>> c-span shop store a collection of c-span products browse to see what is new your purchase will support our nonprofit information and you can order the congressional direct with contact information for members of congress and the biden administration go to cspanshop.org. >> hello everyone. and welcome it and polluting our visitors and viewers from c-span. i am a jim kelly director of the center for global security analysis and proud to be cosponsoring thisos webinar by "lincolnomics" with our partners the museum of american finance in the cfa society of new york.

purpose driven portal. it is particularly timely in conjunction with the museum of americanjuf finance. during the presentation please enter your questions by typing them in a q&a session and the bottom of the zoom screen. will be addressing as many questions as possible after the presentation. lastly as a participant in today's webinar you will be entered into a raffle to win r a free e-book of "lincolnomics". winners will be notified at the end of the week. now i would like to turn it over too david cowan president of finance who will introduce our speaker, thank you. >> thanks jim it's always great to be back with you, the cabellll eat school, our friends

at the cfa. this is the third time i've had the pleasure to introduce john. the first time i introduced him he had written ten books is that that was impressive. the second time he's at the 16 an hour up to 19 books. congratulations on that this is particularly timely because of part of it is discussing infrastructure as we know. congress is debating itin infrastructure bill and has pondered several times throughout the book, what would lincoln do. john's prolific writing includes over 1000 columns and articles in places like the "new york times", the wall street journal, reuters, and bloomberg. but most importantly of course our own magazine our financial history in an article based on the book. be in the spring sometime next month.

cnn -- cnbc, msnbc to pbs. a native of illinois and during his childhood he visited many tourist destinations. he continued onn doing that as adults around the country with various sites. therefore when you read the book there are several great appendices of the various lincoln tourist destinations. now john and has been a very difficult 12 or 13 months for this country. so please tell us, what would lincoln do? >> thank you for that generous intro. it is always a pleasure to speak at the museum of american finance thank you so much for our great sponsors from the school of the business the center for global business analysis, the society of new york and all of you for

attending this zoom session on what i hope will be a revealing new look at abraham lincoln and infrastructure. the story starts in 1828. a young man is taking a flat boat, transporting goods, agricultural produce from southern indiana on the ohiona river, down the mississippi to new orleans. along the way he discovers two things. he sees people who are enslaved do not have the same economic opportunity to advance their own station. it is a moral evil. he also sees the importance of transporting goods to market

and having access to those markets no matter where you live. if you are a rural farmer wherever in the country you do not have to go through this labyrinth on what was in the interstate system on the nation's large rivers to get there. this young man was abraham lincoln. he took another trip out of springfield, illinois, 1828 was a really important year. that is when the eries canal opened. that gave new york city which became one of the greatest ports in the world, access to the markets west into the great lakes. at the time chicago is not even a city it was a swamping trading post. very inaccessible because the only way of getting down to t theg mississippi river was through an ugly portage called mud lake. even in 1673, two explorers

said hey, there should be a canal here. if you connect the chicago river to great michigan, the great lakes, new new york city and get to new orleans. and onto the city. that was one of the first impressions that young abraham lincoln had as the nation was growing in the 1830s it was really a time we don't study a whole lot. we mostly skip from the revolution to the civil war. there is a lot of history in between. one of the reasons i wrote the book is because i wanted to know how did our country develop? what did beat due to where we are today? and eventually what do we need to do to get deeper into the future it is a more equitable present w.

what was really important about that one trip it was a very huckleberry for an like trip for lincoln change his world view, change his thinking, the way he said things in public. one of his first camp pain planks when he ran for the general assembly he was in springfield illinois still a young man inie his 20s, failed at running two stores, tried surveying, was splitting wood, was doing anything to make ends meet. he had some debt, a partner to store left them high and dry bird he had to pay off those debts. he did all of this will been very curious about the world, and markets and economics. things that would transform not only his life but the life of all rural americans. and even people in cities. he proposed something very interesting.

he said we need to build a canal from springfield all the way to the illinois river which would facilitate a great newport and access to the markets in new orleans and further south. and also create a canal that would later be called the illinois and michigan canal that would connect chicago to the illinois river. it is only about 96 miles. and the third thing that was pooh-poohed at the time because everybody thought it was going to be way too expensive was a major railroad line to connect a whole state to the eastern markets of the time. that railroad is going to call the illinois central. he worked with steven douglas a great rival throughout life inin politics to get this done. the illinois legislature passed a massive infrastructure plan and then promptly went bust. it was undercapitalized, the

canal had to take some time off because they did not have the money to hire irish laborers to get paid almost nothing to dig it by hand. but that was something that had to be done in order to open up chicago, the great lakes, and the rest of illinois to global markets. lincoln saw this early, he campaigned for it and he was fairly successful of convincing people this should be done. he wanted to put rural farmers and anybody who is not living near a big city or saltwater port on equal footing with everybody else. how do you do this? you create transportationn routes, lincoln was fairly successful as a young assembly man. but what was w more important is he introduce this concept based on henry clay's american system that if you built infrastructure that would

create economic progress. this was a fundamental to the whig view of the world and the united states. henry clay was a wig, they were very much into building infrastructure and tariffs to pay for them. internal tariffs. they did this at a time, they call that the era of good feelings. i am never quite sure why they call itte that. the biggest thing at that time was to build canals all over the country. to connect to these major river systems that were interstates then. of course or railroads took off in the following decade in 1840s. they became this huge interstate system, really took off because the canals had ceded the growth. what had happened with lincoln first proposed is little canal out of springfield, was he

knew anyplace where the canal was at a conjunctionl with another river system in this case the illinois, a lot of commerce and development would take off. and, this is very little known it was an avid planner. he planned a town at the intersection of this canal called huron as inal lake huron. it of course was never built. i sawui the plans in the research and something i had never known about lincoln. then of course he moved on to become a lawyer and make a little more money. he was a very successful lawyer any kind of dropped out of politics until 1854. now in the interim america's growing at a rapid pace. the eye and m canal the illinois michigan canal, opens up in 1848. whatns happens? it creates this major city on

the other end of it, chicago. chicago, remember it was a dumpy little swampy area right on lake michigan. and it becomes a major shipping point. it becomes the busiest port in the country when the canal is finished for at least another decade. by 1900 the population growth is so explosive that it becomes the fastest growing city in the world at the turn-of-the-century. that was facilitated by the idea that lincoln champion along with steven douglas. even more importantly illinois central railroad which really was built to supplement what was going up and down the canalses becomes the longest a railroad the world by 1850. eventually it goes from the northwest tip of illinois all the way to new orleans. but not until after the civil war. in that case it becomes a major transit route during the

civil war. so, keep those two things in mind.in these are two immense developments in the history of the country of the midwest. it links eastern markets to western markets to the southern port. it's globalization and a very small sense. but in a very growing sense. now what happens in the civil war comes along? we know what lincoln says. we know the house divided speech we know about the lincoln douglas debates. we start going into some of the material and found something very interesting that he said literally in the first debate with steven douglas in 1858 he was running for senator at that time against douglas. douglas had controlled the illinois democratic party. at that time senators were not directly elected they were elected by state legislatures.

he became the senator. what happened was lincoln and talking about slavery made a another argument. this was during the first debate. he said you know, every man has a right to earn his own bread. i am o paraphrasing, to be on equal footing with everyone. so this is lincoln's view of economic progress that you have a right to offer your labor for pay period that you have the opportunity to ascend the economic ladder and he use those words, economic ladder how do you move up? how do you avoid being the back woodsman all your life how do you do that? that is part of the american system you've grown up to learn in our history. but there is more to it than that. here's something even more exciting. this is another side of plots and the whole lincoln story

that during his i would not call it exile than his estrangement from politics which lasts roughly from the time he leaves the general assembly to roughly 1854 when douglas passes the nebraska act allowing for slavery in the western territories, lincoln comes to the realization that what is really important here other than ending the evil of slavery we still need to pay attention to infrastructure. 1847 only term in the house of representatives. he actually gives a very long speech. one of his longest speech ever on i infrastructure. why is it important have ports, canals, railroads? what is it me to the health of the future of the nation? lincoln thought it was essential. he was disparaging president polk at the time for fighting

the mexican war and neglecting this huge national issue. keep in mind that up until lincoln's era, many of the founding fathers, many southerners thought federal funding was unconstitutional. james monroe himself said in anond annual message, even befoe the canal, i like the i idea, we should do things like that. but it is not in the constitution. so that was used as an argument against federal funding of infrastructure for decades, decades before the civil war. so lincoln is elected in 1860. there ishe the secession of the southern states. lincoln has to go into washington by secret route because of the assassination plot attempts. hen gets there and the civil warr starts. now, and prosecuting the civil war lincoln's record is very

well known. but he had embedded in some of his very basic messages were very foundational ideas. raising through economic progress but what did he favor? first of all the transcontinental railroad. it became a very popular idea in 1840s. john see if fremont ran for president against buchanan, campaigned on that. he was one of the first republicans, the republican party does not come along to the mid- 19th century, 1850s. the new republican party is against slavery and for the transcontinental railroad. lincoln, havingli represented the illinois central as a lawyer knew the importance of it. he favors that, mentions it in one of his annual messages which were then the state of the union speeches, mentions a whole bunch of otherot things. he is the first president to

do a telegraph message transcontinental. he gets a message from san francisco and he loves the telegraph as we know from the civil war he learns and spends a lot of time the telegraph room getting dispatches and the various battles. first years of the war went very badly for the union. and of course lincoln is shuffling generals. he's trying to get his troops for the need to be. mostar as it turns out are the railroad engineers who became generals. they later become active in the transcontinental railroad. here is what is even a remarkable. this god awful bloodshed 700,000 people lose their life. the majority lose their lives in the camps to various diseases. jip theory, pneumonia, there is no cure for them they have no idea what is going on.

does not come along until 20 or 30 years later. lincoln is an advocate of medical research. he establishes the pathology institute. i found the papers where hee talks about using disinfectant and some of the union. he doesn't know about germs. i saw letter in the archives this looks like a really good idea. he is our innovator and chief. he wants to do new things. he wants to seek new ways of communicating, of transporting goods, of getting us toet where we want to be. and one of the biggest sort of felt swoops that he signs into law or three very fundamental laws for the homestead act which allows people free land out west. the moral act establishes land-grant colleges and of course the pacific railway

acts, to laws which finance the following year he also passes the national banking act. this is fort. the first time establishes the green back, the green dollar that is our national currency. and establishes also an income tax to pay for the war. during the war the union economy, the gdp increases. it was a very small text, 3% over $800 to pay it the flak tax. it was the first income tax repealed in 1873 i believe. it comes back in 1913. it was the first way of the national government financing its expenses on that level. that was a very important development. all that happens during the civil war, of course there is the horrible battle in 1863

and then the war is over, lincoln loses his life, 1865 he is assassinated at ford's theater. but his legacy lives on. here is the most amazing part of the story. lincoln's view of economic progress that is building infrastructure, really comes out of a another part of his psyche. in 1847 he had actually invented a boat. it was a boat designed to lift, not a very big boat but lift it up if it was in shallow waters. he patented it before he left washington in 1848 and traveled on the illinois/michigan canal. lincoln is the only president who is a patented inventor. he always had this in the back of his mind being the innovator, how do we do things better? how do we use technology?

how do we really do the things we are really good at to make this a better country for everyone? those are the principal things i discovered. but again the legacy lives on. he inspired a whole new generation of progressive politicians, flank jim frank loyd, social, the lincoln highway which was the first national east/west route go some times where all the way to san francisco. was named after him and inspired by him for it i was the lincoln highway. the hospital where i was bored no longer exists. it was called the crossroads ofle america. lincoln's all over my state, he is on our license plate. so, we have all of this inspiration. it goes even further the roads in this country were really terrible going from one part of the country to another.

especially from the midwest to the west. in 1919 a young colonel named dwighter eisenhower takes a convoy to explore the state of the roads along the lincoln highway from one coast to the other. it comes to the undeniable conclusion they are just awful. some of the routes, the roads out of iowa were like pioneer trails the growth of the mountains and the desert. from that time on even how do we pay for this? how do we do this? the first study was the lincoln highway that is 1910 -- 1913 and the first concept of financing it was it should be privately financed. an entrepreneur who was really the heir to the fortune said we can raise the money to do this. henry ford says to them, look, you are not going to do this private money.

and i am not going to contribute. you are going to need federal funding to do this. they do not raise enough money. they get some subscribers including woodrow wilson i think he gave five bucks or something. it is terribly underfinanced. it does not really happen until eisenhower becomes president in 1956 interstate highway acts and creates the largest network of highways on the planet, 40000 miles plus. they tried inflation adjusted for today's dollars that would have been at least 600 billion-dollar project. now we face at least $6 trillion in repairs. there's a proposal for the 2 trillion-dollar american jobs plan by president biden. we are looking at that now. as with a lot of my stories this is my fifth book of infrastructure, history, finance, telling stories about the people behind these ideas

and the principle here is very powerful that you do need to make these investments. this is how we link our cities, our towns, our farm fields from coast-to-coast. there's a lot of things we need to do. i would be happy to take questions on this. i will leave you withh this one thing that what we are very good at, that lincoln really personified was this idea that innovation would not only lift our economic station through entrepreneurship, invention, discovery, new technologies but also lift our spirit. this is aspirational this new idea is going to change the

world. thats is what i think it makes us americans. it is part of the path forward. one of thehe reasons i wrote this book, and i have to type one last anecdote about it as i wrote it backwards. i started out with the covid era, the pandemic we are in now and i lost two friends. i know lots of people who lost her friends and my condolences if you knew somebody who p perished in this ugly thing, but it revealed something about us that we do need to create a better infrastructure, a better socialnf infrastructure a better educational infrastructure. a health infrastructure as well as a physical infrastructure of better roads, bridges, tunnels, railroads , all of these things that come out of that huge category of infrastructure. i cannotru say enough it is what we do. and it also builds our spirit and our competence.

it gives us something to hope for. it is aspirational. and with that i would love to take your questions. there's a whole bunch ofs stories in the book, it was a pure joy to write, living in the land of lincoln. people asked me how long did it take you to write this? well all of my life. this is an ongoing story and i hope all of you will contribute to this effort to realize what we need to do. and we are back to jim, i think. >> thank you very much john. just to start off, before even ask a question i want to encourage everyone to t please enter your ownte question and the q&a box. we will keep going on that basis. the tariff was the main source of income back then. you think lincoln working in favor i think the whole tariff

formula proved to be not enough that we needed to do in terms of infrastructure. this is the whole argument in the 19 country tariffs were used to fund some infrastructure. it was not enough. is it a good way to finance these things? i believe that to the historians and the financial analyst. i think what we do need is a broad based sustainable way of financing this. whether it is private, through bonds, or carbon text. there so many proposals on the table. we need to get them going. obviously this is the house. you will need to replace the heating, the air conditioning, all of things just wear out. if you don't look at that you

are looking at problems. the house is our nation and does need to be fixed, upgraded, put a new technology, we need to address climate change. alld of these things. that is the current argument how do we do this? how do we finance it? >> john, you mentioned in the book and you just mentioned also innovator in chief. you did mention the patent. i wonder if you could expand on that. as you say the only president. and second a lesser known story that you bring out is a dual challenge and believe it or not that lincoln had. just a little bit about that for the audience most people are not aware. >> they are two really good stories. they both happen at different times but the inventor story thwas for lincoln to get to washington, he had to take this god awful route through

the great lakes, through the erie canal, downey hudson and sometimes he took the overland routes. nand often when he took a boat in the great lakes they would get stuck and would have to pry the boat loose with physical labor. amhe came up with this idea, literally designed it on the ship where he had these polls. it would lifted up and he had these inflatable buoys that would float the boat t up higher.. it is a really clever invention. he made a model of it had a friend constructed it was a beautiful working craft. not built as far as i know. beyond the model stage and no one used it in the railroad era there is probably not that much need forab it. the dual challenge was lincoln had some issues with depression. he had several courtships.

one of his sweethearts died, that wase anna rutledge in springville. madly in love with her, she dies he is very bereft and gets very depressed for there's mary ellen's before he meetswe mary todd, who was very sprightly intelligent, politically savvy. new henry clay, grew up with that whole culture in louisville, kentucky. lincoln was very awkward socially for some reason, unless he was giving a speech. things did not go well at first with mary. and then they broke it off. he was horribly depressed and his friend joshua took away his razor. he would not comee out of his bed. it was just terrible. someone insulted him and then there was a dual challenge. what you late 19th century duals were complex affairs.

that is what happened he did not fight the deal that was a good thing if we would've lost lincoln lincoln i cannot have imagine what this country would have been like. >> here's an interesting one. if you could pick one thing to spend infrastructure money on today what would it be? >> that is an easy one for me. it would be healthcare. one of things discovered in writing the book backwards massive inequities in terms of communities of color and the rest of the country. is very unevenly divided. we have a plethora of really good hospitals. if you go to the south side they are struggling to keep hospitals (i would spend the money and say how do we have a broad based plan so everybody

gets really decent basic healthcare? i don't know if that is the national healthcare system, or medicare for all, but we need to come over something. the covid crisis expose a lot of these inequities. it was horrible because some people did not have access to healthcare. or they did not go into the hospital because they were afraid they could not pay for it. this is my first argument i think lincoln would have embraced. ii even go as far as invoking the 14th amendment that was inspired by the illegal treatment clause saying hey we should at least treat everyone fairly and equally. that is something wind to talknd about we talk about infrastructure. >> leo schmidt would like to know if lincoln would be in favor of a line item veto and

order to keep pork belly financing out of infrastructure bill? >> i don't think he would've looked at that specifically. he was a big picture thinker. the continental railroad help big of a project was that? all of this waste, displacement of need in murdering them and putting them on reservations. there are a lot of bad things that happened because of expansion economic policies no doubt about it. but how can you see that? i don't know what he would've thought about a line item veto. his question during his time is not necessarily government waste. it was government not spending enough money on the things that mattered to the greatest number of people. that is a tough one. i am really going to pass on

that. it is open minded to new ideas. >> okay john, abraham lincoln and frederick douglass new each other well. how their relationship impacted values and policies. >> and modern i think they would have been from enemies. lincoln was the first president i could tell that welcomed douglas into the twhite house. douglas was of course a very accomplished thinker, speaker, abolitionist, he wrote two biographies a. he is amazing he opens up the whole issue of slavery, economic equality and what we need to do. there is probably no better person if you want to understand where we are out today than to read frederick douglass.

so douglas was very critical of lincoln in the early years. they talked what we would consider to be a fairly regular basis. he was in the white house and lincoln welcomed him in. lincoln did not do enough to end slavery. the emancipation proclamation did not enslave in totality. it was an incomplete declaration that mostly freed slaves to fight the union side. that is what the interpretation part all of the pieces that needed to follow, education, funding infrastructure for every community, that would come later. douglas lived in the 1880s and pretty much was advocating for equal rights. he was at the 1893 expedition

and i think in the end you agree lincoln had done more than any other president to advance the issue of equality and ending slavery. i don't think too many historians are going to disagree with that. that inspired the 13th, 14th, 15th amendment for the great civil rights legislation in the 60s. i think both men would agree there's more work that needs to be done. >> this is a different kind of question for you. how would lincoln convince folks that broadbandln is the new canal system? >> , well, i don't think he would hesitate doing it, david. here is why. when he received and sent the first telegraph message by a president, morris had been paddling his invention since the 1840s.

he was really struggling to convince people, this is global communications folks. instead of pony express in puttingte something on a boat with the slow route, you are sending messages at the speed of light. this is a quantum leap. there is a telegraph in the white house receiving and sending messages. it was something i think he would have wholeheartedly embraced, broadband everywhere so we can all be hooked up to the same network, the same system, travel globally at the speed of light think he would have loved the idea. >> okay we got some good questions coming in, keep them coming please. here is one, i'm wondering what lincoln's actions on magic because you were if any of his ideas would apply to a

quality? here's a great back story. signed in 1862 establishes a land grant colleges those state universities we know today. the first iteration really set aside 30,000 acres per state, the state could do anything they wanted. they could sell it, they can farm it, they can produce income from it. that is the concept of the land grab it. is not a direct subsidy as we know today. and it was the principal means of the 19th century for doing something big. the federal government did not have the income for one thing. of course the receipt states rights they should be doing it first. states did not have the ability to raise the capitol. a lot of investments that went into these things were foreign investments especially transcontinental railroad, so

education. lincoln i discovered was so focused on education because of its own shortfalls in that area he only had about a year of formal education. the rest was self learned. he became a lawyer, he studied and was a great reader of all sorts of history. he was into math and all sorts of subjects we never knew he read pretty would've embraced the idea of expanding the educational system. there are several other extensions of the that went into the 20th century that established university historically black colleges came out of that. they did american colleges came out of that subsequent iterations which i think he twould have loved. the real back story is more interesting than that. justin moral of the vermont

senator who had his name attached to it originally proposed land grant universities really inspired with an idea by turner who knew lincoln as a young man and had proposed this whole idea of the land grant what he called the industrial university which would have been teaching two basic things, agriculture and what they call the mechanical arts which became engineering. had he had this idea for decades that pretty much passed it on to moral who tried to get passed in 1858. buchanan vetoed it and it became a law under lincoln. lincoln was very well aware of turner. he had them as a visitor at the white house during the civil war. turner was a very famous abolitionist. ironically in the same town were steven douglas got a start jacksonville, illinois. he was the father of the moral act what we call the state

college systems, engineering schools, things likee that. >> we have a what if question for you. what do you believe presently it would have achieved if he would've been up to serve out his second term? >> i think that is one of our most essential questions to ask today. the low hanging fruit for me as he would have completed reconstruction had he lived even longer he would not have abandoned it in 1870s. that of course led to the horrible jim crow era, lynchings and really awful times in our history. so lincoln would've followed through pretty would've witnessed the passage of the 13h , 14th, 15th amendments. he would've taken it a step further and make sure equality, complete voting rights, we generally credit

him for being the inspiration of the great society program, the civil rights laws of the 60s. i think he would have been able to see that and add to that. he was definitely the sole of all of those laws. >> i am curious how would you explain or interpret the transition between the canal system and the rail system? how long would that take and were the stages of development? >> that is a very fascinatingw question. it did not really take long in terms of history. what needed to happen for railroads to take off is they had to mass-produce rail, they had to cut a lot of trees to build the ties. they had to create the

technology to extend a rail over long distances. and with that came improvements in the steam while, braking systems, a lot of this business was centered in chicago. one of the ironic facts of history is the pullman car company was one of chicago's biggest industries. they literally had to build all of these cars out of wood. lincoln traveled and his son robert who became a lawyer wasn't president of the pullman company for a while for there there's a horrible pullman strike there. that was an important part. so with every one of these stories there's incremental events in history, how do you build a better rail that's going to be durable and all conditions? how do you make better steel? how do you make better iron? a lot of this happened he

still mills of pittsburgh, agchicago, cleveland we had all these things that reallyll contributed to the advancement of one technology. so we go from the canal which is basically 1830s -- 1840s, rail starts to take off because they can mass-produce railroad cars, engines, ties, the spikes, when the golden spike is driven into the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, a lot of interesting things happen. they had to reinvent how they built bridges before the iron era most bridges were made out of wood. in fact, here's one great story i have in the book. lincoln was defending a company that had built a bridge across the mississippi river and rock island illinois. the railroad needed to get across the river. and at that time this is right at the endht of the steamboat era. the whole steamboat industry thought they owned the river had a right to this river no

upstart technology was going to cross the river. there is an incident where they steamboat either crashed or lost control and hit this bridge since the bridge was made of wood it burned to the ground. so the steam boat owner who had underinsured his ship sues the bridge company. they bring out lincoln as an attorney to represent the bridge company. he has an interesting argument. he does not win but he makes this really compelling statement of this is not just a bridge, it's not an impediment to commerce, trade, or anything this is a public amenity. this links chicago, the east, the rest of the country across the mississippi. we need to build more of these things, they belong to the public. they are not stopping commerce they are not stopping people

from discovering land in the west. we need it. that was it real important case. i wrote a whole chapter on it. i was how lincoln constructed an argument about the public good of infrastructure. >> hr 40 is possibly in front of congress dealing with reformations for descendents of slaves. but with lincoln think about that? >> i think he would think about it thoughtfully. it is a a complex subject. i really think we need to address the inequities in all of our systems. in education, healthcare, and the fact there's environmental jjustice issue a lot of toxic plants, refineries, and communities of color. there is a whole raft of things lincoln would've

fundamentally addressed. it really spoke to hisbe sense of fairness and the idea that equality is truly based on your ability to take advantage of the opportunity. and that somehow you are held back for what ever reasond it should be addressed. he would've talked to booker washington and all of the people who were talking about it today. i even think that he would have taken a hard look of how do we do this? >> a specific question, how are the canals of finance? a publicly or privately and also the railroads? there's a lot of speculation. this whole preface? >> this is one of the interesting stories of

american finance is that for example the state of illinois finance totally inadequate to pay for this. what they did was it okay we are going to work contracts to build small sections of the canal management probably not a good idea you hire one contract, you put the contract out for bid. the best bidder gets the job.ic anyway they would send notices out to ireland and other places in europe and say hey they promise these poor irish guys you want to be a navigator on the canal? that's what they called them, navigators. they were digging this thing byhe hand.

at first there is a really undercapitalized project. and then they got foreign financing. a lot of foreign money came into building these canals. and then into the railroads. and of course the land grant system is basically you get the land and find money to build it. their summit rates the transcontinental railroad. again mostly bonds. there is a lot of foreign investment. >> john, with 19 books now to your credit, what is number 20 going to be about? >> i am hoping it's going to be about bringing the environment to every neighborhood in the country. climate change is our existential threat. it is what i call a reversible how do we enjoy nature in suburbia in the middle of the

city? and what does that mean? how do we clean our air, our water and stuff like that. how do you localize it? one of the things i really discuss in the book is climate change affects everything. it certainly affects our way of looking at infrastructure. we have to build bridges hire, we have to redesign our water systems. everything. so this in book would look at how do we kind of shrink this question down, break it down a little bit. what is it mean for my neighborhood? that hopefully will be my next book out called the natural neighborhood. >> one or two more i guess. would lincoln have embraced the concept of public-private partnerships?

i'm thinking of the pandemic for example with the cooperation of the federal government and the pharmaceutical companies. as lincoln analogy stuck in that area of public-private partnerships? >> went a lot of these projects were done, what really provided undergirding of the financial structure of them was the fact they were able to solicit eastern and european investors. the mostly federal government could do because most of the landap that had been appropriated from native americans and they could say we will give you the land, may be the states can help a little bit with some bonds. it won't be enough it's never enough. you are going to have to find the rest of the money to do this. that is certainly the story with all of the railroads, all

of the railroads that came after the transcontinental railroad. the local system it was originally a journalist had started out his career of covering the civil war, created the first newspaper syndicate and became a friend of lincoln. but eventually got so much information on some of these railroad projects going out west he became an investor. there is the famous villard house in manhattan of course he lost a lot of that fortune, the railroad stocks crashed. they went up and down. eventually finance thomas edison. that is another great story. he would go back to german investors who were originally from germany say hey this roger financing in kansas city, you might want to take another look att the paper and

the statements. i can help you with this. he made huge brokerage fees he got stock and became filthy rich. it is still there and the history is probably as interesting as any one else from that gilded era. >> our final question before we close there's so many lincoln tourist destinations, which is your favorite? >> that is a tough one. that is like picking your favorite child, that is not fair come on. the thing that really strikes me, this is not something most people even associate with lincoln, is a place called lincoln landing in is in lockport, illinois. it's one of things were lincoln came through their after his only term in

congress. that is really what spurred my imagination, how did lincoln see the future of the country? he helped get this canal built, he built a great city and all the towns along it. think of all the towns along the erie canal, new york city and all the things that happened after it. he had this vision to instill its vision. it's important to see what he saw in the fuel what he may be feltee. we cannot abandonment. >> john on behalf of the

cabela's school, the cfa it is a wonderful to again have you back thank you for tuning in. if several wall street legends including peter cohen on behalf of all of us again, john, thank you very much for. >> thank you it has been such a pleasure. i just hope and pray that we will get back to a healthy healing country again. i will be back and new york city with my friends. i miss you all terribly. i wish you all the best. : : : television for serious readers weekends on c-span2. ♪♪

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