By the end of this period they would control. You want to know republican ambitions, the ambitions of reconstruction it boils down to this. This is springfield, illinois, Abraham Lincolns hometown. It was the place the great pilgrimage after lincoln was assassinated would bring him back to springfield to be buried. The idea of reconstruction would be all the United States would look like that. South, west, is going to be remade into a version of the midwest. They imagined that is where we are going, that is what they could achieve. That is not where they were going. That is not what they achieved. What they achieved was this, and chicago. No smalltown america. They achieved a nation of small producers, they achieved the nation of slavery. This is not a world of small shops but factories in chicago or outside chicago and workers, many not born in the United States coming off of work. It wasnt going to be a Peaceful World of small producers but a violent one and one of the things that happens in the book, i do not overplay the violence, neither do i downplay. The United States in terms of public violence was a very violent place in the 1870s and 1880s and 1890s. The question is going between springfield and chicago, to quote another author who has a book out this month, what happened . What happened is the subject of this book. In any history, large trends are very often overtake the intention. The intentions do make a difference. Not everything was a failure. The United States did, to its great credit, abolish slavery. It would return in various forms but did abolish slavery and would expand. We tend to forget how quickly that happens, it had taken 21 2 centuries for americans of european descent to get from the Atlantic Coast of the 100th meridian halfway across the continent. Took a generation. This famous lithograph, american progress, symbolizes this and for many years i, like Many University professors and teachers, taught this as a symbol of american expansion in the 19th century. Writing this book, i discovered the Lucinda Williams song, everything is wrong. This is a picture of early 19th century america. It has nothing to do with late 19th century america. The first thing you can look for is what is missing. There are indians retreating, buffalo retreating, immigrants and pioneers going west, railroad following, lady liberty with the school book in her hand, the telegraph wire, and the problem is it is not there. No federal government. The indians retreat because of military force. The railroads advanced because of government subsidies and railroads dont follow, they lead. Settlers come because railroads recruit them. Everything this symbolizes has nothing to do with the way the country developed. The other thing to keep in mind, even though i am a western chauvinist, in the 19th century, in the west, there is a lot more land than people. If you look back, the population of the west through the period i am talking about is very sparse. In 1890 the collective population, chicago, new york and brooklyn, 2. 8 million people, west of the hundredth meridian. If you took San Francisco out of the equation, new york and brooklyn alone would have contained almost as many people as Rocky Mountain state, Pacific Coast states and the southwest. We conquer the west, dispossess any peoples but by and large it wont be the golden age of the west in the 19th century we often portray that way. It will be the golden age of the midwest. Immigration is going to be much more important than western expansion. You cant detach it. Many of the people who settled washington, california, dakotas, the majority of the people in some states. Are going to be immigrants. The immigrants are going to come in and settle on the countryside but also settle in the city. As you can see here when you take southern and Eastern Europe starting in 1890 the United States is going to be much more diverse. The country that had been largely protestant is going to be more diverse. Homogeneous citizenry which most republicans would imagine, would remain a protestant country by 1900, much larger proportion of catholics and jews. It is also going to be a country which industrialize us. Between 1839, and 1899 manufacturing output increases 40fold. By 1900 a vision of ourselves is still cold, i think. The United States had one half of the worlds manufacturing capacity. One half of all manufacturing capacity within the United States. Corporations were largely compliant to railroads and Larger Companies becoming more dominant and americans hate it. The southern pacific railroad, i could reproduce a slide like this for every minute of this lecture, every second of this lecture. The Economic Growth is dominated by the rich, the powerful, small producers are going to be the victims. By 1900, 80 of manufacturing work were factored but in 1865 like in Lincoln Springfield it would be a world of small shops and businesses. The any quality is symbolized in the things we associate with the gilded age. Prairie avenue in chicago, vanderbilt mansion on fifth avenue in new york. This is in back of the yard. We were supposed to be a goldilocks country, supposed to be in between. Everything we were becoming a country of what they called a dangerous class, the very rich and the very poor. The american dream, to use a word we still use in the 19th century was not great riches. It is something called competency. Competency meant you earned enough to support your self, have something to tide you over hard times, provide your children with a start in life and to take care of yourself in your old age. That is what you wanted. You dont want great riches. You wanted competency. Now competency begins to vanish and that is why they begin to talk about the dangers of life. One of the hardest things to do in the book was to figure out whether all of these changes benefit ordinary american this. They are not going to go into the economic literature but many of you have seen the grass starting in 1800 with industrialization in europe, production goes way up, the wealth of the world goes way up. There is no argument about that. The question is where the wealth goes. 19th century Economic Statistics are not good enough to measure that with any reliability. We dont have statistics on that. What i did following economists and demographers is make basic experiments. If they are more prosperous in an urban world, the marks of being healthier was they should be smaller, they should live longer and their children should not die in great numbers in childbirth. All the studies we have done so far, none of that is true. This is 1800. You see the trend line goes down through the 19th century, rising up only in the end. If americans were growing shorter, if americans were living shorter lifespans, if their children continue to die in huge numbers, it seems to me nothing something was going dramatically arrived. If you measure gdp, they grew. It is not about distribution, they are marked by sharp recessions, roughly every 10 years. And building things like where roads, and making an industrial giant. There was a good reason there is so much conflict. Ordinary people thought their lives were getting worse, not better, the evidence that ordinary people were right. How did they understand these changes they never intended which shaped their lives. And the answer was going to be incorporated. And i follow my inner idiot, and pretty obvious answer that im ignoring. And dont try to convince myself of that the answer will occur. It will occur to me because usually it goes around something that is repeated over and over and over. And it is ubiquitous in the 19th century, what americans tried to understand who they are and what the nation was, they talked about the home, talking about gender roles, talked about the home and race, they talked about the home. When they evaluated whether changes were good or bad. They talked about the home. The nation was less a collection of individual than a collection of homes. That is how they understood the United States. Peoples success in life was made around creating the home. In the 19th century, a piece of that, endlessly. The first home in the woods, the end of a successful life, creation of a prosperous farm and a home. Homogeneous citizenship, going to be the black people too who have homes. Over here, the horrors of slavery. Over here the different freedom. Over here, at the center, the black home, black family and of course abraham. The problem is the home is always doubleedged. Part of the violence during reconstruction by the ku klux klan and southern terrorists, attacking the black home. They realized if they could show black men could not protect them, black women could not sustain their home, black people were worried about the privileges of citizenship, citizenship evolved around the ability to maintain a home, the most terrific symbolic violence of the period, night riders show up, black cabin and the details differ but are equally horrible. A black wife is raped inside of her husband, a black man is tied to a tree and lashed. Sometimes he is castrated, sometimes murdered, sometimes more economical, shotgun appears through the window and they fire indiscriminately, black families, men, women and children. The goal is coordination. You cannot protect your home. Single working women, in the 19th century, they are not attached to a home. Women adrift. The chinese are going to be made into great symbols of the threat to the home because supposedly they can live on nothing, they can live on . 40 a day, the white workingman needs a living wage to sustain a home. And the literature, youre going to destroy the white house. For working men such as workers cottages in chicago, the point of their attaining their sufficiency, this is their aim in life, they can achieve that, a threat to everything in life. What the indians do in the 19th century, they attack the home, they attack settlers, they attack the home. Outside the home in 19th century america, to be stripped of your rights and not be worthy of citizenship. It is not just racial. The problem with traps, homeless people, they are seen as a danger to society. Willards genius, you can base politics on this, frances willard, the Home Protection manual is the key of the reform movement, tempered. Willard makes clear this was an age of reform. People did not see these changes transformed next. We often frame it as an age of laissezfaire and individualism but i dont think it was at all. Not that those things were not present but i dont think they were predominant. Americans in the 19th century thought in terms of collectivity. They thought in terms of homes, churches, voluntary organizations, union, they could despise government for very good reason but they also expected government to act for the collective good. In terms of Authority Government was extraordinarily powerful in the late 19th century but lacked administrative capacity. One of the interesting parallels, the government had the power to do all kinds of things but did it do subsidies and delegation of authority, it rewarded Public Officials by allowing them to collect fees and make money off of their offices. This is the reason the corruption was so great. If you want to build railroads you subsidize massive corporations. You want to support prisons, take the prisoners and let them out to private parties who in the south and in the north very often worked for them. The idea for many americans, encounter a Government Official is to encounter somebody who tried to make money by providing access. Why the United States shift to bureaucracy is to avoid that. In fact, we tried that in the 19th century and it proved an incredible failure. One of the nice things about writing about the gilded age is i get a quote by mark twain who gave the age its name, it is a great title to a novel, dont bother to read it, there is much better stuff than mark twain but at the end of the period mark twain wrote there is no distinctly native american criminal class except congress. The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter but an entire bank. He is in part unfair. By the 1880s and 1890s farmers were taking over the legislature, taking over congress. They not only dominated the third parties but powerful factions in the republican and democratic parties. The result is going to be tremendous social conflict but also this powerful reform. The knights of labor, the womens christian temperance. It is going to be a period of great wealth seen as resulting only through government shares. How do they explain the rise of great fortunes in 19th century United States . The government bestowing favors and parallels of today are clear. Tariffs, if you have tariffs, what you are going to do is reward Certain Industries and allow them to make profits they ordinarily would not be able to make without Government Intervention in the economy, subsidies were the same thing, legislation to favor some people over others and all this allows a few to tax the many, that is the way the gilded age reformers and the resistance to it is not just political but violent. This is the hope, lying down here is right. What you had is bitter battles and this one harmed workers versus pinkertons, pinkertons were on that barge, pinkertons lost and what happens afterward is not Something Like that, nobody is going to be killed, just run a gauntlet, not just angry workers but their wives. And reaching its combination in 1896 and William Jennings bryan, and the basic question had been answered. Whether brian wins, whether mckinley wins, americans agree whatever the solution is for this, the kind of problem is they confronted in the gilded age government was the answer. They differ on the details but they agree on that. Progressivism is inevitable after 1896, really very likely and that will follow. To conclude, it is not just even, that we can find seeds of the present in the gilded age, they are there and i wont deny that, i mentioned many of them, the problem is it is more important. The danger to find clues for the present world in the past, it trivialized the past, all that matters, all the lives these people lived that made them just like us. If all we are interested in is people just like us, why bother . We can study us. We are wonderfully ahistorical nation, we are obsessed with ourselves. You can follow modern politics without thinking the last 10 minutes are the most important in all of human history. What the past give you is Something Else, the strangeness of the past, the difference in the past, ways in which an age like the gilded age, parallels our own, still come up with ideas we dont have. Things that seem unfamiliar. The idea of competence. The gilded age was about fighting, more than one way to be american, and competency and great wealth should not be the ambition of human life. Just the concept that seems to apply to the early 21st century which is enough. I have enough, i dont need any more. That is not a conception which seems to describe us. They believe the home, not that we dont have concepts of the home but what they are after is it is not going to be selfreliant but human dependent, human effective relations. There is something more important than selffulfillment. That the American World is a world of homes, homes affected relations. They believe a word they used over and over again, cooperation. They dont believe most things in life come out of individual genius which they didnt believe that about their technology. They believed it came from cooperation and sufficiency of the common. And the conflict and corruption of our own gilded age, these are not bad takehome lessons, in the cold in the gilded age. [about [applause] hi, everyone. I am here to take us into the q and a portion of the program tonight. A couple quick reminders about you and a. Please step up to the microphone. We are doing some recording and want to capture all of your questions. We only have 15 minutes for q and a. Please keep your questions in the form of a question and keep down the long stories and everything like that. We want to get as many questions as possible. If you guys wouldnt mind forming a line this way if you have a question, we will get started right now. That is a very interesting presentation. Your choice of terms, you chose homes over families. Is there a reason or just a choice of downs . The reason i chose it is that is the word they used. In the 19th century, i ignored it and ignored it and realized they use this word over and over, they mean something particular, not the family didnt exist of the ideal was the home, home sweet home, sanctity of the home, that is their word, not mine, that is why i used it so much. During that time, there was at least one major financial panic in 1893. How did that weve in with the gilded age and do you see any parallels to today . There are three, 1873, 1883 in the big one is 1893. The way it woven, what the government will do is subsidize an economy but there is very little regulation of that economy. All of the depressions will be railroad depressions, not because of the railroads but because railroads are big corporations. The short version is it is much like the recent housing panic, credit is extended, the railroads could not possibly earn enough money to pay the debt. They kept borrowing more money and at a certain point people began to worry about their ability to pay back. Loans are called in and this cascade, everything collapses, what has taken place and was no regulation in the 19th century, they are catastrophic. Big ones can last 5 or 6 years. Boom times can be quite good in the 19th century but depressions are quite deep. What are the three greatest lies or myths we have been taught about the reconstruction. Reconstruction by historians, take popular ones, since the 1970s and the south, i would say never in the history of major civil war has a loser got not as easily, the war was terrible but there is not going to be punishment. A threat of terror against white families, terrorism was all 1sided. There will be terrorism by whites against blacks. They could have succeeded. The biggest mistake is they went through their troops and there were reasons why they did it but north is passing a budget clause with no ability to enforce it. Once you have the troops gone it is cheap to take a black life and very little is going to happen. In South Carolina the client could be destroyed. There will be no use of that kind of force. Great presentation. I want to ask about reparations. And the Republican Senate and republican president signed the reparations of 40 acres and a mule, education for the enslaved african americans. They were never given this because the assassination of the president and new administration came in. What is your take on why this didnt happen and tell me what you think would have taken place had it happened . There will be an attempt at reparation. During the civil war, largely wartime, congress will authorize it, they will take land from southerners who committed treason against the United States, big plantation owners and it will be divided up among black slaves. It gets real complicated because sometimes it works to the ability of whites, black slaves and sharecroppers, dont go into that. After the war, the plan, there should be reparation for cyber. After 21 2 centuries of black labor you cannot just say that is over and we will forget about it. The argument is 40 acres and a mule, that will never be authorized. There will be no reparations given to exslaves. There is a wartime measure which allows you with wartime powers to take them but nothing passed after the war, peace comes in the will allow you to solidify and take the rest. Everything taken during the war was given back to people who worked there for years have to give it back to the old owners. If it had been passed, certainly in terms of any social justice it should have been passed. What you would have had is small black farms, small white farms in the south did not do real well during this period. Most neil up in sharecropping and moving out. The danger simply giving land might have turned black sharecroppers into landowners who became sharecroppers again. They would have been better off, reparations had to take place, if you guarantee education some reparations of protection reconstruction should have worked but i dont think 40 acres and a mule would be magic unless you enforce these other things. I was very interested in your grasp of longevity, there appears to have been more interesting decrease afterwards. What was the factor that created that bump . You got me. Demographys cannot explain it. Whether this is simply flawed statistics, why it goes up, we dont know. After the end of the gilded age country gets involved in a colonial war with cuba and the philippines. I think what i read is an expression of nationalism. Can you talk about what you see are the themes leading the country towards a colonial war for the first time. One reason i end the book in 1896 until 1980, i want to address that question. I havent answered that question, it is a really long book, do we want two more chapters . I dont think so. This works partially but not perfectly. We had been engaged in colonial wars through the 19th century, conquering indian peoples and incorporating them into the United States. All that happens is reaching out to hawaii and the philippines, continuing with a series of indian wars except this time there will be places not so much in hawaii but the philippines and cuba, dont displace the population, too many of them, dont make filipino reservations. What we do is take on in colonialism, it differs from the United States. It is an extension of what we have been doing, and qualitatively. My question invite speculation. You talked about the gilded age and how inherent to it were trends, patterns that gave rise to the progressive era and both parties agreed government was going to be the solution and you said now we are in a second gilded age so my question is do you see seeds inherent to our age that portend the onset of a major progressive era . I will be dead by the time this comes to fruition so nobody can criticize me, i would say we are reaching things that are so unsustainable, it is so deep that it is not solved, the country will face the crisis we faced in the gilded age. It is taking shape, you wont see in the next four years or eight years, younger people in this audience will look back on this the way im looking back on the gilded age. And all that turmoil and conflict, all the things which seem to be tearing the nation apart, there were seeds of the solution. The advantage of being a historian is seeing the solution afterwards. It is harder to see it when you are in the middle of it and we are in the middle of it. I have a great reputation being pessimistic but i think of myself as an optimist. Never seen anything quite like this. I wonder if you could talk about the challenge of defining and age of what makes the 19th century the gilded age and not Something Else so you have written a book about reconstruction and the gilded age through periods we think as stained that you have a larger work about it and the talk, i didnt hear discussion about the similarities and differences. Is it one big era . Or are they quite distinct, the era of the gilded age . Are you a historian . [laughter] i will give you the short, glib answers and serious answers was the reason i combine them together, they are impressive together and they combined them together, 30 years ago for reasons i am not sure if but once i have given that i can think of the reason they go together and the reason is reconstruction particularly the greater reconstruction, talk about the real end of reconstruction in the 1880s, reconstruction goes deep. If we talk about the gilded age as a period where ledge the wage labor takes over the United States, industrialization, those things start during reconstruction. It is a phase of the larger gilded age. Having given the concept, proof that i can talk myself into anything, i am the guy who went to seattle. I it works. Next question is the last for the evening. Cholera, malaria, and all sorts of diseases with the dip in the 1800s. This dip, tuberculosis, the question is it falls back off again. You said the seeds were sewed on the Public Health end, chicago and the sewers and seattle. Have you read the book . I have encountered somebody who knows cheeseburgers. The seeds of Public Health didnt exist and come back up. It starts going back up here. It will be Public Health. Thank you, Richard White. [applause]. That would be greatly appreciated and thank you so much for attending this evening. 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