things. >> biggest failure of al smith? >> some of it may be that he over thought things. i think from a political science point of view. postpone authorities were something he wanted to deal with and he created those and now there's debates over public authorities. and bonding. governor smith was a huge supporter of bonding and that has created for dependence state bonding. >> he called certain questions and faced them down. his candidacy raised questions that were coming up in various ways in if 1920s. immigration, nativism and all these sorts of issues. he calls the question and takes a powerful stand about who is going to be an american, who ought to be included as an american, and becomes a great symbol for that. i think within the democratic

party, he is also a very powerful figure and sort of consolidating what we now talk about as the roosevelt coalition, but it's something that begins with al smith bringing in the urban core. >> yale history professor beverly gage, and mr. evers, thank you for being on "the contenders" and we thank everyone here for allowing us to broadcast live. we want to thank the studio audience and our cable partner up here in albany, time warner. we will leave you with a few of al smith's own words. >> i was elected to my first public office. i remained in the assembly for 12 years. then i was elected sheriff of new york county. and then i ran for office 22

times. i was elected 20 times. and defeated twice. i have worked for if county, i have worked for the city. i have worked for the state. and you will probably remember, that i tried to get a job down in washington, but something happened to me at that time. ♪

>> next sunday we continue our contender series, featuring wendell willkie, you can watch it each sunday at 8:30 a.m., threw labor day weekend. >> up next, at the organization of american historians meeting in milwaukee. new york university professor linda gordon discusses birth control in america. she argues that birth control in the u.s. was not controversial until women became politically active in seeking the right to vote in the 19th century and outlines the history of the politics of bitter control, leading up to the 2012 election. this is about 20 minutes. american history tv is at the annual meeting of the orz of

american historians. meeting in milwaukee. linda gordon, professor of history at new york university joins us to talk a little bit about the history of birth control politics. you wrote the book morale property, the history of birth control politics. 2003 publication. where does the debate over birth control begin in american history? >> it actually began only about 175 years ago. because for all of human society, in every known society p people always practiced some kind of birth control and it was not ever controversial before that. but for the last 175 years, in sort of peaks and valleys, there have been concerns about it. but, from a point of view and historian, this is only a modern controversy, because by and large, you know, the main motive

behind people's use of birth control has been economic. it's always about how many kids can you afford to have, bring up in the right way, how close together can you allow them to come. and so, it's such an important thing, that people have always tried to control it. of course, they didn't have such great methods in the old days. >> take us back 175 years, where does it start? >> it starts with the women's rights movement, what in call the women's sufferage movement, and really the first campaign for birth control was a backlash, a reaction from women's rights movements from conservatives that were afraid that women were leaving the home and were moving for higher education, they were moving for access to employment and access to public politiitics to being e

to vote and serve on juries and they argued at that time that birth control was going to take women away from their god given destiny, which was to stay home and raise children and be wives. and that movement succeeded. and first, most ohef t states, but then in 1873, the federal government passed a law that declared anything to do with birth control obscene and therefore not allowable. >> so any sort of product could not be sold. >> it was not even a product, you could not legally write a, you know, an article arguing for birth control that was concerned obscene. and that lasted for quite a while. it lasted well into the 20th century and it was in the early 20th century around 1910 that there really arose a movement to

get rid of that, that prohibition, i think the reason then was there was more women in the labor force, it was becoming more important to have fewer children because children were supposed to stay in school. they were not supposed to go out and work to help paurt the family. between 1910 and 1920, there was a -- what they called birth control leagues, leagues supporting birth control in every large city or town in the country. and state by state, states began getting rid of their prohibition on birth control, until finally the supreme court ruled in 1965, actually, not until then, that it was unconstitutional to have any ban on birth control. >> this period between 1910 and 1920, was it parallel to the women getting to vote movement? >> yes, very much, very much. it was all birth control, it was

seen as a fundamental thing that women just needed if they are to organize their lives the way they needed to be organized in a modern society. but again, i would say at that time, the main motive was still economic, is that people are seeing that they need smaller families, that they have to educate their children and also that they cannot expect their children to go out and work at age 13 and contribute money to the family. so, you cannot afford as many children. >> you're history to issue is -- your history on the issue is called "the morale property" where did that come from? >> it's a quote from a minister of health, they tried to ban the drug, ru 486, which an abortion creating drug. and the company that manufactured it said that because it's controversial, we will not sell it here.

and the french minister of health said, you can't do that, because this is the morale property of women. if you will not sell it, we will manufacturer it ourselves. and make it available. in other words, they were going to refuse to fold to the pressure to the corporation that was trying to avoid controversy as corporations sometimes do. i like the quote, i think it's the morale property of everyone, not just women. and you know, today and in the past too, it's not as if this is quota women's issue in the sense that women usually think one thing and men think the opposite. in fact there's very little gender gap in public opinion about birth control, as many men support birth control as women. and on the other hand there are women who do not support birth control, it's really a family issue i think than a women's issue. but it has become a women's issue in the last 40 years. >> well, you wrote initially the

book that people may be familiar with in 1976, the women's body the women's right. >> right. >> so there's many years in between, 25 years or so, what did you learn in between that book and morale property about the issue of birth control that changed, how did your view change? >> the reason it was the title of that book, it was the period in which it was abortion that was controversial, not contraception. this is the time around roe v. wade, the decision that legalized abortion. and it was also a wave. by the time of the supreme court decision, there were already 18 states whose legislatures had repealed the ban on abortion and abortion at that time was connect with the women's movement which was very powerful in the 1970s and people saw it as a tool for women.

it is in some ways and it isn't in other ways. and after all, it's women's bodies who bare children, as i said before, the polls always showed that as many men were in favor of birth control as women. but one of the -- one of the inequalities, is that ever since 1920, men have been able to walk into any department store and buy condoms. women could not do that, because female birth control is more expensive. it usually requires some degree of medical supervision, especially when you got to the pill, the birth control pill can have a lot of consequences, it's more expensive, it's more, it takes more of an effort for women to get birth control than for guys. >> how did the advent of the birth control pill change the political discussion over birth control in the united states. >> it changed because a lot of people thought, with these pills that will be so readily

accessible, it's the argument that birth control makes people more sexually active. i actually think there's no evidence for that. and most of the evidence suggests the opposite. you know, i teach young people, as i teach in college students all the time. and i always talk and ask about this issue, it comes up. none of them believe that access to birth control is what makes them sexually active. or that lack of access is what keeps them from being sexually active, but there's a very strong particularly christian conservative view that certainly believes that. and believes that if you can keep birth control from people, then they won't have sex. the problem is, first of all, you know, we now live in a society in which half of all people who get married have lived together for several years before they got married. we have a whole new kind of

family system, our family system changed. so these people who are not officially married and officially in the eyes of christians, of certain orthodox christians they are sinning, but in fact they are really couples. and they expect their lives to work that way. and in fact, it's now very common for people to live together until they decide to have a child and then they get married. but, what is going on right now or in the last five years or four years, i think is actually a slightly more complicated thing, because i think the anxiety that people have about contraception has intersected with a tea party type movement that is attacking big government, with a movement against the health insurance

plan, the plan that people like to call obama-care, and i think there's a lot of conservative -- i was going to say opposition, but i think it's stronger than opposition. really a -- people very, very antagonistic toward obama, just a lot of hatred of obama, and i think all of these things have come together, the contraception issue and anti-big government issue, and the expression of it was the attack on planned parenthood. which is an old organization and an important one. >> are you surprised that the issue of contraception and birth control has come back into the political debate? >> very, very, because you know, when i wrote the first book, as i said, the controversy in the 1970s was about abortion, as far as contraception was concerned, i fell it was a long settled -- i felt it was a long settled

issue. people in other parts of the world have to be saying that the americans are silly about this. because in other countries they have worries of population control and the main tool that you have for that is contraception. but, also because the economy today is very weak. huge numbers of families. the vast majority of american families are absolutely dependent on two wage earners and not depend on one income. when you have two wage earners in the family, you have to have freedom of how many children you produce. >> you talked about the obama health care law and it's requirement in terms of paying for contraception, which is causing controversy in recent weeks and months. what about on the state level,

have states passed laws either increasing birth control access or restricting it recently? >> it depends on the state. states like new york, they know that they really need to increase birth control and there are a lot of clinics. state like texas, states like texas have done the opposite and they have essentially reflected of what people popularly call the red and blue states. but, what people don't actually often register is that only the minority of planned parenthood's services have to do with either abortion, which is a tiny percentage or even contraception, because planned parenthood serves poor people and they provide -- they provide mammograms and do cervical cancer is screening and prostate

cancer screening and they teach safe sex as a going along with screeni screening for aids and so on. that is why i say it's part of this idea that we don't want big government spending money on these kinds of things. when of course, what we spend for every poor person that becomes pregnant and has a baby is of course, far greater than what we spend on prevention of it. >> we spent a good deal of time talking about birth control, mainly for women, you talked about the access of condoms. in your book, in your books, and particularly in the morale property book, what do you right about as the role of men in the political debate over birth control? >> i think it's important not to frame it as an issue of men against women.

that is not how i see it. of course, women get very annoyed when you see a house, aggressional panel where you have only -- a congressional panel where you have mainly men. so it does not divide along those lines, but the factory mains that there's one fundamental difference between condoms and other forms of birth control and that is who is in charge of the birth control. and one of the interesting things that i find, for example, among my college students. is they are not happy with just condoms. because they feel that guys are not as disciplined or as trustworthy as women are. they want the -- the women want to have control themselves, which means they cannot just rely on condoms. >> have you found that to be the case throughout the 175 years of

history of looking at this issue, that women want to make the -- >> or be in control. yeah. to some extent, the evidence for a historian's point of view, i do not have definitive evidence, i can say two things, sometimes men do not like to use condoms at all, and at other times they do not feel as great a sense of the risk. you know, it is going to be part of a woman's culture that there's a danger that i can get pregnant, as women will know what stage of their monthly menstrual cycle they are at, so i feel that there's real basis for thinking that all along, well have been somewhat more disciplined about the use of birth control and they want therefore to have it in their own hands. >> if you were going to write a sequel to your book on moral property ten years down the road, what would you like to see

in the chapter? >> it would actually very much be about values. and moral values and not so much about data. because i find that, you know, in american politics people often don't respond very well to data. i can show them how it's a money saving thing to provide contraception and that doesn't sway them. but i do think that -- that, and this is partly what i mean by moral property, i think it's an extremely moral act to make clear decisions about when you are going to have children and how many and with what spacing and it has to do with valuing children, with valuing a real hands on parenthood, that you know, that you really have children because you want to give them a lot of love, and to create some kind of family around them. i'm very open about what kind of family, it's fine.

i have no objection to families of two women, or families of two men, which we occasionally see, but i see that as a morale value. and i do think that in some ways what goes on with a very religious movement like the christian right is that they seem to be the only people who stand for morality, and i think that we have other kinds moral issues that are important. so i think that is what i would probably talk about and how it has changed over time. >> linda gordon, professor of history from new york university, thank you for joining us on american history tv. >> you are welcome. >> all weekend long, american history tv is featuring the history of jefferson city, missouri, the state capitol, locate o located to missouri river. and we visited many sites show casing the city's rich history, learn more about jefferson city, missouri, all weekend on

american history tv. >> well the thing that excited me about being here today is the fact that it's june the fourth. and the lewis and clark car of discovery passed through here, just beyond the trees that you see over there, on june the 4th in 1804, that is 208 years ago, they were on their way to the pacific ocean. and they -- as they say, they passed here and continued on up the missouri river, they followed the river up to the eastern slope of the rocky mountains. it was prelouisiana purchase. thomas jefferson had wanted to send an exhibition of 12 men out into what was then, they thought spanish territory. and then congress said yes, all

right, they would fund him to the extent of $2500. lewis had been jefferson's secretary. jefferson had known him for years, they were relatively close neighbors in virginia. so he knew lewis and knew his capabilities and knew he was the man who could pull this off, getting to the pacific ocean. clark had been lewis' immediate superior when they were in the army together on the frontier in ohio and illinois. he and clark formed a great friendship in the service. so, when lewis knew that this was coming, and had he been selected to lead it, he said there's only one fella that i want to go with me as a cocaptain would be william clark.

merryweather lewis was a shy man and did not interact well with people. he was an outdoorsman, he spent his early years on the frontier, which is now western virginia. and he was looking for things that were unfamiliar to him. he was looking for the indians. he was looking for plants, animals, birds, fish, whatever. and he carried that over with him on to the exhibition. on the other hand. clark, was a people person. he related well to the men. and they to him. so, really between the two of them, they had the mental horses to keep this exhibition under control and on the way. they knew what to expect for much of their trip. once they got as far as st. louis, once they got past st. louis and st. charles, things

changed because there were no places that they could look forward to for a warm meal around the fireplace and bed to sleep in. we were out, they were out in unexplored territory as far as the western europeans were concerned. in the afternoon of june 4, the keel boat which was the larger of the three craft that they were using on the exhibition sailed too close to the bank and the mast hit a limb of a sycamore tree and broke. so, that meant that they could not sail any longer. they now had to row and pull the boat up to where they spent the night which was about eight or nine miles north of where we are right now. and they named it mast creek. now called grace creek. we focus on the personalities and the achievements, or accomplishments and some little

known facts about the exhibition. primarily, for those five people in the monument. let's talk about york. he is on the extreme left of the monument. he is seated, he is a black man and the indians had never seen a black man. and in one location they spit on the back of his man and tried to rub it off. black was something they put on their body to indicate efficiency in hunting, war or tribal affairs. when they could not rub the black off of him and then found out he was black all over, they said this is an important man to this group of men and they called him big medicine. on the extreme right is george druire, he was a half breed, his father was a french canadian and his mother was a native

american. he lived 175 miles south of st. louis, he was hired to be an interpreter, he spoke four or five indian languages, including sign language, which was critical when they got out beyond north dakota. because he knew none of those languages. the dog is a new fin land. he was bought in pittsburgh, lewis paid $20 for him, which at that time was a lot of money. lewis had a very difficult time in st. louis after the exhibition. he was as i said, he was a shy man. he liked to be out exploring on his own. paperwork and governmental affairs were foreign to that

poor man, he could not handle it. and there was a book recently written about three years ago. and the author thinks that he had malaria. there's five types of malaria, which i never knew, he was subject to two of them. one in the brain, and one in his abdomen. and he was in horrible pain whenever they would kick up, particularly the ones in the abdomen, and he was using opium and alcohol to temper his feelings. and he was -- he had been called back to washington by thomas jefferson, because he had not written the journals as he had promised to do, translating them into a written form and printing them. and he ended up on the trace,

which is the path that runs to nashville and that night he showed very peculiar symptoms and behavior. two shots were fired. they think he committed suicide. there's another story that people tell and with justification and with some support that he was murdered. we don't know. but he died in 1810. the naches trace. clark was the head of the indian department he was appointed governor of missouri and he alwa also worked with the indians. they called him red hair because he was really their friend. he listened to them, he helped them all that he possibly could and he never really campaigned for the office of