Politicians as we travel the nation in search of their stories. Coming up first. U. S. Congressman and senator, former wisconsin senator, and i20 for Progressive Party william bob elephant. It is a glorious service. The call comes to every citizen. It is an unending struggle to make and keep government representative. Bob lafollett is probably the most important political figure in Wisconsin History and one of the most important in the history of the 20th century of the United States. He was a reforming governor. He defined what,. Senator who is ready nice by his peers in the 1950s as one of the five greatest senators in american history. He was an opponent of world war i, stood his ground advocating for free speech. Above all Bob Lafollett was about the people. After the civil war america changed radically from a nation of Small Farmers and small producers and small manufacturers and by the 1870s and 1880s, 1890s we had concentrations of wealth. We had growing inequality had we had co
Hughes is what we claim we want. In both a president ial candidate and a president. A man who did get it. A man called Charles Evans hughes as a Supreme Court justice. All but when the election. In 1916 when president Woodrow Wilson went to bed the Election Night, he thought he was beaten. He had been elected, how American History goes in several Different Directions on suffrage, civil rights. What does he do on Foreign Policy . Germany baited us into war. Wilson would hughes have avoided it . Hes the one you could write novels about. He had Charles Evans hughes who would later the he was on the Supreme Court. He left the Supreme Court when he ran for president. He went back on the Supreme Court. One of the finest minds on the court. A fellow justice called Charles Evans hughes, the greatest in our great line of chief justices. Why hughes . Robert jackson provided part of the answer when he was attorney general. Jackson said that hughes, quote, looks like god and talks like a god. And
Print things and publish things. It is not a freedom for what we now refer to institutionally as the press. Lectures in history on American History tv on cspan3. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Lecture s in history is always available as podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. This week on q a, president ial historian Richard Norton smith discusses his book, an uncommon man, the triumph of Herbert Hoover. Richard smith, why kdid you call your book you wrote 35 years ago, uncommon man . Its taken from the title of a relatively famous hoover speech about the uncommon man. You remember Vice President henry wallace, who was the second of fdrs Vice President s, gave a famous speech in 1942, maybe 43, about the common man. And wallace, from the left of center, perspective, was projecting in effect the goals and am birgss of the generation that was fighting world war ii. It wasnt enough to simply beat the nadzis, but to create at home, a true democracy. A place where the common m
Captioning performed by vitac its a spy story, its a humanitarian story, its a political and diplomatic story. Hoover was not very diplomatic by nature. The interesting thing is lou said later on that he was never the same after belgium. What he saw particularly the children. Remember, he was an orphan. All his life, there was something about hoover, he was not naturally gifted in social interaction. But with children, there was a different person. And belgium stamped him, for better or worse. The other remarkable thing again, building on what we said earlier, it was all voluntary. He appealed to the American People. He said, again, the American People, if you tell them what you need, they will give you their shirt off their backs. And there is a you go to west branch, the records are there. It is its a remarkable story there was one group, i think there was a kansas club of new york, who were going to build a clubhouse. And instead of building the clubhouse, they gave hoover the 500,0
Candidate, eugene debs. This is a class at columbia university, of course i called the american radical tradition, and we started with the American Revolution and have been going through the Abolitionist Movement, early feminism, the civil war reconstruction, labor conflict and the gilded age, the populist movement, and now we are sort of entering into the 20th century and in the next couple of weeks, we will look at the progressive era, a period of, a lot of labor unrest, Industrial Workers of the world, the Womens Suffrage Movement coming to the four. Municipal reform, many other things, but today our subject is, the socialist party, the rise of socialism as a key element of american radicalism in new early 20th century. On our reading list, the chapter by michael kaizen gives a good quick summary on the various kinds of socialism at the time. From 1860 onward, there had been some kind of socialist presence in the United States, but largely confined to immigrants from europe, particu