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1880s America Looks A Lot Like Today · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: By pass the hour. It is the third and final hour,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: at least for today, of the Morning Show with Preston's
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Sky in the Morning. On Preston, He's osey. It is Thursday,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: November twenty, first show, fifty two seventy eight, and it's
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: time for a little more history. Doctor Ed Moore are
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: resident historian, joins me. Hello, sir, Happy Thanksgiving a week early.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great time of year, my favorite time
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: of year. Of forty five degrees this morning.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, buddy, I was loving it absolutely and I'm
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: gonna love the thirties when that comes in the next
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: few nights.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: I left the house and a T shirt and went
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: back in and grabbed a light jacket. Yeah, but it
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: feels great.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I love this time of year as well. Our topic
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  Speaker 1: today if there's something that sort of says, the more
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: things change, the more they stay the same, and history
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: repeats itself at all of those axioms that we've heard
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: over the years, whatever's going on in the world today,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: it's kind of like, well, we've been here before.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're all pretty egocentric thinking at our time, and
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: history is very very special. But it's probably why I
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: like history so much. Because you find so many parallels
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: and connections. You know, you do the dotted line on
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  Speaker 2: the wall. Things that happened. One of my favorite periods
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  Speaker 2: in American history. Anyways, eighteen eighty to nineteen ten, that
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  Speaker 2: thirty year period. Why it's a transition of what became
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: the United States. I mean, it already was United States,
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  Speaker 2: but not real big. There were thirty six or eight
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: states then, but our population was only fifty million people.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: And some of the issues were wrestling with now, like immigration,
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: it's how horrible immigration is. Well, there were fifty million
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: people in the eighteen eighty census that lived in the
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: United States, about the size of Texas in Florida now
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: or then the next yeah, then or the next three
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  Speaker 2: say it's Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois combined them all less
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: than probably about forty four million in those three states. Today,
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  Speaker 2: a very very different country. And so I've been reading
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: some on this. I thought, you know, it'd make for
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: an interesting show for people to understand these parallels and
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: understand some of the issues. Some of the things we
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  Speaker 2: take for granted and now began in the eighteen eighties.
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  Speaker 2: During that decade.
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  Speaker 1: Paint the decade, what was the eighteen eighties.
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  Speaker 2: Like growth in America, a lot of immigration, a lot
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: of people coming here from other places. The Irish immigration
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  Speaker 2: wave had already occurred thirty years, starting thirty years prior
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: through the Civil War, but then during this time frame
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  Speaker 2: from eighteen eighty to nineteen ten, a lot of books
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: have been written about it. It was the European migration,
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  Speaker 2: huge migration to America that a lot of our movies
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: when you look at The Godfather and those kind of movies,
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: the settings that Godfather won in the settings, those were
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: the Mediterranean type folks that were coming in Germans and
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: I mean settling. America needed people, so we had to
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: settle the west. One of the points I'll make here
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  Speaker 2: is the Oklahoma land rush occurred in the eighteen eighties,
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  Speaker 2: not that long, one hundred and thirty five or so
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: years ago. They opened up Oklahoma to give people I
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: was one hundred and twenty acres I think they could get,
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: and they all raced out at the same time to
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: get to put their stakes in the sure a very
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: different setting in welcome, wanting and welcoming immigrants to come
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  Speaker 2: to America because they were needed. Now our system's a
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: jumbled mess, but we need to go back to figuring
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  Speaker 2: out who do we need, what do we need. We're
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: not replacing ourselves. Western Europe is not replacing themselves in
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  Speaker 2: terms of having enough children to sustain going forward. So
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: you have to build your population and fill your job
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: some way. We just been doing it wrong. Then it
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: was like open door, y'all, come on right, we'll give
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  Speaker 2: you land. Just a crazy period in American history. A
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  Speaker 2: lot of inventions started, a lot of major corporations started
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  Speaker 2: that we now take for granted all started during that
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  Speaker 2: time frame.
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  Speaker 1: Eleven minutes past the hour, staying on time for a change.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: That's something I don't do very well or often doctor
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Edmore with me, a little more history. You're talking about
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  Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties forward here in America.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: Let's look at politically. One of the things you look
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  Speaker 2: at when you go through we start to think of
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: change and Republicans and Democrats. Well, that really began in
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: eighteen sixty Lincoln as the first Republican elected. And one
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: of the things I found fascinating is that there were
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  Speaker 2: only four time periods in our history where a party,
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  Speaker 2: one political party controlled the White House for three terms
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  Speaker 2: or more. Only four times in the modern era, we
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  Speaker 2: do eight years and back and forth. But one of
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  Speaker 2: the times was Reagan Bush and then we went Democrat,
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: then we went Republican, then we went Democrat, then we
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: went Republican Democrat, and now we're back Republican. That's pretty
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  Speaker 2: common all throughout history. Lincoln to Chester a Arthur was
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: a twenty year time frame, Republicans controlled, McKinley to Taft
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  Speaker 2: was a twelve year time frame, and FDR and Truman
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: a sixteen year time frame. Three out of the four
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  Speaker 2: extended periods, we're Republican. But it's a pendulum. American history
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  Speaker 2: has always been the pendulum. People want all of this
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  Speaker 2: and then they go, no, we want that, and it
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  Speaker 2: goes back and forth. In control, we've had assassination and
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: assassination attempts. I mean Donald Trump got shot, Reagan got shot,
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Kennedy was killed. Back in this same timeframe, we lost
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: to presidents. Garfield got shot and while he was in office,
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: and McKinley got shot while he was in office. It's
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: how Teddy Roosevelt became president. We've been a violent society forever.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: And people ten Roosevelt got shot too.
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  Speaker 2: Roosevelt got shot Teddy Roosevelt got shot and gave a
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  Speaker 2: one hour speech with a bullet in his long Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: a tough guy, bully, bully bully, kind of like Reagan
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  Speaker 2: making a joke while he's laying on the table. I
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: hope you're hope you're a Republican of the surgeon. I mean,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: we've had we have picked well sometimes and sometimes we
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: choose poorly throughout our history. And over the next few months,
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  Speaker 2: I'm going to focus on some of these presidencies during
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  Speaker 2: that time frame from eighteen eighty to nineteen ten. Some
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  Speaker 2: of them were really good, and some of them were
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  Speaker 2: scandal ridden, with all kinds of problems, many of the
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  Speaker 2: same things we see today, but so many cool things.
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  Speaker 2: I did a sort of a timeline. I mean the
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Panama Canal January one, eighteen eighty Panama Canal began the French.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: French spent three years trying to build it didn't get anywhere.
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  Speaker 2: I think twenty three thirty something years later, under Roosevelt,
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: we finally finished the Panama Canal. But what we learned
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: from that, it's sort of like now with Musk and
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: the push to go to space, or our entire space program,
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: which we've done Radio shows on that back in the
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: sixties and seventies. It's the benefits you get out of
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  Speaker 2: these kind of programs. It's not just going to the Moon,
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  Speaker 2: it's how it changed communication and all kind of electronics
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  Speaker 2: and all of these things that came out of the
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: space program Panama Canal. We learned about disease, We learned
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: about how to treat malaria, and how to treat other
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: kind of jungle diseases and treatments emerge.
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  Speaker 1: The things you encounter by doing X, Y and Z
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  Speaker 1: out of necessity. Yeah, you have to do something to
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  Speaker 1: fix the that's the mother of showing you down.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: It is. Boy, did you just make that out? Maybe not?
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  Speaker 2: But the canal again in eighteen eighty, now we take
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: it for granted, and it's gotten bigger. And now if
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: you've seen any of the ships offshore that come through there,
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: now there's there. They're like cities out there. They're so
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: big coming through amazing. But over was that one hundred
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: and fifty years of time frame. As I said earlier,
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: the national population in eighteen eighty census was fifty million people.
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  Speaker 2: Fifty million, that's a little less than the combined populations
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  Speaker 2: of Florida and Texas, but that was our entire country
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  Speaker 2: at that point in time. If you add the next
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  Speaker 2: three states, New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois together, that's less
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  Speaker 2: than fifty million people. So the big change in this
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  Speaker 2: country was going from a mostly rural extended trying to
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: get people to move west to boom where you know,
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: we've got to put these people somewhere, and we were
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: trying to attract all these people to come here. In
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  Speaker 2: November of it, excuse me, November of eighteen eighty, James Garfield,
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  Speaker 2: the Republican was elected president and he I found different numbers.
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  Speaker 2: It's interesting they couldn't count very well back then, just
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: like we don't count very well now, only.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: In certain states.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: The closest presidential election probably in history, about seven thousand
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  Speaker 2: votes difference is the lowest I've found between those two.
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  Speaker 2: So we all know about James Garfield. Probably nobody knows
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: about Hancock. I mean the losers throughout history. We could
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: do shows they're forgotten shows on the losers. You're running
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  Speaker 2: for president in the United States and you almost win,
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  Speaker 2: but nobody knows who you are.
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  Speaker 1: You're forgotten to history.
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  Speaker 2: Isn't that crazy?
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  Speaker 1: I always have a chuckle at it's expense, because he's
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: got fourteen pages of notes and we get talking and
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  Speaker 1: next thing, you know, he's not even looking at them. Yeah,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: I do them, and I never look at it. And
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: then I could see it. In the last segment, he's
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: looking at his notes and he's doing the math in
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: his head. I'm in trouble.
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  Speaker 2: Go go. One of the interesting contrasts.
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  Speaker 1: Probably gonna cover three decades.
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  Speaker 2: I'm not talking really quickly in four minutes. Go ahead. No,
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  Speaker 2: we're gonna do it a little lout of time, do
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: a little out of time.
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  Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna go a little long here.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Go ahead. But there's some interesting people in that timeframe two,
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  Speaker 2: similar to now, every forty to fifty years or so,
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: we get a Gates Elon Musk Bezos kind of innovator
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: changed the world this time frame. Back here in the
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: eighteen eighties, Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell got together
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: and they formed the Oriental Telephone Company.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Why they call it that, who knows, I don't know.
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  Speaker 2: If they were probably to go overseas with it or
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: some kind of innovation. But off air, we were talking
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: about some of these people that created things that now
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: are absolutely have always fascinated me. But I still I'm
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: not smart enough to figure out all these things. But
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: how do they take a voice and transmit a voice
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: through a wire to wherever it went or through the
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  Speaker 2: air like we're doing right now. People are just sitting
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: in their car or at home or wherever they happen
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  Speaker 2: to be, and they're hearing my voice. Fascinating putting voice
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  Speaker 2: Edison had a lot to do, whether he stole ideas
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: or not. You're smirking with Victrola's and yeah, record players
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: taking someone's voice, or taking an orchestra and putting in
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: a little piece of vinyl and you can play it
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  Speaker 2: and hear it just like they just said it. Absolutely fascinating.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: These inventions began in the eighteen eighties that we now
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: take for granted. Now the voice goes into your computer somewhere.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: You can take this show and send it to me,
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: and I can send it to anybody I want. I
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: don't think we're as amazed by these things as we
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: should be. I think that's where this comes from. A
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: guy like Elon Musk, fascinating guy. I think his mind
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: is fascinated by the things he's able to do. Takes
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: money and whatever. But that's what drives people like that.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: It's that creativity and the interest in exploring new worlds
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: or exploring small parts of our lives. Talked about it.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: It's a cliche, but they think outside the box, so
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: it totally do.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: But I think there I'd love to sit and have
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: a beer with him because I think his eyes light
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: up when he starts talking about creativity and doing things different.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: People like that are absolutely fascinating and we all benefit
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: from them. I mean, our society benefits from the innovations
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: that come from creativity. The eighteen hundreds was when earlier
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: we were talking about the flip. What happened? Why was
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: it different than to me anyway? Is it went from
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: completely our societies went from being completely rural of horse
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: and buggy and that type of farming and to we're
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: going to be different from here on in. And that
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: difference made the difference for our country and what our
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: country had ended up becoming about the most powerful innovative
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: country in the world. And I think it's that spirit
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: of innovation and creativity. The Chinese in our modern era
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: have kind of come around from being totally rural for
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: forever or dependent on that to innovative, but they're not
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: innovative where they are. And the Japanese were like this
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: back in the seventies eighties. Create copiers. They can take
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: something that you invent and you create and make it
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: better and then figure out how to market it around
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: the world. We're not so great copiers as we are
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: creators in our country and we stimulate creativity.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Well, it's a matter of personal pride.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: I'd like to think, Well, whatever it is, it's just
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: the American way. It's the way we are as people.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: We do different things. One of the points I looking,
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: I'll just pick them off the page here. In July
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: of eighteen eighty one, the Tuskegee Institute was founded. Now,
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: if you think of from the Civil War and where
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: the country was and how African Americans or Black Americans
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: were treated during those time frames, A Booker T. Washington
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: a creative, very creative black person in America. He invented
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: all kinds of things, you know, and figured it out
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: to take agriculture and be creative with agriculture. Genius. Yeah,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: created this tucky Tuskegee Institute that was four black students
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: to give them an opportunity for post secondary education. We
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: now have ninety nine HBCUs. We call them. I come
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: out of the higher ed world historically black colleges and universities,
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: almost all of them in the South and the Southeast,
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: almost all of them. There's just a couple around the
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: rest of the country. And it's a reflection of where
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: we were in trying to create opportunity and how best
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: to create opportunity for people that prior had no opportunity.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: So when we see the arguments, the modern art arguments
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: today about well, I don't know why is the Florida
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: has four HBCUs. Why are they because we got all
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: these others, we all ought to be the same. There's
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: now did some number search on it, about a quarter
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: of the students who attend HBCUs in America, in these
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: ninety nine institutions, a quarter are non black. And there's
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: that transition that's occurring based on programs like Florida n
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: M has physical therapy and occupational therapy that others don't.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: They're doing it, and there's changes that will occur over
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: time to where that probably be all fifty to fifty
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: or whatever. There'll still be HBCUs.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: But it's all rooted in the eighteen eighties eighteen nineties
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: in the transitions in our country.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah. Yeah, and because of the innovation of Booker.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: T can't wait to see what we cover next month.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll get past that. What was that July of eighteen.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: You've gone in three lines in your notes.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: I was gonna do a decade today. I got to
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: eighteen eighty one.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: So well done.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: We've got a great chance of getting through this in
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: the next four years.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm the am I the energizer Bunny or the
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: hair I'm not. Or the turtle I'm not sure. Yeah,
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: the tortoise.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Thanks for the time.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: More tortoise, I guess.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: So good to see you too. Happy Thanksgiving twenty eight
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: after the hour of The Morning Show with Preston Scott