Latest / Saberian History Lectures / Labor Unions and Urban America

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Labor Unions and Urban America · Saberian History Lectures

0:01
So, first of all, we left off with the rise of
0:07
the industrial economy. And the rise of the American
0:11
industrial economy was made possible by the development
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of what industry that united these United States?
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Rail. Rail, in many ways, while it doesn't create
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national, well, in some ways it creates national
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markets for some products, whereas previously
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your national markets were textiles that were
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being transported by ships. Now you have the
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rail lines transporting produce throughout the
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United States, all over the fruited plain, from
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sea to shining sea, as what I call the ships
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over the oceans of land. And so, What happens
0:53
is the United States transitions from an agricultural
0:56
to an industrial economy. This changes how people
0:59
live, and it changes how people work. I'm going
1:07
to talk to you about two rather broad concepts.
1:09
One of them is going to be a broad essay topic
1:11
that will appear on your final exam. The other
1:13
will be what I call a unit topic, which kind
1:17
of makes a bit more sense. Okay, so here's your
1:20
basic idea. Let's do what I would call looking
1:23
at agricultural America versus industrial America.
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Because literally you have, For some people in
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one generation, in one lifetime, families that
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started on farms and end in cities. Okay? So,
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first of all, in agricultural America, how do
1:54
you live? Where do you live? You live where you
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work. And where do you live and where do you
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work? On a farm. Now, On a farm, are you, whereas
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in industrial America, where do you live and
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where do you work? In the city. Now, what's cleaner?
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Farm. We don't tend to think of rural life as
2:30
clean, but compared to the city prior to the
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dawn of the flushing toilet, Being densely populated
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was not the win. So here you have people living
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in sparsely populated agricultural communities,
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whereas in the city, people live in densely populated
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tenements. Yes? Now, by the way, if you're in
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a sparsely populated area, are you as susceptible
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to succumb to disease? Specifically... When you're
3:05
living with people densely packed together in
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the world before the shower and before the flushing
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toilet, it really is an unpleasant existence,
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isn't it? Now, you try and cover up the stench
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using perfumes, you try and cover up the stench
3:18
using tobacco, but by the way, in the era before
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the flushing toilet, you might not want to be
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walking down the street in the early morning
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because what do people do with chamber pots?
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They throw the stuff out the window, don't they?
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Well, it's weird to us. Whereas, if you live
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in a rural area, even before the flushing toilet,
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does it take a lot of plumbing sophistication
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to create an outhouse? No, you dig a hole in
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the ground and you put a roof over it, right?
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And once that crap hole is full of crap, what
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do you do? You bury it and you dig another one.
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Whereas, if you're in an American city before
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the dawn of the flushing toilet, you are living
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surrounded by cesspools. Okay? Let me give you
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one example, although this wasn't in the text
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and this is not necessarily an American example.
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How many of you have heard the expression, raining
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cats and dogs? So, in the cities, and for those
4:15
of you who are visual people and love animals,
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this is going to be unpleasant. In the cities,
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you would actually have large collections of...
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feral domesticated animals. Feral cats, feral
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dogs. And when it would rain in the cities, the
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streets would flood and what would happen to
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these animals? They would drown and they would
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go down the streets. And you're like, oh my god,
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it's raining freaking cats and dogs. It's really
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quite disgusting, actually, if you think about
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it. And so... Densely populated, subject to disease.
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Such diseases might include airborne diseases
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between humans, but also fecal -borne diseases,
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dysentery, such. Alright? Now, in agricultural
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America, was work constant? In agriculture, well,
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it's seasonal. Okay, ranching, you always have
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to look out for your animals, but if you're talking
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subsistence agriculture of grain crops, you have
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some periods where you are working your tail
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off and you've got some periods where you're
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just staying at home because there is literally
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nothing to do, right? So here you have a seasonal
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lifestyle. Because also, you know, when it comes
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time for harvest, you have lots of people who
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need to go to work, and then when you're not
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harvesting stuff and you're just waiting for
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the crops to do their thing, you've got a whole
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lot of nothing going on, right? Now, for the
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farmer, it's always his land, but were there
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people working in agriculture who didn't own
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land? Farmhands dispossess agricultural workers
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or what we would call landless, what the Europeans
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called landless peasants, yes? Okay. In industrial
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America, is work seasonal or constant? Constant.
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In agricultural America, do children work? Yes.
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What type of jobs do children do in agricultural
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work? So when I'm talking children working, I'm
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talking less than 12 years old. We're talking
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small children. They're not doing the same jobs
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as the adults, but are they doing work? Yes.
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So for example, if you're harvesting grain, dad
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might be busting out with the scythe to actually
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do the harvesting. The kids might be gathering
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the stocks, albeit from a safe distance. Yes?
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They might be tasked with feeding some of the
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domestic animals. They might be tasked with other
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cleanliness chores. But it's not the same type
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of work as children working in the factories.
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What's the difference between children working
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in factories versus the type of work that children
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might be engaged in on the farm? die and or be
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injured in other words that in an industrial
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setting children's work is hazardous isn't it
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actually all work in the factory has some degree
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of hazard but does it help especially with children
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by the way are children the most agile adept
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and coordinated people God put on the face of
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the earth no Shoot! Middle school! You know,
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you see middle school children tripping because
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their feet grew an inch while they were sitting
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in the chair. No? Too soon for that joke? You've
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only been away from it for how many years? Alright,
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never mind. Not enough. Still getting the flashbacks.
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Alright. So here we have in our two -fold diagram,
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I'm going to put a smiley face by children working
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in America, and I'm going to put a not -so -smiley
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face with children working in industrial plants.
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Did women work in agricultural economies? Yes.
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But did women engage in necessarily the same
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type of work as men? More domestic. There was
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a defined division of labor. So, for example,
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and this is one part that I don't think people
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fully appreciate. Okay. Primary source of meat
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intake in the United States prior to the dawn
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of rail? Chicken. Okay. Second? Pork. Okay. How
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many of you are familiar with the process by
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which one slaughters a pig? Okay. Now. Spencer,
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you have seen them eviscerate a pig, yes? Now,
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before they eviscerate the pig, this is not this
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little piggy went to market, is it? This is not
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a cute, happy little pig. This pig is not going
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to have a good time. Also, typically, before
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they butcher a pig, how big is this pig? Approximately
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what weight? How much? 300 pounds. Now, in the
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era before hydraulics and machines, it takes
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a substantial amount of manpower... to butcher
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a full -sized pig. At the risk of underestimating
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you, you in your present size and weight, I do
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not think would have the mass to achieve that
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task. No. And so there were certain matters of
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divisions of labor that occurred just as a matter
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of biological necessity. This is not me being
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down on feminism. Don't worry, we have the rest
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of the course to get into the various feminisms
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that arise in the 19th century. and into the
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20th century. So you do have women doing work,
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but are women... These work that they do are
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typically in a family environment, yes? Either
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they're working in the house of their fathers
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or they're working in the house of their husbands.
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So we would say women work, and I would put that
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as familial. In industrial and urban populations,
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were the women's employment tied necessarily
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to family structures? No. And so here you have
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women working. Some of them are working in factories.
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Some of them are working in office spaces. Some
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of them, you know, they are exiting the countrysides
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of their homeland and they find themselves, instead
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of working in the factory or the office space,
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finding themselves working in less than honorable
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professions. Like the oldest one. Prostitution.
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Okay. And so here we have things being done in
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agricultural America. When you see these patterns
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of employment and lifestyle in the city, they
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are seen as exploitative. They are seen as...
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They are seen as against the American ethos.
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And especially when you consider that the American
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ethos at this time is greatly influenced by what
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religious thing that we've talked about already.
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Second Great Awakening. Revivalist Christianity.
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And so, if I am a person who is looking to make
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the kingdom of God on earth, does urban America
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look like that kingdom of God? Not by any stretch
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of the imagination. And so, not only, by the
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way, are industrial cities filthy, what else
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is the fuel source that powers the Industrial
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Revolution? Coal. Does coal burn clean in 1879?
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No. It's a very dirty fuel. It leaves a lot of
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what on everything in the city? Soot. So you've
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got coal, you've got soot, you've got the smell,
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you've got... children missing limbs, you've
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got prostitution, and you've got one other thing
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just thrown in just to make it interesting. Oh,
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by the way, just one quick thing about coal and
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soot. What happens when coal and soot and sulfur
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mix in the air? Nope. Acid rain. Which always
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reminds me of that one song, you know, I set
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fire to the rain, although with acid rain it
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kind of feels like rain sets fire to you. Yes,
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now you're thinking purple rain, acid rain, yes,
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I know. I may cut this out of the tape, I don't
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know. Actually, I've got an entire sketch from
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fourth period on the gag reel. Anyway, I'll get
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to that one later. Okay, so you've got the coal,
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you've got the soot, as opposed to green acres
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being the place for me. Now, something else going
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on. In agricultural America, who do you socialize
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with? Who do you interact with for the most part?
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And typically, you immigrated to this country
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as whole groups. You had... Kinship relationships.
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So, you know, your neighbors might be your cousins
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because dad bought a huge plot of land when he
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immigrated from the old country. He divided it
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among his sons who then set up their homesteads
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on the subproperty and so on. Also, by the way,
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not at the risk of getting... Getting into people's
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mores. How many of you know people that have
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been in, say, this area, Bolverde, Spring Branch,
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Neubrandfels, for more than two generations?
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Okay. And so some of these people you know. Your
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cousins are around here, aren't they? I mean,
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yes. I mean, that's what happens when you grow
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up in an area that was previously agricultural.
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So your primary interactions are your kinship
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relations. People who share your language, your
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culture, your sense of history, and a sense of
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belonging. Is that who you interact with in the
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city? No. Who do you interact with? Strangers
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and also the other. And what do I mean by the
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other? People who do not. share your language,
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culture, sense of history. Who else is coming
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to the city besides dispossessed agricultural
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workers? You have foreigners, immigrants. Specifically,
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we talk about the first wave of immigrants to
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the cities being the Irish, but is that the only
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wave of immigrants coming to the cities into
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the 1880s? No. Who else is coming? Chinese are
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coming to the cities of the West. Czechs, Slovaks,
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Poles, people who had been previously and Greeks,
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Slavs, Italians, Jews, Gypsies, those sorts of
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things. These are people who had not previously
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been in the United States. And by the way, are
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their customs different? Yes. These are not even
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people, I mean... The Irish, at least, they spoke
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English. Yes, they were Catholics, but, you know,
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you go to a Catholic church or a Lutheran church,
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okay, there are some differences doctrinally,
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but there aren't a whole lot of differences in
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terms of the ritual. Have any of you been to
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an Eastern Orthodox Mass? No. Greek, Russian,
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you know, so these are people who have a radically
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different form of Christianity, if they have
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Christianity at all. These are people with radically
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different language groups. Oh, by the way, what
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drives them here? Stuff. Good stuff or bad stuff?
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Bad. Okay, so your dominant narrative coming
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out of your 8th grade class is America's awesome
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and there's good stuff over here which caused
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people to migrate from those countries over here.
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But what everyone sort of forgets to get into
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is that there was bad stuff going on in the homeland.
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So in the case of the Balkans, you have the expansion
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of what is the Austro -Hungarian Empire. In the
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case of Poland and what will become... the Czech
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Republic and Slovakia, you have the creation
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of modern Germany that is now branching to the
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east, heading towards Russia. And in Italy, you
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have a series of conflicts between the various
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states as Italy is going from Florence, Naples,
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Tuscany, and all that into what will become modern
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Italy. And Greece has a similar set of internecine
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conflicts. So you have, in the old world, war,
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famine, pestilence, and death driving people
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to the new world. Who else was driven by population
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pressures? Englishmen. Western Europeans, yes?
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So, now, people looking at what the cities had
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become largely as a result of the industrial
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processes sought to reform the system. Among
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the people, who would have to work in the cities
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but not work in the factories? Your middle class.
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Your accountants. Your engineers. Your lawyers,
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your doctors, your burgeoning middle class works
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in the cities. Some of them would commute to
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the suburbs. Sound familiar? So, your middle
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class, I'm going to put them over here. They
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want to ameliorate the situation. Now, who else
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would want to ameliorate the situation of the
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working class? The working class themselves,
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yes? And they form unions to try and ameliorate
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their situation, ameliorate to make better. What
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would make a working class person's life better?
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Shorter hours, higher wages, and safer working
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conditions. Also, the removal of people who would
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drive down wages from the workforce. Who drives
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down wages from the workforce? Immigrants. And
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who else? Children. So you have the middle class
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who tends to be progressive, trying to keep the
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kids out of the workforce so they're not injured.
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And then you have the unions trying to get the
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kids out of the workforce to increase wages.
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Does that make sense? And what do you call it
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when you have two factions that come together
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for a political purpose? Starts with a C. Coalitions.
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Coalitions are voting blocs. You get the idea.
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And so many of these strange new things coming
19:11
up in industrial America affront people's sense
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of aesthetics, affront people's sense of decency,
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and there are laws put in place to do that. But
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also you have the rise of unions. Now I'm going
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to stop for a moment on this. Does everyone have
19:28
this? Okay. Okay. So I'm going to give you another
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one. So this is the one that I would think is
19:35
more for a unit type essay. Now I'm going to
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talk to you about the one that I would probably
19:41
have as a broad essay topic on your final exam.
19:45
Because you see it in multiple industries. And
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you have seen it in your own lifetime. This is
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what I call... the invention regulation cycle.
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Okay. And it has a cyclical element to it. So,
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the first thing that happens is there is, and
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I'll get to the organized labor in a bit. I kind
20:21
of want to hit this broad stroke first and then
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I'll get to the organized labor. So here we have
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There is an invention or an innovation that changes
20:31
the game. Someone comes up with a new product
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that revolutionizes an industry. Okay? In terms
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of agricultural America, name one thing that
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revolutionizes the game. Cotton gin? Or the combine.
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In this period, the combine. But yes, the cotton
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gin would be 1790. Combine. What's it do? It
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combines winnowing, harvesting, and thrashing.
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So, then you have a period of chaos. In the period
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of chaos, in other words, you have a new thing
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and the new thing is not regulated. In the period
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of chaos, do you have winners and losers? Yes.
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And typically, do the winners win big or the
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winners win small? The winners win big. Typically,
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they win big by selling their product and getting
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a lot of money for it. Yes? So, winners win big
21:45
money. Can I think of something else that you've
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perhaps seen where you have a technology that
21:51
has made people very, very rich in a very short
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time? Say it again? No, I'm talking a technology.
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Computers, smartphones, yes? The internet markets
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themselves, yes? Okay. Are there losers? So let's
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use, for example, the smartphone. Are there people
22:20
who have made buku bucks off smartphones? App
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developers, the people who design the chips,
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yes. Are there people who have been exploited
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or who have otherwise lost because of this technology
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revolution? Yes. In the case, and so the losers
22:38
are people who either lose their jobs or who
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are exploited for their labor power. So let's
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think about this first in the context of agriculture
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in the 1870s, then we'll think about it again
22:52
in the context of, let's say, smartphones. So
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you have a combine. It takes out the trouble
22:59
of harvesting, winnowing, and threshing. So if
23:04
I'm the farm owner, I'm okay. I know I have a
23:08
job because it's my land. Do I need as many farmhands?
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No. So if you're a farmhand and you just had
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your job taken away by a combine, Did you win?
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You lost. You look at modern technology. Has
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some things in our internet economy replaced
23:29
jobs that previously existed? Netflix and Blockbuster.
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Or, here's one. You take a picture. And you can
23:46
share them. And you don't have to have the film
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developed, do you? Postcard. Need for mail, yes?
23:57
But even, you don't, nobody works in photo labs
24:00
anymore, do they? Nobody develops film. That
24:02
used to be a job that you could actually make
24:05
a decent living at. When I was your age, there
24:08
was a photo lab. in the drugstore that I worked
24:13
at, and they had us do some of the training for
24:15
the photo lab, although I did not work as a photo
24:18
lab technician. Well, and you also have in that
24:25
period of chaos, you have unintended consequences.
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So in this case, you have dispossessed agricultural
24:35
workers moving into the cities, moving into cities
24:38
without the infrastructure to sustain them. What
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are the unintended consequences? People living
24:43
in squalor, people living in disease. Oh, by
24:45
the way, if you don't have showers and you don't
24:47
have flushing toilets, you probably don't have
24:49
fire hydrants when buildings are mostly made
24:51
of wood. And what do you use to light everything
24:54
before electricity? Lamps. Open flames! Oh, by
25:04
the way, what else do people do as a nasty little
25:06
habit that helps kill your sense of smell? Smoking.
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Hmm, more open flames. Open flames, flaming cesspool,
25:13
buildings made of wood. What could possibly go
25:16
wrong? Either the city floods or the city catches
25:22
fire. By the way, into the early 20th century,
25:25
cities perennially had catastrophic fires. Cities
25:28
are like forests. And how do forests clean themselves?
25:32
With fire. So you have unintended consequences.
25:36
What are some of the unintended consequences
25:39
of the internet age? Information being unfiltered.
25:45
Content being unfiltered. People taking vile
25:48
photographs of themselves and distributing it
25:50
all over the world. Right, it's digital, but
25:55
yeah, it's vile pictures of it. Well, but think
25:59
about this for a moment. Right. Yeah, no, I'm
26:03
getting back to the concept of digital citizenship.
26:04
Whereas before, and I know this because I worked
26:08
in a drugstore that used to have a photo lab,
26:10
if someone took pictures of things that were
26:13
considered obscene and tried to have them developed
26:16
at the photo lab, the photo lab had standard
26:19
instructions to call the police. You laugh. There
26:24
were people who, okay, I don't know as a certainty
26:27
because all I did was cashier and stock the shelves.
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But I had, you know, a buddy in the photo lab.
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He's like, yeah, I had to call the police. I
26:35
wasn't sure about one. And there you go. And
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would you develop it? No. Now, here's the thing.
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Now can people take pictures of whatever and
26:48
print them at home? And they do. Right? You get
26:53
the idea. Unintended consequences. Now, it doesn't
26:57
end there. What happens next? You have a situation
27:00
of chaos. You have people being exploited. You
27:03
have unintended consequences. And so, a consensus
27:06
arises. Partially from the winners, partially
27:11
from the losers, partially from people who are
27:14
feeling the effects of the unintended consequences.
27:16
And this takes you to phase three, which is regulation.
27:28
So you try to mitigate the losses, you try and
27:31
mitigate the unintended consequences, and the
27:34
winners typically try to preserve their wins.
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Because if I'm an innovator and I'm here where
27:43
I am because of innovation, what could happen
27:45
to me? I could be out -innovated. Where is MySpace
27:53
now? No, it's in the graveyard of social media
28:01
next to AOL. AOL and MySpace in the graveyard
28:06
of social media. Facebook, which used to be the
28:09
way that college kids used to communicate into
28:12
their alumnihood, is now the vestige of older
28:16
people. When my 74 -year -old mother is on Facebook,
28:20
you know it's for everyone now. I love my mother
28:23
dearly. And Yahoo's about to go down. And so
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what do you do? You try and preserve the institution
28:31
through regulation, don't you? However... Can
28:35
regulation have unintended consequences? It can
28:39
have unintended consequences. Regulation has
28:42
a cost. Regulation has a burden for compliance.
28:44
This burden is financial. This burden is legal.
28:47
And so if the regulation burden becomes too high,
28:51
what do you do? It becomes an impediment to the
28:56
market, but eventually, and this leads to phase
28:58
four, which is deregulation. But what can deregulation
29:08
cause? A new chaos. Do you see how that works?
29:19
Now, right now in American history, along the
29:22
arc for many industries, we're going from innovationary
29:26
chaos to regulation. You really don't get widely
29:31
into deregulation until post -mid -20th century.
29:35
You get the idea. And so right now we're going
29:38
from here to here. You get the idea? And this
29:40
occurs in multiple industries. This occurs in
29:42
automotive industries. This occurs in electricity.
29:47
This occurs in transportation. This occurs in
29:52
multiple fields. Now, that being said, let's
29:56
get to the rise of organized labor. I know I'm
29:58
a bit behind time, but I'm just going to keep
29:59
going. Organized labor. So you have... Strangers
30:04
working together and so they create a new identity.
30:07
And so you have these rises of unions and the
30:12
rise of strikes. So previously... So think about
30:21
this for a moment. Unions. What do they want?
30:24
Higher pay. Shorter hours. Better conditions.
30:45
Now, what is coming between them and what they
30:48
want? Well, you have the management, so we see
30:54
this as a conflict between managers and workers.
30:59
But there's also something else in the mix. Is
31:05
it just that the management is keeping wages
31:06
down, or is there an externality? There's an
31:12
externality. Who drives down wages? Immigrants,
31:14
children. Why? Because they'll work for less.
31:17
Now, if you're a child working for less, why
31:19
are you working for less? And because your family
31:23
needs the what? Money. Now, you're also working
31:25
for less because the jobs you're going to have
31:27
a kid doing aren't the jobs that you have a full
31:28
-grown man doing. They might not be doing it
31:30
as long. If you're an immigrant, Why are you
31:33
willing to work for less? You need the money.
31:37
You're happy that you're not in the famine -torn,
31:40
war -torn area that you came from. Also, you
31:43
probably expended a fair amount of capital getting
31:45
your butt over here, so what? You can't just
31:47
take your stuff and go home. Right? They got
31:51
nowhere to go. Now, if you're a union person,
31:56
by the way, many of these unions were ethnocentric.
32:03
The student is not here. Thank you. I would be
32:14
upset at the other who is driving down wages.
32:19
And so you see that in the railroad strike of
32:22
1877 where workers had exhibited some... antipathy
32:28
towards people who would work for less and among
32:31
the people who would work for less are the Chinese
32:33
immigrants. The Sandlot incident is when you
32:35
actually had a strike turn violent towards the
32:37
Chinese immigrants. So going back to the idea
32:40
in the cities you had higher frequency of racial
32:44
violence because you had higher frequency of
32:46
racial contact. And so you have people pushing
32:50
for exclusion of Chinese labor. We saw that with
32:53
the Chinese Exclusion Act and the idea of forced
32:56
deportation of the immigrants who were driving
32:58
down wages. So here you have the steamroller
33:00
chasing after the Chinese person in the graphic,
33:05
which is obviously a racial caricature, but hey,
33:08
it was published. Alright, moving on. So your
33:14
first National Labor Union convenes in Baltimore.
33:17
You have the rise of these labor fraternities
33:21
and they advocate for their people. Now here's
33:23
the thing. You have the rise of organized labor.
33:28
Here you have the knights of labor looking all
33:30
tough with their machinery. And notice in the
33:33
photograph they're posing with the implements
33:36
of their work. Do you see that? Yeah? Alright.
33:46
Now, in addition to People in these labor unions,
33:54
when these strikes would occur... Now, by the
33:56
way, in some ways, and this is what many people
34:00
don't appreciate, strikes against the boss are
34:06
a relatively new thing, and they're an urban
34:08
thing. In rural America, if you were a farmhand
34:12
and you were dissatisfied with the payer working
34:14
conditions, if you were a landless peasant, what
34:16
would you do? You would leave. you'd walk off
34:21
the job and off you went. Given the scarcity
34:25
of employment options in the cities at that time,
34:28
was that an option for the workers? So their
34:30
best recourse was to stop production. Now, also
34:35
getting into these labor movements are foreign
34:39
ideologies. And I do mean foreign ideologies
34:43
because in these organizations you have Some
34:48
other political philosophies being anarchy, socialism,
34:51
and communism. And it doesn't help that some
34:56
of the people leading these charges are foreigners.
34:59
Why do I say that socialism is foreign to the
35:02
United States? Not just capitalists. Let's go
35:09
back to the ethos of the 1700s. Locke. John Locke.
35:15
And even the Declaration of Independence. We
35:17
hold these truths to be self -evident that all
35:19
men are created equal, that they are endowed
35:21
by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,
35:24
that among these are what? And the pursuit of
35:28
happiness was a euphemism for what? Property.
35:34
In America, private property is sacrosanct. In
35:37
America, what separates America from Europe?
35:41
Ownership of what? Land. Does socialism recognize
35:48
the validity of private property? Does communism
35:51
recognize a creator god? And actually, even in
35:55
the Declaration, you have the idea that governments
35:59
are instituted among men to protect those right,
36:02
and do anarchists believe in government? Foreign
36:06
ideology writ large. And at the risk of making
36:10
fun of some political leftists, I was going to
36:13
say the self -avowed socialist Bernie Sanders
36:14
was a close second in a major party. But, hey.
36:20
Now, here's the thing going on. And the book
36:22
gets into it. There are a series of violent strikes
36:26
that go on. So you have a labor protest. You
36:29
have some acts of violence, either by use of
36:30
explosives or incendiaries. By the way, for many
36:33
of these major strikes, how does it end? So,
36:41
you are the establishment. You are the government.
36:44
You see workers striking against private property
36:47
owners. And if you're the American government,
36:50
your first priority is the protection of property
36:52
and of good order. So what do you do? Specifically,
36:59
your militia, your National Guard. In the late
37:03
19th, early 20th century, has tear gas been developed?
37:06
Have rubber bullets been developed? And if you
37:09
don't have an effective fire suppression system,
37:12
you're not going to bust out with the water cannons,
37:14
are you? What are you going to bust out with?
37:18
Infantry forces with live rounds and bayonets.
37:25
No, but I make the distinction between guns.
37:27
It's one thing to kill a person from a great
37:29
distance off to fire a volley into a crown. It's
37:31
another thing when you have your forces line
37:33
up and advance on them with basically spears
37:35
and you watch the life drain from their eyes
37:37
when you make contact with them. But you get
37:45
the idea. And so... we can see the labor strikes
37:50
and the various violences breaking out as a conflict
37:54
resulting from this period of what I call innovative
37:57
chaos. As people are trying to hammer out a new
38:03
order. Does that make sense? And the chaos and
38:07
confusion that arises leads to a greater devotion
38:11
of this progressive movement that is trying to
38:14
ameliorate the situation. And so that progressive
38:17
movement in some cases makes common cause with
38:20
the union to get better pay and better working
38:22
conditions and to get the kids out of the labor
38:23
force. In some places they find themselves antagonistic.
38:26
You get the idea. And so you see the rise of
38:28
coalition politics in that regard. Okay, I will
38:32
let you read about Debs and whatnot going on.
38:35
I kind of want to go into the South. I know I
38:38
only have five minutes, but this makes for a
38:40
great teaser into what's going to be on Friday.
38:45
Okay, so switch gears, but this gets us into
38:49
the beginning of chapter 17 if I actually have
38:52
some input. All right, so the South and the West
38:56
transformed. I actually want to start with the
38:58
South first. Okay, so, in the American South,
39:05
1861 to 1865, what happened? Civil War. Who won?
39:17
The Union won, sort of. You're about to see why.
39:23
Okay, 1865 to 1876, what happened? Reconstruction.
39:32
Now, if you're living in the South, you don't
39:34
call it Reconstruction. What do you call it?
39:37
An armed occupation. The federal occupation of
39:41
the South. Now, whenever you have a military
39:44
occupation force, what else might occur? Starts
39:47
with an R. Resistance. Who were the agents of
39:53
resistance to federal occupation and civil rights
39:57
for African Americans in the South? The Ku Klux
40:01
Klan, the disaffected Confederate war vets, formed
40:05
themselves an organization to attempt to reassert
40:08
their dominance, even in the face of federal
40:11
occupation. 1876, what happens? Oh, wait, who
40:14
else is in there besides federal occupation?
40:16
Well, you've got carpetbaggers and you have freedmen.
40:21
Yes? 1876, who leaves? Federal occupation. You're
40:35
the resistance and the occupying force leaves
40:39
and you're still there. What just happened? You
40:42
just won. And so our history books record that
40:47
the North won the war. But did they win the peace
40:52
and the occupation? No. And so two things happen.
40:58
The federal forces leave and the sons of the
41:02
South, who were but children during the war,
41:06
come of age. They are not disenfranchised because
41:10
they didn't participate in the war, but by God,
41:13
they suffered during that war. And you don't
41:15
think those wounds fully healed?