thank you to everybody. ♪♪ >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual piece. every saturday american history tv documents american stories. some days, book tv brings the latest in nonfiction books and authors. logically c-span2 comes from these television companies and more including charter communications. ♪♪ >> broadband is a force for empowerment. charter has invested billions, building infrastructure, upgrading technology, and parent opportunity in communities big and small. charter is connecting us. >> charter communications along with these publishing companies support c-span2 is a public service. >> i want to welcome you to the hudson vibrate at historical society live event with thomas hager here to discuss this fascinating new book, "electric

city", past history of fort and addison's american utopia. i'm one of the adult services librarians here at the hudson vibrate. we have quite a few exciting author programs coming up in june and you can learn about and register for them at hudson library.org. i am very excited to say we will offer live morning medication, tai chi and yoga classes outside by our patio for some. the classes will be on our website this week if you would like to sign up. a reminder if you're joining us on zoom, and put your questions in your queue and date at the bottom of the screen if you're joining us on u facebook, put yr question in the check and we will get to as many as we have time for. one moreeor thing, our local independent bookstore is selling copies ofre tonight book and the is a link in the chat if you would like to purchase one. tonight i am delighted to welcome author thomas hager, publishers called "electric

city", a book we are discussing tonight, eliminate portrait of a little-known chapter in american history. an award-winning author of numerous books on the history of science and medicine including a jewish genius, doom tycoon and scientific discovery that fueled the rise of hitler and how plants, patters have shaped the history of medicine. according to the associate professor, journalism and communication at the university of tso oregon so please give a m virtualm welcome to thomas hage. >> thank you. good to be here to chat about this particular city which as kathy noted, i write mostly about the history of science and medicine. this book is less about science

although there is a fair development of the electricity in the book, it's more about people. hang on -- i want to make sure that we are on and working here. >> your good. >> i regret? sorry, i got an error message. it's more about people and what i saw were fascinating people in american history and how they try to change the history of the united states. the two main characters in the book are henry ford, auto industrialist, a man who built ford motor company and made forth the number one selling car in the world in the 1920s and his body and delete my friend

thomas edison,d, thomas edison,e all know him as the inventor of the electric incandescent light, the light bulb we use -- we don't use electric bulbs like he invented but not much anymore but he had a tremendous effect on the development of technology in america. it wasn't just light bulbs. edison also did the photographs, early versions of camera movie projector and changed american light and a dozen ways that are fundamental to who we are as people.en he did that through his dinventions. he was known as the wizard of menlo park. it's in new jersey where he had his laboratory where he made his inventions and by the time of the setting of us book, this

book is set in the years just after world war i an early 1920s, so five years on either side of 1920 where the heart of this book. during that highin time, was already revered in america. he was one of the best-loved americans who lived during that time. everybody knew thomas -- the name of thomas edison. everybody knew what thomas edison had done for the united states so it was quite an event when edison teamed up with henry ford try to create this project, an enormous project which is the book.t of my happened like this. edison and ford knew each other

and ford was a younger man, one of the first jobs fort got when he was a young man was not in automobiles but in electricity. he worked on electric dynamo as a young man. one of the first jobs henry ford got was working at thomas edison's electric company in detroit, michigan. ford grew up in michigan, here's a farmboy. he hated farm work. he hated the drudgery of farm work and he hated working outside in all weather's, the kind of stuff farmers have to do to make a living in this world with things that henry ford didn't like. henry ford plaza smart kid have a natural aptitude for machinery. he loved tinkering with machines, early machines.

he grew up, he came of age in the 1880s and 90s and during that period of time, steam engines were over things, they were huge, clanking. they were used to power factories and on the farm they had steam engines on wheels they get role from farm to farm and fire up the help with the harvest to have an engine brought to your farm. these things wereco huge, like locomotives. they were called road locomotives because they didn't need tracks to run from a they had big ironn wheels. the engines themselves were the size of railroad locomotive, they would roll farm to farm and

they would use the steam engine to power a series always to do various farm chores that needed to be done these road locomotives were henry ford's dream machine. he was obsessed with road locomotives. he learned everything he could how theyy worked he was a genius seeing how they fit together. he learned on the farm about machinery and he stuck with machinery and left the farm work behind. he couldn't wait to get out of his parents farm it into a machine shop detroit and he ended up working for thomas edison thomas edison was at the highest in the 1880s and 90s and ford came in as a young nobody and started working with

edison. reporter: counted of course, he took notice of his superiors and his superiors brought henry ford 20 edison company to an event, kind of a luncheon one day in which thomas edison was present. the two men met so edison is established, an older rich and famous and ford is nobody. the two of them started conversation at this lunch, the young kid with machines and the other guy who understands inventions, they start talking and what they are talking about is an idea henry ford has building a new kind of automobile engine. ford has been playing around with thehe idea of powering an

automobile gasoline and he's inventing improved gasoline engine in his kitchen in his garage putting together bits and pieces of stuff in his spare time trying to make this revolutionary gas engine edison is fascinated. he listens tods this young man d thinks why, he's gothi something going on. the two of them become friends but it was years later after ford built his engine and put his engine into an automobile was the most reliable least expensive automobile the world ever seen, he called model g. he converted the event a way to make them that made them fabulously cheap on the assembly line factory, a more

important -- i think, more important inventions in the model t itself a model t cut down costs tremendously. ford put his factory together with his automobile, but in the world with model t's, everybody wanted one.ne a revolution in america because up until the time of henry ford, automobiles have been tremendously expensive. they were rich people's plaything, they were rock luxury, toys. what henry ford did was creating an automobile tough enough to work on a farm, taken on dirt roads, easy to fix, everything was durable and reliable dirt cheap so anyone could afford a model t car and suddenly everyone wanted one. between 1910 -- 20 during that

decade, the model t became the first best-selling, a phenomenal best-selling park worldwide. it was a tremendous moneymaker for ford, heor owned his own company and all the money went to fort. by the time 1920 came around from four plus industrialist on the scale of unlike anyone else in the world. he was the richest man in the world and one of the most -- so that is thefu setting for the story. the older edison, number four, both of them interested in invention and technology from above interested in new waves of power and the book tells the story of how they tried to create the utopian city in the middle of america that would incorporate their best ideas and ideas into a new way

of living for america. i want to take a moment to talk about what it was they wanted to change, not just about american technology but american society my book is about an experiment that two great men, very powerful men tried to undertake on a massive scale in northern alabama on the tennessee river in northern alabama and the tennessee river is a big part of american history, its associated with the movement of americans west of the appalachian mountains and it's a huge source of stories about the birth of america and the tennessee valley. by the time ford and edison were

interested in the area in the 1920s, the tennessee river area in northern alabama was one of the poorest parts of the united states. it was tremendously -- you could use the word backward, almost as if that part of the united states had gotten lost in the 1700s and had not advanced into the 20th century. part of the problem was the civil war which ravaged the area and it never really rebuilt fully. it was set back by the civil war. part of the reason was the people there were small farmers who worked tough farms, much of the farming in a hilly area, western tennessee.

the southern part of tennessee and northern part of alabama, a lot of hills and hill people, what people make fun of now as hillbillies. a tough way to make a living. farming, the males, the soil wasn't very good.oo the roads were very good and no electricity and no healthcare. people lived in cabins that had holes in the roof. he read descriptions of the way people live in those days in that part of the country and it really is like looking back a couple hundred years. they washed the clothes in bigki metal washing pots that they lit a fire under to heat the water and they had very poor communication with the rest of

the world so when henry ford and thomas edison decided 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 england, you announce two people in the area you are going to pull them out of the 1780s and into the 1920s in one fell swoop, hear what you do it by building the world's biggest dam across the tennessee river and using all the electricity used by the dam to power industries without using coal, use electrical energy, entirely clean, very renewable energy is what wee would call it now but you would

invent industries that work with electricity instead of burning coal. thousand important step forward because edison and ford built their vision around the idea of clean and renewable energy. they both disliked coal. if i was dirtyty and polluting d dangerous. it was unhelpful, they wanted to get away from coal so they were going to build an entire city built around electricity. this was of course edison's doing. the world's biggest dam from walt largest powerplant reducing the world's largest source of electricity power industries up and down the tennessee river. they played a new kind of city. they wanted to reshape society around the idea of a new work. very quickly what henry ford had in mind when he was thinking about this experiment in northern alabama was, his

thinking what a mistake he made in detroit and the board factories, huge h factories are making model t's in and around detroit, the city of several of detroit built two huge factories, he is in the process of telling the world's biggest factory at the time he was thinking about this experiment sin alabama. he built these factories in these cities, he completely changed the nature of detroit is factories employed so many people in such a small area that they created slums. workers were well-paid and he cared about his workers is very concerned about his workers wages and fair living conditions but he couldn't help the fact

that when you build a huge factory, you concentrate people in a small area. they tend to live in rentals, city centers, the result is slum living to a great extent and along with that is an increase in crime and these were things henry ford hated. he had to say idea in mind that america should be much like the small town midwest america farm town he grew up in. a few brick buildings downtown, a church on the village, this was the idea of america he wanted his workers, he thought was the best way for people to live. he wanted to create that in northern alabama on a vast scale. he wanted to have an enormous industrial center, a city 75 miles long and .1 million

workers, he wanted all caps but without any coal pollution or any crime. he wanted workers to live on small farms, forming a few acres in their spare time to bring in their own crops and working in an electrically powered industry the rest ofwe the time. ...

so he built this vision around a new kind of american life. act what he thomas edison created in northern alabama. this tells the story of how they tried to do that and why they failed. finally, the book tells what happens next. the story moves eventually toward the creation of one of the greatest achievements of government in the united states, a project called tennessee valley, tpa which many of you never have heard of this book

explains how they started and it started out of this vision. eventually despite his popularitynd and despite his money, eventually,nt his plans land head on into the u.s. government which also had a claim on the power generation and so on at the tennessee valley. and for five years they fought each other over who would control this area in northern alabama. would he get his wish and build his city or would the government toto stop him and do something else? eventually, the government found a way to stop henry ford and they moved in and built their own version in this new

industry, this new o way of living. the book tells the story how it grew out of the ideas as well. one last slide before we get into the keen day, the side note is along with everything else going on in the early 1920s as ford was trying to make a national case for the government to give him what he wanted so that he could build his city, you wanted control over a vast area and all of the world's biggest to pay for most of it. that didn't happen. what did happen is henry ford decided the easiest way for him to get what he wanted might be to run for president. so the book tells the story of how close henry ford came to being president of the united states. this is a little-known story as

well but he was a serious candidate for several years in the mid-1920s and a number of observers, and i've got to admit i was oneum of them think that e had as good as anyone at the time of being the president of the united states incorporated the ideas of this city that he wanted tote build, his vision fr america. that's what he wanted to run on. for various reasons. for someone who didn't have a day of government service behind him who came out of private industry, who was accustomed to running a one-man boss shop, the loss of everything at ford motor

company and yet he was phenomenally popular with people across the middle of america. farmers, factory workers, people who looked upon him as a genius and would have loved the idea of him running the united states. that almost happened and the reason it didn't was also tied up with this story of this utopian experiment. so that is what i got into and the book that resulted in the story of electric city and i hope everybody gets the chance to read it. i'm open i for questions if anybody has any.

it was sort of an accident that was mentioned in the previous book called the alchemy of the era. one of my earlier books was about the development of this sounds very exciting. i spent a few you few years learning and the book was kind of a hit so i got invited to talk in a lot of places around the united states. one of the places i went to his northern alabama. i've never been to northern alabama in myba life and i had

this idea, if any of the viewers tonight have read the work, there was a book in the 1930s that detailed life in appalachia in this very poor part of the united states and that is when i thought northern alabama was white. my mindset was this is a really poor area still and then i got to northern alabama and landed at a modern international airport in the town of huntington or surrey, huntsville northern alabama. the people were wonderful and there was an international hotel up on the hillh and i was blown

away. this is a part of the country that came as a complete surprise to a me that was very prosperous and up-to-date. there are more of these per square mile in northern alabama than any other part of the united states. with international agricultural research there's all this stuff going on. anyway, i was fascinated. i did my talk on the way out of town and i'm getting ready to go back to the airport to fly back home. the local fellow who was my driver picked me up heading to the airport and we had a little extra time. interested in fertilizer history so he took me out for aor little

trip. that was interesting to me. what's the story behind this and how did this end up in northern alabama. what was more interesting is what happened next. it drove to another field in northern alabama and then we saw that it was a network of streets that have been laid out like

city streets with curbs and fire hydrants and street signs for streets that were never built or were never finished. this was the remains of a city that had been plotted, started construction and had never been completed. here i am on its leg being in egypt looking at the ruins of things in the surprising remains of a civilization that never occurred. it was the combination of the gigantic remains of this huge factory. that led to the rest of the

book. it's just picking up a little as the writers do and then you followk. the thread and the whoe fabric at the end. >> an interesting story. who would have thunk it. here's another question. what similarities if any do you see between the young henry ford and today is no elon musk? a decade or two earlier it would be the titans of technology of their time and i think the parallels are obvious. elon musk is a legitimate technological innovator.

he must have a restless imagination for electric cars, space travel and he reminds me very much of henry ford and thomas edison. their restless minds couldn't stay with the success they had and moved on. henry ford after his success in the assembly line plant wanted

to stretch himself out into this role and i think that is a factor that happens to people who become highly successful in the business and industry as they begin to think that their heideas because they worked in e area of the industry their ideas and their thinking would probably be better for everybody so they try to apply this.

it would have been an interesting experiment because had he gotten what he wanted and completely dominated the area of central united states and that is something that didn't happen. it's a little bit interesting to see what would have happened. so i see definite parallels not that it'ss the same thing. >> you mentioned about ford becoming president. do you think he would have been a good president and would have

made this plan have been had he elected? >> had he been elected he would have made it happen. the onlyt thing standing in his way the only reason it didn't happen even without being president is that a small group of concerned senators. he's a very smart guy and did a great job. the presidents at that time were laurent and harding and calvin coolidge. they talked the same language,

it looked great. then the war and harding died when he was in office and passed away of what was a stroke or heart disease and calvin coolidge his vice president became president at that time. calvin coolidge was much cooler and that created b a problem and followed the support instead a group of senators formed and opposition group and they were people that wanted government control instead of private control for this enormous resource that turned out to be a series of more than a dozen

unfortunately it turned into more than a dozen. these senators wanted that to be loaned by the people of the united states, not by henry ford. everybody should know the name because he's an old senator from a nowhere state. he was from nebraska and he is a heroic figure, he's a maverick, never let anybody tell him what to think.

it was george morris that stopped henry ford and that story stayeden put. however if he hadn't have been there, there is a very good chance ford would have gotten what he wanted even without being president and the presidential elections heated up edafter harding. he could make his utopian city happen you can circumvent to the extent he needed to to get the votes that he needed to and if he was president if he would

run, seriously he made a back room deal. there is the evidence in the book. henry ford and calvin coolidge president of the united states got together in the white house and henry ford agreed not to run for president. for ford's control of this project it was a secret deal and was controversial and evidence that it happened but once the news, what happened is george morris got a hold of the scandal. he found out about the secret meeting and blasted it all over

the media. once it became a public scandal, calvin coolidge already backed off. had he been president, my view is he would have been a president unlike any president we've ever had. he would have been an autocrat

he could do what he wanted and tell anybody what he wanted h to tell. he was a genius and it sounds like it contradicts what you just said. i wouldn't be able to work with the press if he was president. and as a private citizen, as an industrialist, he maintained a very large public relations in the ford motor company.

he was a genius at publicity. everybody that was interested in what henry ford was doing. he was an enemy of wall street and bankers which most were at the time..

he knew how to work with the press at that level. he didn't know how to work with the press as a public service. he had never been a public servant and that is a different rule you could argue the point but in any case it is the basic difference between politics and businesses. the newspaper reporters and why are reporters at the time always gave henry ford a break. what henry ford wore to the

event and it focused on that because they knew that they could sell paper and it was important for the media, tomac. had he become president, it would be an automatic opposition. in addition to his folksy people persona, which is true for the vicious anti-semite. and to attack jewish citizens around the world and a jewish citizens of the united states in particular he blamed.

that was a weak point that he had as well, so not every group in america was behind him. farmers were behind him, the midwest and south. they were more dubious about his claims, so he was a popular figure that as a politician it would have been very difficult. >> another question here. did the alabama planned city have any relationship and can you come here and contrast the two sites? >> there was another ford project. this timeut an attempt for an empire in south america and

brazil. thank you for bringing that up. i think that both of those have happened a little later after ford was blocked from his utopian city after his plan with edison fell through and the government stepped in. he looked for other ways to use that same energy and one of the projects that he did have the city on the tennessee river happened i don't think that it would have or at least not in the same way so it was another attempt to create a huge project. that was the scale that he liked to play at. he did enormous projects. the irony is that the end result this planning is probably

best exemplified by a park that he built in dearborn michigan. what he decided to do and what he put a lot of energy into after the events of the story that i tell he put enormous energy into creating the kind of america that he wanted as a sort of your mark so if you ever go to dearborn, i recommend that you visit the ford museum, a beautiful facility that has every car that ford ever made, i'm pretty sure, and a number of machines that acted in his thinking with tremendous american success stories in the ford motor company. there is a wonderful archive i spent weeks researching the book and then there is a third

component that essentially is a theme park and it's an idea to create the kind of america that he thought was the true america. so he would buy the birthplace like the buildings where they were bornn including his own. he created a little arm around it and brought thomas edison's workshop and moved it to dearborn and i think it was nathaniel hawthorne's birthplace and shop where they sold bicycles. he would collect buildings the way others -- he would bring

them to dearborn and he created this fabulous place you can see american architecture changing laid out parts of it. there is a central part of it sort of like henry ford's dream in america. it has o a white church house wh the steeple and these beautiful houses and an old colonial in and so on. it's remarkable to me that he went from building, wanting to build a 75-mile working city to doing this charming but unusual

mark. do we have any knowledge or information of the adversarial relationship henry ford had with john rockefeller which of the story and outcome? >> i didn't study rockefeller at all for the book. i had looked at rockefeller for other projects very muchh involved in the history of science in america in the rockefeller foundation so i studied from that standpoint. the overlap that i came across between ford and rockefeller and to do with the germans and it's another story but one that i haven't fully researched and i

am not ready to talk about but to outline henry ford made his money off of cars and john the rockefeller made his money off of the run with cars. around the time of world war i the oil reserves were thought to be smaller than they were and it was a great worry that it was going to run dry, the oil and if the oil went, rockefeller wouldn't make any money. at the same time just after world war i, the germans who had been defeated in the war were looking for ways to build their industry and they came up with a plan to make synthetic oil.

they were going to perfect a method, a very difficult method technologically to take coal from german coal mines and turn it into automobile fuel for the gasoline. it would make gasoline for cars out of coal. there was tons of coal around the world and that project for synthetic oil was very interesting both to rockefellert andnd ford. the records are difficult and i think a lot have been destroyed or lost or are not available to the public around this project

that would have been a collaboration between the biggest industries in the united states and the biggest chemical industry in the world which was developing this synthetic oil in a group. ig, ford and standard oil have some evidence that they did collaborate in between developing this new industry. the intellectual property past back and forth and the problem as it turned out later that hitler came to power in the early 1930s in germany, it became a nazi industrial firm and the work that ford and

rockefeller were doing became very problematic for a number of reasons at that point, but there is some evidence that it continued into the nazi era. i wish i could dig out the records. i don't know if anybody ever will. however, that overlap did occur. i didn't really look at rockefeller. >> one last question for the patron. for one who may not know much about this, how much for the dream for electric city was developed by m the government ad what was edison's involvement in this? >> good question. edison dropped out ofst the process and i believe helped forward with his ideas as a

favor to a friend. once the going got rough once the congress started stiffening its position so he pretty much dropped out before the government finally took over control of the project. so the question is what did they do with ford's ideas and that covered the length 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 and a lot of money and power in the central part of the united states and northern alabama and the tennessee area. and it naturally raised concerns about the public control over.

the question of the public control of rivers gets into interstate commerce and flood control and irrigation. who is best in charge is business more efficient, or is government more concerned about the real value out of public resources which should be in charge of large projects like

this would be bandied about 100 years ago inin this project. after the deal with calvin coolidge the government took over and morris designed this government project and when eleanor roosevelt became president this is in the depths of the depression. it was crushing to the peoplein south of the united states, which is why they were attracted to the idea. ford promised the economic revival. what happened is the government took over and they came over and

finished t the dams. they finished them in a different way. they were not just concerned with electric power. they were concerned with flood control because there were devastating floods. they were concerned with the lakes that built up behind the dams. he wanted to create jobs in the depression but in ways that benefited all of america as much as possible. so they were built, the lakes were established, there is more coastline right now on the lakes in northern alabama than in the rest ofco the united states. there is a string of leaks that goes on and on. and this tremendous project got finished in the electric power

flow and the industries began to come in except they were industries he would not have chosen but required a lot of electric power. the industries started coming in and when you go now it is a wonderful area. and there are questions about whether henry ford might not have been a better choice. and i go over the dynamics that's kind of complex, but the book goes of it into what we have been worse off? it is seen as an enormous success story but i made the argument, and i think that it's fair to make that it would have

been almost as good as henry ford and in some ways more efficient as well. there is no easy answer. there's no easy answer it has to be taken on a case-by-case basis. it's life-changing, generations of lives changing. henry ford would have done that, also. so anyway, we end up with a very difficult question. i think that it's time to wrap it up tonight. this is the book you want to look for that we've been talking about and i want to thank you.

in nashville hosted a virtual event with author and journalist sebastian younger who spoke about his 400-mile walk along the train tracks from washington to philadelphia as he reflected on the concepts of freedom, independence and community. >> to walk from washington, d.c. along the railroad lines to philadelphia where we are headed in new york and then we head to pittsburgh. it's this kind of weird no man's land. there are not that many people,

or it's marginal but it's this real weird world with abandoned buildings and water over the woods and the railroad lines are also interesting because they go right through the middle of everything. you go through the factories, the junkyards, the cornfields, and of course the woods. when we hit pennsylvania it got very rural. it was a long the river that was the only east and west river in pennsylvania basically the gateway to western pennsylvania and ohio territory in the 1700s when the settlers were pouring through a mountain cap west of harrisburg heading into the unknown so we did this trip over the course of a year we walk 50

or 100 miles and most nights we were the only people who knew where we were and there were definitions of freedom but that is one of them that i particularly enjoyed. >> to watch the rest of this program, search for sebastian using the search box at the top of the page. >> i am so pleased to have with us this evening spencer mcbride associate managing historian of the project and author of tonight's book justice smith for president. in conversation with him is harry williams professor of history and author of the best-selling book, white trash nancy eisenberg