anniversary of the september 11 attacks. join us for live coverage from new york, the pentagon, and shanksville, pennsylvania, starting at 7:00 a.m. eastern, saturday, september 11 on c-span. watch online or listen on the radio app. >> theodore gilmore bilbo was an american politician who twice served as governor of mississippi, once in 1916 and then from 1928 to 1932. later he was elected a u.s. senator in 1935, was reelected, but died early in his third term. he was 69, a democrat, an outspoken white supremacist, and a strong supporter of fdr's progressive new deal.

we asked a retired professor of history at the university of southern unison -- mississippi to give us some background, and his impact on politics in the fdr era. professor morgan is the offer -- author of "redneck liberal". >> chester morgan, on this episode of book notes plus. listen at c-span.org/podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. >> america's status as one of the wealthiest countries in the history of the world is based on the economic system of capitalism, giving incentives to individuals in other corporations over the government to form companies that trade goods, based on a market economy rather than one run by the state. for the next 90 minutes, we will share stories of american-made as this is in the people who

vote them. we begin with johnny rockefeller and standard oil. it made him not only the richest man in american history, but also a target of the antitrust movement. we are looking at a standard oil delivery wagon that would have been used to deliver products from the standard oil company here in cleveland, ohio. on the signboard we see various product packaging for other products. standard oil was formed johnny rockefeller in 1870, and quickly became one of the largest petroleum companies in the united states.

johnny rockefeller -- john d rockefeller was a brilliant businessman who moved to cleveland as a young boy, threw up in the cleveland area in boarding school, and eventually working in various companies in the petroleum industry until founding his own company. standard oil comes from john rockefeller's idea and desire to standardize kerosene. kerosene was what most homes are using as a lighting oil in lamps, and at the time, it was somewhat dangerous. there is no standardization, some would burn hotter and better -- quicker, and it with the two fires in homes. john the rockefeller was interested in standardizing that and making a safe audit for americans. that is what he was able to achieve with standard oil, even

went so far to build their own safety lamps to burn standard oil in the homes. that led to rockefeller quickly becoming one of the wealthiest men in america, one of the most hated man in america. the way johnny rockefeller ran his business, the way he took over other petroleum industries led to a very bad public image. his business practices were well known as, not the best. it was at that point where his advisors told him he needed to appear more charitable than he already was, and he began his own campaign, where when he was out on the streets, meeting people, talking to people, he would give out times -- dimes.

there became a large legend behind rockefeller dimes. to be handed a dime in the early 1900s, he was giving away a large amount of money. if you think about the steel industry worker who might have been making a couple hundred dollars a week, a dime was a significant amount of money, especially when he would handed to children. children were able to go out and buy thing. it was all because of mr. rockefeller, he was again a good guy rather than a bad business. --businessman. standard oil quickly became successful, making rockefeller the wealthy man he was, it also impacted cleveland economically. it brought money into the city,

but also the ability of rockefeller to be able to pay his employees a decent wage, and allow them to live a good life here in cleveland. it was another one of those industries and we went -- in cleveland that at the time was doing so well like the auto industry, that the citizens of cleveland had a very good polity of life in the city, thanks to these major industries, to be at the auto industry or petroleum industry. bringing that wealth into the city. >> a rival of rockefeller, andrew carnegie built an empire with steel, innovation made the company extremely profitable and

transformed pittsburgh into the steel capital of the world. >> i have been a steelworker all of my life. i come from a steelmaking family, both of my grandparents were steelworkers. my father was a steelworker. my father's father, my father and myself all worked for the same company. pittsburgh was the natural capital of steelmaking in the world. i began to wonder why that was. in the process, with my interests, i started reading books about the industry. that was always lacking the reason. it was known that pittsburgh was the steel capital, but nothing ever said why.

a lot of people attributed it, and thus pittsburgh -- and yes pittsburgh has a lot of coal. one day i realized what it was. it was not the coal, although it had a part to play. it was people. it was engineering, technology, the development of systems. it was a much more complicated system, as a matter of fact, it was also utilization of materials. things that wouldn't be used in the past, now they were found to be very useful and economical to the process. the title of the book is city of steel, how pittsburgh became the world steelmaking capital during the carnegie era.

started applying scientific principles. one of the men who did that was andrew carnegie. a lot of the story became andrew carnegie. there were many steelmakers, but he started to apply in science. he hired chemists. people questioned how he could afford to have a professor, a chemist in his plant. carnegie thought of the others how and why couldn't they afford it. he talked about the burning sun of chemical knowledge. he started to understand things from a scientific point of view, an engineering point of view whereas other people were still going on the seat-of-the-pants operations, they relied on opinion and not what it should

be. the steel industry developed in this region because of history. pittsburgh was a wrought-iron manufacturing region. wrought-iron is a softer form of the material. it was made in small furnaces, puddling furnaces they called them. this did require a lot of skill. that's where a lot of the, basing your analysis on what could be done was the skill of the people you had for you. in the day, you might be able to make 1500 pounds of wrought-iron. wrought-iron was very soft. it was malleable, but it could be made into useful products. it was too soft. a lot of things were being built

required specially rail required that they be harder material. that harder material turned out to be steel. when they made rails wrought-iron, the booming development of the united states in building the railroads, many rails would wear out in stations and places that had high curves. they would wear out in only a few months and steel rails were harder. cast-iron was too hard. rails could crack. especially in the wintertime. steel was the happy medium of carbon that you had where this interview was being conducted, this was the last major facility that was bought by carnegie before he sold out. he purchased this plant in 1898 and by 1901, he was out of the steel business.

this was an iron making plant. he made iron from iron ore. it's not just a melting process, what it is there are blast furnaces and stoves behind us. what you do is smelt iron ore. it is dark side, it has oxygen in it. you have to remove the oxygen and the way you do that is chemically, you reduce it. use carbon monoxide from the fuel then that reduces the oxygen in the ore and you are left with pure iron. this is really a chemical factory and not just a melting factory. that's how you make iron from ore.

this facility was used to feed the homestead works across the river, which many people know from the homestead strike in 1892. carnegie bought a homestead works and this furnace was part of that eventually. it was also a bessemer steel plant. it was built by one of his partners at the time. they had an argument and his name was andrew hallman. he had a vengeance for carnegie and the steel company which became the homestead works was his tool of his vengeance. the people that owned it along with him were afraid that it was going to fail. they asked carnegie to buy them out which he did. that became the carnegie plant. what he did at homestead, he went into a special kind of open hearth steelmaking called basic

open hearth steelmaking and that doesn't mean fundamental steelmaking, that means chemically basic steelmaking. the significance of that is he could remove bad materials, contaminants from the scrap iron. you could remove phosphorus and sulfur. the open hearth production was made from scrap and cold pick iron. the bessemer plants produced a lot of scrap. it had little or no utility. if you put it in a basic open hearth furnace, you can use it. all of this material that was considered scrap and other places and useless material was now to be utilized in the open hearth at the homestead works and not only that, it could be utilized to make steel that had

very high prices. it was a win-win when situation. with carnegie. this was one of the synergies that i found that worked out. he took material that was useless almost and made it into the most profitable products that you can make. the only thing he had to add was labor and fuel to do it. that is part of the genius of him. he could see these things. he utilized the good ideas that he had as a businessman. people would resist him even as his own company to do something like that because it took -- investments and took away from profits. he was constantly reinvesting money from the profits back into the company to the consternation of his partners. they wanted money. carnegie, money wasn't important

so much. he had 50% of the company or more and so 50% of a little is much much better and more satisfactory to him than 5% of a little to the other partners. they wanted more money. he had enough. he was not extravagant. he didn't have huge homes at the time. in 1886, he lived in hotels his mother. his plants were always the best. he was willing to invest the money to make his plants the best. again, that brought or people in. they loved to work for someone who was doing the best. carnegie instituted at jones insistence he instituted the eight hour workday. in 1878. people don't realize that.

for 10 years, he had to work eight hour workdays at his plant. as this went on as more steel was needed and america was taking off as an industrial nation, because he had these sufficient mills, this process begin to take an upswing. the late 1890's, he was starting from a little more than $5 million profits for year to 7 million to 20 million 40 million. in his last full year of operations, his profits were said to be $40 million. that is questionable and it had to do with ego, it may have only been $30 million. still, that's a lot of profits. nobody was as profitable as he was. they had to get him out of the business. he made an asset that was so valuable, they had to buy him

out. because he was going to destroy all of the other steel companies in the united states because he can undersell love them. -- all of them. they got him out of the business and when they sold the steel company to the basis of u.s. steel, they gave $480 million. that's about 3.5 times the total profits that he made all the years he was in business. after world war ii, the pittsburgh region was beat to death by producing a lot of steel for the war effort. they tried to improve plants but they did it piecemeal. instead of going out and building something totally new, they would try to keep their workers working and they would do this piecemeal. they couldn't keep up with the

industry, plants were getting too old. they weren't in new, efficient plans, continuous casters and they make boxing furnaces and things like that. in the 70's, the handwriting was on the wall. plants started closing. the story is about innovation. about technology. the science of steelmaking which is attributed to the carnegie steel company. it's not about the bad part of it, it's about the good part of it. it's about the science. it's about thinking and excelling and doing well. yes, the bad has to come along with the good. that's not why carnegie

succeeded, nor other companies. they succeeded because they were innovators. they succeeded because they could see how to take one and one and make seven. they saw ways to make tings work better as i said with scrap and the open part, they saw ways to make fantastic improvements over stuff that was insignificant. they used insignificant things to make significant progress and to change the way things were done. >> if andrew carnegie steel cult -- built america, this next man helped feed america with his products. we will stay in pittsburgh as our look at american business leaders with the condiment king h.j. heinz. best known for his trademark heinz 57 catch up, he used

marketing and stringent quality standards to create one of the largest food companies in the world. >> when people think of ketchup, they think of heinz. when they think of heinz, you think of pittsburgh. we are at the senator john heinz pittsburgh history center and we are going to take a tour of the heinz exhibit. young h.j. heinz was only 10 years old when he sold his first product. his mother made horseradish in a basement in sharpsburg just a few miles of the allegheny river from downtown pittsburgh. young heinz put the horseradish and other products in a wheelbarrow and rolled them down to downtown pittsburgh and sold them on the street. people loved the product. he ran home and said what else can we sell? she made bottles and jars of other things and a food giant was born.

pittsburgh and heinz went hand-in-hand. heinz became the largest food purveyor in the world. his first product was horseradish. in 1869, he started the business for real. he had a partner named noble. that partnership didn't work out so well, so he brought a brother in, frederick, it was f and j heinz company in 1869. after a while, he figured out he could make it on its own and the h.j. heinz company became a legend. one story goes that in the early days, heinz was on a railroad car in new york city as the billboards flashed by his car. he saw one that caught his eye. 21 styles of shoes. he thought about that for a moment. that's kind of impressive. i wonder how many products i

have. on the back of an envelope, he started to count them up. 54, 55, 56, 57. he liked the look of that number seven. even though when he got home he realized he had more products than that, he stuck with the 57. he put it on every bottle, he put it on hillsides and billboards. heinz 57 was his first branding effort and it was a success. in 1893, he went to the columbian exposition in chicago. it was the world's fair celebrating the 400th adversary of columbus' discovery of the new world. he was on the third floor of the exhibit hall. nobody was climbing the 125 steps up to the third floor. he was dying up there with his pyramids of horseradish and pickles and ketchup.

he came up with an idea on the fly. he printed up little luggage tags. it looked like it was made of gold. it had brass foil on it and he hired street urchins, little out of work boys to throw these luggage tags around on the first floor of the exhibit hall. people would be walking along arm in arm. they would catch the glint of gold out of the corner of their eye. they would bend down, pick up the luggage tag and say look it says bring to the heinz booth on the third floor for a free prize. let's go see what we won. they would troop up the stairs by the hundreds, by the thousands, by the hundreds of thousands they found their way to the booth. they found the pyramids of horseradish and catchup and pickles. it was a huge success. it was such a success that all of the other exhibitors on the third floor said you saved our lives, what can we do. they chipped in, bought a silver punch bowl and engraved his name

on it. what was the prize that people got when they got to the booth? it was a pickle charm. this is the first pickle charm here from 1893. it's compressed cellulose, it says heinz on it. that little symbol of the pickle became the heinz logo for years and years. people to this day still collect the little pins. it's still an american icon. heinz wanted people to see his products. his salesman went all over the world. they couldn't always bring the real thing, so he designed 10 -- tin pickles that they could take. you can see they have numbers on them. 1300, 1800, 2400. that's how many pickles you would get in each barrel. the grocer could say i like the big ones, i'll take one barrel

of the 1500 pickle size. he invented a sorting machine. it was a patented machine that looked like a big drum that rolled and it would sort pickles to different sizes. his sales force went around the world with their tin pickles and colored pictures of their products. heinz knew that if people tasted his product, it was a sure sale. he came up with specialty equipment, chafing dishes, spoons and forks. dishes, some disposable, cardboard. he would set up little samples in grocery stores all over the country. people would try his product and say that's what i want. they would ask for it by name. pure food was a really big part of the heinz message, the heinz brand.

in 1906, he testified before congress pure food and drug act. 40 he was the one of the biggest lobbyists and proponents of this. he knew that his products could pass the test where other competitors could not. not only was it the right thing to do, it was good for business. in order to provide pure food, heinz needed to start with his workforce. many of the workers, most of the workers were women. women from poor families that didn't have any running water. didn't have indoor plumbing in their houses here in pittsburgh. when they got to work for heinz, he outfitted them completely in uniforms that were cleaned daily. the first thing they did when i -- they got to work was they had a manicure. here is one of the women workers getting her daily manicure. they also had showers. heinz started with his workers, but then it went through every

aspect of his operation. from sterilizing bottles and jars, he even made his own bottles and jars to ensure cleanliness and consistency. the stoppers were important. whether they were cork in the early days to crown caps in 1903, to more sophisticated closures that we use today. in 1890, he patented his ketchup bottle. the octagonal shape with the narrow neck. we don't think anything of it today, but that was actually an innovative design. first off, his competitors were using dark green or brown glass bottles. you couldn't see the product inside. heinz knew that if people could see his product, they were more likely to buy it and they could tell it was fresh. he used clear glass. he made his own bottles. that insured a vertical integration of his whole industry.

not only did he make his glass bottles, he developed his own seed stock. he owned farms. he made sure that everything got from the farm to the factory in 24 hours. he wanted it to be fresh from farm to factory. then, he ensured that with the proper temperatures and bacteria and safety inspections, that every product was safe. then, he got them into the grocery stores or the consumer's hands as quickly as he could. h.j. heinz and his son and his son ran the company for 100 years. it was 100 years until they brought in an outsider to run the company. a fellow named armor. in 1971, h.j. heinz the third entered politics.

he was no longer running the ketchup business. he was interested in changing people's lives for the better. he went to congress, then became a senator, senator john heinz was an advocate for the downtrodden. he was an advocate for the environment. he was an advocate for arts and culture. especially, he was the guy who helped pull pittsburgh up by its bootstraps when the steel industry was going down. heinz hall, heinz field, heinz chapel, the heinz school at carnegie mellon university. these are some of the legacies of the heinz family. h.j. heinz, the man for whom this museum was named, his left -- has left a legacy far beyond the food empire his grandfather began. today, the kraft-heinz company is co-headquartered in pittsburgh and chicago. it is still the fifth largest food company in the world.

>> transitioning from industrial giants, one man dreamed of a different type of business success. while his department stores became a fixture in suburban shopping malls across america, the roots of jcpenney stores are the main streets of small rural communities. our look at american business leaders continues with james cash penney and his contribution to rural america. >> like most people in wyoming at the turn-of-the-century, he was a transplant. he was born and raised in missouri. i think j.c. penney was a country boy at heart. there is an old expression, you can always take the boy out of the country, but you can never take the country out of the boy. i think we see that in terms of the life that jcpenney lived. even though he was in wyoming for roughly 10 years and spent the balance of his life in new york city, he never lost that essence of who he was as this

country boy who liked small towns. when you look at where he started here in wyoming, a lot of these communities were relatively young. even as they branched into neighboring states. most of these towns hadn't been incorporated until the late 1800s and some not until the 20th century. in many cases, he became the first real department store that was operating. >> tell me about his early life. how does he end up here in wyoming? >> he was born in hamilton missouri. caldwell county. born and raised. he spent several years there. his dad thought he wasn't cut out for agriculture. he steered him toward a career in retail and he basically lined up an internship for him. he started understanding retail from those experiences. that's where he cut his teeth. he still had his own

agricultural projects that he did on the side. his plan was to work his way up through that hometown. unfortunately, his father died from tuberculosis and it became clear that he was also at risk of that if he stayed in a humid climate. his initial move was to come out west to denver of all places. he started as a sales clerk in a department store, one of the main department stores in denver that has since been taken over by dillards. that's where he started out. he had an opportunity to use his savings and by his own butcher shop in colorado just north of denver. he wanted to get out of denver, he wasn't happy in the big city so he moved to longmont. at the time, about 2000 people. he had deep religious values that stopped him from drinking. his father was a country pastor. he had a huge influence on him in that regard. when he bought this butcher shop, he didn't realize that his

greatest clients were the local hotel and the chef that was there. the chef expected a bottle of whiskey with every order of meat. j.c. penney obliged and provided the bottle of whiskey and he felt guilty about it afterwards. so he decided he wasn't going to do that anymore. so he didn't do that in he lost the business of the hotel in the process and the entire meat shop went bankrupt within a year. it was completely broke. at that point, he had noticed across the street was a golden rule store operating and he was intrigued, so he went inside and explored it. he understood retail from his experiences. he got to know the proprietor of that store, a man named thomas callahan, who also came from missouri to start his business. he was doing something rather unusual, the idea of having six stores, basically a chain department store. that intrigued penney, so he talked his way into being hired

as a temporary salesclerk with the idea that he would be let go after the holiday season. instead, callahan gave him the opportunity to become a clerk in wyoming and evanston on the western part of the state. if he worked out as a salesclerk, he would give him the opportunity to manage his own store and partner with callahan. that was what initially drew him to wyoming. >> what is the title of your book and why did you decide to write it? david: " j.c. penney, the man, the store, and american agriculture." i think growing up in rural north dakota and eastern montana, you have to go out of town to do your shopping, or go from the country into town. my mother took us to a tiny town that had a j.c. penney store on main street. at three years old, i could not read or write, but i was amazed at the atmosphere in that

building. i was fascinated by the stores themselves, but as i begin to study the stores, i began to know more and more about the man behind them, j.c. penney himself. rural america was always part of my childhood in my formative years. i did not realize the degree to which he was also part of j.c. penney's and his stores as well. this gradually became an academic interest of mine, the more i discovered of the rural connection i had not known before, and most people had not known, either. that's what made the book come about the way it did. >> his business model was similar to what the golden rule merchants had started. he didn't open the store entirely on his own. his mentor tom callahan and another mentor, guy johnson, partnered with him. what was different about the stores is they were

partnerships. an employee that came to work, penney preferred to call them associates, they had an opportunity for viable ownership and the opportunity to someday not only manage a store but own part of it and share the profits. that was more unusual about how as i told you, his father was a huge influence on him in terms of moral convictions and values, which penney transferred into his approach to business. even though the initial syndicate was called the golden rule, i think that is what drew penney to this syndicate, the religious idea of doing onto others as you would have done unto you. he took that step further and wanted to apply that not only between the store and its customers but the employer, in this case him, and employees or associates who came to work for him. and even taking it a step

beyond that, into the communities they served as well as competitors and suppliers. his goal was to practice the golden rule in every facet of operation. i think when you look at his approach to partnerships, it goes back to this golden rule idea. it wasn't about him simply making money and that was the end of it. he wanted to share that success with anyone who got involved with him. in the agricultural partnerships that began, ironically began at the worst time of his life when he had lost his fortune ring the great depression, he was using that same incentive to partner with common farmers. most of these would have been tenant farmers, hopelessly stuck working for wages on farms they never would have owned and probably never would have generated enough income to own their own farms. but penney saw an opportunity with those rural partnerships that he could do a solid to the -- solid for the tenant farmers, so that they could have a better farm, and they would have the incentive of ownership and

sharing the profits of that agricultural operation. one of the first ones was arun james. when he came back, he was a well-known person nationwide, he was living in new york city at the time he was setting up those partnerships, but he would simply walk up to the shack or farmhouse this person was in, knock on the door, introduce himself as jc penney, and asked to present this opportunity. who could say no? it is very surreal when we think about that today. if we thought about mark zuckerberg or jeff bezos knocking on somebody's door, offering this kind of opportunity that penney was doing, it is almost stranger than fiction. he continued doing that through the 1930's, the 1940's, and the

last of these partnerships were dissolved in the late 1960's, mainly because his wife thought he was spreading himself too thin between new york city and missouri. there were at least 10 different farming partnerships he set up that were substantial. they changed the lives of the people who got involved with him. in the book, one of the later chapters, his most successful partnerships with two brothers in north-central missouri. they were able not only to buy the farms from jc penney in the 1960's, but keep their family on those farms today. today, the descendants, about five generations down from them, they have family farms that can be traced back to tracy penney -- jc penney himself. >> do you talk a lot about the struggles of the store today and what it has gone through the past few decades? >> i do, and it is sort of -- thank goodness my parents prohibited me from ever owning

jc penney stock, it has turned out to be a good thing in the last 10-15 years. i think he would be heartbroken by seeing what happened to the company. i don't think we can blame it entirely on the rise of e-commerce. i think what it is is deviating away from the values he built it on. he had a mission statement he drafted in 1913 called the penney idea, and it was basically seven principles rooted in the golden rule that he wanted that company to operate by as it continued to grow. at the time he wrote the statement, he only had about 30 stores. in 15 years, he would approach 1400. i think what happened over time is the company drifted away from those ideas and values, and that's why it found itself where it is. if you are not treating your employees the way you would want to be treated, or your customers the way you would want to be treated or responding to what your customers want and need, you will become irrelevant quickly in the 21st century.

i think that is part of the problem. >> what do you hope take away from reading this book? >> i want them to see sort of an unusual approach to capitalism, i think. i think capitalism gets sort of a bad name. i think jcpenney's brand of that was a situation where you could have win-win situations through capitalism rather than somebody making a profit and lowering the standard of living for everybody they made that profit on. jcpenney kept an awareness of everything around him and the idea of trying to do what he could do to make that environment that are, and -- environment better, and he saw his company and wealth as a means to do that. >> inside every jcpenney store, you will likely find a product from this next company.

john h patterson was the head of the national cash register company. he helped make it an essential item for retail stores across the country. >> patterson was not born far from where we are standing. he had a number of careers before becoming an entrepreneur. he worked on a canal as a toll collector. he owned a coal supply store in dayton, and a company in southeast ohio that sold coal and miner's supplies. that gave him the background that formed some of the innovations that came out of his company, the national cash register company. in the early 1880's when he owned the company in colton, ohio, and southeast ohio, he had purchased a cash register sight unseen from a magazine for $50.

new invention, very expensive, in today's dollars that is a little over $1100 for a piece of equipment. he purchased it because his receipts were not matching the cash in the door at the end of the day and almost immediately he turned losses around and started making money. in 1884, they purchased the national manufacturing company for $6,500. patterson created the market for the cash register where none existed in a variety of ways. he was very canny at marketing. he would advertise to the butcher specifically the benefits this would have for his butcher shop, or if you ran a saloon, you got a piece of marketing material that talked about the benefits of the cash register would do for your saloon. he was kind of a genius in that targeted, direct advertising, what we now call junk mail.

patterson was the inventor, if you will, of the cash register receipts. not only did patterson advertise to the merchant that this will benefit you, he also advertised to the consumer, you need to shop at a store that issues a receipt so you know you were not taken advantage of. he played them off of each other to help create that market. along with creating the market, one of the absolute business innovations that comes out of patterson and the national cash register company is the professionalization of sales. in the late 1800s, salesman were shady characters, they were traveling from town to town, not trusted one of the things patterson did was professionalize sales.

he did that by specifically writing down the script all sales agents for national cash register company had to use. it was very specific as to how the prospective purchaser should be shown the cash register, what the sales agent should talk about, even down to when you talk about the indicator, you point to the indicator. every sales agent had to have it memorized. if you did not have it memorized, you were not going to sell cash registers for national cash register for very long. he was very innovative, he gave guaranteed territories to sales agents and initially on starting the company, they could not afford to pay sales agents, so they gave them a commission. all of the sales training, guaranteed territory and commission were all new.

a lot of what patterson did was eventually copied by other companies around the world and not just that, so many people who worked for patterson went on to other fields that by 1930, 1 sixth of all the company executives in the country had trained in some form or another under patterson. in the late 1890's, patterson became an innovator in the area of employee welfare. in 1895, what started that was a $50,000 cash register order came from england as defective. in order to figure out what might have caused this, patterson moved his desk to the factory floor. he realized very quickly that the conditions were typical for the time but also not conducive to productivity and good employee morale. factories were dark, not a lot of fresh air.

immediately he started instituting policies, from that and on, any new factory building was built with $.95 glass -- 95% glass and the windows. the curtained window of today goes back to that time. these could be open to allow fresh air in. initially when he started these efforts, he was derided by other manufacturers, that he was too soft on his employees, he felt increasing morale would pay for itself hand over in the increase in productivity, and he was absolutely right. john patterson was so impactful because of his personality. i have heard him described as a benevolent dictator. he kind of had a my way or the

highway way of doing things, but he took care of his employees and he made his company thrive, and he also applied some of those concepts to the community at large. he was very much let's improve dayton, because improving dayton is good for the company and kind of felt his employees should own their own homes, the community should unify itself and cleanup the factory yards that were so disgusting, and take care of dayton because a happy dayton is good for business. we are standing right now in the cash register exhibit of the heritage center for manufacturing and entrepreneurship. what we have done is assembled 90 cash registers that show the beauty and artistry of the cash register from 1879 until about 1922, which is the period patterson, founder of national cash register company, was running the company.

the idea behind the heritage center was to show the stories that come out of date that have national and international impact. ncr has a more than 120 five year history of innovation, starting with perfecting the cash register and the market for it, all the way up to the present day of software solutions and self checkout systems and electronic signature capture. it is a wide range of things that are still coming out of ncr to this day. we tried to show some of these innovations. we have obviously the cash registers. we've got a lot of early business machines that ncr produced when they started to diversify. the atm comes out of ncr in dayton. self checkout.

we have tried through photographs and are graph -- and artifacts show the range of innovation that has come out of this city and the companies located here. john h patterson is a very intriguing character and i would use the word character. his personality i think is part of why he was so successful. he was very driven and he did not take no for an answer. it really does come down to that take no prisoner, my way or the highway way of business he had. he turned a company that manufactured a product that no one did into a company still around over 125 years later. >> we continue our look at american business leaders with industrialist john roebling, the man behind the construction of the brooklyn bridge. he designed and manufactured wire rope, a widely used -- widely used during the american industrial revolution.

>> in 2008, the brooklyn bridge had a 125th anniversary party that the city of new york threw. mayor bloomberg presided over it and he said the brooklyn bridge was the icon of new york city. he is absolutely correct. if you look at television or read magazines, it is very hard to watch tv and not see repeated images of the brooklyn bridge. it really is the icon of new york city, and it originated here in trenton. john roebling was born in 1806 in prussia, later became part of germany. the town he wasn't born in is about 100 kilometers southwest

of berlin. when he came here, he had a first-class education in germany by some of the best architects and engineers in europe. he arrived here just as america was taking off in terms of the industrial revolution. there were very few train engineers here. he showed up with tremendous skills and was able to really live his dream to design suspension bridges. his first suspension bridge was an aqueduct to carry a canal over the allegheny river. that led to other commissions, including to build a canal, a suspension aqueduct, for the delaware and hudson canal.

that aqueduct is still in existence, it is in pennsylvania on the delaware between pennsylvania and new york, and it is the oldest suspension bridge in the united states. roebling really loved engineering. that was his passion. but he also realized he would never become a wealthy man from engineering and he decided to go into manufacturing. when he was in western pennsylvania, he observed what are called inclined planes. that is a railroad track that goes up the side of a hill. the canal boat would come to the bottom of the hill and it would go over a submerged flatcar and be tied to the flatcar, and the

flatcar would be pulled up the inclined plane to the top and then let down. that's how people crossed the allegheny mountains before tunnels were built. the original ropes on the inclined planes were hemp, but they were fragile and they would break. roebling got the idea of twisting wire into a rope and that was his first wire rope. he was a very smart businessman so he wrote an article about his wire rope that he made on his farm for this incline plain. he wrote an article for the american railroad journal and that was kind of the wired magazine of its day. most of the innovation happening back then was happening in railroads.

once people had read this journal and saw he was making wire rope, he got all of these orders and he started making, manufacturing wire rope on his farm. he did that for about seven years, but he completely outgrew the capacity there. he wrote a letter to peter cooper, who later founded cooper union in new york. peter cooper had a company called trenton iyer company -- iron company where they made steel beams and wire. roebling wrote to him and asked where would be a good base to locate? cooper recommended trenton and told him about this particular site. roebling came here in 1848, filled his house on the property

and he built his factory and he was in the wire rope business. wire rope we don't cover very much today, it is not something people think about, but 100-150 years ago, it was a new technology that was essential for many other tech elegies. not only suspension bridges -- many other technologies. not only suspension bridges, cable cars, deep mines, tall buildings in terms of construction, like pulling up steel beams, and airplanes. airplanes have small diameter wire ropes that go from where the pilot sits on the wheel and they go back to the router and so they turn the rudder. the roeblings got into the airplane wire rope business and they called it air cord.

they produced the air cord that charles lindbergh used when he flew the spirit of st. louis to paris in 1927. roebling not only designed the bridges and also designed various types of wire rope, but he also had to design the machinery to make the wire rope because you could not call up somebody and order a wire rope machine, you have to build it yourself. there are many drawings of his showing his original designs for wire rope sheens, the original drawings he did, and after he died, his son washington and his other two sons, ferdinand and charles, took over this business and it was called john a roebling's sons company and they

ran it until washington died in 1926, over 50 years. as the decades went on, the size of suspension bridges kept getting bigger and bigger and that required larger diameter wire ropes. wire ropes were not used for the top cables, they were laid by individual wires, but the wire ropes were used for the suspenders to hold up the deck. as bridges got eager, you needed bigger suspender ropes. and as mines got deeper into the owners wanted to haul out more iron or in -- ireonon ore, you needed bigger rope. so they built a new machine, built in 1893, it was the largest wire rope machine they ever built and at that time it was the biggest in the world.

it is about 64 feet tall and has an entire story below where we are standing, and that has a marvelous array of gigantic gears that enable the machine to have three different motions. the first motion was that the machine would turn clockwise, the whole platform, and the spindle would rotate clockwise. as that was happening, each one of these individual spools on the small cradle would turn in the opposite direction, and that enabled machine to take the kink or twist out of the strands as they went around. from the six strands, they went up to the top like this rope hanging down here and the middle of the spindle is hollow, and another strand came up from the bottom.

at the top, the six strands were turned around the middle core strand and they used a closing head to put a twist in the ropes and that enabled the ropes, enabled the strands to lay very closely together. the roebling company worked on dozens of suspension bridges. the biggest one was the golden gate bridge. second business -- biggest was the george washington bridge. they also worked on many others, cincinnati bridge between cincinnati and covington over the ohio river. in new york city on the east river, you can the three bridges with roebling wire rope. one was the brooklyn bridge, the second was the manhattan bridge and the third was williamsburg bridge.

and various other bridges around the country. at the height of the roebling era, probably the highest employment was during the first world war. the whole company, including here and the two other factories in trenton and the factory in roebling, new jersey employed about 8000 people. about 2500 would have worked on this site. many family members would work together -- brothers, fathers, sons, cousins. it was common that there were multiple family members working for the company. i interviewed a man when i was working on my book and he had come here in i think 1939, when the depression was on and it was hard to get a job, and he said

his uncle knew someone who worked here, and the man put in a good word for him and they called him in for an interview. i think he was 18 years old. and he said they offered me a job and told me to come on monday. he said i went home and told my mother, i got a job at roeblings , and his mother said, now you're set for life. and that is the way it was, you got a job here and you spent the next 40, 45 years here. during the second world war, there were so much demand for wire rope that a lot of companies in the steel business and even other companies started building wire rope factories to supply the war effort. when the war was over, there was an overcapacity of wire rope. the roeblings saw that was not going to be promising for the future.

they sold the company and it was bought by the colorado fuel and iron company based in pueblo, colorado. they saw it as an opportunity to get the roebling name because roebling had a stellar reputation for high-quality wire rope, and they could also combine their own wire rope business they had with roebling and get some economy of scale. cf&i ran the roebling factories until the 1970's, and then we had to the arab oil embargo in 1973. that shot the price of oil i think i a factor of four or five times from what it was before. the roebling steel mill was operating on oil, it was using oil to melt scrap steel to melt -- to make wire for its wire rope.

the oil embargo, by restricting the supply of oil and making it very expensive, made the roebling plant a very uncompetitive. there were other rope factories and steel mills that used electricity to melt steel, but roebling used oil. cf&i shut down the roebling steel mill in 1974. beforehand, they shut down these wire rope shops, which are all around us now. they shut them down in 1973, because there was, again, too much capacity in wire rope manufacturing.

when you think about the legacy of the roeblings, starting with john roebling, you know the legacy is one of innovation. you know, someone said that creativity is taking one idea and then taking another idea and smashing those separate ideas together and coming up with something new. when you think of a bridge, it is really a utilitarian structure. it is not a church, a courthouse , a city, it is not and to be a symbol of power or of god. it is a utilitarian structure and its job is to get you from one side of a river, usually, to another. but when he designed the brooklyn bridge, he made it a work of art because he knew these would be america's monuments in the future.

>> douglas aircraft company was a leader in aviation in the early 20th century, taking the growing industry to new heights. a look at american business leaders continues as we hear about aviation engineer donald douglas and his company's contributions to aviation. >> thr factors that built southern california -- agriculture, entertainment and aviation, which later became aerospace. donald douglas was one of the chieftains, one of the pioneers. a visionary, a brilliant engineer. he graduated m.i.t. with the first ever aeronautical engineering masters ever given from that institution. in 1921, he began the douglas aircraft company here in santa monica using a movie warehouse on wilshire boulevard that today is known as douglas park.

he created a company that literally change the world with its airliners, navy jets and aircraft, seminole airplanes of world war ii, air force transports, the list is long. he is responsible for that greatness and american aviation. douglas chose santa monica because it had good terrain. there was a small airport called cloverfield being used by the army at the time. he used that as his flying operational base. the big breakthrough for douglas, who had been designing torpedo bombers for the navy, he had one small airliner, a biplane, but the breakthrough came in 1924. the u.s. army wanted to demonstrate its capabilities and wanted a douglas airplane to fly around the world, it had never been done before. using the torpedo bomber as a basis, five airplanes were built

to fly around the world. they launched from cloverfield in santa monica. airplanes were equipped with wheels and floats. they were comported -- converted to seaplanes and again the journey westbound with a range of about 800 miles per a long string -- 800 miles. a long string of navy ships were on the flight path. it took six months. miraculously, no crews were lost. none of the airplanes did crash, and was replaced by another one. another airplane sank in the atlantic after an emergency landing but there was no injuries or loss of life on the trip and it was a wake-up call to the world that air travel had arrived. the airplanes arrived back in

santa monica in september of 1924, completing the journey, and three airplanes completed the trip. those airplanes became part of the douglas logo and the slogan "first around the world" became the company slogan. we have got everything from the actual artifacts and souvenirs collected on the world cruiser flight, gifts given by government officials to the pilots. we have a display case of all of those types of things. we have ace word from japan, medals from russia. an array of artifacts. we have a display of mr. douglas's office furniture and drawing board. we have his desk.

we have a lot of the treasures that were passed on from the family to the museum. we have a number of scale models built in the douglas model shop, including a series of models that were hanging in corporate headquarters half a mile from where we are sitting now. we have those hanging from the ceiling at the same attitude they were in the lobby of the company headquarters. in the 1930's, commercial aviation was a rarity. people traveled i train or bus or boat. donald douglas change that. the air clean -- airplane dc-1 evolved into the dc-2 and the breakthrough was the dc-3, created for american airlines. a modern twin engine fast aircraft that could carry 25 passengers with reliable engines and in relative safety. it became the first airplane to make money carrying just passengers as opposed to freight and mail.

the airplane was not pressurized, he could flight up to about 10,000 feet, but it revolutionized air transport, because to fly coast-to-coast in those days, you would fly on an older model aircraft and could only fly during the day, you cannot fly at night or over the mountains. a passenger would buy a ticket from los angeles to new york, fly in the daytime, land at an airport, take the train at night over the mountains and across the desert, and another airplane in the daytime would go the next distance, and it took the better part of three days to travel coast-to-coast. compared to a train being a week was still a breakthrough. but the dc-3 could do it in two or three stops depending on the weather and it established a benchmark. in world war ii, donald douglas was asked by president roosevelt

to form a task force for manufacturing for the war effort. in those days, the titans of industries were all best friends. he called upon one of his best friends, william boeing, and they put their talents together, built plans. it was a collaboration of resources. santa monica took center stage in that effort with manufacturing of c-47 transport, which president eisenhower considered one of the five most significant machines that help the allies win world war ii. it was the same airframe but cargo doors replaced the cargo door and it could carry jeeps, weaponry, spare engines, there was one that carried washing machine through the pacific to give the troops and comforts of home.

it was a pivotal airplane, also used in the berlin airlift after the war initially to resupply east berlin. it was just a workhorse. it is often said that more than 10,000 d.c.c-3's were built and

that is not the case. there were about 900, and after that they were c-47's. before world war ii, only about 3% of the american population had flown at that time and commercial airliners. after the war, there was a veritable explosion of the commercial aviation industry, people taking the air for travel, vacation, business travel, and that spread worldwide. the role douglas played was converting a war machine into a peacetime aircraft, the c-47 became an aircraft that could carry about 50 passengers and a high density configuration. now the same three-day trip and the one in a half-day trip coast-to-coast became 12 hours coast-to-coast. it was a real breakthrough. the dc-4 revolutionized air travel. from those designs, further refinements, the pressurized dc-6, faster, more powerful engines, and the zenith, the dc-7 series, the first true intercontinental piston powered airliner, all built here in santa monica. behind me is an exact replica of the boardroom at the douglas aircraft company in santa monica

as it looked in the 1940's and 1950's. thousands of airliners were sold to the chief executives of various airlines around the world. this was the focal point for mr. douglas, who sat in the chair at the other end of the table, and his board of directors, and aeronautical magic was made at this table. significant of element occurred after world war ii. flight test research went centerstage and the setting of world speed and altitude records captivated the american public. new aircraft were being old and flown at edwards air force base north of los angeles, and douglas produced three significant test research aircraft. the first being the douglas sky streak, the d-558-1. it probed the flight regime of transonic flight.

then came the phase two, the skyrocket. this was an airplane most from the ground initially using rocket assistant, and advanced versions were air launched from a bomber, rocket powered aircraft, and skyrocket in 1953 became the first aircraft ever to fly twice the speed of sound. the last in the pantheon of test airplanes was the stiletto. needle-nosed airplane that could take off and land under its own power. unfortunately the engine it was designed for never came to the fore. it was not as successful as was first hoped. a shift occurred at the airplane plant in santa monica with the advent of the dc-8.

there was a physical limitation of the runway and the jets needed about 8000 feet. it was decided dc-8 production would move to the douglas plant in long beach, california, and the commercial aircraft operations reverted to long beach by about 1958, 59. design work was still being done here, subcontracting work was still being done here, but the end of the reign of the douglas plant in santa monica extends pretty much into the end of the 1960's and then the plant pretty much was a remote operation at that point. i grew up in an aviation family. my uncle was an aircraft engineer, my dad traveled, i was always at the airport. i was enamored of aircraft from a young age and my debt preferred douglas airplanes, he said there were more comfortable and had a big window.

he said something that resonated with me when i was about seven or eight years old, he said your douglas designs airplanes for passengers so they are comfortable and always want to fly in his airplanes. i carried that with me for many years. i was a young artist, drawing airplanes for fun at the time. when i was 12 years old, i sent a letter to mr. douglas with one of my drawings of a jetline and told him i thought his airplanes were cool and someday i would like to work for his company. that dream came true, five years of art school and moved to california, but i was hired in 19 77 into the presentations department. i worked my way up to staff illustrator and wound up illustrating the concepts of airplanes that were yet to be built by douglas in long beach.

when i hired into the douglas aircraft company in 1977, 1 of my favorite things was to take people who were about to retire, the old hands, and let them tell stories about what it was like. most of them started in santa monica and moved to long beach when the plant closed. to the person, they all talked with reference and deep love -- reverence and deep love for mr. douglas. they told me you were not working for mr. douglas, you were working for doug, and it was a special feeling i was able to ascertain from these wonderful men and women, and in that small way, i felt like i was touching the roots of the company. it was special for me, and it is special to say i worked for the douglas aircraft company. it meant something then and it means something now. >> our look at business leaders in america continues with robert weems talking about his book, business in black-and-white: american presidents and black entrepreneurs in the 20th century. he reveals how support for black businesses started with president hoover but fluctuated

over succeeding administrations. >> when i started working on the project, the popular wisdom was presidents and the u.s. government really did not have an interest in black entrepreneurship until the 1960's. part of that was motivated by the war on poverty. some saw business ownership as a means to help alleviate african-american poverty. another impulse, the urban rebellions of the mid to late 1960's, and the belief that if you had more african-american owned enterprises in lack neighborhoods, it would decrease the likelihood of people destroying property in those neighborhoods. all that being said, and in doing some preliminary reading, i came across a fleeting reference in a 1949 book on

black business to a division of negro affairs in the commerce department. this was the coolidge administration and it grew out of the commerce department when herbert hoover headed the commerce department. it grew out of a meeting between a prominent african-american entrepreneur by the name of clive barnett who had a meeting with hoover contending it would be in the commerce department's best interest to develop a special program, a special programming aimed at african-american entrepreneurship. barnett's motivation for this was essentially during the 1920's, historians refer to it

as a golden age of african-american business at pivoting in the united states. barnett made the point that the commerce department could help stimulate this by forming a special agency to deal with issues or promote african-american entrepreneurship. interestingly enough, when we talk about interest and the division of negro affairs, it was founded during a republican administration, continued through hoover, and was continued in the fdr administration and continued through truman. this division literally had bipartisan support. but again, when eisenhower came in, the division was discontinued. and in fact, it really wasn't -- you did not have a clearly defined governmental agency aimed at african-american entrepreneurship until nixon established the office of minority business enterprise in 1969.

but during the 1960's, while there was not a separate, specific government agency to assist african-american entrepreneurship, there were initiatives in the small business administration, there were other initiatives in the commerce department to promote african-american entrepreneurship. as i alluded to earlier, either based on the war on poverty impulse or an attempt to help quell urban black rebellion in the 1960's. there was a real push to increase the number of african-american banks. there was a push to increase the number of african-american franchise owners. there was a push to increase the number of african-american auto dealerships. when we especially look at african-american franchise ownership, which today is a significant segment of

african-american business ownership, we can literally go back to the nixon administration and certain initiatives that were promoted that is directly tied to some of what we see today. based on my research, beside axon, who gets a lot of visibility and credit, i would say the carter administration in terms of deeds as well as words probably was the most supportive administration in terms of promoting african-american entrepreneurship. one of the things the carter administration did, there was a public works act that was passed in 1977 and there was a stipulation in that act that said 10% of government projects, government work related

projects, had to go to minority contractors. this contributed to an explosion of opportunity for minority contractors. another area that the carter administration helped to promote african-american entrepreneurship was in the realm of media and especially cable television. during the late 1970's, there was little if any african-american ownership in the cable realm him and literally threw initiatives associated with the carter administration, that helped bob johnson be in a position to start black entertainment television. when we look at the reagan administration, we know in some areas, the reagan and missed ration indeed fought to cut back programs that historically benefited african-americans and other poor segments of american society. interestingly, during the reagan

administration, the programs to assist lack business were maintained and in some instances, enhanced. it has been suggested that one of the motivations was the influence of elizabeth dole, who was a liaison during that period. that dole approached president reagan and said there is a sentiment out there that you are anti-african-american, and by continuing to support african-american entrepreneurship, that might help dispel the notion that you are totally against the aspirations of the african-american community. it also appears that reagan on a personal level believed in a free enterprise system, so it wasn't a problem in terms of promoting programs to support african-american entrepreneurship.

but when we look at the reagan presidency, he had more than elizabeth dole in his ear, he had conservative advisors as well. this appear to manifest itself in supreme court nominations reagan made, and ultimately while the reagan administration continued to support business and african-american entrepreneurship, his supreme court nominees ended up ultimately helping undermine these programs. a landmark case involved an initiative in the city of richmond that allocated a third proportion of public works products to minority contractors. the supreme court with these new reagan additions declared the city of richmond's policy was unconstitutional.

six years later with the addition of clarence thomas to the court who was nominated during the first bush administration, the supreme court declared that a transportation department initiative that also sought to allocate work to minority contractors, that was declared unconstitutional as well. the reagan administration had an interesting dichotomy, whereas his administration actually promoted pre-existing government programs to assist african-american entrepreneurship but subsequent supreme court nominations ultimately helped to dismantle some of these programs. to bring it fairly close to the president, last summer there was an initiative cosponsored by the obama white house and the business school at rutgers. rutgers has a center for urban development and black entre nous worship and they cosponsored an

urban entrepreneurial summit and among other things, similar to what previous administrations and others have said, by promoting more positive economic activity in urban, black enclaves, it not only has a beneficial effect on those neighborhoods, but also on eunice a book, state and the national economy. again, there is this continuing thrust and movement and interest in promoting urban entrepreneurship, urban has become a code word for black, but again, we know what the bottom line is when we talk about business, whether it is lack, white or what have you. if you can expand it in certain areas, that will not just have a positive impact on specific communities, but on the broader economic sector.

over the past 30 years and linked with a lot the governmental programs that were put in place during the 60's, 70's and 80's, we have seen a significant diversification of african-american enterprises in a variety of sectors. historically, for a variety of reasons, we saw african-american enterprise confined to personal care products, insurance companies that catered exclusively to african-americans. again, over the past 20, 30 years, there has been significant diversification, which again has generated some very positive developments. for instance, the leading african-american enterprise in america today, worldwide technologies based outside of st. louis, missouri, had receipts of over $3 billion in 2011.

they are in the i.t. area. but notwithstanding the success stories, there is cause for concern in why there has been a dramatic increase in the number of african-american enterprises over the past decade. the vast majority of these enterprises and the numbers, 94%, are single proprietorships and the average income of these single proprietorships is about $21,000. in today's world, $21,000 is rarely above poverty level. so while on one level there has been a sick if it can increase in the number of african-american enterprises, the vast majority still remain marginal, single proprietorships. we talk about single

proprietorships, part of the american dream is to own a business for yourself and i think a lot of african-americans become single proprietors based on the fact of the ongoing discrimination or limitations in the employment sector. and again, with the employment sector being what it is today, going into business for yourself is an attractive alternative, but when we look at the numbers and just the reality, upwards of 95% of small businesses, regardless of the ethnic makeup of proprietors, cannot last five years, that as a whole another reality. i am not sure there is a real solution to that, because unfortunately, most small businesses are destined to fail.

but again, in the short term, some african-americans have been able to expand upon single proprietorships to move into a larger enterprise that can actually employ individuals. the numbers are very clear that the more african-americans or any entrepreneur can move into the realm of actually employing people and expanding your enterprise to higher the likelihood of success. >> this concludes our look at american business leaders. visit our website to view more content like this. ♪ >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more including comcast. >> you think this is just a community center? no. it is more than that. comcast is partnering with

community centers so students can get the skills they need to be ready for anything. >> comcast support c-span is a public service along with these other television dividers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> over 790 billion dollars have been given out through the paycheck protection program, the covid-19 aid program designed to help small businesses with payroll costs. up next, the house small business committee gets updates on the effectiveness of the program and some of its challenges. >> the chair is authorized to declare a recess at any time. let me begin by saying that committee rules our practice. we will apply during these proceedings. members are reminded to adhere