right now i panel on the great depression. [inaudible conversations]

>> will come. can you hear me? @. welcome to the fourth annual tucson has developed books. my name is katherine morrissey and associate professor at the history of the university of arizona. and today my role is to introduce these wonderful authors then to moderate a session on the great depression. looking back at the worst hard times. would like to first thank the university of arizona medical scanner for doing this particular venue. as well as all of you. thank you all for your attendance. this presentation will last about an hour and is going to include questions and theories from all of you and will ask you to hold those towards the end of the hour. at the conclusion of the session the authors will go out to the mall, to do media signing area. those are right along the student union in the mall and

their books will be available for signing and you'll be able to continue in a conversation we started here. last reminder, cell phones. please turn them off. and all of us, too. [laughter] .each author is going to speak briefly, three to seven minutes or so as we begin the panel today and then i will come back online to address some questions. all the panelists contact together and that we will open up the floor to questions. first let me introduce this group. timothy egan is a former "new york times" national enterprise reporter and now an opinion columnist for "the new york times." he was part of "the new york times" team of reporters who won a pulitzer prize for their series, how race is lived in

america. those of us who live in the west have come to depend on his astute reporting of a native son and his journalistic pieces and we've also come to appreciate his piece as well. perhaps you know the good rain, last of the wind. the big burn, teddy roosevelt and the fire that took america. for this panel, he will speak about his national book award-winning book, the worst hard time -- "the worst hard time: the untold story of those who surived the great american dust bowl." our second speaker, michael hiltzik at the end of the pulitzer prize-winning journalist and author was covered business, technology and public policy at the "los angeles times" for 20 some years. he currently serves as the times business columnist, but it's had a very career there have been as foreign correspondents, political writer and investigative repeater. among his books you might know

the hoover dam in the making of the hoover century. the plot against social security and a death kenya. but it's his most recent work that brings him to join us here today on "the new deal." our third speaker, jimmy hillman born in 1923. growth on a subsistence farm in southern mississippi and received his phd at the university of california berkeley. it's not too claiming at the university of california researchers racer decided the department of agriculture and 30 years on doing groundbreaking work in agriculture policy. he is currently an emeritus professor. in the 60s he was executive director of president national basic commission of food and fiber has her confluence 1970s u.s. foreign policy and its previous published works on non-tariff agricultural trade

barriers, for example, help shake economic thinking on trade policy. but it's a different type of writing he shared with us today. it's his just published memoir of life growing up in the depression. that's entitled "jimmye hillman, higs, mules, and yellow dogs: growing up on a mississippi subsistence farm". so first, let's hear from 10. >> well, thank you all. [applause] thank you for showing up in this glorious day for those of us who are from rainy climate san fran screechy here. you know, one of my complaints about history is people get a first peek at it. they get a first take a telling this story and that becomes conventional wisdom. and what happened in the

terrific writer john steinbeck, grapes of wrath but it was about the dust bowl. it's about the day after, the texans and kansans, people who went to california and more often treated like dogs, take that tour. you are welcome here. but this historic truth of that era and not. is that two thirds of the people who lived at the center of the worst environmental disaster in our time during the worst economic collapse of our time, two thirds of those people didn't go anywhere. said that was a jumping off point for my book, which i'm happy to see you card for the title as well. and delicious simply an attempt to get a story that hadn't been told, and more importantly he would appreciate this from people who are living during that era. and it's so important to get

these stories before they pass. with so many world war ii vets who are disappearing now by the day. and when they are gone will just have to go to the archives and look at this. i was lucky enough to have people look in their eyes and they were 85 or 90 years old and a small town in one place in the dust bowl and i would say tell me what it was like in a close their eyes and i see a 17-year-old girl, not someone who is 8536. they would start to tell a time that seems almost lost. no social security. remember that came in 1935. no farm price support us a call farm payments now, which alleged the abuse by corporate farmers, corporate agriculture. federal were fair to any form. people literally -- at a time believing this and i first started hearing from people, but there's enough documents -- documentation. people sometimes give up their kids. they thought that they were just too impoverished.

people at roadkill in some cases. a lot of swapping. a lot of non-money economy. a lot of thinking going on. in the vacuum came along and largely took away per room had a need to service the bootleggers. so as i heard the stories, i realized at the last error, but it's not lost. it's still within our time. there links of living people. i tried to stoke the combination of an environmental disaster again reveres took to the sky, were in a single storm come which is like sunday april 14, 1935, more dirt they estimated was thrown to the sky during that weekend, died sunday of black sunday then was removed during the entire excavation of the panama canal. remember the canal took seven years to build. this was a single day.

so it started in the dakotas and rolled all the way down. you'll see some of ken burns during the dust bowl documentary in the fall and there's lots of good documentary footage of it, too. but that was my jumping off point and i felt privileged because i was just sort of a bridge. abraham lincoln has this wonderful line but you cannot escape history. but i was afraid this part of history is going to escape bias. and while it's researching this, i opened up my son's high school american history book. he was in the ap history class and i went to the back and looked at dustbowl. it was a single paragraph. and i thought, that doesn't do credit to this epic event. so that's the story tried to tell. [applause] >> well, drawing a line from what tim just said, it's my

belief in my finding that even great cataclysmic event, cataclysmic economic event, political events often get forgotten in time and what i try to do with my book, the new deal, was to capture this seminal period in american history as to extract data from the excretion of misunderstanding and sheer forgetfulness that coveted over the last 70 or 80 years. and my research should have led me to a number of specific points that i wanted to make sure that my readers sort of remember for at least unity remembered. we think of the new deal today in terms of social security and many of us also to incapacitate ppa and the great instruction program at the new deal years. but it's my finding that in fact today, both liberals and conservatives tend to get the

new deal wrong. that is important for us to understand and to go back to the first principles and the original facts to understand why we get it wrong and how we get it wrong. it seemed mostly today as was a great great landmark in politics and progressive economics, whereas in fact it was a real combination of both liberal programs and very conservative programs. in part because president roosevelt was a real fiscal conservative as i used to say. so as a result of that, you had really progressive political economic programs in the new deal that were balanced -- counterbalanced, sometimes even overbalanced by very conservative programs. yet the closing of the banks and dramatic matriculation sunday

banking system as the very first act of the new deal. the very second act was the economy at, which cut the federal budget by 25%. laid off thousands of federal workers, cut congressional salaries, cut veterans benefits. we don't remember that. to this audience i might point out the man who is in charge of the economy act was in arizona. he was lou douglas, democratic congressman from arizona, extremely conservative who fought the other new deal programs to the nail for the year and half he survived and the roosevelt administration. so that is something that obviously we often forget. and then there are all these other aspects of a picture important, that i try to balance to make explicit connections to today and the recognition that it would be obvious for readers of the book with the new deal means to us today and the

significance of the program for the way we live today. it goes far beyond the economic impact that it might have had to the fact that it was a fundamental rethinking of the federal government's relationship with the citizens. that is the part of the new deal that really has had an effect over 80 years with the way we think of government, with what government does. roosevelt would say in 1938 he said the thing that we need to remember about what we've achieved is that we have established that the federal government has accepted responsibility for release. and that was the expression of a government principle that dan is really the beating heart of the new deal and the real legacy data has. if some day and i think that gets covered over and forgotten in the political tug-of-war that we have today in that we are

even going to at this very moment. so these are very important. the last point i would make before turning the floor over to jamie is one thing that i think we need to keep in mind as we watch the political circus unfolding event now is the difference in the way franklin roosevelt dealt with the challenges that you face is somebody who is really up in maine, political and economic reality of this time. roosevelt was a unique political parent. we cannot blame barack obama for not being franklin roosevelt. nobody is franklin roosevelt. but the principles for which he connected his administration and various political campaigns for that he always tried to make sure that the voters understood what was at stake when he was running for election and reelection. and always knew what his

administration and what the new deal had achieved. even when the results might not have been what everybody hope. 1938 there was any recession. the depression was already behind the country in a technical sense. there is any recession. roosevelt went on the radio. fireside chat and he said yes, we know unemployment is still too high. economic growth is still too slow, but you have to remember that because of all we have achieved, your money in the bank is safe. we have reigned in the abuses of wall street. we have set the friends that are back on the path to parity, which i think professor will appeal to tell us all about. and the idea was he did not run from his achievement. one thing that always strikes me about politics today is that we see the current administration

running away bizarrely from what i think it's a great achievement, a new deal style achievement, which is health care achievement. that is the lesson that the current administration in our current politicians need to take from the new deal. so i will and thayer and move on. [applause] >> thank you very much. my speech is already then made. [applause] why am i here? i'm going to tell you hi washed. [laughter] i was there. seriously, it is a real pleasure. i'm going to stick to my note and also that they tear up --

when you mention roosevelt. thank you. i'm going to stick to my nose because a friend of my daughter's said dad, don't wander. i have a tendency to tell one story that becomes 20 stories before i get five minutes into the real story. it's a pleasure to be here amongst such noted writers, sitting beside two pulitzers. it's an honor to be select it for this panel. i spent a lifetime to be exact, 60 years and another profession. parity. that word turns on a key area for still trying to find out what was meant by.

he after books and books and books that i could tell you who started it and who the men were that roosevelt brought into that. but i spent a lifetime doing that and international trade policy. and if you go to google and just saved jimmy helmand, you will have a flood of books and titles with respect to add policy, parity, trade, japan, trade policy, et cetera, et cetera. if you type in jimmye hilllman, hog, you're going to get this. really. it's wonderful. you'll discover my new career. and i go to the doctor's office and get down to the line that

says occupation. i no longer put an emeritus professor. i put writer or author. the [laughter] [applause] anyway, i decided today to begin writing stories at his area of my childhood, experiences which began after world war i. and i didn't see world war i in 1923. i had read william falk and her comments on mississippi and i decided it wanted to be a kind words faulkner overran the other side, seven lincoln reasons. i'll tell you. i said why not. after all, faulkner was the mississippi james joy. so why can i be a tiny words

faulkner. my wife and my daughter and my son and mom and many others encouraged me along the line. i give them credit. anyway, when asked to be on the panel about the depression, i gladly accept it. i'll say just a few more words because i ain't we ought to hear from you and ask questions. first i've heard ad nauseam. i want to hear about the current grand recession. still looking for names as to how to find this. we begin in 2000 name. and i think the economists are still groping for what this period means in economics as the social and political florida policy i'm not sure. it's so different. but the great depression was the

great depression. i don't know what we're in now, but there's no compares them. you can take it from jamie. there's no comparison. how many people really go -- there's a lot of hungry people. how many people are really unemployed? in the 1934, 1935, we had 28% gainfully unemployed and the household. that's when women didn't work. that means maybe 50%. those are the people who were selling apples and fulton and so forth. and i tell those people when they try to compare these two. i've written two articles on this for newspapers.

bring a different world now to say something about that in just seconds. there's no comparison. even so for the economic and political land of the other aspects, u.s. europe and all the commercial economists in the world, the depression was a very unique. amazing we should discuss that. the main point i want to make, however, as we are in today. totally different in the world been so far is 89 years we can perceive in my experience. this. is something new. i know that's cliché, but there is some thing new about -- someone said there's nothing new in the world. i think this total world affairs situation is sent to we are gripping to find out. that's what i mean. and not a personal human experience, but a global healing

and political affairs. this world cause for different actions and that's what worries the out of me for it clears that we keep going back to the well for certain types of actions and activities. we go back to the new deal. it's not the same world. it's not the same situation. thank you to the pages of reasons why population foreign policy, trade policies, et cetera. an illustration and then i'll quit. an illustration of this, what i'm talking about in general is a new call yesterday on the phone. he had read the book and has im

content. even mississippi and he didn't like it. i said well why? because i mentioned certain folks. [laughter] called them something else. but the real reason why he called was that the element clan or the helmand family were what you said. i called his name and i said, you don't know what the you're talking about. you're only 40 years old. you didn't live it. i lived it. and helmand with the great name of ancestry were almost on the dole. we couldn't go and find that for the commodities are the first chart the rules in, we were permitted to join out lying at.

but it was to. even for those marginal people. and i think that is what makes this another different. everyone was poor and they felt poor. even dr. mcleod's salary and his son, we went to school. they are having a hard time. people couldn't pay the bills. [applause] >> now, both mike and jimmy talked in your opening comments about this sort of legacies and lessons of the great depression of the new deal. i wanted to invite you if you have any thoughts on legacies and lessons of the great depression. >> michael actually got me thinking about this. i didn't we listen i started this on the dustbowl book, what

caused the collapse, not the environmental collapse. part of that was the commodity price problem. everybody had the suitcase farmers are the so-called witches show up and strip away a layer and puts the democratic comeback in the spring and expect to harvest wheat can be rich. and so you have this unsustainable farming from $4 a bushel to 10 cents a bushel. but the thing that struck me i think this is somewhat parallel today only in the sense of the crash. it started this thing rolling. i got me thinking, how can that be only 2% of all americans own penny stock adult. and that's what iraq odb 33 shares in something. that's the entire stock. how could this be? here's the connective link. the banks.

the banks are unregulated and they were able to take people's hard-earned savings in these little towns i've visited, were they give them their money and pay them out of 3% interest in the banks to take her savings and got them on the stock market. some of the market collapsed, all these things pulled in one after the other oliver the united states. and i haven't seen in the book where people show up one morning and midday on the door and said how could this be? her savings are in their? they say never underneath that. the swells on wall street, fancy pants. how can this thing be to me? i work the land. the land itself is more powerful than the paper exchange. again, the banks are unregulated so they could take evil savings, better than the market and then when the bank collapsed, people savings might happen time and again. peril to our time and lessons. >> i'm sorry.

i just want to expand a little bit about the relationship trained the farm economy and the overall economy, which i'm sure tim is very aware of and sensitive to. the u.s. in 1930 was still a very agrarian country. and when franklin roosevelt was inaugurated on that day, yet the industrial economy hide them in the depression since 1929, the farm economy had been in depression and is entering his second decade and as tim mentioned, that dated back to the critical run-up and production that had occurred during world war i when the united states became the bread basket for europe. and what hoover understood, was unable to do much about. and finally, what fdr started to grapple with was that we still have too much production, that farmland prices had run up so

much during world war i and that you had to overproduce just to pay off the mortgage and there was no way that the vicious cycle, nobody could get out of his trend of more and more production every year and that's lower prices. and the numerous bug administration and some of the people i'm sure jamie was thinking about when he mentioned the great agricultural reform as henry wallace, rick studwell who came in and said we have to stop the cycle of overproduction, they plowed under acres and acres of cotton. they slaughtered thousands upon thousands of hogs, not a popular image for the public, but it was necessary in their mind to break the cycle. but she had this real combination, this interaction between the farm economy and industrial economy that just made everything so much worse

than that is when you see farm community showing up when a firm is being auctioned off at the share status because the bank had taken the mortgage and threatening the bankers to keep them from buying it or they could buy it back and give it back to the farmers. >> good site for a nickel or something. >> so you had real civil unrest in the farm districts in this sum is not really concerned roosevelt, henry wallace. >> just to finish my point about the parallel today because you are right. in the 1930s, third of americans when somebody worked way working the land. it is under 2%. it's right around 1%. but here's the thing. and you're right, we have this other amazing irony of people going out and shooting cattle and pigs at a time of so many americans are hungry. it's an attempt to drive down the prices. people are shocked at taking

these cows off and shooting into in them into an open pit. how can we do this? we are eating roadkill. .. >> weren't doing aig-like, you know, bets on pets. [laughter] weren't doing these collateralized debt obligations, etc. weren't buying greek bonds. but yet we all suffered from it. >> see, the more these guys talk, the more they corroborate

my point, it's a totally different world now than it was at that time. farm prices fell 60% in 1921, i remember it well for not being born yet. [laughter] and it never recovered, tim. i mean, we never recovered from that shock when we had overproduced from world world war i yord to save europe. -- in order to save europe. the economy never recovered until after that. second point, and i remember it well, 1933 in march we were going, i was going across the leaf river with my grandpa in his t model to the bank. i said, grandpa, going to the bank? said, no, bank's closed.

>> yeah. >> bank's closed. i don't remember anything after that. [laughter] bank's not in business. >> yeah. >> and it wasn't a holiday. >> it wasn't a holiday. [laughter] >> it was a bank holiday. >> yeah, a bank holiday. >> i remember that well because my dad had borrowed money to buy, to go back to the farm a little house that we had needed to make the payments on. >> you know, one thing i've been struck with in reading your works and even this morning is how unplanned and improvisational the character was of the 1930s in trying to deal with all of these factor, whether it was for the hillman family and making personal choices, or new dealers or high plains residents. i wanted to ask you to think about the intended and unintended consequences of the actions that followed up quickly in the 1930s, whether it's dry farming or early new deal programs or things like that.

>> well, i'll start with just a couple of reheart attacks. roosevelt -- remarks. roosevelt came into office having said quite candidly and openly that he didn't know what the answers were going to be to the crisis that they were in, but that he was determined to try everything. and the way he put it in a famous speech at ogle thorpe p university this georgia during the first campaign in 1932 was, um, we are, we're going to try everything. if something doesn't work, we're going to discard it. we're not going to be ashamed of it, and we're going to move on to the next, but the watch word is going to be we are going to do something. and that was, of course, a real break with the way people thought of the hoover administration's approach which was to do nothing. now, it was a little unfair, but metaphorically speaking it was true enough. and, in fact, the new deal in the very first years, certainly in the 100 days, the first three

months was extremely improvisational, and they did try everything. and they tried to create enough latitude for themselves that they could move from one effort to another. the aaa, the agricultural adjustment act, which was a hyundais' act was designed to address the farm crisis. and because nobody knew the way it would work, the way the aaa act is written is that it allows the secretary of agriculture, basically, to try everything he can think of to address the farm crisis. now, henry wallace had his own ideas about what would work, but there were about ten different ideas in there that were all open for him to try. the nra, the national reconstruction administration, which was the industrial analog to the aaa was, basically, we will try everything. we're going to suspend antitrust

laws so that, so that industry can create -- maybe there's been too much competition among businesses, and that's why we have a depression. and, of course, what was going to allow the new deal to do all this, to try to find any way it could to restore the industrial and the agricultural economy was that it instituted these relief programs so that whatever happened the workers, unemployed people, underemployed people would have enough to eat, a roof over their heads, money in the bank. and that's what allowed all of these other improvisations to take place. let's not forget they didn't have, president obama had a model to deal with the economic crisis of the last few years. he had the new deal. the new dealers didn't have any model. all they could do was try whatever they felt would work, and then if it worked, they would keep it. if not, they would discard it. >> that's a great point.

i love your question because i can think of two things. one of the things i love about history is to look at unintended consequences. when roosevelt was elected, we had just gotten rid of prohibition as a two-step thing. they left it up to the states. one of his first forays in this 1933 was to go out to the midwest which was then in the midst of an early drought, and he went to south dakota. i saw this sign, a bunch of farmers showed up. he had tons of support, the exact opposite of the political situation now. oklahoma would support him, farmers would support him, people in overalls and working the land. he had the working men and women of these deep red, now deep red southern states and midwestern states where they loved him. so there's this sign this guy holds up, i saw this picture in the dakotas, and it says, mr. president, you gave us beer, now give us water. [laughter]

roosevelt turned to an aide and said, the beer was the easy part. [laughter] they did try a lot of things. they built this so-of called shelter belt which is basically two lines of trees going from the dakotas all the way down to texas, to the mexican border. and they planted rows of trees, more than 200 million trees. the wind would not blow as hard, and it would not lift the soil up, so they sent out legions of workers to plant -- and you can still see some of these trees standing. some of them were not really drought tolerant, you know, you don't plant douglas firs in the middle of the great plains. [laughter] so that was one thing. and it largely failed, you just see the legacy. if you ever see a line of old trees in the midwest with, that's what that is. roosevelt, they said i'm going to continue with the shelter belt project. the other thing, and jimmy knows this better than anyone, i think, on this panel is the legacy of so-called farm price

support. when they started with these, you know, farm payments, it was designed as michael said to take some land out of productions so prices would go up. or to help people who were genuinely starving and couldn't get base amount of money on their agricultural product. so these went to largely, you know, family farms getting a small amount to help them through and to take some land out of production. now this is the most abused and untouchable piece of welfare in the american political system. and if you ever go as i've done quite a bit and looked at the list of people who own, who give farm payments, michele bachmann's family, for example. >> the queen of england. the biggest one until a few years ago. >> right. and to think this thing started with giving small farmers to help them through and now it's this huge corporate system. i think the average payment, someone will google and correct me later, but it was something like $186,000 per farmer that

you and i, the taxpayers, pay them. that has nothing to do with the original intention, so that, to me, is the most glaring example. >> great. >> i want to say two things. one is the moral of the three little pigs, and we didn't have to go through that on our little pea patch. but we did plow up cotton. >> right. well -- looking at my dad there. >> the pig lets was going to be horrible advertisement for agriculture to reform, but he was a farmer, and his family had been farmers for generations. and his remark was, well, what do people think? these aren't household pets. they really are agricultural

commodities although he did feel, certainly we had reports from the time that he felt this visceral distaste and -- >> the whole issue, mike, the whole issue was to control production. and ford, they'd laid off workers, cut it off. you could do it easily. it was a semi-monopoly. six million farmers could not control production easily, so the government has a role. next point i want to make and this is probably one of the most important ones, i think it lapses over to where i say the difference between now and then. at that time i don't know everything, but there was more of a feeling of we're in this together. >> yeah. >> a community feeling even in, about the united states, about the country.

now for whatever reason, and i have my own i won't say it here -- [laughter] reason is we are, we're emphasizing the individual so much more than the community. comes from the -- well, i understand it very well. you're saved as a southern baptist one at a time, and one at a time you go into heaven and all that sort of thing, and not community. and it was very easily, of course, for richard nixon and barry goldwater to go into my southern states and take over because of this individual emphasizing on that. get the -- get them out of our lives, and "them" meant the government. >> i think -- >> they didn't have, excuse me. they didn't have the length of memory, and those who did didn't have the power to say, well,

"them" helped us. "them" saved us. fdr, he saved our asses. i'm sorry. [laughter] and the so-called free enterprise bs that we hear today, that's not free enterprise at all. [laughter] it's corporate bullshit. [laughter] [applause] >> i'll have to say that -- >> you note that i'm retired. [laughter] >> you had tenure, didn't you? >> yes, he did. i have to say, i learned a lot of vivid language from all of these books, including yours, jimmy. frankfurters happy hot dogs and black blizzards and honey

fugling, you've got to check that out. everyone from the hog whisperer, uncle charlie hillman, to the wandering, bam white, to the prim and practical, um, frances perkins to the vibrant new dealer, tommy corcoran. oh, they're wonderful characters. i invite you all to pick up the books to learn more about them. but we've come to the part of our panel today where i want to open it up to the audience, and i invite you to come to the microphones that are set up in each aisle to -- with your questions. and we'll go from one aisle to the other in addressing your questions. so, please, come forward. yes, sir. >> yeah. i have read and heard many times that roosevelt saved this country from communism, that had it not been for him, we were on the path to a revolution or on the verge of that. i wonder if all the panelists would comment about that. >> yeah.

i think roosevelt was very aware when he was running for office and coming into office at the unrest that had led to bad political results in europe. and he was not shy about, about making that point, that america didn't have the same tradition as europe and didn't want to go down that path. and as the new deal went on and the prewar period evolved, he kept saying that european countries are getting themselves out of depression is but -- [inaudible] and that's not something we want to do. now, circumstances obviously changed, but he was -- and the new deal is about the state of civil society out in the countryside. and one way to think about social security which is very important, the new deal was

beginning to think about what to do about social insurance. there were some very powerful movements in the countryside, including the townsend movement, which started in long beach, california. it was a retired physician who came up with a plan for pensions for everyone over 60 years old in the country. he understood that the elderly had been the real victims of the depression. their resources had been destroyed by the failure of the banks. they had no chance of making up their nest eggs, and he said, well, we'll give every person over 60 years old $200 a month on the proviso they spend it within 30 days. well, there were townsend clubs all over the country, at least 500 people signed up. but this was an important, this really scared congress and, in fact, in 1934 the townsend

movement elected a congressman and again in 1938 they elected a congressman. so on capitol hill they were very aware of this, and at the white house they understood that they had to get in front of this parade. and that was one of the reasons that social security went on the front burner in 1934 and got enacted in 1935. but, so yes, there was real concern that the country in some parts of the country was really in disorder. >> i'm not sure that roosevelt saved the country from communism, but i do believe the somewhat-accepted historical conventional wisdom that roosevelt saved capitalism. >> yeah. >> and during the first week of his administration he declared basically a weeklong bank holiday. the banks were closed. and he told people when we resume on monday, i want you to go back and put your money back

in banks, the banks are going to be safe. and if he said later if there'd been a run, that would have been it. they couldn't -- they wouldn't have been able to support the run on banks. they wouldn't have been able to support people taking out their money. so that was the initial thing. there were several other things just to get the banking system sort of on its foot again, and then they had several regulations that separated these things where banks would trade on stock market as i mentioned earlier with savers' money, glass-steagall, right? but the, also in that respect roosevelt, as you know, was somewhat of an aristocrat, hudson river from this wonderful family. i mean, i know a lot about teddy, and i just revere this family in all its facets. but he was, you know, he spent a year on his back with polio. ful he once said of after you've spent a year on your back where you can't move your little toe, nothing will bother you. he also said i know that wall street hates me, and i welcome their hatred.

here's this traitor to his class who's saying bring on the class envy but i, just to conclude, i do agree with the historical, i think, consensus that he saved capitalism. >> sir? >> i am not an economist. >> i can't add too much except i do remember when there was a big march on washington by -- >> yeah. >> -- the veterans of which my dad was one, disabled. and he was getting $12 a month or for his disability, and in march of 1932 or when roosevelt cut it off. >> just a quick remark about the veterans march or the bonus army. the bonus had been enacted for veterans of world war #-r, but it was not to be paid until 1945, so in the heart of the depression the bonus army formed. it started in, i think,

portland, oregon. came all the way east x it was very well disciplined, but it was a march to accelerate the bonuses to be paid now because the money was needed. and the hoover administration had actually -- hoover vetoed a bill from congress to pay the bonuses. well, the bonus army, it gathered at anacostia flats in washington d.c. very peaceful, and then hoover sent the army in. general douglas macarthur was the head of that sally, and his agitant was major dwight eisenhower. and attacked the bonus camp, the anacostia camp, led to several deaths. it became a huge national furor, and as i recount this my -- in my book, franklin roosevelt, this was 1932 during the campaign, he was listening to the reports from the front over the radio, and he turned to up

with of his closest advisers, felix frankfurter, and said, felix, this will elect us. >> it did. great. >> these guys keep stealing my thunder. [laughter] they write about it, and i was there, you know? why does all the infantrymen in world war ii hate douglas macarthur? >> that's why. >> well, he was there. >> that was it. >> he was in charge. >> he was in charge. >> i'm not an economist, and my question will probably reveal that, but what would have happened to the economy if world war ii hadn't intervened, and why does a war save you? why couldn't production of peaceful products of some sort for the country have saved the country the way war products somehow saved the country's economy? >> well, this is the old line that the new deal didn't p end the depression, but world war ii ended the depression. as i go into in some detail in

my book, the fact of the matter is that in technical terms the depression ended, and that is in terms of the decline in production and the economic decline ended probably sometime around mid 1935. now, the pain of the depression persisted for many, many years. the new deal was not overtly an economic stimulus program. that's something that we forget again, over and over again. but there was a lot of economic stimulus, fiscal stimulus in it. but it raised the federal government's, um, share of spending against gross domestic product from about 4 or 5% in 1929 to maybe 6 or 8% by 1935 or 1936. now, that was a tremendous amount of spending, but even new

dealers who understood the principles of fiscal stimulus knew that wasn't going to be nearly enough. and they wanted more, but roosevelt and congress were delivering about as much as they thought they could in political terms. now, once world war ii started the government share of gdp went up to 42%. so you can look at world war ii as an enormous stimulus program, and when you combine it with the fact that consumer pending really bottomed -- spending really bottomed out because the boys were overseas, families weren't being formed, there was a tremendous latent demand that was building up that finally exploded in the late '40s and early '50s, but the principles of fiscal stimulus were proven by world war ii. that if you really pour -- when the private sector withdraws from the economy, there's no other choice but for the public sector, the government, to step p in and take up the slack. and that's what happened.

but the trend to more government spending really started as far back as '33. >> i'll just say quickly, it's one of the great historical what ifs, of course, but i'll just tell you a quick anecdotal thing. one of roosevelt's ideas in the pacific northwest, the north side is wet, the east side of the cascades is bone dry. in that bone dry section, he wanted to dam the columbia river and build something they called the planned promised land. and it was these dams would back up, the water would then go to the land, and all these poor, displaced people from oklahoma and texas and other parts of the midwest would start life anew in the planned promised land. well, the grand cooley came up, it never worked out that way, but what they did do was process plutonium to build the atomic bomb, the one dropped on japan -- two of them -- and there were 100,000 people employed at this little bend in the river that had been just

peach orchardsful and same in seattle. little boeing which was turning out a couple of planes suddenly cranked up and were making these b-17s which destroyed hitler, of course. so i can say in my own neck of the woods the planned promised land didn't work out, but the atomic bomb of world war ii was a great economic generator as was that's what really made boeing was world war ii. >> yes. >> my ancestors were farmers in kansas and oklahoma, and at one point my grandmother could no longer make the payments on the land to the former owner, and the former owner said, oh, don't worry, i don't want that land back. [laughter] >> as many banks say today about houses that going into foreclos. [laughter] >> but my question is, i wonder if people who lived through that similar to cold war i -- world war ii veterans who often would

not talk about their experience maybe until the end of their lives because it was so traumatic, i wonder what your thoughts are about, um, people who went through that, whether, you know, sort of ptsd, um, from that caused some of the collective amnesia about the december poe and the depression. >> i think the answer to that from my standpoint is that, number one, they didn't have the time to reflect, to sit down and recount and to publish whatever way that they could their experiences. for veterans i cannot say. my brother had three purple hearts. he never talked about it. so those are personal things. but i revert to my original

solution. it's a new world, and the people who are many -- who are in this world, mainly below 30, have to figure out what kind of world. and they're smart enough. they're smart as i am or you are, anybody else. [laughter] >> take exception to that. >> my grandson-in-law has got a ph.d. from berkeley and got all the high honors of everything in his field. he can't find a job. he's been looking two years. i told him, i said, blank, it's -- you're going to have to figure it out. you and be all of like you are going to have to figure out what kind of world you want. because it ain't going to be like jimmy's world, it is not going to be even like mike and tim's world. it's going to be a different manager or other. i don't know the answers, of course. if i did, i'd start writing books about that tomorrow. [laughter]

but seriously, it's, but what does worry me are these absolute emphatic get the government off my back or the other extreme, let the government totally control everything. somewhere in between there's got to be a united states, and i hope we keep the constitution like it is. we gotta figure it out. and we've got enough food, and we ain't going to starve, and you've got enough automobiles. despite the price of gas, you've got more petroleum than you know you have. so that's not it. it's the, it's the mechanism. it's the mechanism for doing it, tim. don't ask e me what that is. [applause] >> tim, did you want to address that? >> yeah. i just want to say real quickly because i was fascinated by this

topic too. i'd go into a little town and assemble people in a semicircle, and it was almost always women. the men usually didn't talk, and when they did talk, i'd say how bad was it, and they'd just say real bad, you know? [laughter] and that was about the end of the conversation. but the women would open up, and we would go, and i'd follow up, and they would go for days. the stories would just flow out of them, and they'd say i haven't been asked about this in 30 years, 40 years. and i'd say, why? a, they didn't think people would believe them, it's too far removed from their era, and people just stopped asking them about it. i don't know if it was ptsd as she raised the question, but one of the good things to happen later when the book was a success was kids would show up on their door and do their, you know, grade school project on the dust bowl, and they were more than happy to tell their stories. people want to tell tear stories, that's one of the thing about human nature. >> i love the stories particularly of hazel lewis

shaw. >> she was fabulous. >> i'm afraid that we've run out of time. we're coming to the end of our session. but the good news is that the authors are available to talk with you at the signing area. that is located, again, at the madden media signing area just outside on your right along the student union. want to thank as well tim and mike and be jimmye for sharing with us their ideas and thoughts today. [applause] >> this was fabulous. i could sit for hours with you. this stuff is fabulous. [inaudible conversations] >> watch more live coverage of the 2012 tucson festival of books here on c-span2. in about half an hour, we'll bring you the history of the american west. you can also watch the festival online at booktv.org. coming up next, a panel titled "america at war" from the henly

coughler building. booktv is live all weekend from tucson, arizona. >> booktv has over 150,000 twitter followers. follow booktv on twitter to get publishing news, scheduling updates, author information and talk directly with authors during our live programming. twitter.com/booktv. >> recently, booktv visited bookhouse, a used bookstore in arlington, virginia, and spoke to co-owners edward and natalie hughes. >> edward j. hughes, born april 17, 1920. >> and they want your title. you're an owner. >> a handyman. [laughter] >> all right. >> yeah, i do handyman work. i wrap books, i move books. [laughter]

>> natalie hughes, and i'm 80. i've enjoyed running a book shop all these years. i like being behind the counter. edward likes to buy books. >> so why did you start selling books original hi? [laughter] >> because i bought 3,000 books for $40 thinking i was buying them to read, and then i discovered when we went to the -- i took the children to the library, and i was waiting for them to get finished looking at their books because the books i had bought were so old, they were just old reading books from the hotel. the hotel closed down and donated all it books to the town of bar harbor, and i'm staying up there for the summer -- three summers we stayed up there -- so i just accidentally bought them because i was waiting for my children but i was reading a

book, they said why don't you buy four or five tables full of books? so i opened my wallet. we didn't have credit cards in those days, and i certainly didn't have my checkbook with me, and i said this is all i have. it was four $10 bills, and they said, they're all yours. 3,000 books. we packed them in the station wagon, took them to the garage of the place where we were spending that summer, two summers, and then i discovered taking the children to the library that this person, ben alan bradley, had written a book ahead of this one, and i just happened to pick it up when i was waiting for the children at the library and discovered that people buy and sell old books. i really thought i was just going to sit there and read my 3,000 books. i read peats of them all the time. -- pieces of them all the time. this is american history through here, across there. this is navy, and this is ships and the sea.

>> what do you sell the most of? >> it used to be american history, and now it's so scattered, i can't say that there's a particular section. >> [inaudible] >> i'll tell ya how that happened. we were running out of space, so we hired a man who agreed to construct that building, a certain amount of labor money and the cost of materials. i think it came to about $3,000. and we helped him because he was by himself, and he got some heavy beams, so we had to help him lug beams around and set 'em down. and we finished it and wrote him a check for it and then walked into the shop, and the phone rang, and somebody out in

bethesda had some books to sell. so we went out there and bought 10,000 books. they exactly fit into that building when they were shelfed. >> what do you store in here?h >> books. [laughter] back here are the rivers of america. it's a series of about 65 books which covers every river of any significance in the united states. >> do you know when these were published? >> oh, yes. they're very modern books. one of the early ones was the brandywine, and this was pretty early. rivers of america books already

published, so this is the sixth' book in the series and that's, of course, 1939. we have a number of these in the shop too. >> is that more bedekers? see look at those up there. they are not american history. they don't belong on this floor, but they live there anyhow. >> they're there because the shelves are short. [laughter] >> and this is broad american history in here and presidents here and american architecture here and american art over here,

let's see, this little room over here is the other half, the first half's over there, the second half of american biography. that's waiting for more books to come in, not just sitting there for the fun of it. that is the revolution over there. and this is living in america. this is very nice. these are really, really interesting, nice books about -- that have to do with just living in america. and these, of course, are rivers of america and wpa guides, one for each state as you know, i hope you all know that the wpa guides to the states are the best books ever. >> natalie had been looking through a couple of agents for a place that was both commercial and livable. and she got a call one day that they had just reduced the price

of this property to $48,000. this was in the 1990s. 1990s. 1970s. and there's about 1250 square feet of commercial space on this property. so now the property itself is worth a great deal more. >> this is another real specialty of ours, botanical things, because that's the way i met edward, of course, doing botany stuff. >> so he would come in and buy books for you? >> uh-huh. and i would find books for him that he liked and would use. he was building a garden for his sister, and so -- >> did he, he lived around here? >> he lived in d.c. at that point. he, his life span, his work years were with federal

highways, and he did that from the time -- he was born in altoona, and then he did that for all the years. and then he had a heart attack -- not a serious one, this was before i met him. he was playing golf in january. he had a long-term l golf partner named okimoto. he was truman's photographer. but he and edward played golf at every opportunity. and then he got the heart attack from playing in january. but it was a light one. but he retired. he took early retirement, and he was 55 at the time. when i met him. and i was 45 at that time. so we got married. this is where all the essays and biographies and literary things go, and we give a whole shelf over to emerson, and then it's writings of all kinds. and that goes around to the back

side and continues on the back and jumps over to this wall so this is, this is finishing up that alphabet. not enough shakespeare. we should have more and more and more shakespeare. but that's my favorite book for the shakespeare -- >> which one? >> the star of england. it's a story to itself. it's a wonderful book. >> so you moved in '74 with the books, and you've taken -- >> we bought it, we had the books at that time stacked in our house over in cherrydale. we were told by several people that there was such a thing as plastic creep, that if you overloaded a structure and left it just sit there, the place would eventually start to sag.

it's very true. >> so your home l started to sag? >> yes. >> so what -- so you had to get all the books out? >> well, we got 'em out because we had space for them over here. >> these three i want to get for sure. >> oh, came in from the building? >> yeah. >> okay. >> put that on hold, probably. >> all right, okay. let me -- >> i enjoyed the article about you in the paper. >> thank you. >> a couple of weeks ago, it was nicely done. >> yeah, thank you very much. >> tribute. >> people who really, really care about the old books, they'll find that eventually article came out, we have met in here people who would have been wonderful customers for the past 20 years if we had, if they had known we were here, they would have been

here. so i'm sorry i didn't want know them -- i can't know -- i didn't know them earlier, but it doesn't matter. >> we don't consider it work. it's a lot of fun, you get a lot of interesting people and more of them are nice than not. >> we stop this when we cannot do it any longer because we can't see or can't stand up or something like that. and i, i just, i have to make up something to say, so i say constantly i say, we'll close in a year or two. but i'm going to say that this month and six months from now if i'm still here, i'm going to say we're closing in a year or two because you can't tell when everything falls apart.

>> here's a look at some upcoming book fairs and festivals. this weekend booktv is live from the tucson festival of books. our coverage includes two days of author panels from different venues on the campus of the university of arizona. you can watch coverage of the gallagher theater here on c-span2 and of the henry coughler building online at booktv.org. then in late march booktv will visit char lotsville, virginia, for the virginia festival of the book. in april the university of california irvine will host the sixth annual literary orange. the festival will feature keynote speakers paula mcclain and lisa see. on the 21st and 22nd, booktv will be live from the los angeles times festival of books at the university of southern california. for a complete list of upcoming

book fairs and festivals, visit booktv.org and click on the book fairs tab at the top of the page. also, please let us know about book fairs and festivals in your area, and we'll add them to your list. e-mail us at booktv@cspan.org. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2, and we are at georgetown university interviewing some of their professors who are also authors. and now joining us is charles kupchan who is the author of this new book "no one's world." it's published by oxford. professor kupchan, what do you mean by global turn? be. >> guest: by global turn i refer to a period in history in which the world's center of gravity moves. the last global turn was when the world was relatively multipolar but arguably the center of gravity was in the

mesopotamian valley, india, china, it was to the east. and then beginning in the late medieval period, let's say 12, 1300, you began to see commercialism rise in europe, new cities were born. you begin to see a middle class of bowrnlg who say. and by roughly 17, 1800, europe was dominant. so the pendulum had swung from istanbul, from delhi, from that part of the world up to northern europe. and what i'm arguing in this book is that pend lumbar has started to swing -- pendulum has started to swing again. and that's because we see power moving from the west -- that is to say north america and europe -- and it's heading east, but it's not just heading east, and that's why i call the book "no one's world." i don't think that any country, region or model will dominate. in fact, i think we're headed to a world that will be interdependent, globalized but

without a political anchor. >> host: why do these turns take so long? you're talking about a turn since the 17th and 18th centuries. you're talking about the next turn that we're in. >> guest: well, i think that this turn will actually be the fastest turn ever because we live in the digital age, and we're seeing how quickly china is growing, how quickly they're catching up economically with the united states. and consequently, the degree to which globalization brings fast economic change to the u.s. we've lost roughly half of our manufacturing jobs in the last ten years in part because economic activity is moving so quickly elsewhere. but in general what happens is today's core over time becomes tomorrow's periphery. today's periphery becomes tomorrow's core. and that's because if we look historically really as far back as we can go, you see that great

powers don't stay on top forever and that their innovation, their know how gradually moves to other regions that are less developed. and over time they are able to catch up with the core and may end up being in a hegemonic position, in a dominant position. then that cycle starts all over again. you're right to say that this last turn occurred quite slowly. the u.s. and the europeans have effectively been atop the heap since about 1815 when the napoleonic wars ended. so we've had about two centuries which was a pretty good run. and i think what we're headed to now is a world that for most of the 21st century won't have a dominant player. and that's, that's an interesting world. it's not that different than where we were in, say, 1600 when you had the holy roman empire, the ottomans, the japanese empire, the chinese empire. but the key difference is in the

1600s those imperial zones didn't penetrate. they rarely interacted with each other. so that they could each kind of go according to their own. what's happened now is we're all smushed together. what we do here, what china does, what happens in india effects us, and that's why this next world's going to be complicated. because we need to agree on a set of rules in ways that we have never before. >> host: charles kupchan, how is it that europe in the 17th and 18th centuries became dominant? >> guest: i think the story starts with the end of feudalism. and to some extent europe's strength was its weakness. because when the feudal structure began to erode, suddenly you saw new towns, small towns emerge, and they were populated by artisans like blacksmiths, by the beginnings of what you might call professional people, bankers.

and then over time those cities became the vanguard of a commercial revolution. an economic activity. debt instruments. banks. little workshops that eventually became laboratories. they were able to thrive because they pushed back against the nobility, the monarchy and the church. and the rest of the world empires were much stronger, and they were able to maintain centralization. and, therefore, what you saw in europe, the fragmentation of traditional institutions, the birth of the bourgeoisie that embraced the protestant reformation which slowly pushed the catholic church out of politics and led to a sort of secular realm. all of that happened only in northern europe. it then crossed the atlantic and happened here in the united states. but it led to a period in which technologically and economically the western world pulled far

ahead of the competitors. and that technology also allowed them to penetrate the competitors. we had better ships, better navigation. and so by the end of the 8th -- 1800, by the end of the 19th century, the west dominated about 80-plus percent of the world, and that's historically unique. >> host: some would argue that the late 1970s and 1-9d 80s when japan was on the rise could have been a turn. >> well, i think that though the turns that we've seen in the last several decades have been turns within the family. it is to say among countries all of whom kind of look the same. thatthat is to say they're libel democracies, so if we say what's happened over the last, say, 50, 60, 70 years, europe, the u.s.

and japan have competed to be the top dog. what i think is happening now is the circle is widening. there are now many new cooks in the kitchen. and the western model -- industrial capitalism, liberal democracy, secular nationalism -- is being called into question. and that's in part because west hasn't been doing so well. we are seeing plett political polarization. japan has been stuck in an economic recession for two decades. and a lot of that is the product of globalization. we are seeing jobs leave. we don't have as much control over economies as we used to. and so the broad middle class is in the west, in the u.s. and europe and japan, are not very happy. and they are saying to their governments, hey, help me. i don't like this situation. and those governments are finding it very hard to respond. and that's why we see in the

united states trust in government is hitting historic lows. that's why in europe we see a renationalization of political life away from the european union. and all the while we see other models that are actually doing pretty well. state capitalism in china, they are growing at about 10% a year whereas the u.s. is stuck at around 2%. they're not going to keep growing at 10%. no model dominates in which western democracy, western capitalism will have to compete in the marketplace with other kinds of models, china being one, a left-wing populism in latin america being a third. and i think all of these have advantages and disadvantages, and that leads to a world in which the playing field will be much more level than it has

been. >> host: do you see the china model for the middle east model, professor kupchan, as ideological models rather than just pure economic models? and are people going to look to those like they've looked to the west in the past? >> well, i would say that there are a combination of ideology and socioeconomic foundations. and i think the two are hard to untangle. so let's just take china for a second. what is so different about china's trajectory than the? well, as we were talking about a few minutes ago, in the west the middle class really drove economic growth, and they pushed back against the absolutist state. the chinese state is much smarter than the old monarchies of europe because the monarchies of europe tried to keep down the middle class. the communist party, the so-called communist party because they're not particularly

communist, has integrated the middle class. they have made them stakeholders in the state. and so if you were to talk to most entrepreneurs, most professionals in china, they don't want to change the system. they're happy. and that raises the question, well, is this stable? if those with the wealth and power to change it are actually pretty happy with something less than democracy, does that give that model staying power? and if the chinese can make decisions about high-speed rail, about investment for the long run, right? they've got a five-year plan, they've got a ten-year plan. and the united states, believe it or not, we've got a lot of government agencies, but nobody is doing long-range economic planning. and that's why i think the china model isn't going to carry the day, it's not going to be the model that everyone strives to, but it will be one version of

modernity. it will have a large place in the world of the 21st century, and the western model, i think, won't be as powerful and pervasive as we once thought. so i'd say, you know, history has been seemingly on one road all heading towards some kind of end point that looked like the west. now i think we're starting to see the road take different paths. and that, i think, is one of the reasons that this century is going to be quite interesting, but also dangerous. because it requires a level of management and a level of consensus that historically speaking the world has never required. >> host: charles kupchan served on the national security council under president bill clinton and, in fact, your former boss in his most recent book "back to work" has a line in there that hasn't been picked up on too much, but he said as long as we are still organized by states,

um, do you think there's a future where we are not necessarily organized as countries or nations? >> guest: maybe, but it's a long time away. i think one of the interesting developments of the last couple of decades is how strong the state remains. in fact, i would kind of argue that the nation-state is coming back. and it's partly because globalization reaches into countries and across borders in a way that's very intrusive. and in some ways those states are basically saying, stop, we want more control over our destinies. take, for example, what's happening in europe. europe desperately needs collective governance to stabilize the euro, to find its way out of the crisis. but what's happening is that politics is drifting back from brussels, the capital of the european union, to the

nation-state. and that's because nation-states are getting slapped around by european immigration and by globalization, and then saying it doesn't matter now, we're not going to take it anymore. they're pushing back precisely because globalization punctures borders, those borders are m coming back to life. so i think the 21st century will be a century in which the nation-state is alive and well. >> host: if your theories or predicts turn out to be true, is this a bad thing for the west? >> guest: i would say it's a inevitable development. it is troubling in the sense that the west has run the show for quite a long time and has been able to create an international system in which western values predominate and in which they're inseparable from western interests. we have to prepare for a world in which the west is no longer as dominant as it used to be, in

which the west which at one point represented 75 plus percent of world trade or world gnp will now shrink to well below 50%. after all, the west only represents about 15-20% of the global population. so it's troubling in the sense that we who are lucky enough to live in the west went have as much control, but i think the key challenge for the western world is not to pretend that this isn't happening, it's not just in our hands to say the world is changing. power is diffusing. how are we going to react to it? how are we going to strike a bargain with the chinese, the brazils, finish brazilians, they don't necessarily want to play by our rules, but we want to keep some of our rules. so i think what's required is both expanding the circle but

also having a serious conversation about what kinds of norms, what kinds of rules can major powers of different political systems, different values agree upon? >> what do you teach here at georgetown university? >> guest: i teach broad classes in international politics. this semester i'm teaching one course in national security, and that's a class that looks at what are people arguing about in foreign affairs journal or international security? what are the cutting edge debates? and then i teach a class called grand strategy and historical perspective. which is a book, a class about imperial management. so we start with the romans, and then we go up through the ottomans, we get to the brits, the french, the germans, the japanese, and then we end with the era of american hegemony, so it's a senior seminar, if you will, and it covers a lot