tv Book TV CSPAN January 29, 2011 11:00am-12:00pm EST
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to read a new bestseller or whatever had trouble getting one, so it worked. once the chains started, you know, a thousand more stores from barnes & noble, the book of the month club disappeared. >> you also had, you also had gallams, right? published orwell, was it the left-wing book club? >> left book club, yeah. >> i mean, something like that might be, you know, people who do live near a chain but don't feel like they are getting the sort of books that they're interested in, maybe that would work? >> no, that might. and i tried to see if we could start something like the left book club years ago, and i still don't understand why that didn't work. i can tell you, basically, why it didn't work. what i did is i went to the aclu and various other groups and said, you know, are you willing to use your appeal to sell books -- [inaudible] and they said, basically, no because if people buy a book, they think they made the contribution, and they'll give
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us less money as a result. .. university press have already run with the backstop. a limited available on demand. that doesn't solve the problem of putting the books in bookstores, but maybe it takes away a lot of the risk of printing 5,000 copies. >> and, you know, for years university presses have
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something called university microfilms, or four decades, that would give you a copy of a book out in print, but now that they have on demand, technology is such set any publisher can do the short run, and that is what we do. so that is why there was a while when somebody said you're going to have this machine in the bookstores. that didn't work because precisely people did not come into the bookstores, but more importantly the technology works so that any of our books can be reprinted so that you have the copies, which is great. means the books are available and inexpensive lee. you had a question to back. >> he talked about the publishing industry in terms of globalization and core position. i am wondering if you could comment at all on its relationship to reading?
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whether it is -- i think of it as kind of its chicken egg problem. liggett reading in terms of publishing and publishing in terms of reading. and just wondering if you have any thoughts on that. >> well, the figures but are uncertain. i mean in america most people spend as much time reading as i ever did, but half of that time is spent on the internet. and what they're reading on the internet, you know, whether it is the site and not, people don't know. and not sure what you can tell from that. i think, you know, reading is based, in part, on what is available that you want to read. the more you narrow your choice the more -- if you are being given a choice of words of the ten thoughts programs are going to be replicated by murdoch you are limiting your audience
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enormously. if you still have a variety of people who are wanting to publish stuff that is interesting and different than you will give readers. at the new press we have just one title that sold over a million copies, and that is a book called playas my teacher told me which is the study of the 12 most widely used american history textbooks. when we published that book are sales people said, well, this is a nice idea, and maybe you will sell a few copies to high-school to -- history teachers. if you print five dozen copies you have a 10-year supply, which is what we did print. over the years we have sold over a million copies because people found that this is stuff that they didn't know existed. they were interested. there was a huge audience of students who want to be, you know, smarter than their teachers. whenever. we are interested in buying the book. if you ask any market research
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person, and indeed, we did. says there would have said no. so part of the purpose of the new press was precisely to public stuff that people said, you know, nobody wanted to read. and we did that -- we did that on purpose to be published things that everybody said aren't going to read books about art. we deliberately published a number of books in that field, and they sold extremely well. so part of the difficulty that i'm talking about in the corporate control is that people just want to do dissenting. very often in doing that they lose money because they are offering lots of money to some alter that everybody else has offered lots of money to because they think it is a safe thing. i remember sitting in on meetings at random house where everybody suggests we lose money, but we need a locomotive to pull the rest of the list. soon you have got a train with
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just a locomotive and no cars behind it. >> probably convincing. pretend to be utopian. you know, leaving aside for a moment the question of how, entangled in the middle east and all that which i think is very convincing. if we just evaluate culture on its own merits and look at something like the music industry, which i think tenure at the head, the publishing and its regard and really it has been totally transformed the last couple of years. and i think a lot of people would say, disagree that the music industry is cultural aspects of music production in the united states.
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so obviously this stuff going on is largely internet driven. they are showing no shortage of avenues for browsing and advising and creating musical culture. is there reason to believe that book culture is different? requires a different kind of infrastructure? >> i think that is a legitimate question. i frankly don't know enough about how the music industry works to be able to answer it in detail. i think if you look generally back at the various fields, theater, film, music performance music psst, books and so on you will see that the more narrow the selection available, you know, the worse the situation becomes. in no, i lived in paris half the year. we can see more movies in more countries their on any given day
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than you could in new york the whole year long. they have a huge, huge variety of music houses and fine films that will never make it your ever no matter how good they are. now, in theory, you know, if your theory were correct then that schlecks would have every korean film ever made available. they don't. part of the reason is that people need to know as i said before, they need to know something is there, have the reviews and attention. in music there are enough people are sufficiently close to a given group that they know they want the next song, whenever the case. that just doesn't apply in books and films and elsewhere. so that is the closest packing come to answer your question. you know, on the other side we have seen the last of the record stores disappear here.
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you know, that means that either you can download what you want or you are out of it. there is no way that you are going to find the supply that you are demanding. >> and of course the question. the infrastructure that you're talking about reviewing is much more important for books i think then it is for record spirit a record you can listen to pretty quickly. the young have to invest too much time. he never went into a record store and like, oh, these songs sound interesting to me. a band that you might might have a record that you know. that is different. [inaudible] >> the book? >> the book now for music. >> you look at amazon. this say if you're interested in book ex you might want to look at book why, and usually it is totally off the wall. the question over there?
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>> just piggyback of that question and make a comparison to a different industry. music, when you listen to it, is a fundamentally different, other it is a digital or hearing a record or the quality might change. there is another industry that i think putting real people and real things in people's hands, the food industry has undergone a lot of changes as people pay more attention to finding products that were sustainable one local or environmentally sound. i wonder if there are any examples in the food industry models because their seems to be a lot of growth in those nourishing and wholesome purchasing habits, at least in cities like new york and san francisco. in the examples the publishing can take from the food industry? >> well, they have tried, and there are a whole bunch of publishers in europe that have been pressing for what they call the belly of diversity.
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and there was even an account to do it. some people have seen the difference, and they are taken by it. it is harder. the slow read group based on having bookstores keep it for a laundromat the time. beano, their is a limit to how much time he can keep a tomato. it has not worked that well. i am all for it. in reality people have not somehow made the bridge from one to the other. hopefully they will. >> let's take two more. >> i just have a question of distribution, i guess. in 07 when publishing the, the parent company went bankrupt. it caused a stir for a lot of independent high prices. they got bought out by perseus
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consortium, another large small press distributor said. and then i know i think the new press. are you frightened at all by that? by me, i think that owning by hedge fund is something, how perilous is that? and then with them being responsible for some many small presses and then to jump off of that question, what you think of the distribution for a publisher like zero or books? they seemed to be appealing directly to consumers, and i think that they don't feel at all with amazon. so i guess what do you see as the future for book distribution? >> yes, well, we are nearing the end of our time, so i can't give you a long answer on that. at think it is the scariest part of what is happening. at the distribution is harder and harder. in europe, in france for
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instance you need to have 300,000 euro as a sales year for a major distributor to be willing to let you. most small publishers can't even dream of that. so it is -- it is a real problem. hopefully he know at some point people were stuck coming up with cooperative distribution agreements whereby small publishers can get together, but bidding small publishers to work together is like herding cats. it is very, very difficult. we have tried and not succeeded. so, you know, ideally some alternatives are going to come up. at the moment i think it is very scary. i agree with you. okay. the last question. >> you talk about the risk publishers take and how it is harder for a publisher to take a risk now than it was back then. but then we are also talking
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about distribution online. the electronic information. i am wondering if on the countersigned that not being a will to -- or at the risk to a certain extent that the quality of attention is given to a book is going to change. if you make available whether that be on line, for free information when i talked earlier about providing the information for free online. i am wondering if that is the direction they're going with. more free information. is the role of the publisher to provide attention as far as distribution and promotion. >> well, you know, the head of bugle referred to the internet as a cesspool of misinformation the know, you have a lot of bad stuff on the internet and it's very difficult to check it. i mean, one of the advantages of the publishers logo used to be
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that it was a guarantee of some time the people had set them both and believe in it and thought it was accurate. on the internet you have it delivered attempt but to put this information as we have seen. so it was very difficult to know what is going to be pure and what is going to be something that you can believe in and follow. the risks that come from publishing now are largely by paying too much money for not very good books. those are increasing because there is always somebody who is willing to offer more money than a best seller should line. the big firms following that policy have not necessarily make money. when they took over at random house the publishing was based on that. they lost more money than they ever have in the whole history of the firm. so that is the kind of risk that people are willing to take, the risk on a new idea, on a new
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altar is not one they're willing to take. and so you have a problem. so the internet -- publishing works if you have a highly targeted audience and its specialized book. the university presses are now publishing. you can kind of get that on the internet. they know they have 350 customers. that is the university libraries throughout the world. the latest university book. those people are willing to download it. they don't care that much, you know, what it is as long as it is from a proper university press. it works extremely. if you are trying to reach an audience that doesn't know the book, has a herd of the author, is not familiar with the subjects of going to work. maybe we should stop. >> thank you. thank you. thank you very much. [applauding]
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[applauding] >> again, thank you. >> for more information on andre schiffrin book words and money visit his publisher's website and search his name or the book's title. philip dray presents a history of organized labor in america and the role of unions played intensely political and social landscape of the 20th-century. he also examines the reasons for the diminished size of union today. philip dray discusses his book at the tournament museum in new york city. the program is 40 minutes. >> i would like to provide some historical background for the performance that you just saw and talked about the events of 1909, 1911 here in the lower east side. you know, those years as the performance suggested were a real crucible of change in
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tragedy with the shirt makers stride, the quilt makers strike and the triangle cirque always fire of 1911. why don't i back up a little bit and come up to it, though just to set the stage a little bit. you know, my book and the labor organizing an industrial america both really begin with another large group back in lower massachusetts at about the 1830's and 1840's. there is where you have the introduction -- the first introduction of large textile mills. in know, the founders of america, jefferson, hamilton, were very tentative about introducing industry into america. there were not sure be a good fit. elected king of america as an agricultural country. the example of industry in europe and england had not been a very pleasant one. people living in slums. working and living under miserable conditions. a lot of leaders were unsure whether they wanted to encourage
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it. when they did they set up what they thought was our model example of how it could be done. they called a total miracle, and it was basically to have a kind of benign paternalism safeguard these young female workers in mostly came off the farms. for them this was their first opportunity to work for wages. it was very exciting for them. there was a system of boarding houses with denmark is to guard the morality of the workers. lyceum lectures. it was a very undergraduate at mr. people came from all over the world to see it because it was so amazing. charles dickens, president and jackson, davy crockett came from the south. it was considered that much of an unusual turn of events that you could have industry in sort of a pleasant atmosphere. the workers would be well treated and get the industry would be profitable, which it was. that lasted for a generation
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before the women workers began to resent the conditions under which there were forced to work. they amplify their feelings in a journal they themselves had created call low offering which was the first magazine published and written by women in america. in goal offering it did a great advertisement for the low miracle to show that the workers are so enlightened than happy and have so much leisure time that they can produce this literary journal. of course it turned out to be a bit of a facade and the workers began to complain. they were being made to work 12 and 14 hour days. the air was filled with cotton dust and very uncomfortable. so they did not use the word strike. they said turnout. they're literally turn out of a factory, marched down to the town commons. because at that time in the 1830's and 40's it was not really common for women to speak in public and all. so when these strikers would come into the town and get up on a fountain or whenever and start
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making a speech denouncing the owners of the factory you can imagine the counter reverberations that set off. it was big news. that was in no way the antecedent to the what happened here in new york in 1909, 1910, 1911. you also have become a way to get here, of course, number of other shocks to american society from labor. 1877, you know, after the civil war there was a huge buildup of the nation's rail network, and it was kind of the pride of america, the golden spike in 1869. a nationwide network of railroads. it was an incredible thing. however, the workers were pretty much mistreated, poorly paid adult. safety measures were haphazard. it was thought that if you had all your fingers and worked on the railroad you were probably being lazy. and so there was a kind of a spontaneous strike in the summer
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of 1877. it was not really organized by anybody. it just broke out first in west virginia and then out in pittsburgh and eventually chicago. there was a great deal of violence and destruction. essentially what happened is the workers shut down the nation's railroads. this was an amazing moment for both capital and labor because both realized that, yes, you can have this national rail network and be proud of it, but the workers are capable of completely stopping it. that is a whole thing about a railroad from the union's point of view. if you stop one hub or one part of it you can pretty much bring the whole thing to a halt. that was a moment of great clarity for america because everybody saw that this was a situation. labor and industrial relations or something that needed greater attention. again, this happens about a decade later in chicago with the haymarket riot of 1886 which had been about the 8-hour day. a very compelling argument that
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labor made basically saying we want to be good citizens. we want to go to church. want to be consumers so we can have time to go buy goods that we create. so the arguments for a very sound. even the anarchists' of chicago came to embrace it. of course it led to the famous -- of its haymarket riot of 1886 in which several policemen were killed by a bomb thrown by whoever. was never really shown who had done it, but a lot of anarchists were rounded up. there were put on trial and four were eventually executed. the trial that led to their execution has always been a dark stain on american jurisprudence. there were basically convicted based on the words of anarchist riders that appeared in publications. there was no physical evidence. so haymarket also kind of a depressing moment as labor tried to move forward because it's sort of an aroused the ire of america toward radicals.
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that is very much a constant in capital resistance to labor and america, this idea of changing labor with radicalism, communism, bolshevik is some, whatever it is. 1892, of course, the homestead strike. he saw a tremendous violence between the pinkerton agents and workers that also done a lot of attention nationwide. focusing this problem on what we can do to make industrial labour relations more peaceable. finally the pullman strike of 1894 which not only used federal troops, but the federal government used court injunctions to stymie the activity of labour unions which was considered not playing by the rules because they used the sure and antitrust act which had been designed to be used against large corporations. they used it against labor unions. by the time you come to 1909 the progressive movement in new york
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was eager to find some solutions to these problems. they saw the people were living in slums. workers have very little recourse. in those days before social security and unemployment and the fdic if workers' family was down and out it was really pretty serious. so the muckrakers, the progressives, house workers, social scientists were kind of the scene. they wanted to take some action to reconcile. well, kind of overriding all of this with these questions about what to do with the large number of emigrants and also the question of what role government would take in all of this. teddy roosevelt mediated a called strike, but there was some question about what further steps government to take. the conditions in new york, the garment district down here on the lower east side, fairly abysmal. my friend chris nelson as the
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one time how hot it was in the sweatshops. the thing is about sweatshops is they aren't about the temperature summer recess with they would call sweated labor which would be a way of subcontracting labor down and down and down between the boss and all the way down. it really worked very little by the time it got to the seamstress' themselves. and they put up with a lot different this conditions and terms of crowding back. the work was a regular. there were no guarantees. there were not lots of rules. there were is sexual harassment. so a lot of what the uprising was about was not just wages and hours, but also about just basic workers' dignity that was desired. one new thing about the strike, the author eluded to the
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involvement of people outside the labor movement. there was an organization called the women's trade union made up of the upper and middle-class new york women who wanted to join women's labor issues with other issues such as suffrage, temperance, and education. they get involved with the il t w you to help with fund-raising and organizing for the strike. they held mass rallies and meetings, monster parade. most importantly they went down to the picket lines. female college students to walk in a witness to what was happening to the young seamstresses, which was pretty brutal because the company said hired thugs to police the picket lines. there were a lot of violent encounters. this played into the hands of the labor costs because the newspapers which are often more critical of labor, these are images that they really couldn't ignore and could not help but
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feel sympathetic with. young teenage women being beaten up by thugs who had been hired by the company to keep him off the sidewalk. and so you began to see a kind of public opinion trending in the direction of the seamstresses and the coat makers themselves. that particular strike ended in early 1910. it was somewhat successful in that it won union recognition been some shops, but not all. part of the problem was that the factories had successfully outsourced a lot of their work. there were not being terribly hurt by the strike as would have been desired. the next year and a male club maker's truck, and that was called the great revolt of 1910. in this instance you had another progressive element which was called industrial democracy. one of the key people behind it was louis brandeis who was later a supreme court justice working
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with a man named abraham lincoln's eileen it was the co-owner of silence departments or which was known for its very progressive policies towards workers. these men believed in something called scientific management. a social science idea that labour and industrial relations could be reasonably managed to what they called collective bargaining, way of bringing labour and management together to work out in advance. there would be no strikes or work stoppages or boycotts are picketing, but rather these matters would be handled calmly and without any kind of confrontation. and so brandeis' came to new york and managed to work through with the various local government factories here and also with the quilt makers. was a very deliberate process that took many months. they could not agree on recognition. they came up with something that they called the preferential shop as opposed to the
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closed-door union shop which would basically be a shop where the management would hire. they would prefer them to any other workers as long as they were available. that was compromised language. an overall this sort of method was compromised, known as the protocols a piece. all of this was a little bit of a forerunner to the new deal. in other words the way of democratizing labor industrial relations and bring the constitution especially in the labor-management. the one weak spot in the regime established by the protocols was factory safety and worker safety. this had always been -- in the preceding decade this had been a bitter subject because of something called the lock their case. it was a supreme court case from 1905. a man who owned a bakery bread.
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there were passing something called the bait shop back to new york which limited the hour sounds in the bakery because the conditions or rent a spirit a lot more intimate basements. there was no inspection. of course is not only endanger workers but anyone who can send these goods. so the bait shop ipad initially been very popular. lot owners successfully sued -- sued and won. basically saying the state legislature of new york had no business telling him how to operate his business or have to deal with his workers. that was a very crucial thing in the resistance to unions. what the call liberty of contracts. companies, just like people, have certain rights and that a large company in dealing with even a single worker, there was something called liberty of contract that no one had the right to interfere with.
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of course this is kind of a lopsided arrangement cents a huge concentrated capital been in an industry versus one loan and a working person was not fair, but the locking the decision bus behind of froze the idea of government regulation of factories and stores and places of this kind why. this is where we come to the triangle fire. be of course the building still stands up by nyu and. the company resisted all efforts at unionization. they have survived the 1909 and 1910 strikes chest. but they also were working on a saturday afternoon like a lot of the other workers said that day of. sorry, march 25th 1911. the fire broke out hands on the ninth floor of the factory. they occupy the eighth tonight, and tenth floors. i'm sure a lot of you are
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familiar with this history. it was a horrendous fire that consumed the upper three floors very quickly. the memory of it is kind of haunting for ever because of the image of young female workers leaping from the top when this. some were on fire into the street below. it really was a moment in labor history that galvanized, as you can imagine, the average about the stubbornness of the managers who were acquitted. it turned out they had locked the doors from outside. there were a number of other safety violations that tended to do the work in sidon. made themselves escape culpability, but the public outrage over this is then brought about several views mass public meetings. the committee to try to form a response. the woman who was just with doing this was frances perkins,
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a young woman from new england. at that time she worked at the national consumers league. she went to albany, and she had actually been present at triangle and seen the women jumping from the upper floors. she didn't need any more motivation. she went to albany and enlisted the help of two young senators, robert wagner and al smith. of course l. smith went on to be the governor of new york. robert wagner turned out to be a senator in the roosevelt administration and the wagner act of 1985. allegedly is doing. perkins was successful in creating something called the factory investigating commission , new york state factory investment commission which became a template for such commissions around the country. they really went to work. they combed all over new york state, she and her. then not only looked into fire hazards, but they also got into an area that was just beginning to receive attention which was
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sort of what you would call toxic waste, the chemicals and gases that are produced in manufacturing processes. there were sometimes called the dangerous trades. no one had really looked into this much before. of course those kind of a fax are often hard to spot because sometimes they take years to develop. frances perkins also put yourself to try to discover and reform along those lines will. 1909, 1911, versions of these three developments. you saw a cross fertilization of cribs outside of labor like the woman straight union league coming on board and getting involved in helping to publicize the strike. then he saw brandeis and industrial democracy attempting to work out ways to actually come to create contacts between
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labor and industry that would avoid conflict. finally you had more tragically, of course, the work of the factory investigating commission which finally got around to sending a bar for the intensity or the depth of state involvement in governing workplace in terms of safety and health. so i think that, in a way, was a very positive few years despite the losses at the triangle shirtwaist factory. it was not exactly the end of labor strikes, as many as you know. the years just after that they had a real labor wars going on in west virginia and colorado, shooting with between miners and mine operators and their hired agents to reedbuck then of course when world war one came you eventually have sort of a crackdown on a lot of what was deemed labor radicalism
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various other -- and michael one was deported. there was a lot of effort put into using the new legislation of the first world war, the espionage act, the sedition act and the immigration act. empower the government to go after a lot of people who were involved in the labor costs and have some sort of the immigrant background. a very chilling time for labor. so this time was not an ultimate break through. some people say it was a little bit of a precedent for the new deal. at think you can almost say that about a lot of what went on from the 1870's ford. historians are often saying that was the rehearsal for the new deal. there were a lot of little baby steps forward. took the onslaught of the depression itself to really bring in a lot of these changes. anyway, why don't i stop there. i feel like i have talked enough. always better to have questions and discussions. thank you very much.
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[inaudible conversations] [applauding] can't people just shout out? so, they have to use the might. >> hi, bill. two questions. where is the building in which the triangle shirtwaist fire took place that still stands? >> it does. >> it is located at? >> washington and rain. >> i lost. under what sort of circumstances could the owners of the triangle shirtwaist company had been acquitted? >> they were acquitted by -- it was a very -- they had a very good lawyer basically. what he did was convinced the jury that the young seamstresses testified were far too emotional generally and probably
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specifically because they were fleeing a fire, to really be relied upon as witnesses for what they had undergone which is barely escaped with their lives. so they were eventually acquitted. the juries decide -- decided more like it was an act of god. these things happen. would be wrong to hold these factory owners who provide jobs for us all, along those lines. it was a sad resolution because, of course, a lot of people were looking for these two men. but also they had offended people's sensibilities within days of the triangle fire reopening the business a few blocks away. they just kept right on going. anyone else to back if somebody wanted to shout out i could rep. here is somebody. hi, franklin.
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>> hi, phil. >> i'm just curious when collective bargaining came and what was the response to that? it sounds like it is an invention of management. management's ideas to do things as why. what was the response to that on the part of anarchists or marxist tendencies within the larger labor movement? >> it actually came -- the term collective bargaining actually came from to reformers in england. william and beatrice webb who were fabian's. i guess george bernard shaw was among the crowd. i am not sure it came from management, although it was something that was seen as a way. management had begun after a lot of the disruptions of the late 19th century look for waste that they could maintain productivity and not get through these work stoppages. at think as ever there was probably a lot the shading of reaction. in other words, the radical
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entities might denounce collective bargaining rhetorically, but then in practice when they themselves were involved in labor disputes that might actually push toward something like that. so it is kind of hard to say because there is this gap between rhetoric and real action. i mean, as you know, very typical of anarchists and bobbly is in the communist party will be when it got right down to brass tacks they would go in and serve as the regular labour union and deal with wages and hours. i do know the american federation of labor disliked the idea. he was wary of the idea of this kind of regime of any kind of bargaining or frederick taylor scientific management of what workers should or should not to. it is represented by iconic control which is something that you see even after the new deal with some labor leaders by john o. lewis in particular. even though there has always been this kind of neurosis a little bit.
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a labor sought government intrusion in regimes and things that would govern labour relations there also was a nest thousand four just the freedom of not having being bound by those things and all and just being able to strike when he wanted to. you don't have to be certified by the national labor relations board. saw it was a little bit of both, i think. i think people slowly generally came around to view it as positive. to you want to -- >> okay. you tell me. al. thanks. i was just wondering what happened with below miracle? >> with the low miracle. well, it became sort of like the loan nightmare after a while. you know, it became -- it coalesced around the demand for the 10-hour day. it precede the and demand for the 8-hour day. supposedly these enormous
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petitions were collected over massachusetts. there were taken to the state legislature. again, the legislature said this is really not our business. you have to deal with management to be that was a big disappointment for mobile workers. eventually what happened is that the pride, what made the miracle worker is that these were native american girls basically who were working there off the farm. barry yankee. that was part of it. what eventually happened is this type of people stop coming to work and the jobs began being taken by immigrants by the mid-19th century. then it kind of lost a lot of it's -- what had been attracted about it to people. yes. >> america and then the story as you have told the new york. he mostly spoke about women workers ended comment industry. weather in the history was it
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just was incidents or in the history of labor unions and your organization, would it be the case that women labor force as it were and garmin industries somehow. >> well, a very good question about the history of the garment industry and textile industry. of course we see that even today a broad. it is an industry. comment and textile industry can be very prepared and made to go relatively cheaply. they don't need a whole lot of capital. a lot of the product to seasonal in nature. that was true. everything is a very transient kind of business. so it is something that appeals to people who are venture-capital is. while women get involved in it more is because it is very low paid, lady skilled. for instance the skills or those wigs women, country women were believed to already possess.
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in other words they had a knack for weaving in selling. so it's kind of natural that they would fill the ranks of these large factories. and of course the same thing here in new york. seamstresses, those who would accept these low-paying jobs. these jobs were kind of exploited will largely. and so these women, these were teenage when, jewish, italian, many of them barely spoke english. they were glad to have a job they could get. it just try to get a foothold. that is why it appealed more to women workers and why management also soften. you know, for a lot of these people the unions became sort of like the first real part of america that they can identify with. they identified with it much more than their jobs. but uc abroad even now in indonesia at that a lot of these current factories are worked by women, women and girls actually.
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yes. >> did they have the male union work force? i think the question was having to do with their role as activists fighting for economic or social justice or better conditions. the gender relations playing out within the movement. >> well, in new york this certainly did. the 1910 strike was the male clockmakers. even though it is called the ladies' garment maker working, that had to do with the garments, not the workers. the male or very militant. yes, they largely did in the 1909 strike. less so a low. in fact, in the mid-19th century it was often at that time thought that women's wages were not really to be taken seriously in terms of a family. in other words, the man was the breadwinner and that in case of any kind of labor strike it was the man, the male worker whose job and his salary needed to really be safeguarded.
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you often deceive rift developed between the men and women. strike situations because the men would want the women to follow their lead and to cooperate and be team players. as in the lynn massachusetts she strike of 1860, what was so famous about that was that the women said to hell with that. we want to set our own rates. they sort of broke off from the male-dominated union and with their own way. that also was a precedent in a way to what happened here in 1909. so, yes, i think it was a case by case basis. >> was there any response to all of this by the cup holders to move this work to other regions such as the south with there would be less of this? >> that is a good question about whether the owners were prompted to just move away. the answer is yes. historically, especially the
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textile industry started in new england and moved into upstate new york, pennsylvania always seeking cheaper nine unionized labor basically. from there it fled down to piedmont of north carolina and virginia. from there it went further into the deep south to texas, and then of course finally crossed the border altogether into northern mexico. last i heard it was seen heading toward deeper southern mexico to get away from the union organizing that had taken place in northern mexico. it is sort of on the run. at think it is interesting because, of course, it says that there is this kind of renewable universal principle that people matter how downtrodden and repressed and exploitable they might appear will eventually begin to realize their collective might and the unionized. that is heartening. yes, you are absolutely right. yes. >> this march will be 100 years
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since that triangle fire. >> yes. >> currently so much is outsourced in factory and labor and women. vietnam, laos, cambodia. are you aware now in the area right around here with all of these that still exist, much lower number perhaps, but what conditions exist, what changes have happened in the hundred years'? what protections exist? >> you are saying there are still. well, it is funny. about a year or two ago i saw an excellent movie here called made in l.a. about this very phenomenon in los angeles. it was amazing to see the sweat shop conditions existing in present-day los angeles. of course that was a movie about people resisting it. still, there was a lot of footage. yeah, i don't know what to say. there was a lot. you can be depressed about a lot in terms of not only what is happening here, but abroad where as bad as things are in the
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inner cities of america with this kind of thing abroad you get into of a whole different scale of human rights abuses, environmental abuse, this kind of thing. it is even much more fast. and of course that labor is always low wage, non unionized. i mean, that is really where the labor movement, if you can think of it in a larger sense of where it is right now in transitional trying to sort of become -- trying to keep up with the global nature of capital. it is behind obviously. there have been some inroads over the past ten years of anti sweatshop leagues, the successful consumer boycotting of certain brand names to force change. efforts to get world bodies of trade to be put in place enforceable cones. but it is really a long way to go and it will probably be another generation or so before you really speak confidently of
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it. >> sort of irrelevant today. >> well, now it is part of the night. >> but it is not as forceful as it was 40 years ago. >> i think unite here is still -- they are still active with the needle trades. i don't follow them exactly. most of what i worked on had to do with the past. so in terms of the present i am sort of not really an authority. as far as i know unite has a less than a million members and are still -- are still active in not only needle trade, but a lot of of the things as well. hotel workers. yes. one more question. >> continuing on. >> hi. >> say. >> i should know a lot of the questions. >> continuing from your opening act about women's libber, one more interesting characters is mother jones. she sort of moves between these
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different worlds of both mining habib and textiles and as opposed to we mentioned a number of the female workers. i wonder if you could speak on that. >> icy. mother jones was a remarkable character, mostly we associate her, she was known as the miners angel and was formidable. she herself was an irish immigrant. she had lost her entire family to a yellow fever epidemic of the and lived through the rail strike of 1877 and the haymarket. there was something we did not mention. the army of 1894 when people all around the country began to walk -- march on washington to demand the kind of changes that would eventually come with the new deal in terms of job creation, unemployment insurance and so on. mother jones, that is when she came to the fore. she led a group of people toward washington. i don't think they ever made it. largely after that she became
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involved in minor struggles, particularly in west virginia in 1913 and later in colorado as well. so, yeah, i don't know that much about her involvement in the textile strikes, although i know she was involved in the new york. she got involved in the street car strikes that were periodic throughout the early 20th century. she was known for her style. very strident. she would bill the laborers and she would say you are not men if you don't get out there and fight. she would gather the miners' wives and tied them as well. you get out there. get arrested. she was actually responsible for causing a lot of urban disorder, getting people arrested kind of thing and was detested by the mine owners and police. >> we have two more questions. >> your book, there is power in
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the union, emerges against the backdrop of the deals we now know as labor studies. forty years ago this field had barely, you know, being born in academia back end even popular, were so popular history. you remember what, if anything, you learned in high school or as an undergraduate about the topic and the aspects of labor history that your writing about now? >> well, it is funny. i mention that in the introduction to the book, that i grew up with this standard rendition of labor history which was very flattering. of course it is one that we all know which is that the unions are good and that they fought for things that we all took for granted that are valuable like reasonable hours of work, benefits, pensions, safety on the job, so on and so on. that was always my recollection. for me it was more when i was a young adult when i began to work
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labor of the image of being radical or communist they themselves bought into the cold war mentality fully. to the extent that they not only were policing unions in america and expelling them occasionally. they got involved abroad and had agents working in latin america, europe, and asia. they were involved in things like overthrowing silly and 1973. what happened in guatemala earlier. also in italy and france but they would try to get in and undermine left-leaning unions and push for more conservative mainstream federations. of course in doing so there were often licensing of legitimizing the real dictators, right wing characters in latin america. so it is not a very savory episode. i was surprised and had not known much about it. it still haunts us today.
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even now when an american union says to a burgeoning union movement in some developing country, well, let us work with you and help you, they are naturally suspicious because of this past. be. >> okay. takes a lot for coming down. [applauding] >> this event was hosted by the tenement museum in new york city. for more information and not the museum and its events visit the website. book tv is on twitter. phos for regular updates on our programming and news on nonfiction books and authors. >> you are watching book tv on c-span2. here is our prime time lineup for tonight.
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>> we are here at the national press club with dan barry and catch the gold market talk about their new book. tell us what this book is about. >> it is a book about how to get published and how to keep going as an author, how to get your career up and running. we do encourage people how to write, but it is not so much a class of writing books as the business of being an author. >> so what is some of the advice that you have? >> well, your book will not get finished unless he started. you have to apply your butt to the chair and read a little bit every day. we have a lot of textbook but the moments when you get stuck, the moments when you feel
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insecure, and tips about finding an agent. we sort of what the author through the publishing process from beginning to end. we hope that it gives people a more realistic sense of how the whole thing works. >> i noticed the four word is by my angela. how did you work that out? >> well, she and i have been friends for 25 years. i called her up and astor. >> what are some of the other books that you have written? >> a written a novel. mashies keep walking back to you. i have written quite a few essays for anthologies. i co-wrote a rock-and-roll jokebook. i am the founder of a literary rock band, the rock bottom remainders. i have written a book with my band mates as well. sand. >> i wrote a book called how to play the harmonica and other life lessons. it is a humor book. i also write a column in book days
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