they say it is a typical kind of party but it is not. there usually negative and hateful looking for someone to blame we do not want to blame anyone and we want to unite people not divide and others would say maybe the populist party because he is a local celebrity and everybody votes for him because he is popular and is a celebrity but that is not true either. the most exceptional thing is that as he said we lasted a whole term for term six

people voted into city council nobody quit. they're all still friends. and that is something that i think is very much important now to find an alternative to improve democracy. because violence is an alternative. and i think there is a universal need that lets take this negativity to turn

into something positive. it could be called the pool party. [laughter] for the clown party or what about the happy party? >> host: the party has continued the people that remain in office from that same election but now they call it a bright future? >> yes. but that is no more and those who continued with politics they merged into one political party that is called bright future and is now the second or third largest political party in iceland.

because technically it is not a political party because because i do something to color something a ended is the combination of anarchism. but it is not democratic. [laughter] >> what do you mean? we're only a group of 20 people. hint people ask me how can i join? i say it is not possible. you cannot do it that you could help a poor person or

the old lady across the street. because that is the spirit. >> host: you also advocates direct digital democracy. what is that? >> we implemented of software called best of reykjavik in reapplied a budget to its where the citizens can come up with ideas. and we are bound to the process with those it is that get the most votes through the system.

so if bay city council member comes up with the idea it is processed from the exact same way. and that party is in my mind like it intervention into a dysfunctional circumstance. like an intervention a dysfunction of family from outside and stays with the family for a period of time to help the family out to get them to talk together and when it is over that person does not become part of the family even though everybody loves him or her

in bet like that person to say to become part of the family that is not how would is. this person has to leave. [laughter] and they see that part ds the intervention. so if we were to continue to do a second term it would be something different. my job was done. i did what i felt was my duty to do. >> host: would you do it again? >> guest: i don't know. i am not sure.

i don't know. >> host: last question before we open to the audience. how does comedy fits into all this seems to be the core of your being that led you to acting and other things and even the politics >> comedy for me is say magnificent aspect of the human intelligence. and in my opinion humor is what comes closest to free will. [laughter]

so i think we should try to use its two-hour if advantage as much as possible in and at least in my country humor has been culturally look down on as a lack of intelligence and the more you smile but mia experience i have always felt my humor and optimism

has helped. it has helped me to overcome obstacles and has saved me many times to see the funny side of it. and it has been a self healing process. lake the cities that you mentioned that became enormously popular in nicely and then i am dealing with my father. >> and you would not recognize him. [laughter] a and it was on the bbc now online.

if you just said i like this show what it a completely different person. [laughter] >> it does not even look like you i would not recognize the physical resemblance. >> guest: it is like being bad guy. i was him more or less three year four years. >> host: was your dad still around? >> did you recognize it? yes. [laughter] he does it -- she did not talk about it but he said we

had scenes from my family from my family in this series. and it was more than just him. so it was not brutally just him. he became many other characters and sometimes i

would shave my head from here to here. it looked like one i could take off the costume. then i realized when i was brushing my teeth sometimes as a part of history. and i would snap into the character with the family and sometimes my wife would snap that me snap out of it. [laughter] because i would just turn into him like he would just takeover. >> host: an amazing performance. you should watch a.

>> do you feel your end with the as an actor understanding helps with politics to negotiate what you needed to do as a politician to get things done? that has helped me a lot to play different characters to emphasize it -- empathize with them. and even if i had a troublesome relationship with my father i would empathize with him because

he had a very hard life. and so and i would say meinhold experience as a comedian helped me enormously as a politician to go up on a stage that i don't know how it will react to me. and that is the same with politics.

and have you say in english to reach for the clouds? you could sense it and see it in people's eyes and you read in the clouds successfully as a politician. and i realized for what was going on.

>> were you surprised by the interest of the interest that reykjavik if there is the possibility of an american and "gnarr!"? >>. >> guest: i was surprised how well the book has been received a and how inspirational man is my story. there is of very good chance of up party in the u.s.. probably not on a rational level and it would not surprise me in this city for

this is like the jury to. i think that could have a party. and i see signs i have been in contact with people in germany those who are interested to set up a party so we tend to think big the the opportunity to think small and i like to see our party as the first of mont

the dinosaurs. aho maybe not from the dinosaurs but i feel a wave. we're is a true sense the people feeling tired. that want politics to change.

people want to receive more empathy and maybe more cooperation because politics always cooperated. that means we don't get what we need. so i am very optimistic and i think maybe i could write another book, emmanuel with an explanation. >> last question. >> hello.

to the dinosaurs chasing gin any way with the way they regard you or they watch you implement your policies? >> i'm sorry. the dinosaur politician. >> did they start to watch the wires? [laughter] what did they learn from you? >> yes. is in many ways.

and with the social democrats he has a speech in parliament he said i had changed politics in iceland forever. that it will never change back. that will never be allowed to go back. i don't know if that is true. but definitely we have proven that it is possible. even if we don't agree on everything, we can still communicate in a non-violent way without oppression to each other.

and i think what people say say, as politicians are communicating in a different way. if it is going to last, i don't know. if it is too soon to say. one. >> host: i will take the last question. there is a question coming back from politics and whether running for mayor or president. will that happen?

there have been many people interested in it. and they need to make up my mind. i am still recovering. [laughter] and i have not come the distance that i need. i am a very responsible person. i tried to be a responsible person. >> host: you have proven that. >> guest: and if i feel strongly that it was my

responsibility this is your responsibility something that you have to do, i would do it but if i don't sense that i will not do it just to do it only if i feel that responsibility. because i have been carrying so much responsibility i have been avoiding responsibility for the past one and a half months. i have no responsibility. empty your mind. [laughter] that is what i am trying to do. to see where i float. >> host: i will keep my fingers crossed. in the meantime, thank you everyone for coming out i want to thank jon gnarr for the book and his career. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> had to acquire a book? >> there are a million ways to do it. one is not often talked about but you come up with an idea and you try to find the perfect writer or the person who's passion matches your ears. that is one way you can make a book have been. another way is to make sure

to talk to agents as much as possible to see what they are enthusiastic about this new wave your hand and hope they will send you a good proposal. sometimes you cultivate authors that you adore and plant ideas with them and hope over time they come up with a project that they want to spend five or 10 years with to make the great books out of it. >> host: have you ever read of a newspaper or magazine article to think that could be a book? >> guest: yes. i read an article 10 years ago about shortly in the early 20th century more households in america would be supported by whitman -- women. that was a giant change.

and it made me want to explore the implications for men and women and to marriages and the loving and court shipping and i got a great book air out of it is called the richer sex written by a "washington post" reporter and now at the new america foundation in washington and it landed on the cover of "time" magazine and generated a huge conversation about how we all need to adjust our lives to the economic new reality if it is good for men and women. it makes couples stronger to

live up to their potential. >> host: one pair of authors that you worked with was nancy and michael of book that q and a program covered and also booktv so what was that process to work on the president's club? >> guest: i wish i could say i came up with that idea it was brilliant but they had been working on that for quite some time. the dia came to them after they had written a great book on billy graham and they realized the degree to which the president's talked to the ex-president's and how much that club shapes the presidency itself and that is what gave them the idea to explore the

president's club been a thorough way. a very modern idea because we had to get to the 20th century. and practical reasons for this to be possible but what we found who was presidency's remains stronger sometimes a challenge by people inside the club in what was interesting was you had over one dozen characters who had relationships with each other going to the path of the future. so the big challenge to edit the book was how to structure. if you look at how the book is built, an introduction to keep partnerships all along the way because it helps to keep track of who the characters are and it helps them to move along

chronologically without or while honoring history and the relationships as they happened. >> host: so they write the president's club in and what was your role? what part did you play? >> guest: essentially to help structure the book to give it architecture to make it so it accessible to "the reader" to ec to a absorb they forget their multiple characters on stage at once and not feel overwhelmed. my role was to cut i am a big believer if you are bored as an editor there is a good chance your readers will be. my role was to be sure the inside knowledge they had was made completely

transparent to "the reader" so they knew where things came from. but is essentially when you have officers as talented as nancy and michael you get up in the morning and get to work. >> host: what is your editing process? what do you do when you first get the manuscript? >> guest: it comes in sections. the first thing you do is leave the office you cannot do serious editing in an office you have to lock yourself somewhere else and completely immerse yourself in the book. there would be times i would leave the book to go and get dinner and still be living in the middle of the nixon administration and would want to get back.

you want the ability to sink into the story as much as possible to see its beauty and occasionally make it more beautiful. >> host: do you take a red pen or a pencil? >> guest: i take a pencil it comes from my days at the editor at the newspaper to move back-and-forth and get back to them they feel they can look at the notes and absorb them as they would on their own terms. >> host: another author you have worked with is karl rove. did he choose you? how did that relationship, out? >> guest: i had to audition i got a call from my publisher and it was the

first book i was asked to edit i was there journalist and he had read up on me and we had politics in common covering him as an editor for many decades. and basically my argument is this is my first job i can not screwed up. it worked. >> host: is a different working with a personality rather than like nancy or michael who are not as well-known? >> guest: every writer have to put themselves on the page so it is a process

that makes them feel vulnerable. and the job of the editor is essentially to protect them but also make them feel comfortable with what they say. one of the first conversations with carl was you cannot start the book at age 30 you have to start with the pain of your childhood including your mother's suicide, your father of the being the home, he was not your father, and meeting your real father, and is difficult as they are to talk about that it needs to include in it if it is a biography and later he said

he was stopped by readers over the childhood stuff because they had experiences like his. but then that seems to be more accessible to people. >> host: because of your background as a journalist to work on a lot of non-fiction political books? >> guest: yes. only nonfiction. some of the books are not so much political but of brookline afghanistan, veterans, the industry that is the oligarchy and those that involve journalist spending many, many years of their lives digging into some of

the issues that we face to make them readable that someone wants to pay hard cover $25 and spend a lot of time. . . beth macy and john bassett iii agreed to stay for questions and

to sign books after the talk. note cards have been placed. every seat, at least the first 200 were placed before we filled in the rest of the room. we will collect questions in baskets just before the q and a starts. at this point i would like to welcome john bassett iii. a [applause] >> we are looking forward to hearing from you tonight. i would particularly like to welcome many folks who are here from bassett. thank you for sharing the spotlight in this as well. i could tell you about all the amazing awards beth macy has won for herb writing. hello, lehman fellow. but the real mark of her life

as a journalist stands in a simple question. how many of you remember a specific beth macy story? by a show of hands how many of you remember young selena who made it to harvard with a whole community of gainsborough library patriots cheering her on? [applause] >> best award winning story about the somalis band to refugees that were coming to live in our community, where the children were going somewhere that 12 languages were spoken. her series about teen mothers. families are navigating, caregiving their elderly loved ones or may be what comes to mind is what you printed out. now covered in grease stains,

and to make the pap smear. this is in 2005. you all remember s o bs, we have a lot of i b be interviewed by beth macy. we were lucky because we knew our story was brought up in good hands. since 1989, she met her beloved husband tom clanton and now has her two children, she worked for the roanoke times telling stories about us. and how much we knew each other. you know journalists are supposed to be objective. let's credit fellow journalist mary bishop who i think is here

tonight. [applause] >> credit her with telling her it is okay to tell her about the people you are innovating indicate to care about her stories. this is a religious book but it is rife with stories that resonate in this church setting. stories about real human beings and they -- their all too human frailties. when they did or didn't treat each other with grace and humility. this book is about who is related to whom and big industry in 1930. most of all, this book is about what it means to live in communities. please join me in welcoming beth macy. [applause]

>> i am already cheering up. not good for you. i am going to read three passages, a little from the beginning and one from the end and the little from the middle which is weird but it is a good way to introduce you and i will start with chapter one which is the tipoff. there is a prologue which precedes it and it is about this watershed moment in 2002 when john and his son why went to china to find who was making this chiefyatt went to china to find who was making this chief chess of the wars. it would then become a world's largest anti-dumping petition. that comes before this part and this is why i am telling you how i found the story. it sort of is laying out all the

threads of the book. i was really driven initially by the question of what happened to all those people in henry county who lost their jobs. half of the workforce was displaced. almost 20,000 people and where did they go? what happened to use them. the second question was was there another way it could have been done? a friend of mine who helped me a lot with the book, she lives in washington d.c. it is wonderful. you found this amazing story that goes all the way to china and back and the guy is still alive. [applause] >> like living history. i am going to read. once in a reporter's career when is very lucky. a person like john bassett iii comes along. this is inspirational.

he is a sawdust covered good old boy from rural virginia. a larger than life rule breaker who for more than a decade still almost single-handedly against the outflow of furniture jobs from america, quote, he is an asshole. i hope that is okay to say in church. [laughter] >> more than one of his competitors said that. when they heard of his writing a book about globalization using him as the main character of the course of researching this book, over the course of hearing his many lectures and listening to him even made my question is like telling me the same stories over and over, there were times when i agree. i first heard about in the rocky mountain, va. half an hour from my home in roanoke when eating breakfast with my friend and neighbor joel shepherd 200 jr. furniture market, a rocky mountain retail establishment that began for arriving at the same time the import boom hit.

as i type i am sitting in a recliner my husband and i still fight over because it is the most comfortable seats in our house. i remembered joel showing it to me, despite what i might have heard, a swarm of high school wrestler is could in one another on this chair and it would not fall apart. with a friendly neighbor discount i got $160. i invited joel to breakfast to pick his brain. i was working on the impact of globalization on southwest virginia company towns some articles inspired by the work of freelance photographer in jerrod story was making the all along trek from roanoke to martinsville. the photos were gritty and moving. church services and tattoo artists, conveyor belts, disabled minister named leonard y. lin away the time in his

kitchen in the middle of the afternoon. the people of martinsville were refreshingly open about what happened to them and jerrod have long wondered why our paper didn't do more to document the effect of globalization in our mountainous quarter of the world. not that many other media outlets had done better. according to a 2009 view research center survey the greatest economic crisis since the great depression was largely being covered from the top down, primarily from the perspective of big business in the obama administration. the percentage of the economy stories that featured real ordinary people and displaced workers just 2%. if people in henry country wanted their stories to be heard we were going to have to help. it would be up to writers and photographers like us to paint the long view picture of what happens when one after another and the furniture factories close and set up shop in mexico, china and vietnam where workers were paid a fraction of what

laborers were earning. some 20,000 people had lost their job. martins ville was va's manufacturing powerhouse, known for being home to more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the country. in 2009, one fifth of the town's labor force, many millionaires had fled interior landscapes. and va's high street for nine of the ten past 11 years. empty bassett furniture plant and burned to the ground. police arrested silas crane, a henry county man who had been trying to salvage the factory's copper electrical casings to sell on the black market but instead sparked an electrical fire. i heard many similar stories that desperate moves, a stranger

approached one woman i know outside a cvs pharmacy and offered a one hundred dollars if she signed for the purchase of the cold medicine which is the main ingredient used for making that. babysitting, growing their own food, working part-time at walmart over and over. the director of an area food pantry told me he could divine what people used to do for work by their disfigurement. the women who bent over all day making sweatshirts at home on their backs. the man who called lumber were missing fingers, quote, the last, last, last resort to come stand in line and get a box of old food. jolt explained there was a small town about 70 miles from rocky mount that managed to buck the trend. he was from families that once zoned largest furniture operation in the world, bassett furniture industries. his name was john bassett iii and he was from that bassett family, the name inscribed on

the back of so many american head board and dressers. the name stamped on the bedroom suit behind door no. 3 of let's make a deal. the story of how he fought against the ties of globalization with the goal cunning, political intrigue and judging from what joel told me about bassett's asian competitors and sirius cowboy great. imitating the patriarch's booming voice and cringe inducing chutzpah, the expletives were going to tell him how to make furniture but there is another juicier story. john bassett iii was no longer living in bassett, va.. he had been booted out of the family business by domineer relative. three decades later, they still had local tongues wagging with the talk of a living room fight scene. some say it was something else. rescue squad call and my

favorite detail, john bassett cit in the ambulance driver $100 not to tell anybody had his brother-in-law hauled away like something out of dynasty. [applause] >> but was any of its true? what did the family inside -- what did the family in fighting had to do with john bassett giving the middle finger to easy money overseas? plenty it would turn out. let's skip to the end of that chapter. was so when i read the end it will make more sense. moment i heard there was a company owner who was taken on big business and the people's republic of china i knew i had to find out who john bassett iii was losing not only kept his small factory going but managed to turn it into the largest wood bed room factory in america. i got on the highway to meet the southern patriarch for, 74 at

his bassett furniture company. imac got his insanely twisted family tree at the city library. already called around to get the real scoop about his family feud. i already introduced several henry county furniture workers who were laid off not long after managers showed up to take pictures of the virginia assembly line so they could copy them when they got back home. 1-woman described her mom, her knees shot from decades of standing on concrete floors and wondering, what with the little people doing at work today? i already knew as i began to refer to him j.b. iii that he was grooming his little ones to take over. returning after school to save the family company, i heard too he had their salaries when the recession hit rather than lay off more mine workers and personally stopped pulling a paycheck during the ministry is. the furniture store owner described to me how

globalization had taken a 70% by out of his business. a store that used to be frequented by people who worked in the henry county textile furniture plant. delano thompson's father worked down the home at family furniture and his mother down another road at fieldcrest, a sprawling textile plant started by marshall field's. now the site of a weekly community food bank. in the ladies' room was the cafe, a diner frequented by retirees, sprained photographs proudly displaying what put the town on the map. a stack of fieldcrest towels. bassett furniture was no longer made in bassett, domino explained in his southern drawl as rain sank in metal buckets that protected the soak ups and bedroom suits in furniture lingo is spelled like sweets. quote, with his determination john bassett could have said, the bassett furniture cos going if he could have kept the company. should have made a shorthand for

that statement first-time i heard it. i interviewed scores of people who said he essentially the same thing. delano knew all about j.b. iii's covert mission and had his own version of the evil brother in law, the story of the man who elbowed j.b. iii out of his job, the company he had been reared to run but would any of the bassetts open up to me about those things? would he reveal what it felt like to be with the dresser sized ship on his shoulder? would he tell me the real story of how he thought the chinese? if you wouldn't, with the people who grew up under the thumb of the family be bold enough to spill the beans? you don't even realize what kind of spider web you have going, said bassett furniture's longtime corporate pilot who worked for years under john bassett iii's corporate nemesis, war and peace will seem like a $0.10 novel compared to your spiderweb but lucky for you the scorpion is already dead.

john bassett iii comes from imposing family of multimillionaire's whose ancestors find the magna carta and persistent unspoken code that no matter what one should keep the family secrets where they belong, in the closet. what secrets would he tell me, the daughter of a former factory worker? i relate better to people like octavia, a 55-year-old displaced family furniture worker who gave me her elderly mother's phone-number as the contacts because her own sun was about to be turned off and people like the forced former worker mary read described trying to raise her 14-year-old daughter alone, working the only job she could find as a 30 hour week receptionist with no benefits. when she told me that i recalled receiving full financial aid for college because my mom widowed by that time made just $8,000 a year test driving cars for a on the subcontractor. when mary recounted running into the former ceo at a party, she was helping cater for martins ville's elite, what he said may

be gassed, quote, if toltecs were to open backup today and the only way i could get there would be to crawl on my belly like a snake i would do it. john bassett iii at staycation homes and perhaps schools, i was a long shot and underdog but fortunately for me was too whether he was ready to admit it to a reporter or not. with any luck at all he would tell me explain this piece of american history from its hardwood floor to the executive board rooms, and to smart phones and skype, from the oak log that sailed from the port of norfolk, va. to asia and then returned months later in the form of dressers and beds. that kind of the setup, i go back to bassett, va. his grandfather starting the business and his birth in 1937,

he was burnt -- born during the epic fled, he hadn't told me about it, but doing research, i called him over, what about the epic flag? there are all kinds of really great just things i heard about that i knew were stories that he didn't necessarily realize were great yarns and i realize the epic flood was a precursor to a dramatic exit from the town and even stories going on i heard about that in the guy in the furniture store. that was a story and i had to go back and interview him and his son and translator over and over again. what was that temperature like? what does it look like? there was a key moment i knew was going to build the book around and come back to it near the end and last week, his son doug and i were talking on phone. he is the president of bassett.

doug is the sweet one of the three. as soon as wyatt and doug, if you don't like duggan nobody in your family will like. i really liked doug. so we were talking about something else and doug goes that guy was hard. it is in my book. like a character out of a movie. i said yes. we are hoping it is. went over this story 30 times and talked to wyatt and john about it and the translator from taiwan who live in high point and that was a happy circumstance. she is a woman so she will remember the details better.

i hadn't interviewed doug when they got home. doug, what do you think about the guy? just like -- the guy was really cold. i said what do you mean? the way he sat there on the lounge chain-smoking. what? he chain-smoking? smoking, and you didn't tell me? read not telling me because i didn't ask? i said when we get off the phone and want you to go hit your dad. when i wrote my book proposal it came with an outline for 27 chapters and for 27 chapters of was going to be about this great moment in 2012 but i was able to witness, he had won his anti-dumping petition in 2005 and again in 2010 and millions

being pumped back into american manufacturers many of whom did at this things with the money but john put it back into his factory which is what was intended for. and this great hero's story where he says to me at the end going over those clashes, well. if you never went jeep with a woman down the street you don't have to drag us back. he had never gone to china son now he had a place to grow and keep his business. that would be a great triumphant moment in the book, and i knew what that was going to be, the end. one day i spent a lot of time in bassett and hung out in the historic center for weeks at a time and really fell in love with these people and one of the things i noticed as i drove into bassett, the first factory, the first abandoned factory that i saw was called bassett superior minds and 3 years it was one of the most profitable factories in

the history of the industry. it made no end furniture really cheap, really profitable. in one month it made a one$.2 million just in profits. the community is proud of that. speed lines. they have a word they used to describe the furniture down the conveyor belt. and i saw it being abandoned and a friend called and said it is on fire. displaced workers came to watch it burn as if going to a funeral. talked about how it was like a funeral for everybody you noon so that was poignant and then they started to tear it down. it took some months and the very last scene which i am about to read from, i will read it to you, just knows that when this happened i knew it was how the

book should end because i found myself driving back and crying and i knew that what he had done as an out liars in the industry and in business and in general, what had happened to bassett was the story of what happened in so many southern towns, not just southern, but tennis shoes, head fulls to everything and i knew i had to end with those people back there. shouldn't read the whole thing. i won't read the whole thing. during one of my last trip bassett went on a tour, his family landed shortly after mr. j.d. was the company founder got his start. ran grandfather was the one that made all the lights in town blink when he flipped the switch on his boiler. more than anyone i interviewed for this book past wanted me to get the story exactly right to

honor the workers and pioneer owner's. it is history every time i banged against an uncomfortable truth. if you dig it up and it is true it is your job to tell it. 70 years old, still ran the center as a volunteer even though she had officially retired year before. volunteers bring in chocolate most days and whenever anyone make a 40 minute trip to the shop they stop at the midtown market. a store known for its chicken salad. the key being fresh chicken, middle of mail, no eggs. how does a chicken salad. the kitchen gifted by volunteers for hungry researchers and reporters all like? it was pat's daughter who wrote the history of mary hunter, mr. j.d.'s made and the namesake of mary hunter elementary school in seventh grade and mary hunter was the founder, john's grandfather j d bassett and his like pocahontas, mary huntwife s

there a long time noon gracie was still serving christmas dinner, still gardening her little patch, she liked to place a walker grandchildren insisted she is inside wheel barrow, then we'll the contraption to her vegetable plot. that way if the kids paid a surprise visit she could grab it and pretend to have been using it all along. john bassett caught her doing that before her death. during infrequent trips for bassett for board meetings in every stopped -- failed to stop by gracie's house to hug her and never failed to leave without handing her a quote nick a little piece of money. listen, he told me. when i go to the pearly gates and st. peter says to me to do you know? the first person i say will be greasy because i know she will put in a good word for me. a place like bassett takes time

to condemn. it is barb wire and blue heron, crumbling brick behemoth and tiny hillside trailers that astonishingly somehow still stand. it takes patience to pinpoint the soul of any community and the benefit of someone like pat ross who month after month and layer after layer helps me really see the effects of globalization of her beloved hometown. down to the street lights that eliminate the center at night. ever since bassett furniture stopped providing communal lighting presidents have solicited donations to pay for it but across 720 purple per year, some businesses did there -- gave up and had their light through from the polls. when i got around to asking pat 484 basket i have already seen from a disparate set of passenger seats. i had been chauffeured around town in a mercedes and in my subaru with junior thomas behind the wheel.

he still prefers driving over writing after all these years. he was another show for. i sat atop the roof of my car while bullet barber clutched my ankle to keep me from falling with my camera under the railroad tracks to recreate the ghost town version of a downtown bassett postcard from the 1930s. it was may of 2013 and pat wanted me to see something near her house. we passed her alma mater, john bassett hi, now a medical records storage facility owned by an old classmate who opened the former gym to senior citizen walker's two mornings a week. he also runs food and clothing banks to the school. we pass the company homes, some rented out to visiting trout fishermen or nascar fans watching to see the martinsville speedway race. the winner of martinsville as a regional symbol, a ridge with a grandfather clock. the clocks are no longer made in henry county hamlet of ridge civil way. they are made in shy like

everything else. halfway to our destination pat drove to an african-american cemetery behind the black church next door recycling center near mary hunter elementary. i had been wanting to see mary hunter's grave for months. pat waited in her car while i walked along the we joked roads and fallen head starnes. i found plenty of barber's but no mary hunter. rosella johnson had not been 3 years old when she died in 1920. gone but not forgotten read her head stone which was lying on its back covered in 6. seeing as the grave of the rev. moses more who died in 1929 i thought of the solace of many reconstruction era furniture workers must have taken in their churches and in the promise of the afterlife. the rev.'s parents had grown up slaves in henry county plantation. he was the -- by 1920 he was a 56-year-old lot of furniture worker living in the side and

lived in rented farmhouse with a white and six kids. i got goosebumps when i realized probably i had already seen his photo in the early old town picture. he was likely one of the lighter skinned black men in the black wrote holding overalls and wearing a hat. he was unencumbered and dignified with a holy bible sculpted into the top. at the bottom it said earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal. it was the glorious made day and we watched little and waiters fishing in the middle of the river. we found our destination across from the ridge overlooking the town. terry ferguson was about to get on his back home. he was a factory undertaker now hired after it the hazmat suits and demolition guys left, it was harry's job to put what was left of it underground. the concrete and brick had been

hauled here by trucks and 45,000 tons in also a landowner could use it as fill for the ravine behind his house. the rough end of the superior's run end would be to extend the wealthy man's line. if you told people in basset 20 years ago that i would be happy to date burying this plant would have said you were a complete fool. grass seed would be son at ground level as it already happened at this superior sight. broad spillman told me he didn't know what the company would do with all the expenses of one created by the factory demolitions. the company was already allowing town volunteers to hold weekly farmer's market in the old train depot and the grass would host the fall bassett heritage festival. perhaps the land behind superior was in proximity to the smith kind to the early system of greenway trails and broken in. maybe we can make it a quaint little cool destination sunday and use it to tell our little brands for reminding me of one

of the hardest foundation's economic development mantras, you can't move the river to china. two weeks later i found myself drifting toward the smith. there had been a drenching rain the week before and up river the dam was in powermaking mode. i've voted on a side greek for 30 seconds before my boat had been dismissed and a gentle paddle i envision turned into white water rafting instead. my guide was jim franklin, 73, flow fisherman who had run the bassett particleboard plant for 34 years. team named the abandoned factories that bristol standing as we swiftly passed them and pointed out where he called the concrete and risk from oldtown pleasing trunks just so on the riverbank to stave off erosion. when the river wasn't demanding full concentration, the team with wildlife, and a trio --

sweeping ahead before landing on a new surveillance perch. the air temperature was 64 degrees but the water as usual just 42 which was why people efficiency smith but rarely swim and why the trout find it ideal. my full immersion baptism came right after we rounded the bend near the old stanley furniture factory on a giant tree limb blocking most of the passage. jim paddle desperately through a narrow channel on the left. i made a critical mistake of hesitating which put me in exactly the worst position parallel to the logs before the current slammed me against it. the underwater plunge was as bone chilling, after being trapped between the 3 and a kayak i removed coughing and went to jim's canoe. we rode up the rest of the rapids together, him inside the boat and me with my arm over the ball. you are fine, now, you are fine. before long i wasn't fine. my feet went on hypothermia with

someone scrambling by the bank which was encrusted in poison ivy. jim helped with the canoe in a rushing river. i will meet you up the road he shouted disappeared around a curve. i emerge from the woods ten minutes later near a strip mall behind a family dollar store. my ponytail holder was submerged in the river along with my dignity and when i appeared from the brush with matted hair, ripped pants and many sandal's the women taking out the store trash was startled. i looked at like some form nick head who had stumbled out of a newspaper mug shot. she shook her head. i am not going to ask, she said. before long we were tracked down

jim. jim rescued my drenched reporter's notebook. the score all inside still legible somehow. the people of bassett wanted their stories told. [applause] >> all right. never listened to me talk long before. i know it is killing him. this is john bassett iii. he is the factory man. i will read a fun section. a lot of this book was not fun to write. it was learning about international trade laws, the tariff act of 1830. the know about the tariff act of 1930? it went to indonesia to interview the replacement workers overbear, it was a lot

of for a feature writer, i consider myself a feature writer, it was a lot of business that was dry to me and i tried to write the book that i would want to read so to bring the people in as much as possible, at that i could do a displaced factory worker putting all my cards on the table and a lot of it was just hard, interview lawyers and trying to understand stuff that wasn't familiar to me and reading the economist every week. that was hard. i did read it every week. but this part was really fun to right because after hundreds of phone calls, and you will go she is exaggerating. he hasn't called her a hundred times, he has called me probably 700 times. he has called three times just today. so this is fun to write and when

i wrote it, i nailed it so this is my introduction to john. this was in the 90s. >> 80s. >> like he has just broken out on his own and just left the furniture and now he is struggling, decided to strike out on his own in sumter, south carolina like it is just going to be him. launching the factory from scratch with three security guards and a personnel manager made for the loneliest climb of his career. at least he had upper level managers and the company's finance and legal departments and sumter had everything, the banks were not letting me another dime and i invested millions of like it easily go broke if this thing didn't fly. this was a top hypothetical case at harvard business school. my feet were in the stirrups. martha and garrett was the superintendent and head of the

plant predicted, his wife martha predicted williams would be a money-making venture and true enough within 60 days of producing its first piece the company was profitable. marissa predicted it as the spouse of every manager reporting to john bassett iii grew to understand there is no one in the industry works harder or longer hours. they know it with every appeal of his signature refrain. the telephone rings. he calls on christmas morning, make sure it is turned on so we don't ruin the stack of wood. recalls at 1:30 a.m.. the cabinet room giving us trouble all these months, i just decided he has got to go. he calls on your vacation and if you object, if i'm calling you i am working too. he calls on saturday when you are mowing the lawn and if you don't get to the phone on time he will accuse you of having screened your calls. after 9:15 every new year's day he called the previous year's

topsails person in and asked what have you sold for me yet this year? he calls occasionally to share dirty jokes. something frats guys from the 50s would tell. the call from the phone next to the weather is in one of the bathrooms of his home, calls from his car though he isn't sure what button to press if you call him back on his cell. recalls from his bed at new york's hospital for special surgery, still sweating from anesthesia after foot surgery he thought of one more thing he wants to tell me, the story of apollo 13, weighed the astronauts and the putin in houston worked day and night to fix the equipment, refused to accept failure and did not yield and guess what, they prevailed because they worked hard and smart, so can you. he is practically in tears when he calls after learning more people at stanley furniture will soon lose their jobs. he prefaces the conversation with this is off the record, this is off of everything, this

is just us girls. recalls and calls and calls, never identifies himself, never has to with the deep baritone drawl and the entitled sense of timing. who else would it be? he called garrett sell-off in the early days of getting the sumpter plant running usually at 5:30 in the morning and again at 10:00 at night that there's wife grabbed the phone, you trying to cut him out of all of his sex life? john bassett iii laughed so hard he gave their and a night or two off. still, his personal role at the telephone is simple, comprehensive and not open for discussion, quote, i don't call gentiles on easter weekend or jews on yom kippur war. any other time when he feels the need to lecture sort of a dirty joke or describe an idea that has just occurred to him he calls so ladies and gentlemen,

john bassett iii. noon bracket applause] >> she said she would be through in nine minutes. she wrote a beautiful book, she really did. this girl can write. [applause] >> last sunday after church i was at my club and getting ready

to play golf and we were on the practice tape and one of my good friends who is a member of the same club and has a home in new york city, he has a vacation home in north carolina and he says i am jealous. what do you mean you are jealous? he says i angeles. i called kathy last night and she was in new york and it was 9:00. i said what are you doing? and she said i am in bed with john bassett iii. [applause] >> you are going to find out what we did and how we did it so i am not going to touch upon that unless you would like to ask questions in the question

and answer period. i want to take my nine minutes and give you a little insight of why we did it and why i did it. i grew up as john bassett from bassett, va. but home of the bassett furniture industry. i don't know many people who can say is that. it was a sublet of an unusual position to be as a young man. i had wonderful parents, wonderful parents and they believed in teaching you what your responsibilities were and i can hear my mother today saying yes, you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, but you are no better than anybody else, and don't you ever forget that. she said you have a

responsibility to the people of this community and we expect you to live up to it. they would also tell me the story about the parable in the bible about one -- i could hear my father saying son, you were not born to bury her talents, you were born to use your talents. thoseyour talents, you were born to use your talents. those lessons stuck with me. back then i was a baptist. i am now episcopalian by the way. the episcopalians have more fun. so we do what we did, in 1902

when my grandfather started bassett industries he started in the furniture business because in henry county, it had never been cut before so we had the lumber. we have a wonderful labor supply that they needed manufacturing jobs. they were sharecroppers and farmers or whatever, but we needed some place, they needed some place to find steady work and then the railroad had just the western railroad had just gone through what became bassett, va. enabling them to make a product and ship it through the whole united states. back in those days you have a wagon and the mules to pull the wagon how do get this product except 30 or 40 miles and you

would never build a furniture industries that way. the railroad gave them the access to the american academy and they used it. they were hard-working, they were dedicated. we had wonderful people working for us. i have a telegram in my archives that i received from my father and it was three telegrams. back in those days they had marketing in michigan and the first telegram he was up there trying to sell furniture and the secretary sent him a telegram and said your factory is on fire and an hour later, he received a telegram and the said the fire is out of control from the secretary of the company and after that he received a telegram and it said everything

we have is burned to the ground. come home. j.d. bassett senior. that happens three times. it burned to the ground three times and rebuilt every time. you have to admire that type of spirit. so when my grandfather started the business at 19, i can assure you he had no idea what globalization was. when you had retailers in large cities like atlanta, they started retail because they were not going to start a furniture factory in the middle of atlanta. that is where the customers were so they did what was logical back in those days and my grandfather did what was logical. now we fast forward until the 1980s or 90s with globalization and our company and association supported nafta and the world

trade organization which we now refer to as wto. we were troubled that it would actually increase jobs in the united states, we would be making products we shipped to the rising middle class in china and asia and other ways is. that obviously did not come to pass. we were told we needed more modern and efficient factories which we agreed to do but they would level the playing field. everyone would be playing by the same set of rules. we set okay. that is not what happened. globalization did lower the price to the american consumer. you haven't benefited from globalization, i haven't benefited from globalization. the retailers, many of them

benefited from globalization because the savings they had, some of those savings they didn't pass along to us. they put it in their profits and there is nothing wrong with that. i am not saying i would do any differently but the retailers were able to buy from sources overseas as well as local. it devastated manufacturing. how many factories closed? 63,000 factories closed. over 300,000 furniture workers lost their jobs. those are the statistics that we were looking at. so you have to ask yourself, what am i going to do with this company? how are we going to prosper or even survive with this going on?

it was interesting. what we all did initially was we went to china and the chinese said look, let us make this product and we will sell it to you a you can sell it to your dealers and you don't have to have all those people, you don't have to worry about government regulations, you don't have to worry about hospitalization or retirement or anything else you deal with if you have a large labor force. it didn't take me long to figure out komatsu and as number one a lot of furniture factories, furniture companies were sending back engineers to teach them how to make furniture, people tell me how quickly they learned to make furniture, you can learn it pretty quick when teachers came from somewhere else and taught you how to do it. second, once we told customers, tried to ship the product, they knew where the customers were. it didn't take me long to figure

out this wasn't going to work. you are going down a path that is going to be the paths to your demise. so i pull out and we make no one hundred% of our products in the united states. our products are made here. [applause] >> how are we going to survive? frankly i felt we had an obligation to the people who work for us. i really did. our family over there the last hundred or so years had done very well, they really have. it paid for a lot of college tuitions and wonderful homes and vacations and so on so we would never have done it without the people who work in those

factories and this was our time to look after them. so when we learned about the petition, dumping his when you sell something in your country cheaper -- sell in another country cheaper than you selling your country or you sell a product that is under your costs and you are selling it under your cost so you can drive the other people out of business and then you get all the business and is recognized by the wto. 0159 countries who are in the wto recognize dumping as illegal trade. there are laws on the books from the 1930s in the united states that say dumping is illegal. some of the laws have vision revised but it has been on the

books since 1930. it is the law. the federal government never told us we had to pay a lawyer $75,000 to explain to us what our rights were. and this new money, a $20 bill, that is -- jackson on the $20 bill, the picture of jackson is larger and they put some colors in and did other things because they wanted to make it harder to counterfeit. united states government spent $33 million to advertise the new $20 bill. i was testifying in congress and i was criticized because i said you never tell american