End, if you could pull up your chairs, it will give you more space for the book signing and help us get back to bookselling. Welcome to politics and prose. My name is abby fennewald. I run all of our events in the store. Np,youre not familiar with p i would invite you to take a moment to sign up for our calendar of events and see everything else. We are operating inside three locations around town and will be doing events in all the spaces as well. We are doing more than ever. I would hate for you to miss out on any of it. With that, on to why your here. We are so happy to have eric burns back with us. Here four times before. He is back to talk about his new book, 1920 the men that made the decade roar. This is absolutely not your typical history book. And he is not your typical academic historian. He brings his journalist eye to the topic just as he had with , his previous book. He is a former nbc news correspondent and is the former host of fox news watch and has won an emmy for media criticism. 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 is like the talking more and more about people who maybe we dont remember as much in history books that were important in the day. So im going to turn it over to him to tell you more. Were happy to have him back here. Please join me in welcoming eric burns. [applause] eric i dont drink coffee. I dont like coffee and i always felt the reason was the taste. And it may instead my lack of coordination. So would like to ask you 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 the 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 the century. Thursday, september 16, 1920, Trinity Church on wall street, the final bell from the tower sounds the noon hour. At that at that precise instant, a horse that had been standing in front of the j. P. Morgan bank, which was across the street from the Trinity Church explodes. , a horse explodes into so many that none could ever be found. I will not be questioned. [laughter] eric the horse of been attached to a cart. And inside the cart was the equivalent of 100 pounds of dynamite. In addition to 500 pounds of cast iron sash weights which in the explosion 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 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 in started talking 1920 about homeland security. They did not call it homeland security, but they started talking about making it more difficult to pass through the portals 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 precariously manufacture, but curiously enough not to drink alcoholic , beverages. 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. [laughter] eric many people made their own versions of the beverages they used to know and love so well. Most commonly, a 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. Mothers in the kitchen washing jugs, sisters in the pantry bottling the suds. Johnny on the front porch watching for the cops. American 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 disobeyed it 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 the relic or you named chiarella la guardia invited friends and fellow legislators, reporters, newsreel cameramen, and even perversely the Capitol Hill Police force, to watch a demonstration. Here how the historian describes that demonstration. La guardia blended twopart heretofore only of anemics to any mix and available at any drugstore to one part near beer. , a beer with minimal alcoholic content. This was legal under prohibition. Although some reports the times of the taste was Something Like dish water left in the sink overnight. He allowed a few seconds to pass to heighten the suspense. I 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 la guardias payroll. La guardia started passing around samples of his Second String beer. He even said that the police should try it. He had people in the crowd pass glasses back to the police who were confounded about whether they should arrest this man. He 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 investment la guardia had caused versions. Better near beer industrial alcohols were legal under the 18th amendment. 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. Cases to sell bootlegs , hooch to people who cannot afford better was to commit murder. And in the words of some people, governmentsanctioned murder. One of the many destructive products that was used at the time concocted by gangsters was gin or jake. Ca j if you drank too much jake, there was not much of a chance that you would die. But what it would do is wea tendons in your ankle so that you could not walk normally. You are called a jake trotter or jake stepper. In studying the various recipes for jake, american scientists learned some of the principles that would lead german scientists to develop nerve gases during 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. In fact, 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. Oppositionifying his to suffrage was now bought and paid for. But momentum trumps 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 National Election in which women would vote. Men in votinged out of office the first the mill president of the United States. And so far, the only female president. Now, she wasnt really the president , but she was the president de facto, lets say, ur. Opposed to du jo and most americans did not even know about it. As i look out here, i see most americans dont know about it today. But 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 paris 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 them. A conflict at once so brutal and nonsensical that we could not help but fear it would break out again. And as the case of the exploding horse demonstrated, this time, it 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 wasnt 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, melon, rockefeller, the vanderbilt descendents, among others, the era of men who made millions of dollars from the bent backs and aching shoulders of men and women and children, the year 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, munitions and even , airplanes for the allies. At the same time, other men who were not nearly so fortunate became 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 of new yorks plaza hotel drunken 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 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 are their pennies by spending week,rs a day, six days a on blousesttons forced to stand up and eat their lunches so they could keep working. These people were the true symbols of life in america in 1920. Charles ponzi was an immigrant to the United States, and he was determined not to live the kind of life i just described. He didnt. There were times however when he might have been better off if he did. A few people actually made money from his financial machinations , which, by the way, were legal when he began to offer his financial product. And the initial ponzi scheme was misunderstood in several other ways which i will mention in a few minutes. Before long, so much money was being made by a few people that laws were passed that made his dealings a criminal activity. When he continued selling his now worthless paper, he became a crook and the ponzi scheme became a reality. The 20th century, thanks to Bernie Madoff, the scheme was reborn. And in 2008, Bernie Madoff went to jail for the rest of his life. I suspect that ponzis name might have been in the newspaper more in 2008 than it was in 1920. Most of us think the ponzi scheme is a type of chain letter. But in its original form, it is not that it all. Its much more complicated and 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 come you may betion, 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 did not even last a year. Was ain 1920, he smalltime hoodlum trying to impress his mama who he loved dearly. His italian mama back home, he wrote her letters saying he was well in america, becoming more successful all the time, figuratively, the streets here were really paved with gold if you knew what streets to take. By the fourth of july in 1920, ponzi was a multimillionaire. Before the year was over, he was a jailbird. Very quickly for this most famous of scam artists. But i have this surprise for you. You wont believe it now, but just wait. If you read 1920 the year that made the decade roar, by the time you finish, he 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, a 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 . At the time, america had had 29 president s. [laughter] eric none, however, had presided over an administration as corrupt as hardings. One member of the administration was, perhaps, and this is 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 a man,ng, and a despicable 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. The veterans hospitals were full and needed the supplies as much as ever. He stole 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. Foe of petticoat government, was appointed secretary of the interior where he sold military oil reserves to friends of his for private profit. The scandal was called teapot dome because of the shape of the 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 gate wasding in 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 closet next to the president s office. Femalevoice joined a voice in a course of lustful panting. Usually, Janitorial Services do not inspire that degree of enthusiasm. The tour guide asked his group to walk a little faster. They were happy to oblige. Now, most important event of 1920 in my opinion was also the most important event of the 20th century. In my opinion. And it took place in a small shack on the 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. And neither the country nor the world would ever be the same again. Although few people could have imagined that radio would someday lead to something called television, and no one could have imagined keeping up with the kardashians. Small towns where 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. 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 ,nd Carl Sandburg 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, you have been a mother to me. Napoleons with josephine when napoleon was away . Real titles, real songs. Nowhere, a0, out of woman virtually no one had ever smith named mimi record,ith released the crazy blues. Against all odds, it became 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 have 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 two jumpstart the decades engine, it might have been quite a while before history heard so much as utter. 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. Abby time for questions. Eric i was going to say, that is not true, that is not the last you will hear from me. But now it will be up to you to , decide what you hear. Very interesting. I thought that there were terrorist attacks, or at least before the anarchists 1920. I think there was an anarchist attacked the carriage in new york with ladies coming back from shopping. Eric yes. There were anarchist attacks in this country before 1920. In there was a wave of package 1919, bombs. One person died. These package bombs were sent to mayors, judges, members of the establishment. I dont 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 mentioned the second mrs. Woodrow wilson as the unelected president you referred to. But obviously it was she. ,eric well, im sorry you brought that up. I was being cute. Well, this is not an analogy that i am crazy about, this was basically a a serious talk. The format was like jokes without punchlines, which was the voice of commerce in my ear saying make them buy the book. [laughter] eric so they will find out. You have come up to the microphone and ruined that. [laughter] eric fortunately you just , ruined one of the questions that i did not answer. The second one, with regard to ponzi, this may be oversimplistic, but i studied andcon game many years ago i reduced it to he was engaging in what we would Call International postal rate arbitrage. Right. Eric that is a good term for it. Very good term. You said you didnt even understand it. Eric i dont. That is a good term, but i dont explains exactly what he was doing. Collecting far more money than he did pay out. Was,ppeal, the sales talk, postal rates are different from like 100 Different Countries around the world. And 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 the profit and you get the benefits. That was his pitch. Eric my understanding is and i am not sure, and in my reading, i have not seen this, but he more than likely did not go into that kind of detail for fear of confusing people. And maybe he never even engaged in it, but i thought that was his sales pitch. Eric 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 50 return. Ok. Thank you. Eric you didnt do too much damage. I apologize for blowing your teaser. Eric that is all right. I would like to make a correction and then a question. Wroteid Sinclair Lewis our town. I think you were referring to main street. Ourrdan wilder wrote town. Eric this gentleman caught a , my sayingtake Sinclair Lewis wrote our town. Of course, he wrote main street. Now for the question. Did you watch boardwalk empire by any chance . Eric no. My question was, how realistic do you think it is, but you dont know. Eric im sorry. Somewhere notead long ago that it may have been 1920 or not exactly that year that in the midst of all this one of if notad the largest demonstration down at that time. Is that correct or was that a slightly different year . I know there were so many convening things. Veterans and anger about the war, prohibition, all these things. I was just wondering, does that come out too much . Eric to the best of my knowledge, nothing like that happened in 1920. What was the cause of the demonstration . The bonus army. That would have been later. Eric that was quite a bit a bit later. I was wondering. It did not come up too much. Eric protests didnt occur much then. And interestingly enough, there was not time to go into everything. I did not go into labor unrest and strikes. In 1920, there were 3000 strikes. 20 years before that, there would have been none. It was a massive change and an indication of how terrible the working conditions were that the strike became a staple of the american workplace. Yes, sir. Probably a naive question, but i will ask it anyway. People giving money against women voting because of what fears . Eric i have no idea. I have no idea. There is no is no logical reason for it. I can tell you that 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. 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, and this is not a good idea. I dont think they would have used a term like this. It is not a good idea to confuse the roles. That was the general idea behind it. And again, this is coming from women and certainly men. Sure. Go ahead. Actually, followup question. The 18th and 19th amendment, you had on the one hand, a lot of women who opposed suffrage but also among the women who were the most diehard activists. Eric sure. For suffrage. You had an awful lot of them, a lot of the prominent leaders who seemed to be making deals. They were very active in the Temperance Movement and very much supportive of the 18th amendment as well. Do you talk about that in the book . The sort of political bargaining that seemed to be going on between the two groups to get both amendments in the same year . Eric i have written at length in another book about the 18th amendment, and it is my feeling that that was a very, very minor factor, and so the answer is no. I dont. I dont think that had much to do with the basic problems of the 19th amendment. Yes, sir. Could you talk a bit about the harlem renaissance and maybe the state of Race Relations in 1920 and its connection with the harlem renaissance which was very popular among certain white people . Eric the harlem renaissance was a glorious thing. It is wonderful to read about. The effect that it had on whites generally was nonexistent. The harlem renaissance was funded for the most part by jewish merchants from 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. It did not draw people from other places. The people that Duke Ellington playing for at the cotton club were almost exclusively new yorkers. By the way, at the cotton club, although blacks sang and played, they were not allowed in the door to be customers. And Duke Ellington was asked about that. And as you might imagine, he had a very unsatisfactory answer, you know, as powerful man as he was, he could have said something about it. Then again, the cotton club was named theman killer who was in jail at the time for various murders. Perhaps one went along with his racial dicta. The harlem renaissance was not particularly widespread in its effect on Race Relations. In terms of how it changed music, in terms of how it chains changed 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 unfortunately. But it is just a wonderful time. I dont know if you people share my adoration almost for hl mencken who, to me, is the most interesting journalist to read that this country has ever produced. But believe it or not, he was a leading figure of the harlem renaissance because he was somewhat antisemitic. And jews were among his best friends. He was prejudiced against African Americans, but he worked very hard with African American writers, and what they say about him, james weldon johnson, they idolized mencken. He more than anyone else took it upon himself to make sure that literarilly the harlem renaissance succeeded. Much more than you asked. Thank you. Eric is that it are questions . Abby all right. Thank you so much. Thank you all for coming. If you have not had a chance to get a copy of the book yet, you can get them and bring them back here to be signed. [indiscernible conversations] history bookshelf features historytrys best writers of the decade talking about their books. Every saturday at 4 00 eastern on cspan3. Products are now available in the new online cspan store. See what is new for American History tv and check out all of the cspan products. Tonight on lectures in history, professor anderson talks about efforts in the early 1950s to register African American voters in mississippi. Here is a preview. Moses goes down to the courthouse. He has a couple of guys with him. They are going up the steps to register black folks to vote. Billy jack caston shows up, pulls out a knife, turns the handle round, and hits moses. Moses staggers. Billy jack is not done. He starts wailing on him. Remember nonviolence is that you learn how to take the blows. We talked about these ethnic notions. What you know is the moment you , it becomes justifiable homicide when they kill you. Multiple reasons for nonviolence as a strategy. Wailing on him, wailing on him. Zoes just goes into his e. , that kind of zen zon omm. Whotwo black men with him were going to register to vote took off running. You know when your boys up and leave you . [laughter] when billy jack is done, moses is a bloody mess. Jack is really proud of what he has done. He and his boys walk away like haha. When they are gone, moses stands just bleeding. The two guys had run away. They are looking. Moses is like, are you ready to go register to vote . Ou see that kind of strength that is that quiet power r leading. You can learn more about efforts to register African American voters in mississippi tonight at 8 00 and midnight eastern on lectures in history. Join the classroom on American History tv. Right now, we are in a Twilight Zone in between. The of this is because constitution is more specific about impeachment that it is about most things. It does not say everything. It leaves this question as to when the articles of impeachment will be presented. In the past, it has gone pretty quickly. With the clinton trial, it went so quickly that the senate was not even in session when the articles were sent over. This is something for the leaders of the two houses to wrangle with each other about. Im not sure i would use the word leverage, but i do think it is a tactic the speaker is using in this case. The historian emeritus of the senate on the history of Senate Impeachment trials. Watched sunday night at 8 00 eastern on cspans q a. Military history scholar mark gerges explores the allied defense of st. Vith on the 75th anniversary of the battle of the bulge. American forces eventually surrendered the belgian town, but mr. Gerges argues the fighting caused the delay that frustrated the german counteroffensive. Libraryas city public and the u. S. Command and general Staff College held this event. Tonight, we are going to be talking about the 75th anniversary of the battle of the bulge. Tonight is also probably my farewell introduction, if that is not a contradiction in terms, for our ongoing signature series with the History Department of the command and general Staff College. The director of the command school, scott green, is here tonight. Scott, can you
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