hello and welcome. thank for joining us here at the mechanics. at 57 post street in san francisco for our program, american midnight the great war, a violent peace and democracies forgotten crisis with adam hochschild. i'm laura sheppard of events

here at the mechanics institute. shoot. and for those of you who are new the mechanics institute was founded in 1854 and we're one of san francisco those most vital literary and cultural centers in heart of the city. we a general interest library on the second and third floor and international club and our ongoing programs and cultural events. and friday nights come for our cinema lit films. please see us at my library dot org and come see us in person downtown san francisco. this talk will be followed by a q&a with you audience. also copies of american midnight are on sale after the program and they are provided by alexander book company. american midnight. in this book by award winning

historian adam hochschild, he brings alive the horrifying, yet inspiring four years following the u.s. entry into the first world war spotlight of forgotten repressions, while celebrating an unforgettable set of americans who strove fix their fractured country and showing how struggles these struggles still guide us today, this prescient book brings into perspective the conflicts of armed troubled and conflicted times times. much of adams work and writing is about issues of human rights and social justice. among his 11 books are included leopold's ghost, a story, greed, terror and heroism in colonial africa, bury the chains prophets and rebels in the fight to free and empire's slaves to end all

wars. a story of loyalty and rebellion. 14 to 1918. spain been in our hearts americans in the spanish civil war, 1936 to 1939, and more recently rebel cinderella from rags to riches to the epic of rose pastors stokes. as a journalist, he has for american magazines from five continents and some of his work appears in two collections of shorter pieces, most recently lessons from, a dark time and other. how to child has won the pen literary award. the angeles times book prize and the theodore roosevelt. woodrow wilson award of the american historical association. two of his books have been final is for the national book circles

critic award, and one for the national book, and his has been translated into 15 languages. a lecturer at the graduate school of journalism at, the university of california, berkeley. and speaking of berkeley, that's he lives with his wife, socialist author arlie russell hochschild. so please welcome back to. mechanics institute adam hochschild. okay. thank you very much, laura. and it's nice to be back here and have the chance to talk about my new book with you here and with those of you who are watching this on c-span. so i'd like to begin by asking you to think about some of the most dramatic and shocking events that have happened in this country in the last couple

of years. president who tried to steal an election, the january six, 2021 assault on the capitol. the killing of george floyd camera. a string of appalling court decisions. but imagine if a hundred years from now you were looking at a high school history textbook, the delta, this period. and said almost nothing about any of those things that i think is the case when we look back today at the america of 100 years ago. there were equally shocking things that happened in but we've forgotten about them at our peril. think back to your high school history textbook. there was always a chapter on the first world war about the nations of the old world were tearing each other apart.

meanwhile, the united was a country at peace. a country of small town churchgoers, new industries and hard working farmers. then the nasty germans started sinking american ships with their submarine arms and president wilson declared enough, is enough. we need to the world safe for democracy. and he asked congress declare war, which it promptly. then the american troops went to europe doughboys as they were called in sort of forest ranger hats. they fought bravely. they helped win the war. and then that chapter of the textbook, or at least that's where my school history textbook chapter ended. you turn the page. and then the next chapter of american began. the 1920s, the roaring twenties

flappers. the charleston prohibition speakeasies. and, of course, the heyday of babe ruth ruth. but what i want to talk about is a missing chapter between those two. i said that the image of the united states before it went to war, 1917, was that it was a peaceful country. but this was not so. it was an absolute tinderbox of tension with three big conflicts going on. one was between business labor. routinely there ozens of people killed in labor each year just for instance in 1913, 1914 were more than 70 people killed, including and children in battles between sg coal miners, colorado and national

guard and companies detect is a second conflict was that between nativists and immigrants. you can see some of reflected in this sign and in this one and finally a third conflict going was between black and white americans. most black americans were doing miserable, low paid work like picking cotton as sharecroppers, and most white people wanted to keep them in such jobs. so these were some the tensions in that not very peaceful country of ours 100 years ago. and the united states entered first world war in april of 1917. it was like pouring gasoline on, all of those flames. the country was swept by a

frenzy of hyper. from moment the u.s. entered. the war came fierce propaganda barrage from government. this is a u.s. army recruiting. there was a tremendous paranoia about spies mixed with some of those ethnic hostilities. look at this poster. it's a german helmet with a little spike on top. but perhaps a jewish nose. no, i. about some of this atmosphere growing up from my father was 24 years old in 1917 when the u.s. entered the war. he was the son of jewish immigrant from germany and the family spoke german at home, but they were terrified of doing so on the street. that could get you beaten up. schools and colleges stopped teaching german. several states passed laws against speaking german in or on

the telephone signs appeared like this one at a park in chicago and throughout the country. there were literally dozens of bonfires of german books. this one was outside a high school in baraboo, wisconsin. robert prager was a coal miner in collinsville, illinois who had the bad luck to be german. one day he was seized by drunken mob wrapped in an american flag, forced to sing the star spangled banner, and he was lynched. these are the people who lynched? him. they were put on trial. the jury deliberated for 10 minutes and found them innocent. while a military band played in the courthouse rotunda,

anti-german was reflected in other words, there was no more mendelssohn wedding march at weddings, for instance. names change. berlin, iowa. became lincoln east german town. indiana became pershing. families named schmidt became smith. and one change is still with us. the frankfurter became the dog. there ferocity in the air at very highest level. take instance elihu root. he was a former secretary of state, secretary of war, u.s. senator from new york. now, in 1917, the special emissary of president wilson was the absolute epitome of wasp wall street, washington respectability. in august 1917, he told audience in new york and i'm quoting the

pro-german traitors were threatening the war effort. there are men walking about the streets of this city tonight who ought to be taken out at sunrise tomorrow and shot. there are some newspaper published in the city every day, the editors of which deserve execution for treason. the daily of this era, by the way, were by and large terrible. they usually unkrich echoed whatever government officials like, root said. now people like him were as fierce as were about the war because. there was considerable resistance to it. these women example are from a group called the women's peace party, which agitated against war. people popular anti-war songs like this one because there were of americans just as there were millions of people in other countries as well, who by. 17 reckoned knows that the first

world war was going to drastically remake world for the worse in every way and leave a legacy, bitterness and resentment it. so there was a lot of resistance to the war. one strong voice against the was a magazine called the masses, which was the liveliest in america at the time it was left leaning, but not doctrinaire. it published john reed walter lippmann. sherwood anderson. saint vincent millay. many of the best writers of the day. in some ways it was a precursor of the new yorker. for instance the mass masses pioneered the new style of cartoon where you have a cartoon then one line of dialog is the caption. so it was one of the strongest voices. the war. there were politicians who out against the war. eugene debs, the perennial

candidate for president who had won 6% of the popular vote in 1912. the popular vote for president strong opponent of the war, emma goldman, the charismatic anarchist leader who immediately, soon as the war was declared, started arguing, started organizing against the draft. six u.s. senators voted against going to war. the most of them was robert lafollette of wisconsin. he asked if this is a war to make the world safe for democracy. why aren't we demanding self-determination for ireland, for egypt, for india? these were places, of course, that were all colonies of our new ally, great britain. lafont began receiving in the mail. he was hanged in effigy at his alma mater, the university of wisconsin. other senators opened

investigation over whether he should expelled from the u.s. senate debs and goldman had an even tougher time and will back to them. the government moved to suppress antiwar. if people refused to allow themselves to be drafted, what today we would call conscientious objector laws. they were locked up in army detention camps like one or inside prisons and in those prisons, if they refuse to do the 8 hours a day of manual that was required of all prisoners. they were shackled to their cell bars for those 8 hours. and this drawing of that was made from an art by artist from the magazine, the masters, who himself endured this as a war resister in prison. now, in its crackdown on

dissidents, the government a lot of help from vigilantes, organizations sprang up around the country. the largest of them was, something called the american protective and its members. to wear badges like this. and if you look carefully i don't know if you can see it from the back of the room, but the inner ring of lettering on that badge says auxiliary to the u.s. department of justice. this was an organization that was chartered by the justice department. it soon had 200,000 members by the end 1917, it had a qrter of a million members. it was made up of men who a little too old to to war, but who still wanted to feel they were doing their patriotic best. help the country. defeat its enemies. one the things they did was

carry on what they called raids, whh was to carry mass citizen's arrest by the tens of thousands of people of young men who might be resisting the draft. they would be held if they couldn't produce a draft card. they would be held often up to several days in armories, police stations. until they could produce paperwork and if they couldn't, they were shipped off to the army. sometimes also a slacker was somebody who refused ta war bond. but slacker raids by american protective league were the comparatively mild side of gilantism in these. other expressions of, it were much worse. here's one such episode. this is the front page of a

newspaper from tulsa, oklahoma, and the people referred to here were. wobblies as they were known members of the most militant labor union, the industrial workers of the world. they were beaten, tarred and feathered. what the article doesn't say is that one of the leaders of the masked vigilante teams who carried out this action was local police chief. just have a sip of water. somebody else who was on the scene was the editor of the local newspaper, whom the chief had invited along. here's what it looks like when you're tired and feathered. the men in picture was a minnesota farmer who had refused to buy war. the men who attacked were put on trial but found innocent.

someone else? an organizer for the wobblies had a worse fate. he was seized his bed in butte, montana, in the middle of the night and hanged from a railroad bridge outside town. his name? frank little. he was 38 years old and his crime was coming to organize workers for the wobblies in a mining town where weeks earlier, an underground fire had taken the lives of more 160 miners, which brings us to the point that the real target of repression during the first world war was not only draft or alleged pro-german. it was organized. this was an era expanding unions and many. and business was desperate to suppress unions whatever way they could. strikes were often put down by military force or by the police.

note that these police are in lawrence, massachusetts, facing textile strikers armed with a machine gun. the war gave the federal government and big business the perfect excuse to crack down on the left on organized labor because could say to somebody striking you're impeding the war effort and then else happened that inflamed. still more of the russian revolution. in november 1917. the bolshevik case the most extreme faction of russian radicals seized power in the enormous country. and this set off a hysterical reaction by the american who were terrified at the prospect never realistic. one i don't think that the russian revolution spread to the u.s. and combined with the hyper

patriotism that was already in the air as a result of the fervor over first world war. this produced the worst political repression in the united states since the immediate aftermath of. and it happened on several fronts. one was censorship of the press on an scale here a cover of that magazine. the masses. this issue of august 1917 was its last. it was printed but it was banned from the u.s. mail meant it couldn't be distributed. why censors to several articles and cartoons. here's one of the cartoons they didn't like the liberty bell crumbling so the best magazine in the country was forced to cease publishing publishing this

man was america's chief press. his name was albert s burleson. he was postmaster general and the law gave power to him to control what went through the mail. and remember in these days that was crucial. daily newspapers, mainstream daily newspapers could be sold on street corners or delivered people's homes. but weeklies, monthlies of opinion, the vast of the country's foreign language press had to depend on the u.s. mail. burleson was a former congressman from. texas extremely reactionary and arch segregated unionist. he'd actually been born into a family that owned two slaves at the time of his birth. he loved being chief censor between in 1917 and early 1921. he banned more than 400 specific issues of american newspapers and magazines from the mail and

forced roughly five of them to shut down entirely with his hatred of dissenting media. he would have been very much at home in the trump administration. ironically, he this whole censorship operation from post office in washington, d.c. which a century later became trump international hotel and. another friend on which the government moved was to jail. critics of the war. here's eugene debs, the socialist leader who was sent to prison for ten years for speaking out the war because something else the government was eager to do was suppress the socialist party. socialism was never as strong a force in the united states. it was it would be in western

europe. but i like to think that if the party hadn't been so ruthlessly suppressed at this time, it might have had some influence as a force pushing this country to have a better social safety net, a national health care like they have across the border in canada, for example. not mention virtually every country in western europe. but the party was ruthlessly crushed in this period. and like many workrate x and many other socialists, debs was still in jail two years after the war ended in november 20, when he was convicted. number 9653 in the federal penitentiary in atlanta. he was a candidate for president and received more than 900,000 votes. was not the socialist sent to jail. far from it.

one of the hundreds of others, a woman named kate richards o'hare, the party's most popular woman, activist and orator. she came from kansas and, had a particularly strong following in. the prairie states could attract crowds, thousands. and in she found herself in the very next cell to emma goldman, whom we talked about earlier, the two women became close even though they were from very different political and they each recorded their memories of the other. and for me, writing is about people. and when two of the people you're following write about their memories of each other. it's just a writer's dream. goldman wrote her memoirs later in life kate richards o'hare with help of a friendly chaplain, smuggled out of prison, which her husband published. goldman served nearly two years

in prison, but after that, the deployed another weapon against her it deported her from the united states on this ship just before christmas 1919. she and 248 other radicals. the government was eager to get rid of her expelled from this country, and she was never allowed to live again. now, remember all of this was happening under woodrow wilson, which i think goes to show that you don't have to be an orange haired, loudmouthed demagogue to preside over repression. wilson was the most genteel, scholarly, dignified president. imagine. he was the author of a dozen books, former president. he was president of princeton for a decade. a college professor. most of his life. yet he oversaw the greatest

assault american civil liberties in the 20th century. the year after war ended 1919 saw some of the worst violence in american history and a major reason for it was that there were nearly 400,000 returning black war veterans and nearly 4 million returning white war veterans. and they were competing for jobs. and the jobs were scarce because the war industries and the factories making planes, ships, tanks guns, ammunition, artillery shells were no longer running. furthermore, black americans were fleeing the south, trying to get out of a region where was often an average of one lynching a week. they were heading north in the great migration, but often in the cities where white people did not want them there.

these are white people in chicago stone ing to death? a black man in? the racial violence that claimed some dozen lives in that city the summer of 1919. wilson said almost about this wave of rioting that swept the country. here are white soldiers questioning, a black man on the street that summer, lynchings ple the north as well as in the south. the mayor of omaha, whose ntion in this headline had intervened to try to stop a black man from being lynched. police managed to cut the down unconscious just in time to save his life. but man he was trying to save was not so. he was lynched. and his body was burned. martial law was declared in omaha as it was, and several other americans cities in the year 19.

in this wave of racial violence, more than 70 black americans were lynched. the highest total in over a decade and, many hundreds more were killed in what is always called race riots. but they should be called white riots because in virtually every case they were initiated by white mobs. there's no accurate total death toll because the largest single number of killings happened in a place called oelwein arkansas at the hands of both local vigilantes and federal troops. the victims were black sharecroppers who were trying to organize a union. nobody exactly how many of them died, because their bodies were simply tossed in the mississippi river and floated downstream. but the estimates are that total black death toll. that summer was in the high hundreds.

something else going on in the united states at that time, i think feels eerily familiar today. the u.s. was swept a frenzy about people. the leading candidates for both the publican and democratic presidential nominations in 1920 were campaigning promises of mass. on the republican it was general wood. a blood and thunder who was incidentally among other things, the commander of those on the street in omaha. meanwhile, the frontrunner for the 1920 democratic nomination was the attorney general, a mitchell palmer, who was determined not to be outdone, as a law and order candidate. he staged the notorious palmer raids in more than three cities in which he the arrests of thousands radicals, estimated a

total of around 10,000 people looking people he hoped could be deported because they were not yet american citizens. here are some of those. palmer raid victims rounded up and awaiting deportation at ellis island, a place that had previously been a place of hope where the ancestors, so many of us had first entered the united states. nearly 40% of americans have an ancestor who first entered the country of ellis island. but now, it was a place where people were before being deported. in the course, these palr raids, which took place in several cities throughout the rtheastern part of the country, the raiders also seized and destroyeleft wing literature of all kinds. these are federal agents and local in boston. the raiders also took the occasion to tras the offes of

progressive groups when they made their arrests. this is the new city office of the wobbls, and there were proud of having done this and invited newspaper photographers to come d take pictures of their handiwork. there was however one unexpected hero of this dark time who foiled some the farmer's plans. a man louis post, who was acting secretary of labor. and i'll explain why that was important. the arrests of the people palmer wanted deported were, carried out by the justice department. but deportations to be approved by the immigration, which fell under labor department. now as good guy, this post would never has written risen to a top position in a government department, but the secretary of labor was sick leave. the person normally would have

taken his place was a big buddy of attorney general, had just resigned to run for congress and post was the third ranking person in the department became acting secretary. he was a longtime progressive who was outraged the planned deportations. he was not a radical but he felt nobody should be kicked out of the u.s. because their political opinions. he was a very skillful bureaucrat, an experienced lawyer, an ardent believer in civil liberties. he found legal problems wi the arrest warrants under which all these people had been seized. he invalidated them got most of the people awaiting out of jail and able to save several thousand people from being expelled from the united states. his actions infuriated the real architect of, the palmer raids,

who was the 24 year old j. edgar hoover head of what was called the radical division at the justice department. hoover was enraged. he prepared a dossier against post. he got the american legion to that post. be fired. he got congress to investigate post, but post held on. he was a very skillful in hoover lost his battle with post but went on as we well to win many others. he really got his start in these years and. one of the things he did was to greatly enlarge government infiltration and of radical groups of all kinds something that would for a century to come. i've used the freedom of information to get the fbi files kept on me when i was active in the movement against the vietnam war.

i suspect maybe a couple of you here done the same thing. hoover began doing this writer, this era that i'm talking. he told the country he was monitoring dangerous and radicals of all kinds. for example, men like these. this is the front page, a newspaper from pittsburgh, pennsylvania. in 191 a story about people arrested in an alleged bomb plot by the iww. three suspec a the supposed kingpin of plot was the man whose. photo is at the upper right in collage. pittsburgh radicals knew him as louis walsh. he was secretary the local wobbly branch. he was active in the city's radical library. he was on the strike committee for, a big steel strike. he was a of other left wing

organizations. well, a friend of local socialist states. and he wasiont during a streetcar driver strike, for instance. walsh and another man jubilantly beat a strike breaker unconscious. the beating is referred to in the second deck ofhi headline. somebody obviously very suspio in the eyes of the authorities has to be watched carefully. he was arrte several times, but the whole time he was really agent. 836 of the bureau of investigation, pdessor of the fbi. periodically slipping to meet withoor in washington or new york and brief him and some of whathe ptsburgh were accused of doing was actually instigated by him. res much later in life when he came above ground d new career. one of the things he became was

an officer in t michigan state troopers predecessor of the michigan national guard. another of these years, 17 to 1921 is that not only did the justice department greatly increase its actions and surveillance against progressive of all kinds, so who did the u.s. military. and i'm going to show you something that is sort of a reflection of how the military in this era thought the, military thought, you know, like justice department and other people in the establishment very much in ethnic terms. italians might be anarchists, -- might be socialists or communists. the irish be irish republican army fighters and black americans. of course, an all around threat. and a reflection of the army's

way of thinking. this is ethnic map of new york city. i think you would recognize it as the upper right hand corner of manhattan, prepared by military intelligence in. 1919 and its color by where people different dangerous ethnicities lived. red is for russian --. brown is for italians. dark. gray is for. blacks. bluish is for irish. the numbers on the map in the red circles refer to union iww offices. other meeting places. the blue stars with the little numbers in them refer to the office as the location of the offices of suspicious publications such as labor union newspapers and even the of the

naacp, which at that time was edited by w.e.b. dubois, the military was so fearful of a general in the united states that they even prepared a contingency plan for putting the whole country under martial law complete. with the wording of the proclamation that the president should issue, on that occasion, happily, things did not reach that point. but it's a reminder of how cle to the brink we came. gradually, the repression eased. there were demonstrations urging, the release of those in jail. these folks are in front of the white house in 1921, the wilson came to an end. warren harding became president. and at last, in response to these demonstrations, moving

rather, he began to gradually, almost all remaining political prisoners out of jail. he felt it safe to do because woodrow wilson's repression had accomplished its purpose. the labor movement, the socialist party, progressive forces of all kinds were severely crippled. it's remarkable and appalling to just how many political prisoners there were in the united states at that time. the people of these folks demonstrating about these wives and children and family of the prisoners during. this period of frenzy from 1917 to 1921. the best estimate is that roughly a thousand american is went to jail a year or more and a far larger number for shorter periods of time, solely for things that they wrote or said. one of them, of course, was

eugene debs and harding finally released him after two and a half years of his year prison terms and even invited him to stop in washington for a visit. and debs, his way home, his debs leaving after that visit, joked that he'd run for president five times, but this was the first time he'd actually to the white house. so what can we conclude about this? i think a reminder of the dark currents have long run below the surface. this country sometimes the surface as well. races and xenophobia and eagerness to hunt for scapegoats and vigilante justice. and those currents are still today, as we well know. and it's a reminder of how quickly and easily such forces can be unleashed.

a century ago, it the twin crises of going to war and then the shock the russian revolution that brought all that toxic stuff boiling to the surface. the demagogue of donald trump helped to do so again very recently. what crises fuel these things in the future? we tell. but whatever they are. we need to be on guard against them because i think these last few should have taught us something. same lesson as the american experience of 100 years ago. constitutional is fragile. it can vanish in the blink of an eye if we're not vigilant vigilant. i want to finish by just reading you something that emma goldman said when she was put on trial. in 1917 for organizing the draft trial that resulted in a two year prison sentence and her

expulsion, the country. gentlemen of the jury she said remember no on juries in those days we respect your patriots ism but may there not be different kinds of patriotism. our patriotism that of the man who loves a woman. open eyes. he enchanted by her beauty. yet he sees her faults. so we to know america love her beauty, her richness, her great possibilities. above all, do we love her greater parcels who dream and work for liberty. but with the same passionate. we hate her. can't and her corruption. it was a good definition of patriotism. and then and i think it still today. so thank you. i'll be glad to hear your and questions.

so yeah so what did the censorship start with that congressional art was an executive doctrine as. oh, the microphone. the postal censorship. was that begun as a congressional act, an executive act? good. good question. it was it happened under the espionage act, a law, an amended version of which is still with us in iran likely it's the law that may get donald in trouble over those classified documents at mar a lago that was that law was passed just about six or eight weeks after the u.s. entered the war in april 1917. and it's what gave those enormous powers to the postmaster general, to control what went through the u.s. mail, how long? i'm sorry.

so how long did that last did it end after the words you're suggesting? burleson, the postmaster, continued zestful censoring things up. he left office with wilson, march of 1921. hardy, who is actually remembered is not one of our great presidents, uh, nonetheless, quite good on this issue. he didn't like he'd been a newspaper publisher before he went into office. he immediately stopped it. and then later on the act was was amended, although a version of it is still effect and even though it was called the espionage act in this period that i'm talking about this four year period of, the 2000 or so people prosecuted under it only of them were actually accused of being german spies. so on the one hand i am almost

heartened to see that things today are not as bad as they once were. on the other hand, i'm just mortified to see that somehow we never really learn. so my to you is are you optimistic or pessimistic. well, i'm a little more optimistic after yesterday's election, as i suspect many us are, even though the control of both houses is still officially in doubt. i think the forces of enlightenment considerably better than most of us expected at least better than i expected. however, it's to take more than one election even the next one goes very well to get rid of all toxic stuff in american life. it's there. it's deeply embedded, unscrewed

u.s. politicians and business leaders will make use of it whenever they can and we have to be on guard. i'm a little optimistic on two other scores as. well. i think as bad as things have gotten, you at moments in these last few, if you compare it with the united states, compare us with the united states of a century ago. i think today for all our faults, more americans have some sense the value of the bill of rights and the first amendment than was the case 100 years ago. i don't think a law like the original version of the espionage act could get through. even a republican dominated congress today. i think in civil society we have more respect for civil liberties. one extremely influential bill organization, the american

liberties union was born during this terrible period and had a considerable impact on american life and still. the supreme court made horrible decisions during this time i was talking about upholding the espionage act. but later in the senate century they went on to some pretty enlightened decisions in brown versus of education, gay marriage and other things, and maybe going back the other direction. but i hope not as far. another thing that gives me some hope is this i spent a lot of time in researching this book, looking at daily newspapers in this era of 1917 to 21. and as i mentioned, most of them were really pretty terrible and uncritically repeated whatever government officials and leaders

said. i think the best of our press today. you know, despite fox news and everything else, the best of our media is considerably than it was 100 years ago. the great newspaper is like the new york times and the washington post and do do a lot of critical investigative reporting that the case back then. so these are some things that give me some hope but it's still going to be a tough road ahead of the more pessimistic note. you know, you said we need to be about our democracy, but people would say that we're not a democracy anymore. at least when you look on the spectrum and compared to other western democracies, we have the electoral college, we where popular vote doesn't count. so much. you have a senate where you know

that have fewer people than the city of washington, d.c. have clout in the senate. you have united, you know, supreme court judgment. you have money that now can flow know across borders for local issues. all of this you have money that controls the and to a large extent the elections which is prohibited in other western democracies is how do you respond to that? you're right on every single one of those points. i think on virtually every everything you say is true. and on so many of these scores, many other countries do better than we do. canada, most countries in western europe, a lot of countries do better than we do in having a social safety net as well. the average costa rica lives

average life expectancy in costa rica is two years longer than it is in the united states, even though their per capita. is about one sixth of ours. why because it's a democratic country with an extremely good public health and national health care system. so we have enormous needs improvement in all of these things. and these are going to be tough things to change, especially because our constitution is -- hard to amend. and when you've got things baked into it that, you know, california sends the same number of people to the u.s. senate as wyoming. washington, d.c. doesn't send any at all. you know, the the large state small state thing is just going to get more extreme over the years and i despair of ever being able to get the constitution amended. so these are problems and it

makes us less than a democracy. you're right of the question in the back right here is oh most, most of us have been educated to believe that woodrow wilson was a good or even better than very good president. what is evaluation of him are wilson. i would not rank as one of our greatest presidents for sure. he was a complicated man. i have to say, not somebody easy to hate or loathe. but i think he was a very paradox critical figure. on the one hand, he was a genuine progressive on many issues. he was the last president of the progressive era on issues like graduate of income tax laws against child labor or some degree of regulation of business.

he was fairly good in his term. he was also a great idealist on the issues that was the most passionate thing he felt about in his life. the league of nations. i don't think that his dream of the league of nations with the united states as the most influential country within would have done any better stopping wars than the u.n. has done since its foundation in 1945. but can't deny that it's better for countries to sit down around a table and talk to go to war. wilson about that passionately, so much so that it shortened life because in 1919, when he was in very health, he set off on a cross-country speaking tour promoting the league of nations exhaust it himself, and had to fatal strokes, which really shortened his life and put him out of commission for the last

year and a of his presidency. at the same time he showed virtually no concern about this tremendous destruction of civil liberties during his term the jailing of people for their political opinions press censorship. he was thoroughly in favor of it and wanted the press censorship section of, the espionage act, to be actually stronger than it was. he didn't object when things happened and there even occasions when, you know, he pointed out to the attorney general, for example, a newspaper that was critical things and said couldn't be done about these people. he was dismayed when the socialists made strong gains in the munising elections of 1917, fall 1917. and then that was when the arrests and roundups of the socialists started.

so a paradoxical man, an idealist in some ways, but at the same time, somebody who was convinced of his own rightness that everybody who didn't agree with that could silenced or jailed. he was also a deeply segregationist. the first southerner elected to the presidency since the civil war. and he undid was the rather mild degree of desegregation that had happened in the federal bureaucracy up to that time. there were fewer black people employed in. the federal government. at the end of his rule than at the beginning of it. was there something you were trying learn or uncover when you started working on this book? anything. one thing in particular. and if so, did you find it while you were writing it?

that's an interesting question. i think what i found i've always fascinated by the repressive ness of this period and i think what what found was i was amazed by how rapidly it ignited it. it was that that gave me the feeling that there is something fragile about the social order. i actually begin the book with after an introduction with in which i talk about my parents having lived through this period my hearing about some of these things from my father. i begin it with an extended of a single day april, april 2nd, 1917, which was the day that

wilson went congress and asked it to declare war. and you can almost see the flame being ignored shouted at that moment. there was a remarkable moment in the middle of speech when people were people knew wilson was going to go before congress and demand something maybe not a complete declaration war, maybe war on all fronts, but just war at sea. no more navy patrols against, submarines. people weren't sure. but at the very in his speech, the very senate lines in his speech, he made clear was going to ask for a massive draft, a huge conscription act. the chief justice of the united states edward white, an arch segregationist, very conservative man from louisiana

former confederate soldier, leapt to his feet, lead the applause, weeping, tears of joy. so i titled chapter tears of joy, because there is something so extraordinary how easily this hysteria can be ignited. the strange thing about it, of course, was that nobody had attacked the united. it was not like pearl harbor. a quarter century later. it was not like september 11th, 2001. no one had attacked the united states. there were some american ships being sunk by? german submarines. but they were being sunk because they were carrying munitions, war supplies to germany's enemies and were sailing into areas of ocean that germany had declared. this is a war zone and any ships from any country sailing in there is going to be sunk. you know that doesn't constitute

an attack on us. so but there was all this stuff sort of boiling around under the surface. and then here came the spark that it. so it's just the i think the thing i came away was a greater sense of how easily that ignition can place. and that's what we have to be aware of in the year ahead years ahead. we don't know what those crises are going to be. some of the pressures we can foresee we're certainly going to be facing millions more climate refugees, trying to get into this country as equatorial areas of the world heat up. that's to be one source of pressure. there be others, but we have to ready for them in the back. thank you. a wonderful presentation. i just had a question about sacco and vanzetti and that

trial fits in even though it comes later after the war. i'm just kind of curious some thoughts on that. it came later. i cannot remember year that they went on trial. my remembering correctly was 19, 24, 21, 21. but then they weren't executed until. 27, i think. right. i'm not sure on those dates, but it was after this period and i think the enormous protest movement against, their being put on trial and their execution and so forth was partly a product of people wishing they had done more to protest the injustices of this period. that is a theme comes up again and, again later in american life during the new deal period, they were wary about giving too much power to the fbi.

for instance, remembering what the justice department had been doing during this period. so i think some regret after over what happened in this era was reflected in the strengths of the and vanzetti protests. you had a question here with the microphone you you you mentioned the russian revolution a couple of times and i know it was used for propaganda and that sort of thing. is there a sense of, you know, the level of awareness people had of it and whether there was sort a consensus in terms of what folks opinions were about it? yeah, was certainly a great knowledge of what had been happening in russia. of course, the russian revolution, in a sense happened in two phases. the first was in march. 1970, and when the czar was overthrown and replaced by a provisional government and this

was greeted universally with acclaim across, the political spectrum in the united states, partly because it removed on the right on, the left. it was greeted as the first step towards reforming this autocratic empire. on the right, it was greeted as removing an obstacle to the u.s., joining the allies, because we can't say fighting to make the world safe for democracy. see, when allied the last remaining absolute autocracy in europe. so wilson and the people around them were very happy to see the czar overthrown and the provisional that took over from him in russia promised to continue fighting the war. then when the revolution happened, the second phase in november, wilson and all the allied governments were appalled by this because not only it extreme leftists who over in

russia, but they had vowed to take russia out of the war, and they did so. and this freed up. half a million german troops to move to western front and france, belgium, and be arrayed against britain and france and the american that were now joining them. so were appalled by that. the american, however, which hated the war and large, greeted the russian revolution with great hopes and, expectations and, you know, thought this was paradise on earth. many of them continue to think so. for some years, the wiser ones among them, like eugene and emma goldman, immediately that it was otherwise. when goldman was expelled from u.s., she was sent to russia. she lived there for two years, was horrified what she saw left in great dismay.

deb, days before his death in the mid 1920s began talking about the vatican in moscow issuing decrees which everybody else was expected to follow. so he sort of wised up as well. the other questions, if not i'd like to thank adam hochschild for his insightful and powerful talk about his new book, american midnight. i hope this has been a wake up call, a call to fight for our civil liberties, our freedoms and democracy, and to fight racism as we go forward into. our next election season. so please join me in thanking and also books will be on sale in the back. and please come and have your books. and thank you for coming to mechanics institute here in san francisco thank you.

we are so very glad to get into this subject. it's for me because as poet in the the artistic and spoken word community, this expression that a dope is very, very important. all right. and it's usually used you know in the the dynamic uses of language as something good. all