Patrick lets get to it. Today i am going to talk with thomas schwartz, the director of the Herbert Hoover president ial library. He has been with the Hoover Library since 2011 and before that he served as the illinois , state historian and went on to lincoln collection at the Abraham Lincoln president ial library as an author and editor, his work recognized with a number of professional awards. He will take a step back in time, not all the way back to lincoln, but to the time of Herbert Hoover. Tom, are you there . I want to make sure we can hear you. Are you with us . How are you doing today . Obviously the library is closed. How is everyone doing . Thomas the staff is doing well. They are eager to return on a regular basis and we are eager to be able to safely reopen to the public when the opportunity avails itself, but i appreciate the opportunity. Patrick great. I know you have a great set of images and stories and tales. I have a feeling we have lots of questions. I will sign off.
Reached out and began speaking with the u. S. Public Health Service in january because we get began thinking about how we document the story, so it has been a slow process for us and we ramped up since we have come home, to think about collecting. Steve at what point did you pandemic would stretch into the summer and into the fall and potentially the winter . We definitelyns, have thought about the difficulties that are inherent in making a vaccine and so we this pandemicre would last if her amount of time, that we would need to remain at home for some months while a vaccine was being created. What is dont know happening, as you know, and so we are still taking things week by week in the museum. What do your job duties and how has it changed over the last few months . I oversee historians of medicine and science, and we have been planning an exhibit on the history of medicine for the museum. We started that four years ago, so when the pandemic was beginning, we were very deep into the
To think about what i think its core dialectic was. The tension between democracy and efficiency. These were both ideals that people from a Broad Spectrum of political backgrounds in the progressive era believed were important. And they believed they were not incompatible, but you can see some ways in which they were fundamentally at some tension. So again, throughout class today be thinking about democracy versus efficiency. So the central question for historians of the early 20th century what is progressivism . A famous article that came out in 1982 was entitled in search of progressism, which i think aptly summed up the way that the historians were rummaging around, knowing that the progressive era existed but quibbling about what counted as progressive his. Who counted, when it started. Some people limit only to the Political Party that it was named for. Others define it much more broadly. So for me in this class this is how im going to define progressivism. In the broadest sense,
We are mostly working remotely. Our Museum Closed in march, but we began thinking about the pandemic in january. We are a division of medical historians and we tend to follow the news pretty carefully, especially news about Public Health. So we actually reached out and began speaking with the Public Health service in january because we began thinking about how to collect document this story. So it has been a long process and we have kind of ramped up as we have come home to think about collecting. At what point did you realize this pandemic would stretch into the fall and potential winter . As historians, we have definitely thought about difficulties inherent in making a vaccine and we were pretty sure this pandemic would last a fair amount of time and we would need to remain at home for some months while a vaccine was being created. They were keeping things week by week in the museum. Before mid march, what were your job duties and what has changed in the last couple months . I overse
Right during the 1920s. Republican president s, fairly conservative ones, were elected by landslides, 1920, 1924, and 1928. Congress was in control of the republicans throughout the 1920s. With support of congress, republican president s signed bills which rolled back the income tax increases that were passed during world war i. And the leading social movements on the left, labor unions and the socialist party, both lost members during the war. In fact, the socialist party was never really a factor in american politics, again, after the 1920 election. And people on the left generally, whether people we now consider to be liberals, former progressives or radicals all on the defensive during the 1920s. The most popular president in the 1920s, Calvin Coolidge, took office in 1923 when harden died of a heart attack and was reelected in 1924. Famously said in the mid1920s, the business of america is business. It was a prosperous time for a lot of americans, though, certainly not all. Stock