tv Thomas Hager Electric City CSPAN June 27, 2021 10:00am-11:01am EDT
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western european countries for as being fellow muslims but rather viewed as apostates and they themselves are viewed as the righteous muslims. >> to watch the rest of this program visit c-span.org. use the search box near the top of the page to look for sarah kamali or the title of her book homegrown hate. >> i want to welcome you to the hudson library and that societies like that with ry thomas hager to discuss "electric city: the lost c history of ford and edison's american utopia". i'm kathy toombs, one of the adult services librarians at the hudson library and we have quite a few exciting (coming up in june and you can learn about and register for them at hudson library.org. also i'm very excited to say we will be offering live morning meditations, it and yoga classes outside our patio this summer.
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those classes will be on our website this week if you'd like to sign up. like if you're joining us on to you can put your questions in the q&a at the bottom of your screen and if you're joining us on facebook put your questions in the chat and we will get to as many as we have time for. one more thing, the learned how our local independent bookstore is selling copies of tonight'sbook there's a link in a check if you'd like to purchase one . but tonight i am delighted to welcome author thomas hager. publishers weekly calls ub illuminating portrait of a little-known chapter in american history. mister hager is an award-winning author of numerous books on the history of science and medicine including the alchemy of air, a jewish genius, doomed the scientific discovery spent the world what fueled the rise of and hand-drawn, plants powders and bills have shaped the history of medicine.
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he is the courtesy associate professor of journalism and mitigation at the university of oregon, so please get a warm virtual welcome to thomas hager. >> thank you. it's good to be here and to chat about electric city which is as kathy noted, i write mostly about the history of science and medicine. and this book is really less about science per say although there's a fair development, development of the electricity industry in thebook . it's more about people and hang on, i want to make sure. that we are on and working here. >> you are good. >> sorry, i got an error
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message. so it's more about people and about some really when i thought were fascinating people in american history and how they tried to change the history of the united states. the two main characters in the book are henry ford, the auto industry list, the man who ford motor company and made for a number one selling car in the world in the 1920s area and his buddy and let my friend, thomas edison. thomas edison of course as we all know him as the inventor of the electric incandescent knlight light bull that we use , well, we don't use electricals like he invented but that much anymore but he had a tremendous effect on the development of technology in america. it wasn't just delightful. edison also did thephotograph .
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the early versions of the camera movie projector and really changed american lights and a dozen ways that are fundamental that we are as people, he did that through his inventions. he was known as the wizard of menlo park. menlo park in new jersey was where he had his laboratory. where you made his inventions and by the time of the setting of this book, the book is set in the years just after world war i and in the early 1920s so the years i'd say five years eaon either side of the 1920s at the heart of this book, during that time edison was already a revered elder statesman in america. he was the best loved americans that lived during that time. thomas edison.
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everybody knew what edison had done for the united states. and so it was quite an event when edison teamed up with henry ford. and tried to create this project, this enormous project that is the subject of my book. so it happened like this. edison and ford knew each other and ford was a younger man, one of the first jobs forgot when he was a young man was not in automobiles but in electricity. he worked on electrical dynamos as a young man and one of the first jobs forgot was working at thomas edison's electric company in detroit michigan. ford had grown up in michigan
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and he was a poor farmboy and he hated farm work. he did the drudgery of farm work and he hated working outside in all weather. the kind of stuff armors have to do to make a living in this world were things henry ford really didn't like. henry ford was a smart kid and he had a natural aptitude for machinery and he loved tinkering with machines, early machines. he grew up and came of age in the 1880s, in 1890 and during that period, steam engines were all the thing. steam engines were huge planking affairs. they were used to power factories and out on the farm they had steam engines on wheels that they could roll
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from farm to farm and fire up to help with the harvest so you could have an engine brought to your farm. these things were huge. they were like locomotives. they were called road locomotives as a matter of fact because they didn't need tracks to run. they had to take iron wheels but the engines themselves were the size of railroad locomotives or a little smaller. they would roll from farm to farm and they would use the steam engine to power a series of belts and police to do the various farm chores thatneeded to be done to harvest . these road locomotives were henry ford's dreammachine . he was obsessed with road
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locomotives. he learned everything he could about how they worked and he was a genius at seeing how engines fit together so he learned on our about machinery and he stuck with machinery the farm work behind. he couldn't wait to get into a machine shop in the working for thomas edison, is that of his power in 1890s were started working with as for was talented of course and he came to the notice of his superiors and his superiors brought henry ford to an edison company event, kind of a luncheon one day at which thomas edison was present. and the two men met so edison is established an older, rich and famous and ford is nobody
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and the two of them start a conversation at this lunch. the young whiz kid who's adept at machines and the older guy who understands inventions they start talking and what they're talking about is an idea henry ford has four building a new kind of automobile engine. ford has been playing around with the idea of powering an automobile with gasoline and he's inventing and improved gasoline engine in his kitchen in his garage. he was putting together bits and pieces of stuff in his spare time and trying to make this revolutionary new gas engine and edison is fascinated. edison listens to this young man and thinks he's got something going on at the two
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of them become friends but it was years later after ford built his engine and put his engine into an automobile that was the most reliable and least expensive automobile the world had ever t seen . it's called the model t. he invented the multi- then invented a way to make model tees that make them fabulously cheap. it was called the assembly line factory. it was a more important i think invention than the multi-itself where it cut down costs tremendously and ford put his factory together with his automobile and flooded the world with multis . everybody wanted one. this was a revolution in america because up until the time of henry ford, automobiles and then
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tremendously expensive. they were rich people's playthings. there were luxury toys. and what he did was he created an automobile that was tough enough to work on a farm. you could take it under roads . it was easy to fix. everything was very durable and it was dirty. so you could afford a model t car and suddenly everybody wanted one. between 1910 and 1920, during that decade model t became the first best-selling, just a phenomenal best-selling car worldwide . it was a tremendous moneymaker for ford. he owned his own company and by the time 1920 came around ford was industrialist on a scale unlike anyone else in the world.
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he was the richest man in the world and one of the most powerful but that is the setting for the story . the older edison, the younger ford, other than interested in technology, both of them interested in no new ways of powering industry and it tells the story of how they tried to create a utopian city in the middle of america that would incorporate all their best ideas and turn those ideas into a new way of living for americans. so i want to take just a moment and talk about what it was they wanted to change not just about american technology american society. my book is about an experiment that too great and powerful men tried to undertake on a message in northern alabama on the river
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, the tennessee river in northern alabama and the tennessee river is a big part of american history. it's sort of all associated with daniel boone and the movement of american west of the allegheny and appalachian mountains and it's a huge source of stories about the birth of america happen in the tennessee valley. by the time that ford and edison were interested in the area in the1920s , the tennessee river area in northern alabama is one of the poorest parts of the united states. it was tremendously i guess you could use the word backward. it was almost as if that part of the united states had gotten lost in the 1700s.
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and had not advanced into the 20th century. part of the problem was the civil war and it never really resulted fully so it got that back by the civil war. part of the reason was that the people there tended to be small farmers who worked very tough farms. much of the farming happened in the hills at this hilly area in western tennessee. it's the southern part of tennessee and the northern part of alabama . a lot ofhills and a lot of hill people . but people make fun of now as hillbillies lived there. it was a tough way to make a living o. farming, a small farm up in the hills where the soil wasn't very good. and the roads weren't very good. and there was no electricity and there was no healthcare.th
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people lived in cabins that had big holes in the roof. you read descriptions of the way people live in those days in part of the country and it really is like looking back a couple hundred years. they will wash their clothes and washing pots. they lit a fire in there to heat the water and they had very very poor medication with the rest of the world. so when henry ford and thomas edison decide to go down there and change everybody's life, it wasn't just going into a typical 1920s town. it was like going back to 1780 or 1800 and announcing to the people in an area of the tennessee river drainage area is about the size of
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england. you asked people in an area that you were going to pull them out of the 1780s and into the 1920s in one fell swoop. they're going to do it ,by building the world's biggest dam across the tennessee river and using all the electricity produced by that dam to power industry without using coal. it would use electrical energy and it would be entirely clean. renewable energy is what we would call it now. but you would invent industries that worked for the electricity instead of burning coal. that was an important step forward because edison and ford built their vision around the idea of clean renewable energy. they both really did like coal. they thoughtcoal was dirty and polluting and dangerous . that it was unhelpful. they wanted to get away from coal so they were going to
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build an entire city built around electricity. this was of course edison's forte. the world's biggest dam, the world's largest powerplant using the world's largest horse of electricity would power industries up and down the tennessee river. what they planned was a new kind of city. they wanted to reshape society around the idea of a new kind of workmanship and very quickly what henry ford had in mind when he was thinking about this experiment in northern alabama was he was thinking about what a mistake he made in petroleum. and that the ford factories, huge factories were making model tees were in and around detroit. the city of dearborn, bay suburb of detroit and in detroit proper. he had built two huge factories. he was in the process of
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building the world's biggest factory at the time that he was thinking about this experiment in alabama. he built these factories in these cities to be completely changed the nature of detroit . his factories employed so many people in such a small area that they created slums which workers will were well paid and he really cared about his workers. he was very concerned about his workers wages and living conditions but he couldn't help the fact when you told a huge factory and you concentrate people in a small area they tend to live in rentals, in city centers, entitlements. the result is the slum living . to a great extent. and along with that comes an increase in crime and device and these were things that henry ford hated area he had this idea in mind that
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america should be much like the small-town, midwest america farm town that he grew up in . it's a few brick buildings downtown. a white church on the hill and you bring a gristmill by the pond. this was the idealized america that he wanted for his erworkers. he thought this was the best way for people to live. you want to create that in northern alabama on a vast scale area so he wanted to have an enormous industrial center, a city 75 miles long employing 1 million workers. he wanted all of that but he wanted it without any coal pollution, without any vice or crime. he wanted his workers to live on small farms . farming a few acres in their spare time so that they can bring in their own crops and then working in electrically powered industry.
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the rest of the time so that they could have the best of both city lifeand country life . at the same time. they would all drive to instead of a single huge factory like he been building in detroit , you wanted a spring of small factories, electrical power factories up and down the river . especially for 75 miles. and around each of those factories would be these small chland leases or sales to workers so that they could have five or 10 acres of farm . if they wanted to and they could afford to do it because he would offer financing and he would offer advice on how to farm it and he would rent them farm machinery to farm it. then they were done with their crops which would only take a few weeks for figure. they could go to their any jobs and they could make a regular wage and improvetheir land . educate their kids and so on. so he built this institution around a new kind of american
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life. that was what he and thomas edison tried to create in northern alabama. this book tells the story of how they tried to do that and it tells the story of whythey fail . and finally, the book tells what happened next. the story moves eventually towards the creation of one of the greatest achievements of government in the united states.n a project called the tennessee valley authority. the tva area which many of you have heard of. this book explains how the tva started and it started out of ford and edison's vision. eventually ford despite his popularity, despite his name, despite his money eventually ford's plans ran hand on into the us government. which also had claim on the power clgeneration and so on in the tennessee valley area and
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for five years, ford and the us government fought each other over who would control this area, this potentially private kingdom in northern alabama. who would ford get his wish and build his city. or with the us government stopped him and do something else. eventually, the government found a way to stop henry ford and they moved in and they built their own version of this new industry. this new way of living area and they called it the tva. the book tells the story of how the tva grew outof ford years as well. one last item . before we get into q&a on the book. the sign-up is this. along with everything else that was going on in the early 1920s ford was trying to make a national case towards the government to
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give him what he wanted. so that he can build his city. you he wanted control over a vast area. he wanted all of the cities out of the world's biggest dam and he one of the government out of it. that didn't happen. what did happen was that henry ford decided that the easiest way for him to get what he wanted might be if he ran for president. so the book tells the story of how close henry ford came to being president of the unitedstates . this is a little-known story as well. but he was a serious candidate for several years and the mid-1920s. and he a number of observers and i've got to admit i'm one of them think that he had as good a shot as anyone had at the time ofbeing the president of the united states . he would have loved learned on the platform that incorporated the ideas of
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this electric city that he wanted to build. his vision for america. it was what you wanted to run on. and for various reasons didn't happen until i told hethe story in the book but we came very close to having a president in the 1920s who would have been one who didn't have a day of government service behind them, who came of private industry. who was accustomed to running a duone-man lost shop. he was accustomed to being the boss of everything at ford motorcompany . he would have runthe government the same way . and yet he was the nominally popular, people across the middle of america, farmers, workers in factory workers, people who look upon him as a genius and would have loved the idea of him running the united states. that almost happened.
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and the reason it didn't happen onwas also tied up with this story of this utopian experiment so that was in the book that i got into. that was the book that resulted in the long and richer story of electric city. and i hope everyone igets a chance to read it really open for questions if anybody has them. >> let's get started with some questions then. first question we have is how did you get interested inthis piece of american history . >> well, it was sort of an accident. you had mentioned a previous book that i wrote called the alchemy of ever.er one of my earlier books was about the development of this sounds very exciting and you say it like this but it's the
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department of the fertilizer industry in the united states and worldwide. and it turns out to be much more interesting than that wouldsound . for various reasons but i spent a few years learning about the fertilizer industry and as a result the book came out and the book was kind of ahit especially with farmers and it was a surprise hit . and i got invited to talk to a lot of places around the united states and one of the places i went to was in northern alabama. i'd never been to northern alabama in my life and i had this idea. if any of the viewers had read james work let us now praise famous men it was the book in the 1930s that detailed life in appalachia in this course part of the united states and that was what ithought northern alabama was aslike . my mindset was this is a really poor area still.
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and then i got to northern alabama, branded as a modern international airport in the town of huntington. i'm sorry, huntsville northern alabama. i was taken to a city of all cities called florencealabama . and florence was a delightful place. the people were wonderful. it was a four-star international hotel up on the hill and i was blown away. so this was part of the country came as a complete surprise to me and i got interested in the fact that it was actually very prosperous. it was up-to-date. there are more views per square mile innorthern alabama than any part of the united states . it's the site of space research and international
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agricultural research. and there's all this stuff going on so anyway i was fascinated . i did my talk from the way out of town. i'm like getting ready to go back to the airport. and fly back home to oregon. and the local fellow who was my driver picked me up in the car, we're heading to the airportand we have a little extra time . he knew i was interested in the wiser history so he took me out and for a side trip we had time to take a little detour off our route area right down the road, this these holding remains of an old fertilizer tanker, that's, mwhat you wanted to show me . this ozymandias world out in the middle of the field of what had to have been a gigantic factory. that was interesting to me despite what's the story
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behind this, how did this end up in the field in northern alabama? but what was more interesting is what happenednext . the driver because we had a couple of extra minutes saw how interested i was and he drove me a little ways away to another field in northern alabama. and as sort of a field of yellowing grass and i couldn't figure out what he was getting at. we drove out into this field and we saw that the field was actually a network of streets that had been laid out. like city streets with curves and fire hydrants. old-time fire hydrants. and street signs, for streets that were never built. they were never finished. this was the remains of a city called ford city. it was a city that had been planted, had started construction and had never been completed. but here i am in you know,
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it's almost like being in egypt looking at the ruins of the desert. there's >surprising remains of a civilization that never occurred . it was a combination of old city and the gigantic remains of this huge factory. but it made me wonder what happened here? what was the story? so naturally i went to henry ford. i started learning about ford and that led to the restof the book . it's just picking up a little as writers do sometimes things have a little thread and you follow the thread and you find the whole fabric . >> ..
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tightens the technology are a new thing but they are really not. for an edison a decade or two earlier would be tightens the technology of their time. i think the parallels are obvious. all of these men have built, elon musk is a legitimate technological innovator. zuckerberg i know less about. let's say elon musk. elon musk has this restless imagination eddies into electric cars and space travel, hyper technology and all kinds of stuff. he reminds meol very much of hey ford and thomas edison. these people found success in one technological field, changed
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allies for a lot of americans. then there restless minds couldn't stay with what, with the success they had. they moved on and did more. they try to conquer new areas. elon musk is always testing the boundaries of what he can do i think. we haven't seen the last of his innovations about that. henry ford after his success with the model t and the assembly line plant, really wanted to stretch himself out into this role and i think that is a factor that happens to people who become highly successful in business and a industry, is they begin to think their ideas, because t they word for them in one area of industry, their ideas and their thinking would probably be
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better for everybody. so they try and apply, they take their successes in one area and apply to larger and larger groups. i think that is a thing that happens. it's certainly true of henry ford. henry ford wanted to take what he saw as common sense ideas about what was good for people, and he wanted to apply that to essentially his own private kingdom. it didn't happen but it would have been interesting to see if it had happened, it would have been an interesting experiment because had he gotten whatg he wanted we would have an enormous part of the united states that was really under the control of one industrialist. it would've would haveo having a 75-mile long factory that employed 1 million people and completely dominated and
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every of central united states, or thehe heartland of the united states. that domination is something that didn'trt happen. the government didn't allow it to happen in the 1920s. it would have been interesting to see what would've happened. i see definite parallels. not that elon musk going to mars is the same thing, but who knows? >> you mentioned about ford coming president. do you think he would've been a good president and to think he would have made his whole plan happen had he been able, had he been elected? >> had he been elected he would have made it happen, i have no doubt. the only thing standing in m his way, the only reason it didn't happen even withoutut being president was that a small group of concerned senators in the senate of the u.s. congress,
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small group of senators got t together to stop him. henry ford was a very, very smart guy. he did a very good job of creating paper with presidents. e presidents that were buddies were harding and coolidge. harding was pro-business republican president. he and henry ford went camping together, they talked the same language, they were buddies. as long as harding was president everything would go ford's way. that was great. but then harding died suddenly while in office. he passed away what was probably a stroke or heart disease.
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and calvin coolidge is vice president became president at that time. he was much cooler on ford. that created a problem. coolidge talked a good line but he did not follow through to give ford his support. instead, a group of senators in the u.s. senate formed an opposition group they wanted government control instead of private control for this enormous resource of what turned out to be a series of more than a dozen dams on the tennessee river. eventually ford's image of a single damn turned into more than a dozen it is an enormous project. the senators wanted that to be owned by the people of the united states not henry ford. so they formed an opposition group had by a guy named george morris he was an old
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senator from a nowhere state from nebraska. he is a heroic figure. he is a maverick never let anybody tell him what to think. with the allies and the falsehoods where he saw them he did not care what political party or how powerful you were if you thought you were lying he would tell you and he led the opposition to ford so george stopped henry ford eventually. that story is in the book. however, if he had not been there, that one man, george and his friends come it's a very good chance ford would have gotten what he wanted even without being president.
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as the presidential elections heated up after harding's death, and ford considered running, part of his calculus was if he got into the white house, he could make his dream happen on the tennessee river and make the utopian city happening could build it because he could circumvent the congress to the extent he needed to get the votes he needed. he came very close anyway and as president he would have the levers to pull to make it happen. i think he would have been president if he had run seriously. think the reason he didn't run was because he made a deal with coolidge, a backroom deal i present the evidence in the book ford and coolidge got together in the white house and has to deal and henry ford
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agreed not to run for president that meant coolidge could run and in exchange coolidge would push for ford's control of this project. that was the deal that was struck. it was a secret deal and controversial. there is evidence that it happened. but george morris got a hold of the scandal and found out about the secret meeting and blasted it all over the media. once it became a public scandal, coolidge backed off. henry ford by then already said he would run for president. so ford took himself out of running for president prematurely and he never got the project but he also never got to be president.
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if he was president my idea he would be up president unlike any we had ever had. he would have been an autocrat. he would've been unable to deal effectively with groups like congress or the press. he just want his own way it would have been a very interesting four years. but it didn't happen. in fairness ford didn't really want to be president. he knew he was lucky to have the job he had as the world's richest one-man band this enormous profitable company and could do what he wanted and tell anybody what he wanted he did not have to make nice and kiss babies and he knew that. he was not built to be a politician. he knew it. especially his wife. she was dead set against ford
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being president and she was a powerful figure in his life. when she told him she didn't want him to be present - - president that had an effect. >> interesting about the press that he was a publicity genius it sounds like that contradicts what you just said. >> i said he could not work with the press if he was president. but as a private citizen and industrialist, he maintained a very large public relations office in ford motor company. and it grew over the years and was very powerful. he was a genius at publicity. so in addition to everything else, he had the most positive media coverage you could imagine everybody was interested in what henry ford was doing but yet this folksy guy who had a fifth grade
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education, his nickname at the time was uncle henry like a member of your family. he spoke plainly and did not try to obfuscate he was an enemy of wall street and bankers which most workers in america were at the time as well. and americans loved him. that was doing great part to the fact he had this media relations army working for him that grew over time to include essentially what people said was a private police force to investigate enemies as well. but the point is he had to work with the press at that level. he did not know how to work with the press as a public servant he'd never been a public servant and that is a different role but in any case
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it's the difference between politics and business henry ford was site and is highly successful in one field. but to be fair to the journalist at the time to newspaper reporters they always gave henry ford outbreak. they reported public interest features what he wore to an event. they focused on that. because they knew they could sell papers on uncle henry and that was important to the media. had he become president there would be the automatic opposition with the attacks on ford. and another story told in the
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book is weak point in addition to the man of the people persona with a vicious anti-semite. he did a terrific damage i think by using his public relations arm to attack jewish citizens around the world and in the united states in particular. he blames, it was a form of anti- semitism that has to be read to be believe that was a week point that he had as well. so not every group in america was behind him. the middle swath of america, the midwest and south were very much behind ford's plan. the east coast and west coast were not and they were more
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dubious about his claims. he was a popular figure but as a politician he think it would have been very difficult for him. >> another question did the alabama plan city have any relationship in brazil can you compare and contrast quick. >> fort landy a came out a few years ago another huge forward project it was an attempt to make a rubber empire in south america in brazil. that's a great book. thank you for bringing that up. that happened a little later. after ford was blocked from doing his utopian city after his plan with edison fell through and the government stepped in, he looked for other ways to use that same
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energy and one of the projects that he did had the city on the tennessee river happened i don't think fordlandia would have happened in the same way. that was the scale that ford liked to play at. he did projects he did not do little things. the irony i think that the end result of all this planning is probably best exemplified by a park that he built in michigan near his factory. what he decided to do and put a lot of energy into late in his life, he tried to create
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the america he wanted as a theme park. so if you ever go to dearborn i recommend you visit the ford museum. a beautiful facility and it has every car that ford ever on - - ever made i'm pretty sure and a number of machines. it's the story of a tremendous american success story. there is a wonderful archive there i spent a week at the archive researching the book and then afford component which is essentially a theme park. in idea he got late in life to create the america that he thought was a true america. he would by the birthplaces of famous americans including his
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own in the house eager up and would move it from the farm in michigan to this park and he said it down and created a little farm around it. he bought thomas edison's workshop and moved it to dearborn and sat in the park and he bought neil hawthorne's birthplace. and the wright brothers shop where they sold bicycles. he would collect buildings the way people collect china plates he would bring them to dearborn and put them in this park with a place that you can see american architecture laid out and there is essential part of it and is like henry
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ford stream of americana. it has a white church house with a steeple. and a pond. and to beautiful houses with an old colonial in. it is remarkable to me he went from wanting to build a 75-mile working city to this charming but unusual themepark. anyway if you are up in that part go visit. >> we are not too far from michigan here. one more question from the patrons. do you have any knowledge or information of the adversarial relationship henry ford had with rockefeller? please share the story and the outcomes. >> i do not. i did not study rockefeller at all for this book i did get
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rockefeller and ford other projects he was very much involved in the science of america so from that standpoint in the old one - - the only overlap i came across between ford and rockefeller it's another little-known story but one i have not fully research so i'm not ready to talk about with a broad outline he made his money off of cars. john d rockefeller made his money off the oil to run the cars. around the time of world war i it look like the world was
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running out of oil natural oil reserves were going to be much smaller and there was great worry that the world would run dry of oil and if there was no more oil than rockefeller wouldn't make money and ford wouldn't make money. at the same time, just after world war i the germans who were defeated in the war were looking for ways and they came up with a plan to make synthetic oil and perfect a very difficult method technologically to take call from the german coal mines and turn into automobile fuel into gasoline essentially or air period on - - airplane fuel.
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so they make gasoline for cars out of coal. and that project for synthetic oil was very interesting both to rockefeller and to ford. but they have been destroyed or lost or are not available to the public around this project but essentially it would have been in collaboration between two of the biggest industries in the united states and then to develop that synthetic oil in germany so ig far been in standard oil there is some evidence that they
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did, collaborate in between the two wars to develop the new industry. there were shares of stock exchanged intellectual property past back-and-forth but the problem was as it turned out later that hitler came to power in the early thirties and ig far been was not surprised and became a nazi. and the work that ford and rockefeller in standard oil were doing became very problematic at that point and that continued into the not see era. - - not see era i don't know if anybody would dig out the record they think they have been destroyed or kept away from the public.
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but that did occur i did not look at rockefeller and ford. >> for those who may not know much, how much of ford's dreams were developed by the government and what was edison's involvement quick. >> good question. edison dropped out of the process. edison believe i - - he helped ford as a favor to the threat once the going got rough and to stiffen the opposition, some of edison's thinking came under attack he pretty much dropped out before the government finally took over control of the project.
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so what did they do with his ideas and that's cover that link in the book and it raises an interesting question about the relationship between public and private projects in the united states. this was a large-scale project that involved a lot of people that had power in northern alabama and the tennessee area. and it naturally raised concerns about public control and public resources. the most important is the question of public control of rivers. it is commerce and flood control and irrigation only thing we need rivers for came into play because the government didn't want to give
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ford control of the whole river but if he had control of the dnc would have control over how it was developed and for the public good or private good. the question still resonates today. who is best in charge? is it more effective or is government more concerned getting the value out of public resources to be in charge of large projects like this. it came out in favor of the government. the government take over the project forward eventually after his deal with coolidge, for dropped out. and the government took over. george morris designed the government project in the
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deaths the depression it was already an area that was economically troubled and the depression was crushing to people in the south of the united states. which is why they were attracted to ford's idea. he promised economic revival. when the government took over they came in and finish the dams and finish them in a different way they were not just concerned with electric power. that was part of it but flood control and irrigation. and public access to parks and to the lakes that built up
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behind the dams. and what they wanted to do as an important part of the new deal for america to create jobs during the depression but do it in ways that benefited all americans is much as possible. a dams got built, the lakes are establish there is more coastline in northern alabama than the rest of the united states. a string of lakes that goes on and on and is beautiful. in this project was finished and the electric power began to flow. and industries began to come in it was all ford stream except industries he not would have chosen but they required allied of electric power. they started to come in and as i said earlier when you go there now, it is a wonderful
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area. it is a lovely area. it has caught up with the rest of the united states. and there are real questions and ford might not have been a better choice and they go over the dynamics with that and it is complex but the book goes into would we really have been worse off? it seems this is an enormous success story but i made the argument and it is fair to make it would almost be as good as henry ford and to be more efficient there is no easy answer it has to be taken on a case-by-case basis. tga was life changing and ford
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would have done that also. we end up with a very difficult question but a good question. >> well, i think it's time for us to wrap it up tonight. i want everyone, this is a book you want to look for, we've been talking about tonight and i want to thank you, thomas hager, for being here with us, i think everyone who joined us tonight and we hope to see all again soon at our next author talk. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
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