into expectant pressure ept critics is fort sumner. >> tonight at 8:00 eastern. also more on our key figures who ran for president and lost but changed political history. "the contenders" and a look at eugene debs, five-time socialist candidate for president. sunday at 7:30 p.m. on american history tv this weekend on c-span3. each week at this time american history tv features an hour-long c-span sunday night q and a. here's this week's on core q & a on american history tv. this week on q & a, author james grant with a biography of a man who established majority rule in the house of representatives. his name was thomas reed and he

served three terms as speak eer of the house from 1891 to 1991 and again from 1895 to 1899. . james grant, why did you think the public would be interested in reading the book about the life and times of thomas b. reed? >> i had no idea about the public, still don't. i knew i would be delighted to spend three or four years in the company of this wonderful man. when you write a biography it's as if someone comes to live in your home. this person never leaves, has no job, stays for the weekends and you have to learn to live with him or her and it's ever so helpful if you come to like him. instantly i knew that reed and i would be fast friends and i was delighted to welcome him into my house. >> why did you know instantly? >> i came across an essay that was included in barbara tuchman's book on the turn of the 20th century.

and it was a -- "proud tower." and in this book reed figured for a chapter. it was a fabulous sketch of this most interesting and sadly obscure figure in american politics. it turns out he was instrumental in changing the house from a talking shop into something that for better or worse was engaged in active legislation. he was a full participant in all the drama of the monetary debates of the late 19th century. he was all of that, and, besides, he was funny. and, brian, who could resist? >> i should say that he was the 13th longest serving speaker in the history of the united states in the house of representatives, and there had been 53. what -- -- what's the thing you remember most about him? >> well, he was known in the day as czar reed.

it was not a compliment, although he regarded it as flattering indeed. he was impugned as a tyrant because he overturned a long-standing custom in the house that the minority would be an equal parliamentary footing with the majority, which meant that the minority party could refuse to acknowledge its presense in a roll call, eliminate the evident quorum. there was seemingly a quorum in the house because you could count the noses except if the noses refused to speak, then there was no quorum, no business, and the house sat staring at itself. reed thought this was a great affront against the great gales of improvements. he wanted to bring the house into mo dernty, and he did so with the so-called reed rules.

>> when did he live? >> 1839 to 1902. >> where was he from? >> he was from maine. he was from portland, maine. and, in fact, lived there, retained a residence there even after he went to wall street after his congressional career. he was very attached to the pine tree state. >> how long did he serve in congress? >> 12 terms. could i have an essay exam -- or multiple choice exam. some of these are getting hard. he had 12 terms including three terms as speaker. >> how did he become speaker? what was it -- >> by sheer force of intellect and by prowess in the cut and thrust of debate and the devastating wit with which he dealt with the democratic enemy, all of that was in the credit column to his claims to be speaker. then, too, he was a political leader. he was -- people just looked up to him. he wasn't exactly physically magnetic.

he was immense. he stood 6'3" and his weight sometimes approached 300 pounds, but he had a force of personality and of intellect that was overwhelming. >> we just finished a series of interviews with david cohn and one of him is about the artists that did the cover on the book. >> thomas b. reed flummoxed john singer sergeant who had acknowledged how difficult is the art. sergeant sid that a portrait is a painting in which there's something wrong with the mouth. so it's hard to please the audience of the subject being painted. with reed he couldn't do it. reed has this delftic face. he's ever so bland to look at. they sat together in paris for the painting and reed just delighted sergeant. and vice versa. they had a wonderful time.

the sergeant simply couldn't capture reed through his face. >> how did he turn out to be doing reed in paris? what was the introduction? >> well, reed was a francophile, and he went there, and he'd take a summer and go to paris and he would -- sometimes london and sometimes paris. but he studied french as a grown man. he engaged a french tour in washington and when he wasn't in the house on public business he would hang out and they'd take walks, sit in reed's home and converse in french. reed kept a french diary. so he loved the culture and the letters and the sights and the sounds of paris. although, so much a son was he of maine that once in paris, he got some fish balls and he fried them up as he might if he had been at home in portdland. he said -- he said i speak french like a native.

a native of the united states. >> you have a picture of him in your book where he's a younger age where he's quite handsome and looks so much different than the portrait of him. >> when -- at the unveiling of the portrait, as the curtains were drawn there was a polite but evidently shocked silence which is broken by reed saying, well, i hope my enemies are satisfied. >> where did he go to college? >> bowden. >> why there? >> it was the place to go if you were an up-and-coming and very bright kid from maine. it was an elite school, but much more narrowly focused on maine than it has since become. >> and that's located where? >> outside portland. >> is it -- >> if i had the index to that book, brian, i could tell you in a second. >> when did you write this book? >> i can answer that question. i started about three or four years ago.

that's kind of vaeg, though, isn't it? i started four years and three days ago, brian. >> when did you finish? >> about a year ago. >> what book is this for you? how many have you done? >> i have lost count. >> you've got the books in the front of the flap here on this book. and the reason i asked that -- >> i think it's about seven. >> but the first one is on bernard baruch. >> yes. i have mastered three centuries. 18th, 19th, and 20th. >> well, where did it start for you? >> my first book was about the speculator and political adviser and p ljd, bernard m. ba ruches who dates were 1870 to 1965. >> but before that, though, where did you first write -- >> i started in journalism with "the baltimore sun." and after a couple of years there went to new york and got a job at barron's and had become a

financial journalist and i began this business of writing books nights, weekends, and the fourth of july. >> why did you get interested in money? >> i don't know. it seemed like a timely subject. when i was -- before i went to college, i was in the navy. i got out. between my discharge date and the beginning of the first semester, indiana university, i got a job on wall street. i was the only kid in the room who was not making 100 grand a year. this was 1967 when $100,000 was real money. i was making $75 a week. i thought money was an interesting subject, looking around at the wealth surrounding me. so i had a couple of summers working at this brokerage house. so by the time i graduated and got my first job at "the baltimore sun," i was a renowned financial expert within "the baltimore sun" city room. imagine, an economics degree and as much as like 12 months working on wall street, i might have been bernard m. baruch himself. >> but you were born in manhattan? >> i was born in manhattan. >> you grew up in manhattan.

>> long island as we say. >> how did you get all the way out to indiana university? >> i flew. but i flew in the interest of pursuing what i thought at the time a career in music. i was a french horn player in high school. a very serious one. but i quit my first college experience after a semester and went into the navy for a couple of years and i did not play the french horn. i was a gunner's mate. by the time i confronted school i realized that -- indiana by the way was a mecca of horn playing. these were serious people who had not quit and gone into the navy. i saw that there was no place for me in that rather exalted circle of musicians, so i took

up economics. >> but today grant's interest rate observer, how did your life go all the way down to that phrase, you make money selling a newsletter and conferences. where does the grant's interest rate observer come from? >> say it again, brian, for the people on the west coast. i went to barron's after "the baltimore sun." i had by that time become a financial righter. at barron's there was one of these nasty intramural spats, the lower the wages, the more intense and petty was the contention. i couldn't stay there and barron's, you could see one's copy in the print, so i felt, okay, what i'll do is start my own sheet. i realized that according to the surveys that dow jones ran i had many tens of thousands of readers in my column. i thought, well, if only a few dozen thousands of those loyalists signed up for my publication, i would instantly have almost insurmountable tax problems so rich would my family become.

so about -- almost 30 years ago i started grants, and i discovered -- well, i had one of the consummate adult experiences. one of those experiences is having children. another is starting your own business and realizing that when people returned your calls when you were an employee, it wasn't because of you. you were living on the borrowed luster and affiliation of the organization with which you worked. so i had the ever-so-eye-opening experience of going from who's who to who's that, to borrow a phrase from the late walter riiston. you know, so i took a salary at grants after about four years. and my wife supported the family on her investment banking job. since then, it's become a terrific job and i would highly recommend entrepreneurship especially after the first four years. >> what does it cost to subscribe? >> don't even ask, brian. close to $1,000. >> a year?

>> a year. about. and we're running out of subscriptions. that's how hot sales are going. >> how much of your business is conferences? >> it's a good part. we do three a year, two in new york and one in london. they sell out, how gratifying. it's terrific. all terrific. >> bernard baruch, what did you learn about him that matters? >> well, he was the kind of the george soros of his day. he was a speculator who had the golden touch and who also seemingly had the ear of the powers that be in politics. the difference is that soros has an agenda, he has a specific left-wing agenda which he pushes overtly and public. baruch was more in the influence line. he was a democrat of the old school.

rather laissez-faire. work and save, low tax democrat. of the kind that went out of fashion along about march 1933. so baruch, i also learned in studying baruch that it's important to have a biographical subject that you really like. because i came -- i admire baruch for so many things but he finally showed himself to be someone for whom getting along was more important than principle. and it became irksome. if one, as i say, writes books nights, weekends, and the fourth of july, you have to love it. >> it sounds like you didn't like him. >> he's okay. >> you clearly liked thomas reed and how did you get to know him? >> reed? >> yes. >> let me say one last thing about baruch before leaving. he was a great friend for the people who loved him and many, many did. my impatience with him was over his choosing to get along rather than to choose to stand on principle and be on the outside looking in.

so that's baruch. reed was a horse of a different color. he was -- he was a man of a certain bloody-minded principle, which shown forth most clearly and vividly in his stance toward the spanish-american difficulties with spain, that resulted in the spanish-american war. it brought out his -- his stand on principle, it brought out his mordant sense of humor. >> but do you point out early in the book, i mean, as you read it you begin to say, well the democrats then would be republicans now and the republicans then would be the democrats now. is that right. >> the point defies exaggeration.

>> probably the quintessential democrat in those days was a congressman long lost to memory, and he represented indiana, and he was a jeffersonian, pure and simple. he was a man of cultivated simplicity in habit. he was a man who was coined the watchdog of the treasury. he hated spending money. he loved simplicity. he loved the idea that the democratic party went out of power, could block legislation through the assertion of these parliamentary obstructionist techniques. he was once caught out in the single known exception to his career as a jeffersonian obstructionist, if anything resem bling what we call today progressive politics. he suddenly one day showed up at work and he supported a bill to spend money. people couldn't -- what was this? what has happened? has his body been invaded? no, it turns out he was log rolling.

he was supporting some piece of skullduggery to get money spent in his home distance. knowing this, somebody mischievously got up in front of the house and quoted a couple of lines from lord byron. let me see if i can do this. sweet is the honest watchdog's bark as open -- bay open mouth as we come home. and at this mocking of the watchdog of the treasury, the house dissolved into laughter and holman's bill was lost in this wonderful laughter, which is, by the way, the characteristic of the quality of d debate in the house at the time. now, people had nothing else do except to amuse themselves or read. no video entertainment. most were lawyers. despite being lawyers, they were educated people, well read people. and they amused themselves with

high-minded banter in the house. some wasn't high-minded, but some was. this guy quoting lord byron was characteristic of the quality of the debate and the quality of banter in the house at the time. >> it's funny you should mention holman because i turn to page 271 and i want to quote a long paragraph and get you to talk about this time in the history of the house. at 67 years of age, william s. holman, democrat of indiana was one of the house graybeards. he was the first elected to the 38th congress in 1858 and had, for that reason, a different view of partisanship than most of his younger colleagues. not a few members kept pistols at their desks in those days for a piece of paperer, accidentally discharged his weapon, sending a ball blasting into the desk in front of him, narrowly missing human flesh, in an instand, as holman told the story, there were fully 30 or 40 pistols in

the air and the scene looked more like a texas bar room than the congress of the united states, unquote. different place today. or is it? >> yeah. different and yet the same. i sometimes wonder whether the nature of the debate might not be improved by a few firearms in the house to enforce a certain level of decorum. but i guess we don't have -- we have metal detectors now. >> did you find any pictures of any members of congress back in those days carrying pistols? >> no. no, but you can tell with their eyes they were packing heat. well, so many of them, brian, by the time that -- reed got into congress in 1876, and by that time, you know, many if not most of the representatives were veterans of the civil war. they knew something about firearms, knew something about firing them at human beings.

and when people talked in the heat of debate and it got personal which it sometimes did, you could tell under the surface things they were not so far away from a challenge. duelling was, you know, certainly on its way out, if not altogether out then, but there was an undercurrent of rhetorical violence from time to time, including when reed instituted his famous and quite tempestuous reforms. >> born in 1839, tom reed would have been, what, 22 or so at the beginning of the civil war. >> yeah. >> did he serve? >> he did. at first he went to california and pursued what he thought was to be his dream of doing something he didn't know wasn't mining. he taught for a while. he was unhappy. he became a lawyer. he came back east. he was all for the union. he gave speeches, kind of marshal speeches which must have seemed odd to people in california. here is a strapping guy, 6'3", then 200 pound, not 300.

not in uniform. and i gather, you know, one never knows, reed must have felt the call to arms. one of his close friends had been killed in bull run. he gets a commission in the navy. and one of the least marshal sounding military or naval titles, extap, was acting assistant pay master. aboard the uss cybill, which was in mississippi and tributaries in the last year of the civil war. >> how long did he serve totally? >> oh, 13, 14 months. >> and when he came out of the navy what'd he do? >> he went back to maine. he became -- he resumed his legal studies and opened kind of a one-man practice and waited for customers. >> you talked about his diary earlier and it's cited a lot in your book. is the french side cited or english? >> much of it was in french, i had the french version. my high school french seeming to be inadequate to the occasion. i had it translated.

>> why do you think he wrote his diary in french? >> i think he was practicing french. he was a serious student of the french language. also i think he believed it imparted some discretion to what he was saying. you know, it's interesting. his family and his -- i'm not sure which one of his succeeding generations of reeds or valentines got their hands on the diary, but portions are cut out and inked out, unreadable. and one would suppose were the most indiscreet, except some of the portions that remained, i think, were plenty discreet. i had no idea what the standard was nr for obliterating the packages that were obliterated. >> did you read it all? >> yeah, it wasn't long. it was fascinating. >> as you tried to get to know

him, how did you do that, where did you go? >> he has a collection -- his papers with collected at bowden and the professors have chosen to pursue other interests. they have been untouched all these many years since his death. >> untouched since his death? >> well, one of my benefactors was a man named gallagher who sent out to write a life of reed and who went through papers and organized them and collected bits from the congressional record and who went writing to historical archives. he did his work in the early 1960s. so i came across the remnants of mr. gallagher's research. he never did write a book. i hired some researchers. again, this is part-time work, brian. for me my day job is wall street. it took a while, but never ever a labor -- it was indeed a labor of love. >> and again, going back to why did you think this book would sell? >> i have no anticipation of anything resembling an economic return on this book. >> what about the publisher?

forget about the money. what about the publisher? >> no, i think my sainted editor, i think she likes the book and she thinks the world ought to know as i do about this fascinating chapter in american history, which, by the way, is wholly pertinent on the day on many, many counts not least given events in wisconsin when the legislators walked off to deny the state -- the governor a quorum in the state legislature. these events of yesteryear are relevant politically and economically and not least financially. >> well, maybe we can ask it this way. let's say the paul ryan budget that he just got passed by the house of representatives, if your majority is in control and sticks together, today, you can get anything passed. >> correct. >> could you have done that back in reed's time? >> absolutely not. not until he put through the so-called reed rules in the

1890s. >> how would they stop? >> let's say this. congress is convened and one part of the majority party, let's say the republicans, have a majority of members in the house. but they have many fewer members in the house than are required to set the quorum without which under the constitution the house can do no substantive business. so the majority and the minority show up for work, and the gavel comes down and let it begin. it begins. they take a roll call. and somebody moves to introduce legislation. the legislation is controversial. the minority party won't have a part of it, and suddenly, there's no quorum. they don't respond to the subsequent roll call, does congress. they sit there. sit there for days on end until they reach some sort of compromise that will result not in that legislation, but in some legislation upon which they can

agree. so you see, under the rules prevailing until reed got the speakership, very little legislation was passed as a percentage of legislation presented for enactment. and reed's maine -- when he was in the state legislation, they must be discussed and much would be enacted. he was shocked and dismayed and scandalized to realize that perhaps 10%, 5%, 10% of things that were put up for serious consideration got enacted. it was -- you know, so reed was all for the progress of the 19th century. he had the least amount of nostalgia for yesteryear of any politician you have ever met. most politicians love history. that's why they got into the law. they revere the american past. there's an undercurrent in many politicians of a yearning for something of yesteryear. with reed, it was all about the future and the glorious present. he would dine with alexander graham bell.

he knew thomas edison. he couldn't believe what was happening before his eyes. you know, the telephone, the prospects of -- he could see television. he had been dining with bell. he could see that coming. he could see the glimmerings of the internet. he could see instant communication and he got to work in the house of representatives and saw it was stymied with rules that was enacted before any of the improvements in his own life had been effected, so he wanted to bring the standards -- of the house up to the 19th century. >> i have a little amateur chart i figured out here where, you know, all the years that he was there, he became speaker in the 51st congress. so he had a lot of time to watch the house. what did he do in the early years? what committees did he serve on? >> judiciary committee was one.

there was a great hue and cry, of course, over the election -- of the presidential election of 1876. brian, you're going to prompt me on this with the index of the book at hand. the election was run, who is the guy who -- so it was between a new york democrat -- >> sam tilden. >> samuel tilden. and the republican? >> rutherford b. hayes. >> thank you. it seemed for all the world on election day as if tilden had won. this would have been a triumph for the party that had been out of power and indeed out of -- had been -- it had been under the suspicion of treason since the civil war had the democratic party. wholly marginalized, and yet tilden had seemingly won this presidential election. he did win the popular vote, but as the hours dragged by on election night, it seemed as if the electoral vote was still up for grabs and there ensued a great mobilization of political machination and money and

visiting statesmen as they were cynically called went south to the states that were still up for grabs, distributing money as the needs seemed to arise, promises of political preferment, offices, the like. great stink. finally, hayes wins through a compromise, the democrats are promised certain things. in the aftermath, hayes wince. and it stunk to high heaven. so what do we do about the stink? well, we convene a congressional committee to investigate the election. the democrats were reluctant participants because they had rolled over, they had said fine, we'll stand by the apparent verdict of the electoral college. but next time, watch out. that was the democrats. but they had to investigate. re