adopt rules and what jurisdiction we should use and our concern really is that they are going to undo potentially a regulatory status that has existed now for over a decade. >> monday night at 8 p.m. eastern on the communicators on c-span2. >> each week american history sits in on a lecture with one of the nation's college professors. you can watch the classes here every saturday evening at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern. next, st. mary's college of maryland professor charles holden talks about the modernist art movement, labor unrest, race riots, the "red scare," and other destabilizing events that he argues characterized the late 19-teens and 20's. professor holden suggests that violent labor strikes were actually an attempt by workers to bring democracy into the workplace by overturning top-down management. he also describes how radical movements in art and literature clashed with the dominant cultural norms of the time.

this class is just under an hour. >> i want to look at the debate in the early 20th century over what is called modernism. and how these debates are going to work into some of the anxieties we have been talking about -- really all semester about the rise of modern america and spilling over into the postwar years. to start with, let's look at some quotes from people we have heard from before in the semester to reestablish what the progressive ito'sethos was. walter lippman, 1914. he says we can no longer treat life as something that will trickle down to us. we have to deal with it deliberately, devise its social organization, formulate its methods, educate and control it. a classic progressive era approach. jane adams. our friend jane adams.

she writes, life in the settlement discovers above all it has been called the extraordinary pliability of human nature. a phrase she probably got from john stuart mill. and it seems impossible to set any bounds to any ideal deal -- to the moral capability that might unfold from educational and civic institutions. the point that we have been following all semester is that within progressivism there was this strong sense that in an industrialized united states large problems needed to be addressed, but that also with the development or the discovery of new knowledge, new ways of understanding, that these problems could be addressed, and that's a big deal, right? reforms could be enacted in society, in the lives of those living in the united states to

-- could be made better, happier, more fulfilled. that in a nutshell is what we have been doing all semester. now think of people born in, say 1840, what they had witnessed by the time the united states became involved in world war i in 1917. look at all that has changed in terms of philosophic and scientific innovation. even just some of the biggies, right? charles darwin. darwin comes along and the fundamentals of his theory will eventually change our basic notions of where the human race comes from. big deal. the old belief that humans were created intact a few thousand years ago is now challenged by the view, the modern scientific view, that the human family had evolved over millions of years. freud, sigmund freud. he challenges how we understand our own motivations and our own actions in ways that were disturbing to some. freud's work explores the

subconscious. that there are memories or ideas in our minds that affect our bodies and that compel behavior, and we may not be fully aware of them. ok? this is a huge, seismic shift in our own thoughts of what it is that makes us tick. albert einstein in physics early 1900's. syria of relativity. -- theory of relativity. einstein comes along to say time is not time and space is not space in the way we previously understood time and space. that is to say, unchanging absolute. those born in 1840 like the british poet thomas hardy began to raise questions about this

modern questioning. questioning the questioning. fearful it was all going too far, wondering if all of these innovations and complexities of modernity were not perhaps deluding humanity from some essential reckoning from god or nature. in 1912, for example people , could fly. the right brothers. -- the wright brothers. they could drive an automobile. ford motor company will produce its one millionth car in 1915. a few could listen to the radio. not very many, although it is coming. many more could go to the movies, listen to the phonograph, the victrola, as they would call it. there was a sense among some that we were becoming too upset obsessed with what we can do and we can sure do a whole lot more than we could just a few years

prior, but the result is this lingering fear, that we do not know who we are anymore -- we are less certain about who we are and what makes us tick, even though we can do a lot more stuff, right? it may be wonderful to have planes, trains, and automobiles, but someone could ask the question, are they really good if we do not know ourselves anymore? so, thomas hardy then. a poet, 1912, writes "the convergence of the twain." in this poem he writes, as these smart ship grew in stature grace, and hew and shadowy silent distance grew, the iceberg, too. reference to? >> titanic. >> titanic. very good. the sinking of the titanic was to some, symbolic. symbolic of too much innovation, too much flaunting our ability to transcend nature's limits.

flight. the panama can nowcanal. automobiles. the harnessing of electricity. and now perhaps nature had struck back. maybe god had struck back. thomas hardy in his poem also describes "the pride of life that planned her." and he capitalizes p and l. meaning all of the modern technology and innovations that went into building the dazzling showpiece of a passenger ship and all of the hubris that seemed to accompany its building. what is hubris? good liberal arts college word. what is hubris? >> excessive pride? >> excessive pride. yes. good. ok. we will get a sense of where we are headed in terms of this clash.

this leads us into really what we are going to wrestle with tonight and that is the rise of modernism. modernism is a kind of expression of these new thoughts. we will look at the impact on art and poetry and literature, and then of course we will look at the fears of modernism, that it generated and raised across american society. a good place to start right here -- the armory show in 1913, new york city. in march of 1913, the organizers of the international exhibition of modern art -- the organizers were this group. the association of american painters and sculptors. put on this huge, huge exhibition of the latest and in modern art, modernist art from europe, with some american painters and artist included as well. and because it was held at the 69th infantry regiment armory -- if you think about it, that is

an interesting place to have the latest, boldest art, in an armory -- this is referred to as simply the armory show. the 1913 armory show. it brought together really the leading lights of the modernist movement from europe and the united states. organizers estimated over 50,000 people attended the exhibit and this was really a who's who. picasso, gauguin, cezanne, delacroix, kandinsky, marcel duchamp, and on and on and on. it's a massive exhibit. 1200 painters and sculptors. impressionists, post impressionists, and most controversial of all, the cubists. so, as this exhibit was being

set up in capturing the nation's attention, a lot of the press seemed to be focused on the french painter henri matisse. i will give you a couple examples of matisse's work. ok. gives you a sense of how he paints. another quick example. this is one that was on display at the armory show. he is a post impressionist. he is messing with lines here a little bit. the new york times, for example, so fascinated with matisse, they sent a reporter to france to interview him and from this interview then, what you have, we get a good sense both of what these modern artists were attempting to do, and also why their critics disliked them so much. so, you have before you then

just a little snippet from this article, this interview with matisse. what is your theory on art, the reporter asked? "take that table for example. i do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me." later on, the reporter -- "tell me, i said, pointing to an extraordinarily lumpy clay study of a nude woman with limbs of fearful length, why?" i like that. points. why? "he picked up a small japanese statue with head all out of proportion to the body. is that not beautiful? no, i replied boldly. i see no beauty where there is lack of proportion.

then, matisse -- then you are back to the classical, the formal. we are trying to express ourselves boldly, in the 20th century, not what the greeks saw." here is a key line. "above all, the great thing is to express oneself." the reporter. i thought of a canvas matisse oh was produced of blue tomatoes. why blue, he was asked? because i see them that way, and i cannot help it if no one else does. and so this interview goes on and on and on, right, but matisse as a modern artist is less impressed with copying the techniques and forms of previous generations. we see how the new artists are placing greater premium on the emotional power of the work. moreover, they sought some

deeper emotional relationship to their work to achieve a kind of emotional fulfillment through their work. and therefore whether the end result looks like the subject matters less and less. they are using their art to access something within. does that sound like freud? yeah, i think it does. ok, but coming after the powerful realist movement, the previous generation, been 19th-century -- mid 19th century painting, the realist movement which, as you can probably tell by the name, realist, realism, attempted to capture the subject, right? that is to say the peasant

working in the field actually looked like the peasant working in a field. given that kind of backdrop, we can see, we can imagine then how what the impressionist and what the post impressionist and the cubist, and how what they were doing was seen as revolutionary. one of the classic examples of realist art is titled "arrangement in gray and black: the artist's mother." what do we know that painting as? you will know it as soon as i put it up. ah. whistler's mother. james whistler, 1871. why is it a realist painting? we can probably take it on pretty good confidence this is what mrs. whistler would've looked like, bless her heart. so -- ok.

all right. against this kind of realism that the post-impressionists and the cubists are working against and the matisse is certainly different from whistler's mother, that it is a far cry from what the cubists are about to do. so if the critics thought that matisse was wild and revolutionary, they fell all over themselves when looking at the work of cubist painters like pablo picasso, or sell duchamp -- marcel duchamp, all of these artists on display at the armory show. let me give you three quick little examples of cubist art. again, contrast with what we're seeing here ok? "dances at the spring."

what's going on here? good question. well, dances at the spring. the point is how different it is from whistler's mother, from the whole realist school. picasso. "woman in a mustard pot." ok. and then finally, marcel duchamp, "nude descending." so, these are just three of those. you get a sense of the cubist genre here. what are we seeing? what we're seeing is a further disorienting of lines and overall structure.

the cubists, on purpose, fracture the traditional form, the subject as it were. it is all broken up and reassembled. and reassembled. and this spoke also to the artist's temper and some of the philosophical motivations of the time, and that is things are not what they seem or may not be what they seem. ok? especially with einstein and some of freud's influence. this is a thought that is starting to take hold, starting to take root. what we thought was time and space turns out not to be time and space, at least not the way we thought it was. things like that. you can see this now working its way into art. that what we thought was true, real, more solid, absolute, that these things can be broken down, and then they can be reassembled. truth or art or life itself can

be broken down, but then reassembled in a way that has greater meaning and value than it could previously. from this point then, we should be able to make the link from this artistic sensibility we are describing and the kind of social reforms at jane adams might advocate. if we think about the adams biography, that whole progressive ethos. these problems in society can be broken down and they can be reassembled to make life better, to have more meaning. in a way, that is what these artists are doing. they are breaking down the subject, right? and then they are reassembling. critics of modernism however, as we will see, tended to focus on the breaking down part. they tended to focus on that a lot. cubism then provoked some very

strong negative reactions. it seemed to to the encouraging -- it seemed to symbolize, maybe even be encouraging the feeling of the disintegration of the modern world itself. so the reaction against cubism is really strong. ok. for instance, this article that i passed out here in the fresno "morning republican," september 27, 1913. in that little article that i copied for you here, the writer makes a really interesting connection between cubism and labor radicalism. he says if the iw do you -- iww

make you angry and you find it difficult to find them within the pale of human charity, try the antidote of going out and exploring the violent world of the art annex. before you get out you will regard the iww as rational and law-abiding citizens. he goes on, the violent ward is where these paintings are held. cubism and futurism run riot, so riotous indeed they will not even stay in their frames. for this is liberty and free art cannot confine itself within its mere frame. here is a room full of pictures that represent neither things nor thoughts nor even emotions but disordered visions, manias and delirium. ok, so here's the question then. what is the connection between -- how is this person connecting cubism and the iww? who were the iww's?

their nickname is the wobblies. the wobblies. the wobblies were, for that time, probably the most radical labor organization. the old knights of labor have long subsided. the american federation is pretty popular, but they take a much more conciliatory approach to labor relations, and this is one of the reasons we get groups like the iww, the industrial workers of the world. who get this awesome nickname of the wobblies. the wobblies then did advocate aggressive confrontation with mine owners in the west for example. they did sort of encourage even violence perhaps, on certain occasions.

ok? certainly they were seen as the most radical labor organization of the time. to a lot of middle-class types and business owners, mention of the iww, the wobblies, sent chills and shivers down their backs. great concern and consternation of the wobblies. so, in this context, this article that links cubism with the kind of labor confrontation advocated by the wobblies, right is really telling. it is really telling. it really gets at those anxieties that modernism was generating and sort of spreading. it was not confined to just art. critics of cubists are very easily, quickly able to make the connection between the kind of disruption the cubists had done to traditional art form and the kind of disruption the wobblies

advocated in labor-management relations. ok. another example, this interview that the new york times holds with this artist named kenyon cox. march 15, 1913. kenyon cox was himself an american painter born in the 1850's, but at this stage in his life he was known as much for being a critic and an art theorist. as opposed to just his work as an artist. he responded very forcefully to the rise of cubism. very early on, you can see the sympathies of the "new york times."

just out of the bat with this article, the "times" writes, the artist was found in his studio in slippered ease, an old corncob pipe between his teeth. what kind of image does that convey? what comes to mind when we think of that? what are they trying to say about kenyon cox? >> he seems like a good old southern boy? >> not necessarily southern. maybe the corncob pipe. one -- he was born in the 1860's. he's not that old. >> more respected. >> respected. very stable, very practical. this is important. even in this article, being able to convey this image of cox of

being well settled in "slippered ease." i love that. stable. because then he is going to talk about cubists and the implication that cubists aren't. keep in mind this interview with henri matisse. so, kenyon cox on the cubists. "they maintain they have invented a symbolism that expresses their individuality, or as they say, their soul. -- their souls. if they really expressed their soul in the things they show us, god help their souls." right? because in their souls, potatoes -- tomatoes are blue.

then he makes this important link between modernism and painting and literature and cox here raises a very important question. he says, if the literary man were to say, wiggility wiggility, wiggilty and tell you that combination of letters gives you the impression of dawn, how will you say that it doesn't? that's a pretty good question there, isn't it? cubism and modernism represent for him a tendency to abandon all respect for tradition and to insist that art shall be nothing but an expression of the individual. so, again cox has raised a very important point regarding modernism and cubism.

if all that matters to the painter, to the artist is what he or she feels inside, what happens if that view, that conviction moves beyond the realm of art? what then? it's a fair question. the thing, he concludes, is psychologically insidious and -- is pathological, it's hideous, and worst of all for cox, it is popular. these men have seized on the modern engine of publicity and are making insanity pay. "the new york times" ran an opinion column the same day as the interview supporting kenyon cox's views.

and here you see a depiction that sets him up differently from the image we have of the cubist artists. he is described as someone who expresses the view of the sound artists and a rational human being. therefore, he is our guy. we can count on him. this opinion piece then says, it should be borne in mind that this movement is surely a part of the discernible movement all over the world to disrupt and degrade, if not to destroy, all of art and literature and society, too. you can see how quickly the critics of modernism move from being critical of the art itself to arriving at these very large conclusions or fears that grow out of this sort of artistic sensibility. my god. if this is allowed here, where does it stop? ok? it continues -- they have their counterparts not only in politics but in all forms of art including music and the industrial movement.

there is iww again, the wobblies. there only need seems to be that all is old is bad, all that is improved is false, all that has been cherished should be destroyed, all that is beautiful should be despised, all that is obvious should be ignored. yikes. wow. ok, moving on then. some of the poets and novelists of the day were also breaking down traditional forms storylines, the very structure of writing itself. american poets like ezra pound william carlos williams, t.s. eliot all reflect the rise of modernism in american poetry. one very quick example is william carlos williams, very famous poem "the red

wheelbarrow," from 1923. i will go ahead and read all of it. here it comes. so much depends on a red will borrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens. right? so much depends? what is going on here? if he is saying the little things matter, he is saying the little things matter, but grand ideas don't? it is not clear. and that is part of the another point. of the famous modernist poets was t.s. eliot. born in missouri, which he quickly left and spent most of his adult life in europe. one of his most famous poems, he implemented a recurring theme that basically says, we can't know what another person is actually saying or what they mean. so in this poem, one of his most

famous "the love song of j. alfred prufrock" -- the story, it appears, the rambling thoughts of the middle-aged man. this is the impression that his left. the opening lines are somewhat famous. it begins -- we have little bits of it here. it begins, let us go then, you and i win the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient he theorized on the table. it goes on, i have seen the eternal footman hold my coat and snicker and in short, i was afraid. what i want to draw our attention to is how he keeps coming back to this theme. for instance when he writes -- if one settling the pillow by her head should say, that is not what i meant at all, that is not it at all.

and a little later -- it is impossible to say just what i mean. and again, if one settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl and turning to the window should say, that is not it at all. that is not what i meant at all. so when you read this poem it reads somewhat as string of -- stream of consciousness. which is sort of fitting. it wasn't. he actually worked very hard on it, but nevertheless, you get that impression. but those scenes i pulled out here, it is undermining a 19th-century confidence in the power and accuracy of words. eliot writes, it is impossible to say just what i mean. that is not what i meant at all. the meaning of words themselves, let alone the meaning of truth or love or beauty is slippery. it's hard to pin down. life in this complicated modern world calls for new forms of expression.

ok. now let's look at the other side here. it will come as no surprise to you, i'm sure, traditional religion and modernism clashed. religion, after all, harkens for the eternal unchanging truth and modernism, as we have been seeing is built on the inside that the truth may not be what we thought it was after all. and by the early 1900s, there seems to be a lot of evidence. it is hard not to peek ahead, to see part of the negative reaction, especially among the young, to the death and destruction of world war i. not that this disillusion started with world war i, but world war i certainly added to

it. as we have seen in some of the books we have read this semester, right, some of those truths that young people have been raised on included the idea that war was noble. that war invigorated american manhood. but for a lot of americans in the aftermath of world war i proud of the effort to be sure had to admit that the actual experience had been one that -- jennifer keene's book captures this perfectly -- bad planning hideous conditions, extreme terror, let alone death and carnage. much of it eventually -- not right away -- much of it seemed eventually senseless. we will come back to that as we are wrapping up. at any rate, many traditional believers despised the ambiguities, the relativity, the

tearing down that seem to be so much a part of modernism. so to put this debate another way, what was liberating to modernists was cultural or social destruction to traditionalists. ok, so the question then is, what do you do? how do you respond? first off, we should note that by far, most americans were able to accommodate themselves to the changing modern world, even if it could be very confusing at times. by far most americans got on with their lives. i do not want to give the impression that all americans, like the modernists, were -- but the modernists, were wringing their hands about the downfall of civilization. most of them simply weren't.

but some were, right? and a couple groups responded by taking very strong stance against modernity. so, looking at them helps us set up the other end of that cultural social political -- cultural, social, political spectrum of the day. i will look at two here quickly. first, in the early 1900s, a wealthy southern california oil millionaire, a man by the name of lyman stewart, becoming more and more convinced that his traditional view of christianity was under attack, paid for the writing and publication of some 12 volumes defending the christian faith, some 90 essays on the christian faith.

written by ministers, scholars theologians and so on. these volumes were rolled out between 1910 and 1915 and they were given the title "the fundamentals." "the fundamentals: a testimony to the truth." i think these subtitle may be as important as the title, right? a testimony to the truth. the fundamentals. the foreword to volume one explains that these volumes will be published and sent to every pastor, evangelist, missionary theological professor, theological student, sunday school superintendent, ymca and ywca secretary in the english speaking world, so far as the addresses of all of these can be obtained. this was a man with big plans. the publishers continued -- the publishers believe that the time

has come when a new statement of the fundamentals of christianity should be made. keywords right there. the time has come. in light of what we have been talking about so far, yeah, that is how it seems. now those christians who referred to the fundamentals contained in these volumes then became known as why? -- as what? fundamentalists. thank you. that's right. don't overthink. curtis law, a baptist leader, is credited with the term in the 1920's. the fundamentals asserted the authority of scripture, attacked modernism, and generally railed against various isms of the modern world and millions of copies were sent out. that is the important part.

not just that they did it, but they disseminated millions of copies. and they were part of a movement then. they were part of a movement. the 1920's, one of the leading voices of this traditional christian movement was a man we have talked about a number of times this semester, william jennings bryan. william jennings bryan. right? bryan's chapter in this story then reaches its peak during the scopes trial of 1925. but he was not alone. that is the important thing here. there are others, lots of others like william jennings bryan, traveling the countryside during these years, talking about traditional christianity. people like billy sunday, former professional athlete turned preacher. men like mordecai hamm.

in 1923, 1924, ham traveled the south, decrying the teaching of evolution in public schools. and as he did this, he also took the opportunity to take shots at other modern disciplines being taught at the modern university of the 1920's. things like sociology. economics. political science. here is one little excerpt from one of mordecai ham's sermons, 1924. here is what he said. this was aimed squarely at the university of north carolina. hugh today are listening to false prophets and seeing the prophets of god lasted in the face and doing nothing. you put men in your colleges who

are known to believe that christ was an illegitimate child. you wonder why russia is swept by bolshevism, while england and even your own country are swept by disruption. the day is not far distant when you will be in the grip of the red terror and your children will be taught free love by that damnable theory of evolution. as a historian, you come across these excerpts, and that is a wow moment. wow. there is a lot going on there, isn't there? you bet there is. people like mordecai ham, billy sunday, william jennings bryan again, like the article that connects the iww with cubism. you take that modern sensibility and it opens up this universe of anxieties that far outstrips the world of art.

ok, another incarnation of this defense of tradition at this time comes in 1915 with the rebirth of the ku klux klan. the ku klux klan. we can discuss the remote and of -- we have discussed the reemergence of the klan in terms of southern history as it goes through jim crow, how movies like "birth of a nation" meant to glorify the klan in the postwar south, but in this context we can expand the role that the ku klux klan played in american society. the story begins on thanksgiving night, 1915, on top of stone mountain, georgia. if you have never been there, it is a tall granite peak outside atlanta. a group of men gathered, planted an american flag and a cross set the cross on fire. of course they do, right? and they opened a bible to

romans, chapter 12, verse 2, and proclaimed the new knights of the ku klux klan. and in romans, 12:2, what do they find? do not conform yourself to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of the mind so you may judge what is god's will and what is good and pleasing and perfect. do not conform yourself to this age gives us a very large hint at what drove those to join this newly reformed klan. do not conform yourself to this age. think of what "this age" represented to a lot of people. but note also in this verse, it confers upon the believer the power to determine for themselves "what is god's will

and what is good, pleasing, and perfect." you are armed with that, you were in pretty good shape, right? if you confer upon yourself ability to determine what is god's will -- i don't know about you, but i would kind of like to have that power, wouldn't you? all right, the new klan move beyond hate and fear of african-americans. this new version also chafed at the increasing position in american psyche of the 19-teens, 1920's of catholics, jews, progressives, liberals. they oppose labor unions. they opposed feminists, they supported prohibition, they supported the exclusion of catholic teachers teaching in public schools.

they opposed the entry of the united states into the league of nations and on and on and on. against all of this then this new klan responded. this new klan was not only poor, white men and not at all exclusively southern. there's a strong movement in places like indiana. so, when we look at the rise of this new klan, what are we seeing? the places most likely to be hotbeds for the klan were regions that were rural and were becoming more urbanized or more connected to the industrialized national economy. this makes sense because what kind of problems from their perspective, what kind of problems would that bring?

ok? fear of labor unrest. immigrants. maybe black migrations, looking for work, all of these parts of the rural society being brought an industrializing society. when we study the rise of the klan during this time, we find that it caught hold in those places that were just being introduced to a more modern consumer culture. things like movies, things like the automobile, magazines, phonographs. all of these were thought to be loosening agents in society. they all seem to be new experiences beyond the control of, say, your parents. so, in short then, anything, anything -- north, south, west -- anything that threatened the

stability of an older, white dominated, male-dominated, rural-based, more isolated protestant era. the klan slogan was native white protestant supremacy. the klan got started on thanksgiving 1915, but it did not do much until after world war i, 1919, going into 1920. suddenly membership in this new klan took off. probably peaked around 1925 or so. the numbers are hard to say. certainly in the hundreds of thousands. probably approaching millions in this new klan. the question is, why then ? if it started in 1915? what took so long? i think jennifer keene's book

that we've read last week gives us a good description of this mood that comes over many americans as the war is brought to a close. at the end of that book, she really captures this very well and there is this sense, for example, among the soldiers that that is it. we've done it. we've done our bit. time to go home. beyond the soldiers though there is this sense it is not only time to physically bring the soldiers back home, but it seemed a time for many people to rein in all of the innovations the experimentation, they reform that seem to drive the progressive era. time to rein that back in now. a number of the books we have read this semester touch on that mood. brand's biography of wilson really gets at that toward the end, doesn't he? in this sense the rise of the klan is one part of the swing back to a more traditionalist mood in the united states.

not a mood that comes out of nowhere, however, after world war i. it had been there in the years prior. how do we detect, how do we measure the conservative mood coming back to the united states? one very simple way. the political choices made after world war i. for example, the election in 1920. presidential election, 1920 featuring warren harding. the very famous quote from his campaign, 1920 -- well, not very famous. return to normalcy. return to normalcy. whenever you read about war and -- warren harding -- granted not

very often -- oh, yes, return to normalcy. that does capture the mood. but i also want to look at a little bit more from that speech where he used this word. this is during his campaign in 1920. harding says america's present need is not a heroics, but healing, not nostrums, but normalcy, not revolution, but restoration, not agitation, but adjustments. and it goes on. instead of talking about normalcy -- that is it. let's also focus on the word agitations that he uses. for example, after world war i hundreds of thousands of white soldiers returned to find what they considered their jobs already filled by recent african-american migrants to the north. thousands of white soldiers returned to northern cities to find the sheer number of african-americans sharing what they considered their cities to be increased dramatically, and they didn't like it.

we have covered this in "loyalty in a time of trial," but we know 1919 was one of the worst years on record for white on black violence. st. louis, chicago, illinois. all erupted in race riots. millions of workers, about 4 million workers are going to go on strike in 1919. and this wave of labor unrest did not fit into this conservative mood. -- then fed into this conservative mood. it seemed to spark hysteria. this is a time when we are dealing with the red scare. the red scare with the bolshevik revolution being so fresh, that

americans now determined that perhaps bolshevism had come to the american shores and were undermining the capitalist system as we speak, right? so in this climate there is a very harsh reaction to labor unrest in 1919. there were accounts of violence that seemed to be tied to the labor unrest. the u.s. post office during 1919 intercepted dozens of bombs that were being mailed to prominent americans. they did not intercept all of them. one of them blew up on the front door of mitchell palmer's house. mitchell palmer was the attorney general of the united states. here's the thing about the red scare. it is not clear that bolsheviks or communists sent those bombs. they probably didn't. it was probably anarchists.

but in this climate then americans were predisposed to draw the conclusion it was the bolsheviks. it must be radical labor organizers. in the minds of americans they are one and the same. because bolsheviks as they are living out the words of karl marx, workers of the world unite, we have to go after the labor unions. mitchell palmer starts this new division where they are going to root out signs of bolshevism and labor radicalism and organized labor. these are called the palmer raids. they physically go to union halls in 1919, the early 1920's and round up people on suspicion of labor radicalism and agitation and the end of the porting a number of them. the palmer raids. the palmer raids were led by

this general intelligence division palmer created, led by this zealous young investigator j. edgar hoover. his endless career is just getting started. ok. so, when we look at the labor unrest of 1919, we have to remember -- where were the workers coming from? we know because we talked about this. the workers were african-americans at this time seeking to make real the promises woodrow wilson had set forward in bringing the united states into war. going to make the world safe for democracy. from the workers' perspective

this meant more democracy in the workplace. in the context of 1919, the overriding fears have just become too much. too many other americans, race riots in the city, violent strikes, feminism, the fear of bolshevism, these all seem to indicate we have entered frightening times after world war i. these all seem to indicate what the irish poet yeats would write after world war i -- things fall apart. the center cannot hold. that what ever it is that holds this world together, it seemed to be disintegrating. a time when young people are saying the following. for example, f. scott fitzgerald in his novel "the side of paradise," he writes, here is the new generation grown-up to find all gods dead, all wars fought, all faith in man shaken. the underwriter in "the atlantic monthly" in 1928 who wrote

"the older generation has certainly pretty well ruined this world before passing it on to us. so what to do. hold on. hold on to what has previously been understood to be the truth. hold onto what you have always understood to be the truth." about race relations, about gender relations, about the limited role government should play, about the limited power of workers, about what art should look like, what music should sound like, and how literature should read. hold on. let's stop there. all right. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] >> join us each saturday at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern for classroom lectures from across the country on different topics

and arrows in history. lectures in history are also available as a podcast. visit our website -- www.c-span.org/history/podcasts or download them from itunes. >> sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. eastern, join us for "reel america." this film shows the conditions in japanese internment camps during world war ii. that is tomorrow at 4:00. each week, american artifacts takes you to sites of american history. clara barton founded the red cross in 1881. she moved the headquarters just outside washington, d.c. stockpiled with volunteers and

cash she prepared for a crisis. we took a tour of the house with a park ranger. >> welcome to the clara barton national historic site. this is a big house of 38 rooms and 14,000 square feet to read as we walk through this house we will get to know a lady who lived your little more than 100 years ago. this was clara barton's home for the last 15 years of her long life. she lived to be 90 years old. we will see that this is more than clara barton's home. this was the first permanent home of the organization she founded and led for 23 years the american red cross. under one roof in this house they have the people ready to go. the volunteers lived you. they have the supplies on hand. they have the money. there is a walk-in vault in the corner of this building where they had $3000 ready to start a

relief effort. if there was a hurricane on a sunday and the bank was closed they did not have to wait for the bank. they could open the doors, load wagons, go to trains, wherever they were going. i'm standing in the room that was ms. barton's office. she set here in the office. on one side of her desk is the stapler and 80 cannonball that she used as a paperweight something she could have picked up from a civil war battlefield. there are interesting things on this desk. red cross windows are here. people from the streetcar could see those windows. people from the road would know what this house was about. clara barton died in her bedroom in this house, april 12, 1912. >> you can watch this and other

american artifacts programs anytime by visiting our website www.c-span.org/history. >> the battle of new orleans was the final major battle of the war of 1812.