>> that book examines coming back, having every state regardless of its population size, get equal representation in the senate. it's quite remarkable when you think about a state the size of wyoming giving equal weight in the senate with states the size of texas and california and florida. >> do you see evolution in that area as will? >> absolutely. the discrepancies between states in terms of their population has grown over time. although there were some very large and small states at the time of the founding. nothing like the discrepancy that we have now. makes this an one of the most now apportioned bodies in the world by standards of one person, one vote. certainly the most important such institution. dissent is very powerful in the american politics, and to be a apportioned in this way. so that's what that book investigates. i find as you might expect that it makes a difference for lots??

of asp??ects as have the senate operates, including policy outcomes. >> what do you teach at the university was because i teach courses in legislative politics, ??aduate and undergraduate?????? level, congress class.???? >> would you go to school? >> and other university in nashville. >> where did you get your interest in the congress? >> i started out interest in american politics when i went to graduate school. in the course of my studies, focus on the congress as, for me that's where all the different?? forces entered in can politics come?? together. >> frances lee, professor of american politics here at the university of maryland, this is published by the university of chicago, "beyond ideology: politics, principles, and partnership in the u.s. senate." >> thank you. >> booktv has over 100,000 twitter followers. be a part of the excitement. follow booktv on twitter to

get publishing news, scheduled updates, author information and doctorate the with the other string our life program. twitter.com/booktv. >> "the canal builders" is the name of the book. julie greene is the author. professor greene, wendy the idea of building a canal come about? >> the idea was an old one in american history, at least in the u.s. at least in the mid-19th century onwards, but even before that. europeans have dreamt of it for centuries spent and always through animal? >> no. there was a lot of talk of going through nicaragua or even mexico, but for a lot of reasons the french seize on the idea of hannah martin, and in the united states debated long and hard about possibly going to

nicaragua, but some earthquakes and the fact that the french have done some construction worç in panama made at a better;ç;s approach that went to the french get started? how far did they get? why didn't they complete it? >> the french construction project was very dramatic. they face a lot of problems. it was then, they begin in the early 1880s and went through much of that decade. they face a lot of problems that the united states, just because the united states projects are a few decades later, the united states was able to overcome some of the problems the french had faced. >> such as? >> the french didn't have as good as technological development as the u.s. had. they faced much more trouble in terms of disease. by the time the united states project began in the early 20th century, discoveries have been made about what caused malaria and yellow fever in the

diocese was able to take action to eradicate those diseases. also the united states made the decision, crucial decision to build and lock it now rather than a sealevel canal. >> why was that crucial? >> a sealevel canal was just much more difficult to accomplish. much more radical digging and structural re- creation of the area had to be done for sealevel. so a lot of canal was a brilliant decision. >> how long is the panama canal? >> it's about 40 miles. >> how long would it take to traverse it? >> i took a ship through the canal several years ago, and it's an all day trip pretty much. you wake up -- >> because of the locks? >> the locks so you down. you wait in line? are often many ships, and then going through the locks takes a

look at a time but also they should ship goes slowly through the vast lake that dominates the canal. it's a beautiful journey. it was fun to do it on a ship with lots of people pointing out gold hill or other landmarks, but by the end of the day you are tired and you have seen so much, you are ready for some dinner. >> now, professor greene, a lot of the focus when the talk about panama canal, we saw in the present theatre roosevelt's, and in your book, "the canal builders" community picture of president roosevelt but he's not the focus of your book. >> that's right. he dominates our memory of the canal, and for good reason. he, more than any other single person, played a huge role in committing the united states to building the canal, but my book doesn't focus on him because i'm interested in looking at the working men and women who built

the canal. part of what inspired the book was thinking that the united states was brilliant and creating the idea that the canal was a triumphant achievement of technology, the perilous leadership, theodore roosevelt, the selfishness of the united states, and while i certainly agree that the canal was a superb achievement, what i felt had gotten erased was the labor that was actually required to build the canal. george washington global who was the chief engineer for most of the construction and 19% until it was completed in 1914, once wrote years after the canal had been completed counties that everyone talks about it as this and credible technological achievement, or a breakthrough

in medicine, sanitation. he said none of that actually was new about the canal. what was new about the canal was that we discovered new ways of ruling over men and women. and preserving order. >> ruling? what did he mean by that? >> he meant that the canal zone where, the united states built the canal, it was a little country about 65,000 people spent the canal zone? >> yeah, the canal zone. people came from all over the world to build the canal from me as many as 100 countries. and to keep order over those people who actually make the world of the canal zone, so that the canal could be built took a lot of governmental innovation.

and that's what goethals was most proud of. he was proud of engineering and technology, but it was about creating a stable society that seemed most important to him. and to do that he had to develop a lot of key strategies. some of which by today's standards were a bit problematic or really unsavory. the united states relied on, for example, widespread racial segregation. it relied on labor, a fast police force. i should say something about the racial segregation was really interesting because the workers coming from so many different countries, from thousands from the u.s. who made up most of the skilled labor force, thousand, many more thousands from the west indies, people of african descent, from jamaica, from

barbados, a few thousand from spain, a few thousand from northern europe. it's a very diverse group, and yet united states structure the labor force using a kind of biracial, a biracial sort of approach similar to jim crow in the united states. there's a photo of the west indian workforce in the canal zone. and that's biracial -- biracial approach but u.s. workers on the so-called gold road, paved in gold, and black workers from the west indies were on the super bowl, paid in so for. life was very different for those two groups, but a lot of what's fascinating about the canal zone is that so many workers didn't quite fit into that black versus white structure. for example, the spaniards,

fascinating group. the u.s. imported about 6000 spaniards to work on the canal, thinking they would prod the black workers to work harder. in fact, they did have a lot of energy, but in ways that complicated life for goethals and the other officials. they were classified as nonwhite, or sometimes called, referred to as colored or semi-white workers. they were excluded from the white hotels and cafeterias, excluded from white dormitories. in the spaniards were very angry about that. and they mobilized and engaged in anarchists movement. you know, as the labor historic and women in the archives, i'm interested in moments of tension between the workers and officials. so you're looking in the

archives for evidence of any strikes or anything like that. for a long time i saw nothing about that, until finally one guy came upon a big box titled labor disturbances. and excitedly, i opened the box, and the box is filled with spanish disturbances, strikes, walkouts, riots, all sorts of things. >> were their unions for the workers? >> that's a good question. not really. unions were allowed to exist, but they were not allowed to strike. early in the years it was a strike of steam shovel man. i should add the unions were just for the white workers. there was no union representation for, you know, that 35,000 or so black, west indians.

and early in the construction trade, the steam shovel man went on strike and the chief engineers took a very hard strike against them. they said basically you're fired. there will be no strikes in the canal zone. so the unions represented some of those skilled workers and they worked hard to represent them. but they focus more on lobbying in washington, d.c. and trying to make sure that congress passed measures that would support their work. >> so, julie green, 35,000 or so west indian, african descent workers. how many white americans worked on the canal? >> is about five or 6000 white americans. >> and they were the so-called skilled labor's? >> yeah, they were skilled workers. they were working as railroad engineers, conductors, firemen,

machinists, carpenters, that;; sort of thing.;;;;;; ; and go ;back to the gold an silver pay.;;;;;;;; just the white workers would ge paid in gold, and the other workers would get paid in silver? >> yes. >> what did i create? >> well, that created really i cast a system in the canal zone. it meant that the white skilled workers on the gold role were very much privileged workers. they received much higher pay and other workers. they received, they had congress areas bill. they had vacation leave every year. and a free steamship ticket home to the united states. the silver workers, on the other hand, lived in shacks common were fed and cafeterias out of pig troughs. one guy who procured the food

for the workers said we feed the silver workers just like i keep my hogs back into law. we feed them out at the big troughs. they had no seating. they would have to sit under a porch in the rain. so those radically different conditions, and you saw evidence of the segregation system throughout the zone. the u.s. built large commissary shops where workers could buy what they need. and very reminiscent of jim crow in the u.s. were big signs on the two entities, gold versus silver. so in that way that sense of segregation, and a kind of caste privilege dominated the canal zone. >> how many workers died building the canal? >> well, you know, the statistics on that are tough to come up with. i think during the u.s. period,

that statistics are about 2000 workers. historians though who have studied this subject believes that the mortality rate was quite a bit higher. and, of course, the mortality rate and the injury rate was also very race specific. the injuries and deaths were much more likely to be among the west indian groups. and there was sense that if you are a west indian worker and he you finish your time on the construction without having a major injured street fashion major injury or a major illness, you are a very lucky man in the. one of the things i found in the legal record of the canal zone was stories of injured west indians who went to the courts to try and get payment for their

injury. there was one, a sad story of a man who lost and i. his name was isaac mckenzie from grenada, 24 year old guy. went to the canal zone to work on the canal. he got a job working on the gigantic amazing lock gates. his job, he was hired to go down inside the lock gates and help direct the big bolts that white skilled workers would hammer in from the outside. he wasn't sure he wanted the job because there were no lights down there, and his sad story was revealed to me through these legal records. one day he went down in there, and the skilled worker on the outside hammered the screw in and it didn't go in straight.

they told him to go down there and help direct it. he gets down close to it, and the white worker shouts, watch out then, andy shouse as he is taking his arm back to pound a hammer in and the ball goes through isaac mckenzie's eye. such a horrible tragic what's interesting about isaac mckenzie is how he went to court to demand payment for this accident. and the court, he demanded i think $10,000. the court said yes, the company was responsible for this injury, but the court said well, you only lost one eye, and so your life will be okay. so only awarded him $500. isaac mckenzie got a lawyer and took it all the way to the supreme court of the canal zone, which didn't give him 10,000, i

gave him a pretty hefty award for a young west indian man, finding that the company was responsible for the damages. and so a story like that about isaac andy gave me a way to understand the experiences of the west indian workers are they tended to be such a tough group to trace because they didn't, you know, they were top officials. they weren't writing reports. they were often the most erased and the most silent, but cases like that helped me see that west indians did strategize. they did find ways to mobilize and use whatever resources they could to achieve. >> julie green, who ran the canal zone? who was the authority? >> the united states the government spent under an autonomous canal zone authority? he talked about the supreme court of the canal zone.

>> well, there was a separate judicial system, but it was just part of the appellate courts of the united states government. the chief engineer of the canal zone did have remarkable autonomy, although he reported to the secretary of war who was william howard taftspeaks of george washington goethals essentially was the president of the canal zone and a sense of our administrator of? >> yes. he had tremendous authority. he used to come like it said about himself, he was a benevolent dictator. it was a very paternalistic system. he was admired by many in the canal zone, because he did run things very efficiently. it was a very orderly zone. he got the canal built faster than many thought it could be done. he prided himself on being sort

of a fatherly figure to the zone workers. he would meet sunday morning's with anyone who wished to meet with him from the loneliest washerwoman to be the supervisors and foreman. but his authority, as fatherly as he might be, his authority was complete. one observer said we all like chief engineer goethals, but we know not to disagree with him or criticize him pick if we do disagree with him, we get deported real fast. >> what would you say was that level of labor unrest in the building of the canal? and i guess i'm thinking about the auto strikes of the '30s, et cetera, the founding of the uaw. was there anything of that level of? >> no, not really. it was an orderly zone.

goethals was very strategic, and very effective at using things like deportations and arrest and imprisonment to enhance productivity. and executive order was passed by president roosevelt, which gave goethals complete authority to deport anyone not contributing productively to the construction project. generally speaking, workers found other ways besides strikes, except for those pesky spaniards. they struck and they rioted. they were causing trouble throughout the construction era, but that was the key exception. >> would be needed to? >> the spaniards? >> right. >> the more they rioted and

protested, the less the government felt they were needed. and by the end, by 1911, 1912 the u.s. government stopped bringing in spaniards and gradually let them go because they were finding that the spaniards were more trouble and they were worth. >> julie green, we're talking with professor julie green here at the university of maryland about her book, "the canal builders: making america's empire at the panama canal." you talk about the archives. where were the archives that you found on the panama canal? >> that was such a fun part of the project, discovering archival sources. the biggest single source for information on the building of the canal was in college park, maryland, at the national archives spent right here in the neighborhood. >> yeah, right here. tremendous amount of information there. actually i should say at the national archives in college

park and also the national archives in downtown d.c. where the legal records of the canal zone were. i was the first historian to look at some of the sources like the legal records. it was amazing to look at those, because they shined a bright light into a range of activities that sometimes, you know, allegedly illegal activities, sometimes civil disputes, divorce cases between husbands and wives, everything from that to robbery and murder. sometimes when i was in those, looking at the legal records, i would be opening envelopes that had been returned to sender, so envelopes that had literally never been opened. i was looking at probate records, you know, where they assess the belongings of someone who was maybe killed in the

construction project, and some working man's personal set of keys would fall into my lap. i would find myself wondering what doors those keys had once unlocked. so that was an amazing find for me. also, did research in animal itself, looking at especially at records in rioted to u.s. and canal employees and panamanian police in the red light district of panama city. >> and that was where i wanted to go next. what was the relationship between the canal zone and the country of panama? >> that was a complicated relationship. for the republic of panama in many ways, the building of the canal was a tremendous boost of course. the united states government, in order to build the canal, conducted a lot of sanitation,

elimination of disease throughout panama, build sewers. so the u.s. did a lot of things that were beneficial to panama. at the same time panama bridled a bit at the degree of u.s. control and intervention. the essays got quite involved and panamanian elections. whenever there were disturbances would send u.s. military there, and was the important rules that panama played, especially in panama city and cologne was the u.s. tolerate the creation of red light districts, bars, saloons, gambling, prostitution. because officials like goethals knew that his workers would need a kind of a chance for escape for letting out steam.

sort of as a safety valve because of these red light districts became a very important part of sort of the disorderly counterpart to the orderly world of the canal zone. and as employees and military personnel from the u.s. dominated canal zone, would go to let off steam in panama city or cologne, a lot of times they would be trouble. the u.s. folks were known for causing trouble, for getting drunk sometimes, and as a result sometimes fighting and riots would break out between the two groups. >> julie greene, tell us about the city of balboa. >> the city of the above was the city created by the u.s. to house the administration. >> the white workers of? >> yeah. and it was a very lovely town.

it's sort of, the images i remember from ed depict very much this as a town that represents the u.s. empire really. shows off the pride of the u.s. in having created, created the canal and created really the sense of the u.s. as sort of pure list leader of world civilization. >> large differences in the living conditions between the skilled white workers and the other? >> quite large, yes. the u.s. is very proud of its work in creating a sense of civilization, respectability fo the white workers, and for their lives. many thousands of working men's wives traveled to the zone to keep house for their husband. and so, and the u.s. encouraged that because it felt the

presence of housewives would make the zone feel not like a labor camp or transient, but respectable and civilized. so the u.s. encouraged wise to go. once it encouraged wise to go it needed to be sure that the conditions were decent enough for those wives spent and the conditions for the west -- >> far west indian workers it was very different, very much. more like shacks. very often windows without screens on them and in an environment where mosquitoes could spread no area, not to have screens the window would be a very remarkable thing. one of the photos in my book shows stagnant water which again is going to breed mosquitoes carrying disease. so yes, the conditions for west

indian workers was very different from that for the white skilled workers. and yet, you know, that thing is, too, that the west indian workers found their lives improved by the work they did in the canal zone. if you compare their living standards, they're paid to the white workers, it was pretty bad. but if you compare it to what they faced back in barbados or jamaica, this was not just an adventure for them, a chance to improve their lives. many of them were able to save money or send money home, and studies have shown that many of these workers, as a result of their labor for the u.s., were able to buy some land and become self-sufficient back in their home island. >> julie greene, what kind of medical care did the workers due? >> they were fast hospitals.

it was very advanced medical care for their time. and necessary because disease continued throughout the u.s. period. it was a big, it was a big danger to the construction project. even though malaria and yellow fever were under control, malaria continued, and pneumonia continued. pneumonia was a huge problem. it was said that pretty much every west indian at some point felt ill with pneumonia, or malaria and had to spend some time in the hospital. and so, so the role of the medical corps, the doctors and nurses, was quite important. >> how much was reported back here in the united states about labor unrest or death in the

canal zone? did you find evidence that there was fair reporting, or was it pretty rob rauf? >> that's a great question. there was a lot of reporters. the united states, the american citizens, the journalists took what was happening in the canal zone seriously, watched very carefully. was there raw raw? it could become, over time, a symbol of american greatness. and there became more boosterism associated with it. but it wasn't always that way. early on there was an exposé of what was happening in the canal zone by a man named bigelow who traveled through the canal zone. and he charged a number of things. he charged that there was a lot of corruption. and he charged that the united states was importing prostitutes

to service the skilled men in particular. and this really raised alarm. partly because the french construction project have been influenced for scandal and corruption. so there was suddenly this sense that in the canal zone scandal and corruption was taking over. theodore roosevelt decided immediately that he needed to go to the canal zone to answer these charges. and so it was actually the first time in united states history that a sitting president had left the territory of the united states. he got o on the ship with his wife, went to the canal zone dew tour everything. sat in the steam shovel, one of the most famous presidential photographs ever taken.

he marched through the mud and rain with an army of journalists following him. and that really was the beginning of sort of the booster, the triumphalist notion that we across the 20 century and still today associate with the canal project. theodore roosevelt was a master of, a brilliant master at creating favorable public opinion. >> what kind of role did congress have during the construction phase? with a overseeing it? with a watching it pretty carefully? >> yes, congress did play an important role. even though as i said, the government and the canal zone was quite autonomous and had a great deal of power, congress was watching it. there was a lot of money at stake. congress would carry out regular investigations into conditions, had power to oversee and pass

pay raises for the skilled workers, that sort of thing. >> how much did it cost in the and? >> gosh, you know, i'm not exactly sure of the figures. i'm thinking 100 million maybe speakers 100 million back in the day? do you know what that translates to did a? >> no. >> finally, joe negron, which the picture on the front of your book, "the canal builders"? >> the picture shows the spectacular lock gates during the construction period. i love the image because it invokes both a single man standing at the top, the folks the sort of triumphalist notion of the canal, the idea that it is about the pure list individual struggles of a few great men, and at the fact that you see a larger workforce there at the bottom suggests the sort of, the vast number of men whose labor was really important to

the project. >> and we've been talking with university of maryland professor julie greene about her book, "the canal builders: making america's empire at the panama canal." it's published by penguin, and professor greene is a professor of history here at the university of maryland. >> thanks very much. >> you're watching 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books on c-span2's booktv. >> so, the idea of this book actually had a sort of born out of frustration. and the idea crystallized for me that the first and only time that it's on air force one, i had taken this job for the "washington post" why been working for a while where it was my assignment to write sort of more personal intimate stories about the presidency and what the president's life is like. and detroit took me like maybe a week of doing that job to

realize that the president doesn't really have personal intimate moment, sort and none that i was going to get access to. everything about his life is outsourced initially crazy way. he has 94 butler's inmates in the white house. six calligraphers right if anyone's written. 70 people make a schedule every day. i mean, it's this huge army that's what helps them operate in this day today way. his schedule is subdivided into these 15 minute chunks and there's a secretary who sits outside the oval office which action has a reverse people so she can look into the door and make sure things are running on schedule. you know, he calls it the bubble, and and i think sometimes it really drives him crazy. in the few weeks i've been doing this job it'd been driving me crazy, probably also what editors great because i've probably not running as the stories as they were hoping i was going to write, and not getting to sort of the personal moments in obama's life.

so, you know, finally after doing this for probably a few months at this point, my turn came up to fly on air force one. and the waistline on air force one works is pretty much everybody who covers the president, like joining us put into this huge database, and every time the president goes on a trip, you know, they move through this database and eight more people get their turn to fly on air force one. so my name came up and i finally thought all right, this is the moment where i'm going to see something, i'm going to be up close and i'll have a chance to experience what this is like for him. so got dressed up, obama flies out of private air force base in virginia. got dressed up, actually rented a car to drive over there because rachel and eyes car at the time was a battered pontiac grand am that we managed to keep functional like jerry reading the hood down with roe. it into appropriate to pull onto the tarmac next to air force

one. [laughter] we rented a car. i'm car. adjudicating a volkswagen bug, but still rented a car. drove over there, waited with like eight other reporters. and as we waited sort for our turn to board the plane, and waited for maybe i don't know, an hour and then they let us out. they were too interested on air force one. they let us up to stack one commentator back by the farmer of the airplane. we walked up the stairs, sat down and we said okay, wait here, we're waiting for the present to arrive at the airport. so we waited for maybe half an hour. then we heard okay, the president is right at the airport. you have never seen reporters to assess. there's a mad scramble to get back off the plane to watch the president's motorcade arrived and then we watch them walk six steps to the front of the plane. so those six steps where eliminating. we saw what he was wearing and what he was doing. we all were frantically taking notes about it.

we got back on the plane. we flew to new hampshire. we scrambled off the plane as fast as a good to watch the president walk the six steps again back into his motorcade. we followed behind separately in a different car to the event. this event actually there was not enough time or space for the press to go into the event with him so we were off-site in a satellite location where we watched the speech on a closed-circuit tv, and we were taking notes of the event that way. so i was sitting there feeling honestly just frustrated with trying to write about the presidency in any kind of meaningful way. and i was listening to his speech and i heard them say something that i'd heard them talk about before but it just sort of clicked. he talked about these 10 letters that he reads every night, which are assembly of the 20,000 letters that come into the white house every day. he talked about how these letters were what he felt like were his only direct connection

left two people out in the country and people that he governed. and he said that the letters were the things that sometimes kept him sane when he felt he was a. it from some of the other things. i realized pretty quickly then that that was something that seemed personal and real and genuine, and that was something i want to try to write about. so that's what i did. it started with a story for the post. i wrote a longer piece about the process of getting these 10 letters to his desk. then the paper was generous enough to give me a leave for a year where i'd did go out to montana and i think it totally eliminated from the professor title now. were not there and wrote. at the end of this year, finally do get time on the president's schedule where that secretary was looking in that reverse people by we talked about the letters. and i read it, i'll read a brief part of the book now that, you know, from that half hour i had

with him about what the male means to them. the presence of the hardest letters for him to read what the ones who make into remote, even powerless. people tend to write to the president when circumstances turn dire. feeling was a matter of last resort. what resulted each day inside obama's purple folder was an intimate view of hardship and personal struggle. away a desperation capable of a woman ascends. so many writers needed urgent help, obama said, yet the act of governing was so slow it sometimes took years before legislation could actually improve peoples lives. a few times during his presidency, obama had been so moved by a letter that he written a personal check or made a phone call on the writers behalf believe it was the only way to ensure fast results. it's not something i should advertise but it has happened, he said. many other times he had forged letters to government agencies or cabinet secretaries after attaching a standard handwritten note that read, and you please

take care of this? these letters can be heartbreaking, just heartbreaking, he said. suddenly you read and you say gosh, i really want to help this person and i may not have the tools to help them right now. and you start thinking about the fact that for every one person who wrote describing their story, there might be another 100,000 going to the same thing. so there are times when i'm reading the letters and i feel pain that i can't do more faster to make a difference in their lives. he said his nightly reading sometimes made in pine for his days as a key organizer back in the 1980s when he was making $10,000 a year and working on the southside of chicago. he had just graduated from college and he purchased a used car with 2000 are in spend his days driving around the housing projects to speak with residents about their lives. he became to me with many of the same issues that would flood is now 20 figures later. housing calamity, chronic unemployment, struggling schools. obama's fellow organizers in chicago considered among master

hands-on grandeur problem-solving. he was skinny and boyish, still a bit naïve. some of the older women in housing projects made a habit of inviting him into their home and cooking for him. he looked around their apartments, keeping a log of minutes issues and then delivering that list to the landlord. he helped arrange meetings with city housing officials to talk about incest the problems, he established the tenets rights organization found a job can program and lead a tutor group that prepared students for college. when he left for harvard law school after three years in chicago, obama had said his pathways to check you want to become a politician, a job that would allow him to listen to people's problems and enjoy the simple satisfaction of solving them. now he was the most powerful politician of all. and yet fixing problems seemed more difficult and satisfaction more elusive. the people were right in front of me and i could say let's go to the alderman's office, or let me be an advocate in some

fashion, obama said. and here, just because it's the nature of the office and the scope of the issue, you are removed from ways that are frustrating. sometimes when you want to do is pick up the phone and say, tell me more about what's going on and let me see if i can be your social worker, beer advocate, the eight mortgage advisor, to your employment council. so i had to constantly reconcile mmi is that i've a very specific role to play in this office. i've got to make a bunch of big decisions and help in aggregate you end up having a positive effect but you can't always be certain. that was one of the reasons obama had taken to respond by hand to a few letters each night. he still like the satisfaction of providing at least one thing, immediate and concrete. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> and now on the tee, laurie sandell recounts the fallout from bernie madoff's ponzi scheme and the effect it had on his family. the other was given access to all members of the maid