WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.520 --> 00:00:07.400 Hello everybody, ladies, gentlemen, brothers, sisters, comrades, friends. I really 2 00:00:07.400 --> 00:00:13.080 appreciate having all of you here listening so close to Thanksgiving, actually, 3 00:00:13.279 --> 00:00:15.279 now that I think about it, and so close to 4 00:00:15.320 --> 00:00:18.320 the end of my semester, which is partly to explain 5 00:00:18.440 --> 00:00:22.879 why I've been a little absent on the airwaves. I 6 00:00:22.920 --> 00:00:25.000 don't know if Internet is airwaves, now that I think 7 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:26.519 about it, I don't know if that counts, but let's 8 00:00:26.519 --> 00:00:31.359 just call them airwaves. This is basically radio, right anyway. Yeah, 9 00:00:31.399 --> 00:00:34.399 so I'm glad to be here, and you might be surprised, 10 00:00:34.560 --> 00:00:37.119 some of you, at least seeing this episode pop up. 11 00:00:37.520 --> 00:00:40.840 Hopefully the subtitle Throwback Thursday, because it is a Thursday. 12 00:00:40.840 --> 00:00:43.000 As I record this and send this out to everybody 13 00:00:44.039 --> 00:00:46.640 might give it a clue. But some of you longtime 14 00:00:46.640 --> 00:00:50.840 listeners are probably very familiar with the name of this episode. 15 00:00:52.479 --> 00:00:53.679 I want to get to that, but I want to 16 00:00:53.719 --> 00:00:59.520 first thank the amazing support from my longtime loyal supporters 17 00:00:59.679 --> 00:01:03.880 John Andre Saither and Mike Mayleban supporting history impossible at 18 00:01:03.880 --> 00:01:07.599 the executive producer level over on Patreon. Without you guys, 19 00:01:07.599 --> 00:01:09.480 I don't even know where I would be with all this. 20 00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:14.719 But you know clearly you're both really integral parts of 21 00:01:14.760 --> 00:01:17.400 making this show happen. I mean, I always love hearing 22 00:01:17.400 --> 00:01:20.359 from you guys via email or DM, so please always 23 00:01:20.359 --> 00:01:23.680 feel free to reach out again, and same to all 24 00:01:23.760 --> 00:01:26.519 of you listening, whether your supporters or not. Honestly, feel 25 00:01:26.519 --> 00:01:29.280 free to reach out. This episode might cause that, even 26 00:01:29.319 --> 00:01:31.879 though it is a rerun. But again, I'll get to that. 27 00:01:31.879 --> 00:01:33.439 In fact, you know what, I'll get to that right now, 28 00:01:33.480 --> 00:01:37.400 just to explain, because I was skeptical for a long 29 00:01:37.480 --> 00:01:42.439 time of doing reruns of History impossible, at least of 30 00:01:42.439 --> 00:01:45.079 the earlier episodes, and for a while I was thinking 31 00:01:45.079 --> 00:01:47.079 I would do you know, the kind of thing Carlin 32 00:01:47.200 --> 00:01:50.040 does where he puts his old episodes behind a paywall, 33 00:01:50.120 --> 00:01:52.319 and you know, people who want to actually hear them 34 00:01:52.319 --> 00:01:54.359 can go back and pay for them. And I still 35 00:01:54.359 --> 00:01:56.920 haven't done that, and I don't know if I ever will, honestly, 36 00:01:57.040 --> 00:01:59.879 because there's just really not much return on that, and 37 00:02:00.200 --> 00:02:02.719 it robs me the opportunity of doing this, which I 38 00:02:02.799 --> 00:02:05.959 came to realize is totally fine to do. At the time, 39 00:02:06.079 --> 00:02:08.759 I guess, in a weird way, I was thinking I 40 00:02:08.800 --> 00:02:11.560 hadn't earned the right to do so because I was, 41 00:02:11.680 --> 00:02:15.080 you know, was and still am small potatoes all things considered. 42 00:02:15.960 --> 00:02:18.080 But that doesn't really matter. Obviously. It's a silly way 43 00:02:18.080 --> 00:02:20.360 of looking at things, and you know, to be honest, 44 00:02:20.400 --> 00:02:24.120 it's counterproductive, just doesn't make any sense. Like I've been 45 00:02:24.159 --> 00:02:26.759 saying or hinting that many of you hearing this have 46 00:02:27.319 --> 00:02:29.719 been with me since day one, or at least close 47 00:02:29.759 --> 00:02:33.080 to day one of history impossible, and many of you 48 00:02:33.319 --> 00:02:36.639 have also likely gone through the entire show archive, and 49 00:02:36.840 --> 00:02:38.439 I love all of you for it. I really do 50 00:02:38.520 --> 00:02:41.800 appreciate that. But then I look at the calendar and 51 00:02:41.840 --> 00:02:44.840 I remember that it's been nearly six years since I 52 00:02:44.879 --> 00:02:49.240 started this show. I mean, six years is a wild 53 00:02:49.240 --> 00:02:51.879 thing to think about. I was just breaking into the 54 00:02:51.919 --> 00:02:55.000 time period known as real adulthood in my early thirties, 55 00:02:55.039 --> 00:02:58.800 and I decided to start a podcast. Go figure. Now, 56 00:02:58.840 --> 00:03:01.199 it's certainly wild to think of about where the time 57 00:03:01.280 --> 00:03:05.159 is gone and all the things, like crazy things that 58 00:03:05.199 --> 00:03:07.039 have happened since then, both in my life and in 59 00:03:07.080 --> 00:03:09.879 the world around me. So I kind of figured that 60 00:03:09.919 --> 00:03:12.199 this was as good of a time as any to 61 00:03:12.919 --> 00:03:15.439 relaunch this first episode. I'm not going to be doing 62 00:03:15.479 --> 00:03:17.319 it with every episode, guys, This is just because of 63 00:03:17.560 --> 00:03:20.879 certain obvious relevance, but also because you know, a lot 64 00:03:20.960 --> 00:03:23.919 of you listening probably have not gone back through the archive. 65 00:03:24.280 --> 00:03:27.840 There's a lot there, and you know, this is a 66 00:03:27.879 --> 00:03:30.080 particular episode that's so far back that a lot of 67 00:03:30.120 --> 00:03:32.159 you might have missed it or just rolls your eyes 68 00:03:32.199 --> 00:03:35.280 at it. But it, honestly, especially given what happened at 69 00:03:35.280 --> 00:03:39.000 the beginning of November of twenty twenty four, smacks of relevance, 70 00:03:39.360 --> 00:03:42.199 so to speak, because that is part of the big 71 00:03:42.240 --> 00:03:45.919 event or events rather that have occurred since I started 72 00:03:45.919 --> 00:03:50.680 this podcast. It was a historic election year. I mean, 73 00:03:51.280 --> 00:03:53.120 you know, the most superficial sense of the word is 74 00:03:53.159 --> 00:03:57.080 that it's only the second time in American history that 75 00:03:57.120 --> 00:04:00.319 a man has been elected for a non consecutive term. Sorry, 76 00:04:00.360 --> 00:04:04.719 Grover Cleveland, I mean, I know, you spanked Grandpa Simpson 77 00:04:04.759 --> 00:04:07.599 in two non consecutive occasions. There's a deep cut Simpsons 78 00:04:07.599 --> 00:04:11.120 reference there, guys. But yeah, you're no longer the top 79 00:04:11.199 --> 00:04:16.240 dog in unlikely presidential terms, I guess. But more to 80 00:04:16.279 --> 00:04:20.720 the point, Donald Trump's reelection in twenty twenty four was 81 00:04:20.759 --> 00:04:24.240 also historic because of his convicted criminal status. Putting aside 82 00:04:24.240 --> 00:04:26.839 obviously how one might feel about the validity of those 83 00:04:26.839 --> 00:04:30.959 convictions or the trials that produce them. This is historically significant. 84 00:04:31.040 --> 00:04:32.920 No matter how you slice it or how you feel 85 00:04:32.920 --> 00:04:38.399 about anything, it's significant. Now. I've had several people ask 86 00:04:38.519 --> 00:04:41.040 me for my take on everything that has happened, and 87 00:04:41.079 --> 00:04:43.519 I've given it in small doses, like in private, to 88 00:04:43.720 --> 00:04:46.680 friends mostly who have you know, they don't follow history 89 00:04:46.720 --> 00:04:48.839 like I do, obviously because they have lives to lead, 90 00:04:49.360 --> 00:04:52.519 and they just are curious about my take. I hate 91 00:04:52.560 --> 00:04:53.920 this word, but I tend to have a kind of 92 00:04:53.920 --> 00:04:55.879 a heterodox view on a lot of things like this. 93 00:04:56.839 --> 00:04:59.720 But I've also had a number of people, even people 94 00:04:59.759 --> 00:05:01.879 I don't no no, ask me how I feel about 95 00:05:01.920 --> 00:05:05.959 Donald Trump, as in the man himself. And you know, 96 00:05:06.040 --> 00:05:07.839 in short, I don't really have an answer that It's 97 00:05:07.879 --> 00:05:11.639 pleased many people, but likely only a fair few of 98 00:05:11.680 --> 00:05:15.319 you listening know that it really hasn't changed since twenty 99 00:05:15.399 --> 00:05:18.480 nineteen when I started History Impossible. Now, when I started 100 00:05:18.480 --> 00:05:21.439 the show, I came very close to beginning it with 101 00:05:21.519 --> 00:05:23.480 the Muslim Nazi series. I don't know how many of 102 00:05:23.480 --> 00:05:26.360 you guys know that or how often I've mentioned that, 103 00:05:26.399 --> 00:05:28.920 but it's true. I actually almost started that. That's why 104 00:05:28.959 --> 00:05:33.079 I had been researching Hajaman al Husseini as early as 105 00:05:33.279 --> 00:05:37.279 late twenty seventeen or early twenty eighteen. But thanks to the 106 00:05:37.279 --> 00:05:39.639 advice of my good friend and I guess we can 107 00:05:39.639 --> 00:05:42.920 call him Guru Danielle Blelli, the Italian Stallion, whatever you 108 00:05:42.920 --> 00:05:45.720 want to call him, I came to realize that I 109 00:05:45.759 --> 00:05:49.199 would be essentially imposing myself on the historical podcasting audience, 110 00:05:49.279 --> 00:05:52.399 my new audience, by asking them to commit to a 111 00:05:52.519 --> 00:05:55.360 series that at that time I assumed would take a 112 00:05:55.360 --> 00:05:57.639 few years. And I was obviously right about that, but 113 00:05:57.920 --> 00:06:01.319 more than I could even possibly have known. So I 114 00:06:01.360 --> 00:06:04.399 went with one offs for a while, occasionally for rain 115 00:06:04.480 --> 00:06:08.199 into thematic trilogies and two parters. I mean, some of 116 00:06:08.240 --> 00:06:10.839 those are my favorite stories that I've ever delved into. 117 00:06:10.839 --> 00:06:12.920 Even until this very day, I always talk about how 118 00:06:12.959 --> 00:06:16.600 the Great Hollywood cover Up is probably my favorite story. 119 00:06:16.720 --> 00:06:18.240 I guess I'll call it because it was a two parter, 120 00:06:18.279 --> 00:06:20.560 it's my favorite I've ever done. It's just, you know, 121 00:06:20.600 --> 00:06:23.800 it's scratched an itch that I hoped to scratch again 122 00:06:23.839 --> 00:06:28.160 one day. But my very first episode, like I've been 123 00:06:28.240 --> 00:06:32.120 kind of saying talking around this entire time, was one 124 00:06:32.120 --> 00:06:34.959 where I tried to unpack my feelings about Donald Trump 125 00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:39.240 from a historically comparative perspective, and looking back at that 126 00:06:39.279 --> 00:06:42.360 first episode, I do think most of my feelings have 127 00:06:42.879 --> 00:06:47.279 remained consistent. I mean, I've never liked the fascism comparison, 128 00:06:47.519 --> 00:06:49.839 much less to Nazi comparisons. I think that should be 129 00:06:49.920 --> 00:06:54.240 obvious by now. But I never really liked what I 130 00:06:54.279 --> 00:06:57.240 was seeing more in the broad sense, less to do 131 00:06:57.319 --> 00:07:00.399 with the man, less to do with his party, more 132 00:07:00.480 --> 00:07:05.600 just to do with everything that surrounded his ascension. Neil Ferguson, 133 00:07:05.639 --> 00:07:09.000 the famous historian many years ago now, he helped break 134 00:07:09.040 --> 00:07:13.240 this down just what kind of historical figure Donald Trump is. 135 00:07:13.279 --> 00:07:15.560 It was something that really resonated with me. It's a 136 00:07:15.639 --> 00:07:17.720 video I've linked it in the show notes, and it's 137 00:07:17.720 --> 00:07:20.079 a great video, very good time capsule in and love itself, 138 00:07:21.319 --> 00:07:25.120 and it inspired me. And after a couple of months 139 00:07:25.120 --> 00:07:28.759 of frantic research into the period of time Ferguson discussed 140 00:07:28.879 --> 00:07:31.439 in that talk that I've linked in the show notes, 141 00:07:31.959 --> 00:07:34.600 I was able to pull together a story about a 142 00:07:34.720 --> 00:07:38.800 next to unknown man from American history, the so called 143 00:07:38.920 --> 00:07:43.720 original Donald Trump. And then the first episode of History 144 00:07:43.759 --> 00:07:48.920 Impossible was born and because that was all so long ago, 145 00:07:49.199 --> 00:07:51.639 and because I realized that the idea of re releasing 146 00:07:51.639 --> 00:07:54.160 episodes is really no big deal, especially considering I have 147 00:07:54.199 --> 00:07:56.600 so many new listeners who might not have gone back 148 00:07:56.639 --> 00:07:59.480 through the archive, I figured I would re release that 149 00:07:59.519 --> 00:08:02.120 episode for you guys right now, that's who you're listening to, 150 00:08:03.160 --> 00:08:05.480 and to be honest, because it has also been a 151 00:08:05.480 --> 00:08:07.759 while since I've released an audio episode for the podcast, 152 00:08:07.839 --> 00:08:11.360 and not for lack of trying, I'm honestly trapped right 153 00:08:11.399 --> 00:08:15.079 now with a looming thesis prospectus in graduate school and 154 00:08:15.240 --> 00:08:18.079 the ongoing writing and research I'm doing for my proper class. 155 00:08:18.879 --> 00:08:21.000 All that has eaten up most of my time for 156 00:08:21.040 --> 00:08:25.560 the last month or so. And I have a number 157 00:08:25.560 --> 00:08:28.160 of other projects to which I've been committed and one 158 00:08:28.199 --> 00:08:30.519 of them actually kind of relates to this episode, and 159 00:08:30.560 --> 00:08:32.399 I actually really want to do my best to promote 160 00:08:32.399 --> 00:08:35.919 it here, which is a long form essay I wrote 161 00:08:35.960 --> 00:08:40.200 for this up and coming publisher of historical analysis called 162 00:08:40.240 --> 00:08:43.879 Kinrath Publishing. I wrote a like I said, long form 163 00:08:43.960 --> 00:08:48.159 essay about the eighteen seventy six election Rutherford B. Hayes 164 00:08:48.320 --> 00:08:51.960 and Samuel Tilden, and a lot of it gets into 165 00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:54.559 a lot of the material that I covered in this episode, 166 00:08:54.639 --> 00:08:57.600 so it's kind of related. I will obviously be blasting 167 00:08:57.639 --> 00:09:00.399 that out whenever it launches, but it should be launching 168 00:09:00.440 --> 00:09:02.440 within the next couple of months or so, maybe even 169 00:09:02.480 --> 00:09:04.639 couple of weeks. As of this recording, I couldn't tell you, 170 00:09:05.840 --> 00:09:07.559 but it's all moving very fast, and I'll make sure 171 00:09:07.600 --> 00:09:10.000 to share it and you guys can support kind Wrath 172 00:09:10.039 --> 00:09:15.440 Publishing as best you can anyway. Though this is all 173 00:09:15.440 --> 00:09:18.240 to say that a lot of my time has been 174 00:09:18.279 --> 00:09:22.360 eaten up by these projects, and I do plan to 175 00:09:22.519 --> 00:09:26.159 have some episodes come out before the year ends, god willing, 176 00:09:26.240 --> 00:09:28.440 maybe an interview or two, though those are a little 177 00:09:28.519 --> 00:09:32.360 less certain. But with this I wanted to give all 178 00:09:32.399 --> 00:09:35.639 of you who only recently found my work and or 179 00:09:35.759 --> 00:09:38.320 have just not found the time to work your way 180 00:09:38.320 --> 00:09:40.120 back through the six years of content. I wanted to 181 00:09:40.120 --> 00:09:43.759 give you guys something to chew on, especially given recent 182 00:09:43.799 --> 00:09:46.799 events that are relevant to what I talked about in 183 00:09:46.799 --> 00:09:50.080 this episode. Now, like I was kind of saying before, 184 00:09:50.480 --> 00:09:54.159 I do essentially endorse everything that I researched, wrote and 185 00:09:54.240 --> 00:09:56.559 said from this episode. I did so many years ago, 186 00:09:56.639 --> 00:10:00.200 at least in the broad strokes. I do not necessarily 187 00:10:00.240 --> 00:10:04.679 endorse equality, either my delivery or the production. Maybe even 188 00:10:04.679 --> 00:10:07.480 some of the attempts at humor, I honestly don't. I 189 00:10:07.600 --> 00:10:10.759 rarely ever endorse that kind of thing. After some time 190 00:10:10.799 --> 00:10:14.200 goes by, I cannot promise that this episode will stand 191 00:10:14.200 --> 00:10:16.919 to scrutiny compared to my more recent work. It was 192 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:20.679 my first stab at historical podcasting, after all. But I 193 00:10:20.720 --> 00:10:23.440 do think this re release relevant as it is to 194 00:10:23.480 --> 00:10:25.879 the results of the twenty twenty four election. It can 195 00:10:25.919 --> 00:10:28.960 serve as a nice time capsule that answer some lingering 196 00:10:29.039 --> 00:10:32.559 questions that my followers and listeners might have regarding my 197 00:10:32.600 --> 00:10:35.440 feelings on our forty fifth and now forty seventh president 198 00:10:35.480 --> 00:10:38.759 of the United States and the world that spawned him. 199 00:10:38.879 --> 00:10:40.559 At the very least, it can serve as a nice 200 00:10:40.639 --> 00:10:43.799 historical comparison to the first Trump administration and the years 201 00:10:43.799 --> 00:10:46.039 that led up to it. Now, I do believe, for 202 00:10:46.080 --> 00:10:48.559 what it's worth, that things are very different in twenty 203 00:10:48.559 --> 00:10:50.840 twenty four American society than they were in twenty fifteen 204 00:10:50.840 --> 00:10:53.519 to twenty sixteen, but not by much. In some ways, 205 00:10:53.519 --> 00:10:56.679 they are heightened. That's where I'm at, That's where the 206 00:10:56.679 --> 00:10:59.840 show is at. Please stay tuned for future episodes. If 207 00:10:59.879 --> 00:11:02.639 you have already heard this, but you know, feel free 208 00:11:02.639 --> 00:11:05.360 to enjoy it again. If you don't remember it that well, 209 00:11:05.679 --> 00:11:07.679 or if you want to, you know, mine it for 210 00:11:07.679 --> 00:11:09.200 stuff you can make fun of me for for not 211 00:11:09.200 --> 00:11:12.440 being as good at as I am now who knows. 212 00:11:12.960 --> 00:11:17.840 But please sit back and enjoy this throwback. Like I said, 213 00:11:17.879 --> 00:11:20.679 post it on a Thursday of the very first episode 214 00:11:20.679 --> 00:11:25.120 of History Impossible, the original Donald Trump. Well, let me 215 00:11:25.200 --> 00:11:27.000 to tell you what you would have seen and heard. 216 00:11:27.320 --> 00:11:29.759 If will not be pleasant listening, if you were at lunch, 217 00:11:29.919 --> 00:11:31.440 or if you have no appetite now, it is a 218 00:11:31.440 --> 00:11:39.559 good time to switch author radio. An ancestor of mine 219 00:11:39.600 --> 00:11:44.639 maintained that if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable. 220 00:11:54.759 --> 00:11:57.519 I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace 221 00:11:57.919 --> 00:12:09.480 is inside out the dream. I feel we hear for 222 00:12:09.720 --> 00:12:13.840 sue to guilt, We here for issue to guilt. Some 223 00:12:13.919 --> 00:12:16.559 say the world will end empire, some say a night. 224 00:12:17.200 --> 00:12:19.879 From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those 225 00:12:19.919 --> 00:12:23.320 of favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, 226 00:12:23.600 --> 00:12:26.480 I think I know enough of hate to say that 227 00:12:26.559 --> 00:12:36.639 for destruction, ice is also great and look sufficed. This 228 00:12:37.279 --> 00:12:46.200 is history impossible. When Mexico sends its people, they're not 229 00:12:46.240 --> 00:12:49.480 sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. 230 00:12:49.840 --> 00:12:52.799 They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're 231 00:12:52.799 --> 00:12:57.000 bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, 232 00:12:57.559 --> 00:13:03.960 they're bringing rapists. You probably remember this quote from the 233 00:13:04.000 --> 00:13:06.960 current President of the United States, Donald Trump, when he 234 00:13:07.000 --> 00:13:10.399 was on the campaign trail in June of twenty fifteen. 235 00:13:11.600 --> 00:13:15.480 You probably also remember this one quote. We have people 236 00:13:15.519 --> 00:13:17.799 coming into the country or trying to come in. We're 237 00:13:17.840 --> 00:13:19.919 stopping a lot of them, but we're taking a lot 238 00:13:19.919 --> 00:13:22.639 of people out of the country. You wouldn't believe how 239 00:13:22.679 --> 00:13:27.480 bad these people are. These aren't people, these are animals unquote. 240 00:13:28.360 --> 00:13:32.679 Or perhaps this one quote, the Democrats don't care about 241 00:13:32.720 --> 00:13:35.519 crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they 242 00:13:35.519 --> 00:13:40.879 may be, to pour into and infest our country unquote. 243 00:13:40.960 --> 00:13:45.240 These quotes are all varying levels of notoriety today, especially 244 00:13:45.320 --> 00:13:49.320 among the president's most vocal critics and detractors. However, it's 245 00:13:49.399 --> 00:13:53.120 unlikely that this statement is as well known quote. To 246 00:13:53.120 --> 00:13:56.480 add to our misery and despair, a bloated aristocracy as 247 00:13:56.480 --> 00:13:59.639 sent to China, the greatest and oldest despotism in the world, 248 00:14:00.080 --> 00:14:04.919 or a cheap working slave unquote, or perhaps this lesser 249 00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:08.600 known gem of a statement, let me caution working men 250 00:14:08.679 --> 00:14:12.080 to not employ Chinese laundrymen. They are filthy, They spit 251 00:14:12.120 --> 00:14:15.240 on clothes, and if they have any disease it is 252 00:14:15.320 --> 00:14:18.440 transmitted to men and women through such washed clothing when 253 00:14:18.480 --> 00:14:22.039 the body perspires. Do you want leprosy? Here? By not 254 00:14:22.120 --> 00:14:25.559 employing them, you can drive them from the country unquote, 255 00:14:26.200 --> 00:14:29.320 Or maybe even this one. A Chinaman will live on 256 00:14:29.440 --> 00:14:32.200 rice and rats. They will sleep one hundred in a 257 00:14:32.320 --> 00:14:34.720 room that one white man wants for his wife and 258 00:14:34.799 --> 00:14:40.080 family unquote. You'd be forgiven for being surprised at not 259 00:14:40.200 --> 00:14:42.919 knowing about these last three quotes coming from the United 260 00:14:42.960 --> 00:14:46.639 States President in twenty nineteen. Quotes you may have at 261 00:14:46.679 --> 00:14:49.879 first assumed were a few of the many, many controversial 262 00:14:49.960 --> 00:14:52.840 statements that he made during his campaign in twenty fifteen 263 00:14:52.879 --> 00:14:56.080 and twenty sixteen, and that perhaps God just swept under 264 00:14:56.080 --> 00:14:59.960 the rug. But you would be forgiven for not recognized 265 00:15:00.480 --> 00:15:02.960 these last three quotes. For an even more important reason, 266 00:15:04.120 --> 00:15:07.320 the man who said those words was not Donald Trump. 267 00:15:09.279 --> 00:15:13.720 In October of eighteen seventy one, a cyclone of racist 268 00:15:13.799 --> 00:15:16.559 chaos was about to be unleashed on nearly twenty people 269 00:15:16.600 --> 00:15:21.200 living in Los Angeles' Chinatown. These people were chosen at random, 270 00:15:21.360 --> 00:15:25.120 merely on the basis of being Chinese immigrants, after rumors 271 00:15:25.159 --> 00:15:28.320 began to spread around the city that quote Chinamen have 272 00:15:28.399 --> 00:15:31.919 been killing white's wholesale unquote in an area near the 273 00:15:31.919 --> 00:15:37.200 boundaries of Los Angeles Chinatown. This area was derisively known 274 00:15:37.320 --> 00:15:40.600 as Nigger Alley, named after the darker skinned, mixed race 275 00:15:40.639 --> 00:15:44.960 Californios who had originally settled there before California's annexation by 276 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:49.440 the United States, and this thin alleyway like street had 277 00:15:49.559 --> 00:15:52.080 already held a bit of a reputation among the Los 278 00:15:52.120 --> 00:15:55.480 Angelinos at the time. An next saloon keeper had indeed 279 00:15:55.519 --> 00:15:58.720 been killed after seeing a police officer also killed in 280 00:15:58.720 --> 00:16:01.960 a gunfight, but the murderer had been an unseen criminal, 281 00:16:02.159 --> 00:16:04.960 likely tied up in a dispute between two different gangs 282 00:16:05.000 --> 00:16:08.440 operating in and around the Los Angeles Chinatown at the time. 283 00:16:09.679 --> 00:16:12.919 But nuance was not on the mind of the mob 284 00:16:13.080 --> 00:16:17.120 of both white and mestizo men, mostly working classmen, who 285 00:16:17.159 --> 00:16:21.440 stormed around the still relatively nascent city looking for Chinese 286 00:16:21.440 --> 00:16:25.039 people to murder after being told that quote the Chinks 287 00:16:25.039 --> 00:16:31.039 are shooting and carajo lachino, which is Spanish for damned Chinese, 288 00:16:31.799 --> 00:16:35.759 and that quote American blood had been shed unquote the 289 00:16:35.879 --> 00:16:38.440 last statement. According to a letter later written by a 290 00:16:38.480 --> 00:16:41.200 member of the mob, the writer of the letter would 291 00:16:41.279 --> 00:16:44.879 also say, quote we all moved in, shouting, in anger, 292 00:16:44.960 --> 00:16:47.879 and as some noticed, in delight at all the excitement 293 00:16:48.279 --> 00:16:53.919 one quote. The first thing the Chinese American inhabitants of 294 00:16:54.080 --> 00:16:57.080 Los Angeles heard that day as they went about their business, 295 00:16:57.159 --> 00:17:00.480 tending their shops, chatting with friends, was a mass of 296 00:17:00.559 --> 00:17:04.119 screams coming their way. They likely heard chanting, but it 297 00:17:04.160 --> 00:17:07.839 wasn't clear right away what was being said, just shouts, 298 00:17:08.440 --> 00:17:13.000 syncopated shouts. And then the mass of voices became clearer, 299 00:17:13.359 --> 00:17:18.000 entering focus along with the angry, perhaps surprisingly multiracial faces 300 00:17:18.039 --> 00:17:23.160 of the approaching mob. Hang them, hang them, hang them. 301 00:17:24.400 --> 00:17:27.559 Before they even realized what was happening to them in 302 00:17:27.599 --> 00:17:31.000 their community, Chinese American inhabitants were being yanked out of 303 00:17:31.039 --> 00:17:33.640 the front doors of their own homes and shot point 304 00:17:33.720 --> 00:17:37.799 blank in their faces, chests, and stomachs. Some were pulled 305 00:17:37.839 --> 00:17:40.440 out of their homes and their shops by the ropes 306 00:17:40.480 --> 00:17:42.720 cinched around their necks that were used to lynch them 307 00:17:42.759 --> 00:17:45.960 right then and there. Others were dragged by the neck 308 00:17:46.319 --> 00:17:48.480 to their hanging place as they writhed on the ground, 309 00:17:48.599 --> 00:17:52.279 just struggling to free themselves. Once the mob removed the 310 00:17:52.359 --> 00:17:55.440 residents from their homes, they immediately began looting, rooting around 311 00:17:55.440 --> 00:18:01.039 for any trace of gold or other valuables. The ager 312 00:18:01.200 --> 00:18:04.119 social distinction of the victims didn't matter and did nothing 313 00:18:04.160 --> 00:18:07.720 to halt the mob's racialized bloodlust. Most of the victims 314 00:18:07.759 --> 00:18:10.440 were laundrymen and cooks, but there was a cigar maker, 315 00:18:10.839 --> 00:18:13.920 a musician, and a shopkeeper who were later counted among 316 00:18:13.960 --> 00:18:17.160 the dead. There was even a well known doctor named 317 00:18:17.160 --> 00:18:20.640 doctor Chi Loong Tongue locally known as Jeanne, who, when 318 00:18:20.839 --> 00:18:24.079 dragged from his home, begged the angry mob in both 319 00:18:24.079 --> 00:18:28.200 English and Spanish to spare him, but it made no difference. 320 00:18:29.200 --> 00:18:31.200 He was strung up by his neck and killed, but 321 00:18:31.559 --> 00:18:34.559 not before his trousers had been yanked free and all 322 00:18:34.559 --> 00:18:38.000 of his money removed from his pockets. After swinging from 323 00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:41.200 the rope, his finger was severed to remove the diamond 324 00:18:41.279 --> 00:18:45.319 ring that he wore. A young boy was cornered by 325 00:18:45.319 --> 00:18:47.200 the mob, and a journalist at the time, a man 326 00:18:47.319 --> 00:18:50.960 named P. S. Dorney, who covered the incident, wrote quote, 327 00:18:51.039 --> 00:18:53.559 A boy was thus led to the place of slaughter. 328 00:18:53.920 --> 00:18:57.200 The little fellow was not above twelve years of age. 329 00:18:57.279 --> 00:18:59.240 He had been a month in the country and knew 330 00:18:59.279 --> 00:19:02.200 not a word of Inga. He seemed paralyzed by fear. 331 00:19:02.720 --> 00:19:05.400 His eyes were fixed and staring, and his face blue, 332 00:19:05.480 --> 00:19:11.440 blanched and idiotic. He was hanged when the violence finally subsided. 333 00:19:11.559 --> 00:19:15.160 At least seventeen Chinese Americans had been lynched or shot. 334 00:19:16.039 --> 00:19:20.319 Their names were doctor Gene Tong, a Wing Chang Wang Long, 335 00:19:20.400 --> 00:19:28.000 Tui Along, Juan Fu Tong Wan, Alu Dei, ki Awa Hohing, 336 00:19:28.759 --> 00:19:34.920 Lohi a Wan Wing, Chi Wung Chin Asu, and was Sinchwi. 337 00:19:36.400 --> 00:19:39.559 These victims had been set upon by an estimated five 338 00:19:39.680 --> 00:19:43.000 hundred people out of eighteen seventy one Los Angeles His 339 00:19:43.079 --> 00:19:47.720 overall population of six thousand, eight percent of the city 340 00:19:47.720 --> 00:19:51.599 of Los Angeles had murdered seventeen Chinese in cold blood. 341 00:19:52.720 --> 00:19:56.680 Historian Paul M. Defala described the scene of the carnage 342 00:19:56.720 --> 00:20:01.119 in a nineteen sixty Southern California Historical Society Journal better 343 00:20:01.160 --> 00:20:04.480 than most quote the dead Chinese and Los Angeles were 344 00:20:04.519 --> 00:20:06.920 hanging at three places near the heart of the downtown 345 00:20:06.960 --> 00:20:11.079 business section of the city. From the wooden awning over 346 00:20:11.119 --> 00:20:13.799 the sidewalk in front of a carriage shop, from the 347 00:20:13.839 --> 00:20:17.000 sides of two Prairie schooners parked on the street around 348 00:20:17.039 --> 00:20:20.440 the corner from the carriage shop, and from the crossbeam 349 00:20:20.759 --> 00:20:22.960 of a wide gate leading into a lumber yard a 350 00:20:22.960 --> 00:20:27.359 few blocks away from the other two locations. The event 351 00:20:27.400 --> 00:20:30.920 became notorious, especially on the East Coast, with a newspaper 352 00:20:30.960 --> 00:20:34.839 even referring to Los Angeles as a quote bloodstained edenot 353 00:20:35.960 --> 00:20:38.839 Eight of the five hundred participants were convicted for the 354 00:20:38.880 --> 00:20:43.640 crimes committed on that day, their charge manslaughter, their sentence 355 00:20:44.319 --> 00:20:48.160 overturned due to a legal technicality, letting them walk out 356 00:20:48.200 --> 00:20:52.160 of the courtroom as free men. This was the largest 357 00:20:52.160 --> 00:21:20.920 mass lynching in American history. While all of this abject 358 00:21:21.079 --> 00:21:24.039 horror was occurring in eighteen seventy one, Los Angeles, America 359 00:21:24.119 --> 00:21:26.720 was in the middle of a series of massive transitions, 360 00:21:27.039 --> 00:21:29.759 not least of which being an incredible influx of immigrants 361 00:21:29.799 --> 00:21:33.839 from all over the world. This influx actually included my 362 00:21:33.880 --> 00:21:36.680 own great great grandfather of nineteen year old German Jew 363 00:21:36.720 --> 00:21:40.240 from Prussia and self described entrepreneur who had arrived in 364 00:21:40.279 --> 00:21:43.759 Ellis Island earlier that same year as the Los Angeles 365 00:21:43.880 --> 00:21:48.519 Chinatown pogram. This rise in immigration was important because it 366 00:21:48.559 --> 00:21:52.880 fits nicely into the ingredients the five ingredients specifically outlined 367 00:21:52.880 --> 00:21:55.640 by the prolific modern historian Neil Ferguson in a talk 368 00:21:55.720 --> 00:21:58.559 he gave in early twenty sixteen about what he termed 369 00:21:58.640 --> 00:22:02.359 the Populist Backlash. He went on to describe how what 370 00:22:02.559 --> 00:22:05.799 was going on in American politics in twenty sixteen and 371 00:22:05.839 --> 00:22:08.559 the looming election of Donald Trump to the presidency were 372 00:22:08.680 --> 00:22:11.680 certainly interesting and even alarming to many millions of us, 373 00:22:11.720 --> 00:22:15.519 but that these things were nothing unique to the brief 374 00:22:15.559 --> 00:22:18.319 history of the United States. And he was right. That's 375 00:22:18.319 --> 00:22:22.720 what this story is about. In other words, as impossible 376 00:22:23.119 --> 00:22:25.519 as it may have seemed in twenty sixteen, around the 377 00:22:25.519 --> 00:22:28.799 time of the election of Donald Trump, something like this 378 00:22:29.000 --> 00:22:32.559 had happened before, or rather, someone like this had happened 379 00:22:32.599 --> 00:22:37.519 before there was an original Donald Trump. Now it's important 380 00:22:37.559 --> 00:22:39.720 for me to point out at the top here that 381 00:22:39.759 --> 00:22:43.160 this is not a podcast about contemporary politics. In fact, 382 00:22:43.400 --> 00:22:46.759 I find contemporary politics kind of boring on its own, 383 00:22:47.160 --> 00:22:50.960 simply because you can't really construct a reasonable or even 384 00:22:50.960 --> 00:22:53.799 that interesting of a story out of them, because they're ongoing. 385 00:22:54.240 --> 00:22:57.920 But contemporary politics have a funny way of opening the 386 00:22:57.960 --> 00:23:03.119 window to past events that we are well completely impossible, 387 00:23:03.960 --> 00:23:06.440 and this is why they're inevitably going to come up 388 00:23:06.680 --> 00:23:09.319 every so often in this podcast, though usually only as 389 00:23:09.319 --> 00:23:13.519 a point of comparison, a point of relation for us. So, 390 00:23:13.640 --> 00:23:16.680 while America's forty fifth president, Donald Trump is certainly new 391 00:23:16.960 --> 00:23:20.039 in terms of how powerful he's become on a platform 392 00:23:20.079 --> 00:23:23.920 of nationalistic populism, especially in the twenty first century, what 393 00:23:24.079 --> 00:23:26.279 he sold to the American people, whether it was a 394 00:23:26.319 --> 00:23:28.759 bill of goods or a brave new world, depending on 395 00:23:28.839 --> 00:23:31.640 what you believe was a bill of goods or a 396 00:23:31.640 --> 00:23:34.599 brave new world that had been promised nearly one hundred 397 00:23:34.599 --> 00:23:38.519 and fifty years ago by someone else, our titular original 398 00:23:38.559 --> 00:23:45.400 Donald Trump. In his talk Neil Ferguson neatly outlined what 399 00:23:45.480 --> 00:23:49.079 he called the five ingredients necessary for a populist backlash 400 00:23:49.640 --> 00:23:51.839 akin to the one being seen both today in the 401 00:23:51.920 --> 00:23:55.160 latter twenty tens and in America's not too distant past. 402 00:23:55.640 --> 00:23:58.480 These ingredients are all really important for us understand and 403 00:23:58.680 --> 00:24:00.359 what we're going to spend a lot of the story 404 00:24:00.359 --> 00:24:03.640 focusing on, probably the first half of it. Really these 405 00:24:03.759 --> 00:24:07.559 ingredients were, as Ferguson put it, quote, partly economic, but 406 00:24:07.599 --> 00:24:11.240 they were partly cultural unquote. This is why it's a 407 00:24:11.279 --> 00:24:14.039 mistake to look at the populous backlash of both the 408 00:24:14.079 --> 00:24:18.200 eighteen seventies and the twenty tens in purely materialistic terms. 409 00:24:18.640 --> 00:24:21.200 There were certainly economic concerns. You could argue that the 410 00:24:21.240 --> 00:24:24.480 economic situation of the eighteen seventies or the economic situation 411 00:24:24.559 --> 00:24:27.519 of the twenty tens were the driving forces, but that, 412 00:24:27.720 --> 00:24:31.000 as both Ferguson seems to end that I do believe 413 00:24:31.200 --> 00:24:33.920 is a limited view. You could have economic turmoil on 414 00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:36.799 its own, but without the other ingredients, you don't have 415 00:24:36.920 --> 00:24:40.720 the backlash and you don't have its usually very dire consequences. 416 00:24:41.880 --> 00:24:45.000 The first ingredient is evidence of that, since it's rooted 417 00:24:45.039 --> 00:24:47.839 in the realm of perception rather than the realm of 418 00:24:47.880 --> 00:24:52.759 the material. Specifically, this perception was and is the perception 419 00:24:53.200 --> 00:24:58.440 of rampant corruption. The perception of corruption is important less 420 00:24:58.480 --> 00:25:00.839 because of the question of whether or not there was 421 00:25:01.599 --> 00:25:04.519 corruption in the American political system of the eighteen seventies 422 00:25:04.640 --> 00:25:08.400 or the twenty tens, and there was, but rather the 423 00:25:08.440 --> 00:25:10.720 mere fact that there was a perception in place at 424 00:25:10.759 --> 00:25:14.079 all that things were corrupt. The fact that the perception 425 00:25:14.240 --> 00:25:16.680 was largely driven by reality made it just a lot 426 00:25:16.720 --> 00:25:20.200 easier for the perception to keep at pace, if not 427 00:25:20.240 --> 00:25:24.039 straight up outgrow the reality. This is why perception matters 428 00:25:24.079 --> 00:25:27.359 so much more to me than what's going on on 429 00:25:27.440 --> 00:25:31.720 the ground, because perception is really what shapes reality. It 430 00:25:31.799 --> 00:25:34.559 shapes what's going on on the ground, especially when it 431 00:25:34.559 --> 00:25:38.720 comes to politics. There were many, many reasons for people 432 00:25:38.759 --> 00:25:41.400 of the time to see corruption in their politics, not 433 00:25:41.519 --> 00:25:44.240 least of which during the eighteen seventy six election, which 434 00:25:44.559 --> 00:25:47.000 frankly deserves a podcast all on its own, especially for 435 00:25:47.079 --> 00:25:51.359 political and election junkies out there. This election was going 436 00:25:51.400 --> 00:25:54.559 to be seen as being rife with corruption no matter what, 437 00:25:54.799 --> 00:25:58.319 especially considering the sheer amount of voter fraud and intimidation 438 00:25:58.960 --> 00:26:01.519 that was occurring mostly in the South but also out west. 439 00:26:02.039 --> 00:26:04.359 A congressman from the time, a man named A. S. Wallace, 440 00:26:04.359 --> 00:26:07.599 put it this way, quote intimidation is the order of 441 00:26:07.640 --> 00:26:12.720 the day, and terrorism reigned Supreme unquote, and he wasn't joking. 442 00:26:13.119 --> 00:26:16.680 Racial programs against black communities were the norm for Democratic 443 00:26:16.720 --> 00:26:19.240 Party sponsored militia and mobs, such as the one that 444 00:26:19.319 --> 00:26:21.799 hit Hamburg, a small town in South Carolina in eighteen 445 00:26:21.839 --> 00:26:25.119 seventy six. There were several black veterans of the Union 446 00:26:25.200 --> 00:26:27.960 Army living there at the time, and after an altercation 447 00:26:28.039 --> 00:26:30.640 with a couple of local white men, they were subjected 448 00:26:30.680 --> 00:26:32.880 to what can only be called a whirlwind of violence, 449 00:26:33.000 --> 00:26:35.079 very similar to the kind that hit Chinatown in Los 450 00:26:35.119 --> 00:26:39.000 Angeles in eighteen seventy one. Historian Michael A. Bli describes 451 00:26:39.079 --> 00:26:43.119 the events that followed in appropriately blunt terms quote. The 452 00:26:43.200 --> 00:26:46.319 following day, several hundred angry whites, led by former Confederate 453 00:26:46.359 --> 00:26:50.079 General Matthew C. Butler, attacked the town, leaving twelve blacks 454 00:26:50.079 --> 00:26:53.279 and one white dead, including the town's marshall. When asked 455 00:26:53.279 --> 00:26:56.119 by a congressional committee to explain his conduct, Butler said 456 00:26:56.119 --> 00:26:59.359 that the blacks had little regard for human life. He 457 00:26:59.400 --> 00:27:02.119 failed to men that Marshall James Cook's tongue had been 458 00:27:02.200 --> 00:27:04.400 ripped out and placed in his hands by members of 459 00:27:04.440 --> 00:27:10.400 the white mob. Events and threats of events like this 460 00:27:10.440 --> 00:27:14.119 swept across the South, all but ensuring a Democratic victory 461 00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:18.000 in the local elections and giving both black and Republican 462 00:27:18.079 --> 00:27:20.119 voters of the time a sense that there was nothing 463 00:27:20.240 --> 00:27:22.880 fair or legitimate about the election, at least on a 464 00:27:22.920 --> 00:27:27.000 local level. The frustration in fear wasn't limited to the South, though, 465 00:27:27.000 --> 00:27:29.680 and neither was it limited to blacks. In East Texas, 466 00:27:29.720 --> 00:27:32.279 there was a thriving community of German immigrants which were 467 00:27:32.359 --> 00:27:34.599 set upon by a mob of vigilantes who were bitter 468 00:27:34.680 --> 00:27:37.240 about the German American support of the Union during the 469 00:27:37.240 --> 00:27:40.519 Civil War and their continued support of the postwar reconstruction 470 00:27:40.599 --> 00:27:44.039 measures that had largely subordinated the South. Many of these 471 00:27:44.079 --> 00:27:47.200 Germans were killed in an ethnically motivated pogrim, and when 472 00:27:47.200 --> 00:27:49.119 the Texas Rangers were sent in to put a stop 473 00:27:49.160 --> 00:27:51.519 to it, they were unable to press charges against those 474 00:27:51.559 --> 00:27:54.359 they arrested due to the Democratic Grand Jury rejecting any 475 00:27:54.400 --> 00:27:59.000 attempts to bring in indictments. This was yet another example 476 00:27:59.039 --> 00:28:01.000 of what was starting to feel like a fixed election 477 00:28:01.200 --> 00:28:06.160 for everyone living in Democratic dominated states. That said, the 478 00:28:06.160 --> 00:28:09.359 election of eighteen seventy six between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes 479 00:28:09.440 --> 00:28:12.720 and Democrat Samuel Tilden did see the largest turnout, the 480 00:28:12.799 --> 00:28:16.160 highest turnout of the electorate up to that point. However, 481 00:28:16.240 --> 00:28:19.720 the election was a political disaster, to put it mildly, 482 00:28:20.160 --> 00:28:23.119 and it did its part in undermining the public's confidence 483 00:28:23.160 --> 00:28:26.640 in the institution of government, both with Democrats and Republicans alike. 484 00:28:27.119 --> 00:28:29.400 This is because it was a highly contested election, and 485 00:28:29.480 --> 00:28:31.640 while we definitely have had a fair few of those 486 00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:34.400 in recent decades, at least in my lifetime, I don't 487 00:28:34.400 --> 00:28:37.119 think we can say that we've ever experienced anything like 488 00:28:37.160 --> 00:28:40.519 the eighteen seventy six election. In addition to the many 489 00:28:40.559 --> 00:28:44.079 Southern states being stolen outright stolen by the Democrats, there 490 00:28:44.079 --> 00:28:47.160 were mixed reports about the election's overall outcome. It appeared 491 00:28:47.160 --> 00:28:50.119 that Tilden had claimed victory through the electoral College with 492 00:28:50.200 --> 00:28:53.319 two hundred three votes, but it wasn't that simple. This 493 00:28:53.440 --> 00:28:56.160 guy had a general named Daniel Sickles realized this as 494 00:28:56.160 --> 00:28:59.240 he was leaving an after party type shindig on election night. 495 00:28:59.279 --> 00:29:01.559 I can only imagine a few sheets to the wind, 496 00:29:01.559 --> 00:29:03.799 to be honest, and he went back to his office 497 00:29:03.839 --> 00:29:06.240 and started looking at the returns. He quickly realized that 498 00:29:06.240 --> 00:29:08.200 if Hayes took Florida, and I just got to stop 499 00:29:08.240 --> 00:29:11.359 and say, it's always Florida, isn't it. But if Hayes 500 00:29:11.400 --> 00:29:13.720 took Florida, if he took Louisiana, and if he took 501 00:29:13.759 --> 00:29:17.559 South Carolina in the electoral college, Hayes would in fact 502 00:29:17.599 --> 00:29:21.680 beat Tilden. Upon realizing this, Sickle shot off telegrams to 503 00:29:21.720 --> 00:29:24.559 the Republican committees in all three of those states and 504 00:29:24.599 --> 00:29:27.160 told them to hold fast, saw the results, and get 505 00:29:27.200 --> 00:29:31.119 ready to challenge the presumed Tilden victory. And while all 506 00:29:31.119 --> 00:29:34.440 of this very behind the scenes house of cards esque 507 00:29:34.519 --> 00:29:38.920 politicking stuff was happening, the people who had voted were 508 00:29:38.920 --> 00:29:42.359 getting mixed messages from the press. New York's Evening Post, Sun, 509 00:29:42.440 --> 00:29:45.680 and Tribune all reported a Tilden victory, while the New 510 00:29:45.759 --> 00:29:47.880 York Times and the New York Herald reported that there 511 00:29:47.920 --> 00:29:50.480 was yet to be a clear winner. If you're old 512 00:29:50.559 --> 00:29:53.559 enough to remember the two thousand election, you might remember 513 00:29:53.559 --> 00:29:57.039 that the Supreme Court resolved the Florida fiasco in December 514 00:29:57.240 --> 00:30:01.039 of that year. Now imagine the same thing in this 515 00:30:01.119 --> 00:30:05.599 situation in eighteen seventy six, but lasting until the following March, 516 00:30:06.200 --> 00:30:09.839 well after US Modern voters are used to seeing the 517 00:30:09.880 --> 00:30:13.119 new president get inaugurated. And now imagine that the efforts 518 00:30:13.160 --> 00:30:16.279 to determine the winner were spread across three states instead 519 00:30:16.279 --> 00:30:18.799 of just one, and every method under the sun being 520 00:30:18.880 --> 00:30:22.359 used to ensure victory by both sides was happening, as 521 00:30:22.400 --> 00:30:25.960 Michael Bli puts it, quote, over the ensuing weeks, the 522 00:30:26.000 --> 00:30:28.759 two parties use every method fair and foul to capture 523 00:30:28.759 --> 00:30:32.440 the votes of Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina. Republicans, who 524 00:30:32.480 --> 00:30:35.759 had the deeper pockets, triumphed in all three states. Democrats 525 00:30:35.799 --> 00:30:38.839 rejected the official tallies and called together their own election boards, 526 00:30:39.000 --> 00:30:42.359 which validated a state of tilded electors, also setting up 527 00:30:42.440 --> 00:30:47.640 rival government in opposition to the victorious Republicans. Nut, if 528 00:30:47.680 --> 00:30:50.400 you thought we had a problem with the two parties 529 00:30:50.440 --> 00:30:53.359 having two different sets of facts alternative facts, if you 530 00:30:53.400 --> 00:30:56.839 will just know that this, like everything in this story 531 00:30:56.839 --> 00:31:01.319 of ours, was happening nearly a century and a half earlier. Now, 532 00:31:01.519 --> 00:31:03.599 it's important for me to note here that the results 533 00:31:03.640 --> 00:31:06.559 of the eighteen seventy six election are still being debated 534 00:31:06.599 --> 00:31:10.079 to this day by the real historians and experts. No 535 00:31:10.200 --> 00:31:12.559 clear consensus has ever been reached, and as we know, 536 00:31:12.799 --> 00:31:15.880 historians all have their own biases and presumptions that they 537 00:31:15.880 --> 00:31:18.480 have to work through. But this is understandable in the 538 00:31:18.480 --> 00:31:22.000 contemporary context, since as the weeks continued into eighteen seventy seven, 539 00:31:22.079 --> 00:31:27.000 something unprecedented and something the founding fathers never anticipated when 540 00:31:27.000 --> 00:31:30.720 they created the electoral college actually happened. Tilden was leading 541 00:31:30.759 --> 00:31:34.559 by nineteen electoral votes and twenty votes were up for debate. 542 00:31:34.680 --> 00:31:37.880 In other words, as Michael Bili puts it, quote, Tilden 543 00:31:38.000 --> 00:31:43.920 only required a single vote to be president unquote. This 544 00:31:44.039 --> 00:31:48.240 might sound silly, but take a second and close your 545 00:31:48.240 --> 00:31:51.920 eyes and imagine February and then March of twenty seventeen 546 00:31:52.000 --> 00:31:56.240 rolling around. Imagine that Obama is still the president. Hillary 547 00:31:56.279 --> 00:31:59.079 and Trump have been sniped at each other via CNN 548 00:31:59.160 --> 00:32:02.000 and Fox and Twitter and Facebook and god help us 549 00:32:02.000 --> 00:32:06.240 all probably their Instagram stories, and we're still no closer 550 00:32:06.319 --> 00:32:09.200 to knowing who won. No one in Washington seems to 551 00:32:09.240 --> 00:32:11.839 know what to do. Everyone is the figured of chicken 552 00:32:11.839 --> 00:32:15.400 with its head chopped off. This scenario happened in eighteen 553 00:32:15.440 --> 00:32:20.480 seventy seven, though obviously without social or televised media, congressional investigations, 554 00:32:20.519 --> 00:32:23.559 and even redoing the whole thing. Holding a whole new 555 00:32:23.599 --> 00:32:27.480 election were things that were suggested in discussed, so everyone 556 00:32:27.559 --> 00:32:30.000 was going into panic mode, not least of which because 557 00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:32.680 the parties were starting to fragment from within on the issue, 558 00:32:32.799 --> 00:32:37.039 mostly along North south lines. This debate was felt strongest 559 00:32:37.079 --> 00:32:40.000 in Congress, where eventually the House Judiciary Committee created a 560 00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:43.799 commission made up of five House representatives, five Senators, and 561 00:32:43.920 --> 00:32:47.119 five justices, the last of whose names would be no 562 00:32:47.319 --> 00:32:50.920 joke drawn from a hat. This commission, as strange as 563 00:32:50.920 --> 00:32:54.279 it sounds, was created and agreed upon by both Tilden 564 00:32:54.359 --> 00:32:57.839 and Hayes in order to avoid a second civil war 565 00:32:57.960 --> 00:33:00.960 only eleven years after the first one ended, because that's 566 00:33:00.960 --> 00:33:03.400 really where this country was headed all over again, and 567 00:33:03.440 --> 00:33:06.160 no one wanted that, not with six hundred thousand dead 568 00:33:06.200 --> 00:33:10.319 Americans whose bodies were essentially still warm after all. When 569 00:33:10.319 --> 00:33:14.160 Tilden was told by his supporters that he should oppose 570 00:33:14.160 --> 00:33:17.000 the commission out of principle was by Democratic allies of 571 00:33:17.079 --> 00:33:20.160 this to him, he simply retorted, quote, what is left 572 00:33:20.200 --> 00:33:25.599 but war? Unquote. So this sense of teetering on the 573 00:33:25.680 --> 00:33:28.240 edge of a new civil war was felt all across 574 00:33:28.240 --> 00:33:31.359 the country. With the coverage of the crisis, paranoia and 575 00:33:31.400 --> 00:33:35.599 even calls for violence started to spread. Members of Congress 576 00:33:35.599 --> 00:33:39.119 were even bringing loaded pistols into session just as a precaution. 577 00:33:39.480 --> 00:33:41.720 Take an extra second to imagine Nancy Pelosi or Mitch 578 00:33:41.799 --> 00:33:45.920 McConnell addressing Congress with three fifty seven magnums strapped at 579 00:33:45.920 --> 00:33:49.400 their sides. And funny as that might be, the reality 580 00:33:49.400 --> 00:33:51.759 of the situation really starts to set in when you 581 00:33:51.880 --> 00:33:54.440 hear what the famous Civil War general William to comes 582 00:33:54.440 --> 00:33:58.000 to Sherman said about the situation at the time. Quote, 583 00:33:58.160 --> 00:34:01.200 the term of President Ulysses Esque ends at twelve o'clock 584 00:34:01.279 --> 00:34:03.440 on the fourth of March. He will then be in 585 00:34:03.440 --> 00:34:05.720 no position to give orders to me, and I shall 586 00:34:05.759 --> 00:34:11.239 receive no orders from him unquote implicit threat of military 587 00:34:11.320 --> 00:34:16.880 coup anyone. But something that dramatic never came to pass, 588 00:34:17.320 --> 00:34:20.440 because at the eleventh hour, at four in the morning 589 00:34:20.519 --> 00:34:23.920 on March second, eighteen seventy seven, Hayes's victory was confirmed 590 00:34:23.920 --> 00:34:26.280 by the commission he and Tilden had agreed to in 591 00:34:26.360 --> 00:34:29.880 order to avoid war. The crisis was over. But there 592 00:34:29.960 --> 00:34:33.320 was a cost to this crisis, one that couldn't really 593 00:34:33.360 --> 00:34:36.840 have been anticipated. I'll give them credit there. The cost 594 00:34:37.000 --> 00:34:39.920 of all this uncertainty and behind the scenes politicking was 595 00:34:40.800 --> 00:34:44.039 It was greater than anyone could have anticipated. Rutherford B. 596 00:34:44.199 --> 00:34:47.760 Hayes would only serve one term as president and be 597 00:34:47.960 --> 00:34:52.159 dogged by accusations of corruption for his entire tenure, so 598 00:34:52.239 --> 00:34:54.519 much so that he would frequently be given the name 599 00:34:54.719 --> 00:34:58.039 Ruther Fraud in the press, which I'm sure you pun 600 00:34:58.079 --> 00:35:00.920 lovers will no doubt get a good laugh at. At 601 00:35:00.920 --> 00:35:04.639 the end of the day, though, this automated distrust happened 602 00:35:04.639 --> 00:35:07.800 because this electoral circus certainly sapped the faith of the 603 00:35:07.800 --> 00:35:12.679 public in their political institutions. This lead to the perception 604 00:35:12.760 --> 00:35:16.400 of rampant political corruption as well as just the general 605 00:35:16.400 --> 00:35:19.400 perception that the politician the men in Washington, namely were 606 00:35:19.440 --> 00:35:22.440 the quote unquote bad guys. That's what happened, that's what 607 00:35:22.559 --> 00:35:27.840 formed that perception was created here. This perception was actually 608 00:35:27.880 --> 00:35:31.000 so widespread that even former politicians were calling it out, 609 00:35:31.039 --> 00:35:34.079 with a former Republican senator at the time named Carl 610 00:35:34.119 --> 00:35:37.679 Schertz recalling that quote, all branches of the municipal government 611 00:35:37.719 --> 00:35:42.360 were honeycombed with corruption and wickedness unquote, or as the 612 00:35:42.559 --> 00:35:45.480 always awesome and super quotable Mark Twain said in response 613 00:35:45.519 --> 00:35:48.719 to this growing populist backlash that was starting to sweep 614 00:35:48.719 --> 00:35:51.320 across the United States during this time. Quote where the 615 00:35:51.320 --> 00:35:55.159 government is a sham, one must expect such things unquote. 616 00:35:57.159 --> 00:35:59.960 But there was another factor, both in the eighteen seventies 617 00:36:00.079 --> 00:36:03.360 and in the twenty tens, another ingredient being added into 618 00:36:03.519 --> 00:36:06.880 what our friend Neil Ferguson calls the populous backlash soup, 619 00:36:08.199 --> 00:36:13.960 a stark rise in income inequality. The notion of inequality 620 00:36:14.320 --> 00:36:17.800 is actually tougher to measure than many people believe, or 621 00:36:18.000 --> 00:36:20.639 than how it's normally talked about, at least in terms 622 00:36:20.639 --> 00:36:23.800 of real world effects. You can look at the differences 623 00:36:23.800 --> 00:36:27.280 that exist in individual income and capital, but that doesn't 624 00:36:27.360 --> 00:36:30.599 really tell the whole story of how well or how 625 00:36:30.639 --> 00:36:33.519 not well someone is living. You can make a reasonably 626 00:36:33.599 --> 00:36:36.519 educated guess that someone working at McDonald's is probably not 627 00:36:36.559 --> 00:36:39.480 living as large as the head of a Silicon Valley 628 00:36:39.480 --> 00:36:41.960 tech giant or a Wall Street stock trader, just like 629 00:36:42.000 --> 00:36:44.840 you could have made a reasonably educated assumption that a 630 00:36:44.920 --> 00:36:47.920 labor at a canning factory working for a few dollars 631 00:36:47.960 --> 00:36:50.239 a day wasn't living as large as a railroad or 632 00:36:50.320 --> 00:36:54.800 steel or oil magnate. In the late nineteenth century. That said, 633 00:36:54.920 --> 00:36:59.000 it's still really tough to actually measure the effects of 634 00:36:59.039 --> 00:37:02.719 these inequalities income beyond the anecdotal stories of lavish parties 635 00:37:02.760 --> 00:37:07.960 and expenses versus abject suffering and starvation. But here's the thing, 636 00:37:08.599 --> 00:37:11.360 it's actually even more difficult to measure even just the 637 00:37:11.480 --> 00:37:14.440 numerical inequality that was occurring in the eighteen seventies since, 638 00:37:14.519 --> 00:37:17.400 as Neil Ferguson pointed out in his twenty sixteen presentation 639 00:37:17.480 --> 00:37:21.000 on the Populist Backlash, that we don't actually have income 640 00:37:21.039 --> 00:37:25.360 tax data from back then. However, given the economic trends 641 00:37:25.400 --> 00:37:28.800 pointed out by other economic historians, we do know that 642 00:37:28.880 --> 00:37:31.760 income inequality was at a peak in the years leading 643 00:37:31.840 --> 00:37:33.800 up to the First World War and the years afterward, 644 00:37:34.480 --> 00:37:36.360 and the data appeared to show that it was part 645 00:37:36.400 --> 00:37:38.880 of an existing trend that had been growing for decades. 646 00:37:40.440 --> 00:37:43.159 It seems to be pretty common knowledge that the latter 647 00:37:43.199 --> 00:37:46.199 half of the nineteenth century was a time filled with magnates. 648 00:37:46.199 --> 00:37:50.360 And no, that's magnates, not the thing that became an 649 00:37:50.400 --> 00:37:53.039 insane clown posse meme all those years ago. I'm talking 650 00:37:53.079 --> 00:37:58.719 about magnates, steel, oil, newspaper, railroad magnates, super wealthy, largely 651 00:37:58.760 --> 00:38:02.000 self made, and cut throat level ruthless men capitalizing on 652 00:38:02.000 --> 00:38:07.079 these relatively new economic frontiers. You had Andrew Carnegie, Scottish immigrant, 653 00:38:07.119 --> 00:38:10.719 post Civil War steel magnate and inspiration for Scrooge McDuck 654 00:38:10.760 --> 00:38:14.119 as it happens, whose his wealth would be about two 655 00:38:14.159 --> 00:38:17.119 percent of the United States GDP by nineteen oh one, 656 00:38:17.159 --> 00:38:19.360 and that, by the way I did the math, that's 657 00:38:19.400 --> 00:38:21.800 over three hundred and seventy billion dollars. That's of twenty 658 00:38:21.840 --> 00:38:25.639 fourteen when you account for inflation. You also had John D. Rockefeller, 659 00:38:25.639 --> 00:38:29.000 whose wealth was quote unquote only thirty billion dollars less 660 00:38:29.000 --> 00:38:33.199 than Carnegie's, but still massive thanks to his early investments 661 00:38:33.239 --> 00:38:36.079 in oil in the eighteen sixties, which actually ended up 662 00:38:36.119 --> 00:38:40.320 turning into a near monopoly of ninety percent by eighteen 663 00:38:40.400 --> 00:38:44.119 eighty with his company Standard Oil. You had JP Morgan, 664 00:38:44.199 --> 00:38:46.920 yes that JP Morgan of the Bank Fame, the one 665 00:38:46.960 --> 00:38:49.519 that the bank's named after, who bought Carnegie Steel Empire 666 00:38:49.519 --> 00:38:52.280 for nearly five hundred million dollars in nineteen oh one. Money. 667 00:38:52.440 --> 00:38:55.440 You had William Randolph Hurst, thefa mious yellow journalism magnate 668 00:38:55.639 --> 00:38:58.480 and the inspiration as it happens for citizen Kane thanks 669 00:38:58.519 --> 00:39:04.320 to I guess similar ruthless citicism and predilection for ostentatious castles. 670 00:39:05.360 --> 00:39:08.000 And you had Cornelius Vanderbildt and earlier member of this 671 00:39:08.159 --> 00:39:11.159 crew of wealthy dudes who struck it enormously rich in 672 00:39:11.239 --> 00:39:14.400 railroads and shipping in this case, as well as being 673 00:39:14.679 --> 00:39:18.079 the ancestor of a certain CNN anchor with an adorable giggle, 674 00:39:18.400 --> 00:39:21.880 a one Anderson Cooper. And these guys are worth mentioning 675 00:39:22.119 --> 00:39:25.400 for the fun trivia, absolutely, but they're more worth mentioning 676 00:39:25.800 --> 00:39:29.400 as sort of paragons of extreme wealth during a time 677 00:39:29.440 --> 00:39:32.480 when many working class Americans were, in so many words, 678 00:39:32.519 --> 00:39:34.679 living on bread and water in one dollar a day. 679 00:39:35.599 --> 00:39:38.320 It's not necessarily about these working class Americans and their 680 00:39:38.320 --> 00:39:41.880 families living horribly while these magnates, these robber barons as 681 00:39:41.880 --> 00:39:44.639 they were known, and their families were living lavishly and easily. 682 00:39:44.719 --> 00:39:47.920 Though this definitely was the case, it's not that this 683 00:39:48.039 --> 00:39:52.239 alone amplified the friction of the growing inequality in American society. 684 00:39:52.320 --> 00:39:56.440 It was just how much of a financial golf that 685 00:39:56.599 --> 00:40:00.559 was appearing between the working masses and these magnates was staggering. 686 00:40:00.840 --> 00:40:03.320 Both then and in the twenty first century for being honest. 687 00:40:04.280 --> 00:40:07.480 The mere presence of these magnates and the sheer, unheard 688 00:40:07.519 --> 00:40:10.320 of wealth that they possessed really gives us an idea 689 00:40:11.079 --> 00:40:13.360 of how the United States really became a nation with 690 00:40:13.400 --> 00:40:16.599 its insurmountable one percenter class that we still to this 691 00:40:16.719 --> 00:40:19.800 day keep hearing about in one form or another. And 692 00:40:20.119 --> 00:40:22.119 when you have a one percenter class, whether or not 693 00:40:22.159 --> 00:40:24.760 it's being abjectly felt by everyone in the ninety nine 694 00:40:24.760 --> 00:40:28.679 percenter class doesn't matter. There is a stark perception of 695 00:40:28.719 --> 00:40:32.159 gross injustice at this income inequality. You can call this 696 00:40:32.239 --> 00:40:35.760 perception of injustice simple resentment. You can call it an 697 00:40:35.840 --> 00:40:40.400 unfair distribution of resources. Whichever political bias you have informs you, 698 00:40:40.400 --> 00:40:43.159 you can call it those things, but it doesn't matter. 699 00:40:44.199 --> 00:40:47.360 The point is that class differences, this stark tend to 700 00:40:47.440 --> 00:40:51.360 cause our pattern recognizing the million brains, a bit of discomfort, 701 00:40:51.519 --> 00:40:56.719 a bit of cognitive dissonance. Even cognitive dissonance actually is 702 00:40:56.760 --> 00:41:00.320 a really important aspect to this story and any story 703 00:41:00.360 --> 00:41:03.800 really that deals with income inequality, and it's one that 704 00:41:03.880 --> 00:41:06.079 doesn't get discussed often enough, at least not in a 705 00:41:06.079 --> 00:41:09.400 way that isn't depressingly informed only by Adam Smith or 706 00:41:09.440 --> 00:41:14.280 Karl Marx. Cognitive dissonance is simply the mental discomfort that 707 00:41:14.320 --> 00:41:17.360 you feel when your internal beliefs come into conflict with 708 00:41:17.400 --> 00:41:21.039 the reality of your actions and sometimes just your environment. 709 00:41:21.440 --> 00:41:24.960 It's not hypocrisy, as the way it's thrown around on 710 00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:27.880 social media in twenty nineteen might have you believe. Cognitive 711 00:41:27.880 --> 00:41:30.679 dissonance in the end is simply what I first called it, 712 00:41:30.880 --> 00:41:36.000 mental discomfort. But it's powerful mental discomfort. And how else 713 00:41:36.000 --> 00:41:38.880 would you describe the feelings of a worker on one 714 00:41:38.920 --> 00:41:40.880 of the railroads, or in one of the oil wells, 715 00:41:40.960 --> 00:41:42.880 or in one of the coal mines of the time, 716 00:41:43.320 --> 00:41:46.079 or one of the factories, just seeing the owners of 717 00:41:46.079 --> 00:41:49.239 their jobs continue to get monumentally richer and richer, while 718 00:41:49.840 --> 00:41:53.800 they just continue to scrape by with barely enough to 719 00:41:53.840 --> 00:41:56.559 support their growing families, all while they're just trying to 720 00:41:56.559 --> 00:42:00.000 buy into this notion that in America every freeman owns 721 00:42:00.079 --> 00:42:02.199 his labor and can use his labor to become his 722 00:42:02.239 --> 00:42:04.519 own boss and make his own fortune. How else would 723 00:42:04.519 --> 00:42:08.440 you explain it. I mean, maybe this cognitively dissonant worker 724 00:42:08.519 --> 00:42:12.239 shouldn't have had the family at the size that it is, 725 00:42:12.360 --> 00:42:14.760 and that keeps growing, and maybe he should should have 726 00:42:14.840 --> 00:42:18.159 kept his expenses down. Sure, or maybe he's not receiving 727 00:42:18.239 --> 00:42:20.719 the level of income that he deserves for the value 728 00:42:20.760 --> 00:42:23.480 his labor brings. Sure, that might be it, too, But 729 00:42:24.639 --> 00:42:27.679 like I was saying before, neither of those reasons, neither 730 00:42:27.719 --> 00:42:32.480 of those biases matter. He sees the contradiction, and more importantly, 731 00:42:32.800 --> 00:42:37.159 he feels it, and that cognitive dissonance doesn't feel too good. 732 00:42:37.280 --> 00:42:40.280 If you've ever experienced it, and you probably know if 733 00:42:40.320 --> 00:42:43.960 you have, you know that it doesn't feel good. And 734 00:42:44.039 --> 00:42:46.480 for this worker, it really doesn't feel good, especially when 735 00:42:46.480 --> 00:42:49.639 he feels it day after day after day with no 736 00:42:49.840 --> 00:42:53.079 end in sight, all while his bosses can literally sleep 737 00:42:53.119 --> 00:42:55.880 on a mountain of money if they chose to. That 738 00:42:55.960 --> 00:42:58.760 cognitive dissonance is really what people are talking about when 739 00:42:58.760 --> 00:43:02.079 they talk about inequality and the problems that inequality produces. 740 00:43:03.800 --> 00:43:07.440 This widening gulf that was full of cognitive dissonance was 741 00:43:07.519 --> 00:43:12.000 paradoxically actually part of a healing process, like a culture 742 00:43:12.039 --> 00:43:16.119 wide healing process. The era specifically, it was the healing 743 00:43:16.159 --> 00:43:18.920 process that existed in the era that followed the worst 744 00:43:18.920 --> 00:43:21.679 war ever fought in American soil, the Civil War the 745 00:43:21.760 --> 00:43:24.679 eight years between eighteen sixty five and eighteen seventy three 746 00:43:24.760 --> 00:43:28.239 were actually in some ways the best years in American 747 00:43:28.320 --> 00:43:31.599 history by then, at least from an economic standpoint. It's 748 00:43:31.800 --> 00:43:34.599 actually pretty similar to what we experienced in America following 749 00:43:34.599 --> 00:43:37.280 the fall of communism. It's our good friend and most 750 00:43:37.320 --> 00:43:41.360 recent victim of cultural nostalgia milking the nineteen nineties, and 751 00:43:41.480 --> 00:43:43.880 very much like the nineteen nineties and into the twenty 752 00:43:43.880 --> 00:43:47.320 first century. In the years after the Civil War, prosperity 753 00:43:47.480 --> 00:43:50.239 was on the rise. Along with economic growth. There was 754 00:43:50.239 --> 00:43:53.199 a rise in jobs thanks to massive projects, namely the 755 00:43:53.199 --> 00:43:57.559 transcontinental railroads that reached thirty three thousand miles in total. 756 00:43:58.159 --> 00:44:00.719 These projects are actually really important to get into because 757 00:44:00.760 --> 00:44:04.599 they were perceived by bankers, mostly especially bankers in the North, 758 00:44:04.840 --> 00:44:07.519 as being hugely profitable, just like the notion of home 759 00:44:07.559 --> 00:44:10.599 ownership being the great investment of the early to mid 760 00:44:10.599 --> 00:44:13.800 two thousands, spurred on by a strong economy left over 761 00:44:13.840 --> 00:44:16.960 from the late nineteen nineties. In that case, the thing is, 762 00:44:17.880 --> 00:44:21.400 in the eighteen sixties and seventies, railroads were not only 763 00:44:21.440 --> 00:44:26.239 being seen as massive cash cows for their investors, very profitable. 764 00:44:26.239 --> 00:44:31.239 In other words, they were also extremely expensive. And what 765 00:44:31.280 --> 00:44:33.760 do you do when you see a big, shiny new 766 00:44:33.760 --> 00:44:36.559 investment that might be a little out of your price range, 767 00:44:36.559 --> 00:44:40.840 but that's totally, definitely, absolutely, for sure gonna make you 768 00:44:40.880 --> 00:44:44.280 money at the end. You'll be responsible, gather enough savings 769 00:44:44.360 --> 00:44:46.480 to afford it before you make the initial investment, right, 770 00:44:46.760 --> 00:44:48.880 make sure you have a little safety net beneath you, 771 00:44:49.280 --> 00:44:53.199 just in case this prohibitively expensive and rapidly growing investment 772 00:44:53.239 --> 00:44:56.480 goes belly up. Shut up, you was no. You start borrowing. 773 00:44:56.599 --> 00:45:02.480 Come on and borrowing and borrowing and borrowing and borrowing. 774 00:45:03.079 --> 00:45:07.320 And this borrowing, in our story, only increased around the 775 00:45:07.440 --> 00:45:10.760 nation after a number of cities like Chicago literally burned 776 00:45:10.760 --> 00:45:12.800 to the ground in the early eighteen seventies and their 777 00:45:12.800 --> 00:45:17.440 governments needed to rebuild and rebuild quickly more borrowing. To 778 00:45:17.480 --> 00:45:20.000 give you an idea of the kind of growth we're 779 00:45:20.039 --> 00:45:22.920 seeing during this period that's leading to an increased perception 780 00:45:23.000 --> 00:45:25.920 of gross inequality as well as something far, far worse 781 00:45:25.920 --> 00:45:28.440 we're about to get into. I'll turn to Michael Belie 782 00:45:28.440 --> 00:45:31.679 again describing this eight year period of growth. Quote, the 783 00:45:31.719 --> 00:45:34.719 economy appeared fevered in its growth, increasing from four hundred 784 00:45:34.719 --> 00:45:37.320 and thirty one thousand businesses in eighteen seventy to six 785 00:45:37.440 --> 00:45:39.840 hundred nine thousand, nine hundred and four in eighteen seventy one. 786 00:45:40.199 --> 00:45:41.960 There were three hundred and sixty four railroads at the 787 00:45:42.000 --> 00:45:44.360 beginning of eighteen seventy three, two hundred and sixty of 788 00:45:44.400 --> 00:45:47.480 which paid no dividends, representing a total investment of three 789 00:45:47.480 --> 00:45:50.599 point seven billion dollars. That's, by the way, sixty three 790 00:45:50.599 --> 00:45:53.239 billion dollars in twenty eighteen. Money I did the calculation 791 00:45:53.320 --> 00:45:57.840 there too, Blie continues quote, tripling the industry's capitalization in 792 00:45:58.039 --> 00:46:02.159 just six years. Banks were low five times their actual 793 00:46:02.199 --> 00:46:08.000 money supply. During this period of rapid growth, there was 794 00:46:08.039 --> 00:46:12.599 also a massive flux of lying, bribery, and indeed speculation 795 00:46:12.800 --> 00:46:16.400 going on, all assisting and giving regular Americans the perception 796 00:46:16.480 --> 00:46:19.199 that not only were these investors and magnates far better 797 00:46:19.239 --> 00:46:22.960 off than they were and they were, but also how 798 00:46:23.000 --> 00:46:26.280 completely corrupt the political system being bribed by these investors 799 00:46:26.280 --> 00:46:28.599 and magnates was. Because they were being bribed a lot 800 00:46:28.639 --> 00:46:32.559 as well. Massive government land grants and subsidies were being 801 00:46:32.599 --> 00:46:35.320 given to these railroad companies, and that didn't help the 802 00:46:35.320 --> 00:46:39.599 perception either. But these perceptions of inequality and corruption. These 803 00:46:39.639 --> 00:46:42.840 perceptions effects couldn't really be felt on their own, at 804 00:46:42.920 --> 00:46:46.280 least not yet, because while this perception was building, so 805 00:46:46.480 --> 00:46:50.239 was the debt, and so was the speculation. This might 806 00:46:50.280 --> 00:46:53.280 not have mattered if not for a plucky new empire 807 00:46:53.360 --> 00:46:57.519 in Germany deciding not to mint silver coins anymore. And 808 00:46:57.559 --> 00:47:00.000 while this might sound like a silly ingredient to throw 809 00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:03.320 going to the populist backlash soup, maybe a sprinkle assault, 810 00:47:03.360 --> 00:47:06.920 we can call this The lack of silver mintage in 811 00:47:06.960 --> 00:47:10.039 Germany caused the demand for silver to drop like a stone, 812 00:47:10.760 --> 00:47:14.239 and since the United States was Germany's primary source of silver, 813 00:47:14.920 --> 00:47:17.440 this affected the United States in ways that might have 814 00:47:17.519 --> 00:47:19.119 been less of a big deal if so much of 815 00:47:19.119 --> 00:47:22.519 our economy wasn't being based on specuative deals and tons 816 00:47:22.559 --> 00:47:25.559 of borrowing. It threw us into a de facto gold 817 00:47:25.639 --> 00:47:28.840 standard thanks to something called the coinage active eighteen seventy three, 818 00:47:28.880 --> 00:47:31.599 also called the crime of eighteen seventy three by critics 819 00:47:31.599 --> 00:47:34.599 of the time. And what did this do? It completely 820 00:47:34.599 --> 00:47:40.320 dismembered our money supply. This is why excessive borrowing matters. 821 00:47:40.519 --> 00:47:42.639 And keep in mind, I do understand that this is 822 00:47:42.719 --> 00:47:46.039 how an economy typically functions. You can't build infrastructure on 823 00:47:46.079 --> 00:47:48.679 this scale without borrowing. You have to spend money to 824 00:47:48.719 --> 00:47:51.119 make money, like it or not. Guys, I understand that. 825 00:47:51.320 --> 00:47:54.079 But with the level of spending that was occurring, spending 826 00:47:54.119 --> 00:47:57.400 money that didn't even exist, combined with the unfortunate coincidence 827 00:47:57.480 --> 00:48:00.679 that the resource of value lost its value due to 828 00:48:00.760 --> 00:48:04.519 another country's own decisions, is what makes investments on this scale, 829 00:48:04.559 --> 00:48:10.159 these speculations so goddamn dangerous. Here's what happens when money 830 00:48:10.159 --> 00:48:14.920 supply is slashed, interest rates spike, making repayment difficult, if 831 00:48:14.960 --> 00:48:19.239 not outright impossible, and this in turn lowers the confidence 832 00:48:19.280 --> 00:48:23.199 of investors. And here's the billion dollar question, friends, what 833 00:48:23.719 --> 00:48:27.199 happens when everyone loses their economic confidence all at the 834 00:48:27.199 --> 00:48:31.000 same time. You probably saw where this was going, folks, 835 00:48:31.000 --> 00:48:33.840 But this is where head chef Neil Ferguson gives us 836 00:48:33.840 --> 00:48:37.039 his third ingredient for a populous backlash in a society, 837 00:48:37.840 --> 00:48:42.840 a giant economic crash. In September of eighteen seventy three, 838 00:48:43.000 --> 00:48:45.960 Andrew Carnegie, who we mentioned earlier, wrote in his diary 839 00:48:46.000 --> 00:48:49.079 the following quote. All was going well when one morning 840 00:48:49.119 --> 00:48:52.159 in our summer cottage, a telegram came announcing the failure 841 00:48:52.199 --> 00:48:56.679 of j Cooking Company. Unquote, he continued later in his diary, quote, 842 00:48:56.920 --> 00:49:00.480 loss after loss ensued until a total paralysis of business 843 00:49:00.519 --> 00:49:06.360 set in. Real historians like Neil Ferguson and actual history 844 00:49:06.360 --> 00:49:09.079 students unlike me, tend to point shaking fingers at the 845 00:49:09.079 --> 00:49:11.320 Panic of eighteen seventy three as evidence that we don't 846 00:49:11.320 --> 00:49:14.239 take history seriously enough. And the more I've read of 847 00:49:15.079 --> 00:49:18.280 both real historians and the opinions of actual history students, 848 00:49:18.519 --> 00:49:20.679 the more I've come to learn that they're probably right, 849 00:49:20.800 --> 00:49:24.480 especially when it comes to economics. We all know about 850 00:49:24.480 --> 00:49:26.800 the great depression of the nineteen thirties and the forties 851 00:49:26.800 --> 00:49:29.480 brought on by the stock market crash of nineteen twenty nine, 852 00:49:29.519 --> 00:49:32.920 and we, especially us cusper millennials in the United States, 853 00:49:33.559 --> 00:49:36.199 all know about and even felt, the crisis of two 854 00:49:36.199 --> 00:49:37.760 thousand and seven. In two thousand and eight and the 855 00:49:37.760 --> 00:49:39.920 great recession that followed. I can count the number of 856 00:49:39.920 --> 00:49:42.760 friends of mine who experienced employment trouble after leaving college 857 00:49:42.760 --> 00:49:45.519 on both hands and feet, so much so that many 858 00:49:45.599 --> 00:49:47.400 just decided to go back to school and raise their 859 00:49:47.440 --> 00:49:50.159 debts and hopes of increasing their job market value, never 860 00:49:50.199 --> 00:49:53.280 mind escaped the crushing reality of the job market at 861 00:49:53.280 --> 00:49:55.840 the time. But here's the thing, guys, we don't know 862 00:49:56.000 --> 00:49:58.400 enough about the eighteen seventy three panic and the economic 863 00:49:58.480 --> 00:50:01.199 depression that followed, which was at its time called the 864 00:50:01.239 --> 00:50:04.719 Great Depression. This was not just a big one. It 865 00:50:04.880 --> 00:50:08.079 was the big one. It was big, it was bad, 866 00:50:08.519 --> 00:50:10.960 and its far reaching effects make up much of the 867 00:50:10.960 --> 00:50:14.880 materialist backbone of our story. The last two ingredients we discussed, 868 00:50:14.920 --> 00:50:19.360 the perception of corruption and income inequality, were largely psychological 869 00:50:19.360 --> 00:50:22.119 in nature. And while psychology plays into every part of 870 00:50:22.159 --> 00:50:24.000 this story in one way or another, and really every 871 00:50:24.039 --> 00:50:26.960 story from history at that this ingredient is in the 872 00:50:27.000 --> 00:50:30.239 realm of the material firmly planted. It's the most measurable 873 00:50:30.280 --> 00:50:32.719 and objective of our ingredients. In a lot of ways, 874 00:50:32.760 --> 00:50:36.000 the populous backlash chefs Historians of different political orientations in 875 00:50:36.039 --> 00:50:38.199 this case can and do seem to have come to 876 00:50:38.239 --> 00:50:41.000 a consensus about how important this collapse was to the 877 00:50:41.000 --> 00:50:44.599 events of the late eighteen seventies. It began with Jake Cook, 878 00:50:44.679 --> 00:50:47.239 the guy mentioned in Carnegie's Journal a moment ago, another 879 00:50:47.320 --> 00:50:51.400 robber baron type and an investment banker really so corrupt 880 00:50:51.400 --> 00:50:55.400 that it is probably worth devoting another podcast to them alone. 881 00:50:55.599 --> 00:50:58.800 In short after being unable to get more loans to 882 00:50:58.880 --> 00:51:01.760 invest in the rapidly growing railroad game that he was 883 00:51:01.800 --> 00:51:05.199 already invested in, not to mention to bribe more politicians 884 00:51:05.239 --> 00:51:07.400 and continue to buy out newspapers that might have been 885 00:51:07.440 --> 00:51:10.199 a little bit critical of what he was doing. Jake 886 00:51:10.199 --> 00:51:13.400 Cook had been taking all of his client's money without 887 00:51:13.400 --> 00:51:16.639 saying a peep to them. Because he was pocketing all 888 00:51:16.679 --> 00:51:19.679 of this money for himself, he completely sucked his bank's 889 00:51:19.679 --> 00:51:24.400 liquid resources dry. Thanks to a recent ruling from Congress, 890 00:51:24.440 --> 00:51:27.039 paper money called Greenback's at the time had been getting 891 00:51:27.079 --> 00:51:29.320 taken out of circulation, so that the money supply was 892 00:51:29.360 --> 00:51:33.119 technically low for that reason as well. Thanks to these things, 893 00:51:33.239 --> 00:51:35.760 his outright thievery of his client's money and his ability 894 00:51:35.800 --> 00:51:38.920 to somehow vacuum up every dollar his company was holding, 895 00:51:39.320 --> 00:51:41.800 Jay Cook was eventually forced to close the doors of 896 00:51:41.840 --> 00:51:45.199 as many successful banks scattered across the East Coast. And 897 00:51:45.239 --> 00:51:48.119 this wouldn't have been a problem if his banks hadn't 898 00:51:48.119 --> 00:51:50.599 been so crucial to the American economy at this point. 899 00:51:50.920 --> 00:51:53.360 As reported by the New York Tribune. When this news 900 00:51:53.400 --> 00:51:56.079 hit the New York Stock Exchange quote there was an 901 00:51:56.159 --> 00:51:59.599 uproar such as scarcely filled the exchange since it was built. 902 00:52:00.079 --> 00:52:03.400 Messengers fled every way with the story of ruin and 903 00:52:03.519 --> 00:52:07.679 down came the stocks all along the line quote Historia. 904 00:52:07.760 --> 00:52:11.199 Michael Blile writes of the damage caused to American financial 905 00:52:11.239 --> 00:52:13.920 institutions and to the growing railroad industry thanks to the 906 00:52:13.960 --> 00:52:16.159 Panic of eighteen seventy three in a much more concise 907 00:52:16.199 --> 00:52:19.800 way than I can quote. Like many other leading stocks, 908 00:52:19.920 --> 00:52:22.159 Western Union lost one third of its value in a 909 00:52:22.199 --> 00:52:25.519 few days, and fully one half before the markets finally 910 00:52:25.519 --> 00:52:28.920 stabilized at the end of October. Most railroads lost one 911 00:52:29.000 --> 00:52:31.440 fifth to one third of their value during the same period. 912 00:52:31.639 --> 00:52:34.760 A total of forty financial institutions failed in September eighteen 913 00:52:34.800 --> 00:52:38.559 seventy three, and on September twentieth, the stock market suspended 914 00:52:38.599 --> 00:52:40.840 all trading for the first time in its history, remaining 915 00:52:40.880 --> 00:52:45.679 closed for ten days. He goes on to describe how 916 00:52:45.760 --> 00:52:48.519 in the year that followed the initial panic eighteen seventy four, 917 00:52:49.119 --> 00:52:54.000 more than half of the American railroad companies would go bankrupt. However, 918 00:52:54.599 --> 00:52:57.719 the rapid failure of these banks and railroad companies was 919 00:52:57.800 --> 00:53:01.840 just the beginning. The real world on the ground. Consequences 920 00:53:01.880 --> 00:53:04.480 of the panic had yet to start. A man named 921 00:53:04.480 --> 00:53:08.679 Alvred Nettleton, general in fact and Northern Pacific exec wrote 922 00:53:08.719 --> 00:53:11.280 his wife in a letter, quote, if I had been 923 00:53:11.280 --> 00:53:13.360 struck on the head with a hammer, I could not 924 00:53:13.400 --> 00:53:16.800 have been more stunned on quote. As soon as he 925 00:53:16.840 --> 00:53:19.159 finished writing this somber letter to his wife, he, as 926 00:53:19.159 --> 00:53:22.639 described by Michael Blile, quote rubbed his eyes in disbelief, 927 00:53:22.880 --> 00:53:29.360 and then set about firing people unquote getting fired. That 928 00:53:29.639 --> 00:53:32.760 was the real consequence of the panic of eighteen seventy three, 929 00:53:33.480 --> 00:53:35.480 of the great depression of the nineteen thirties, and of 930 00:53:35.519 --> 00:53:38.519 the great recession of the two thousands. It always is 931 00:53:39.199 --> 00:53:41.519 it in its effects are the heart and soul of 932 00:53:41.559 --> 00:53:44.679 this ingredient. In our populous backlash soup and the years 933 00:53:44.679 --> 00:53:47.880 that followed the panic, thousands of businesses would shut their 934 00:53:47.880 --> 00:53:52.760 doors eight hundred and thirty in eighteen seventy four, seven 935 00:53:52.840 --> 00:53:55.679 hundred and forty in eighteen seventy five, and a wopping 936 00:53:55.800 --> 00:53:58.360 nine thousand in both eighteen seventy six and eighteen seventy 937 00:53:58.400 --> 00:54:03.519 seven each. In eighteen seventy four, half a million railroad 938 00:54:03.519 --> 00:54:07.000 workers were laid off. Belyle points out that there weren't 939 00:54:07.039 --> 00:54:10.840 accurate statistics for unemployment rates during this time, but there 940 00:54:10.880 --> 00:54:13.639 are estimates that range from as quote unquote low as 941 00:54:13.679 --> 00:54:18.159 fifteen percent to as high as thirty percent. And it's 942 00:54:18.239 --> 00:54:20.599 not as if the people lucky enough to remain employed 943 00:54:20.639 --> 00:54:24.119 had a grand old time either. While statistics for wage 944 00:54:24.199 --> 00:54:27.280 rates during the eighteen seventies are apparently quote unquote notorious 945 00:54:27.360 --> 00:54:32.360 Belile's words not mine for being unreliable, wage reduction is 946 00:54:32.400 --> 00:54:36.360 generally placed at around fifteen percent during this time. Imagine 947 00:54:36.400 --> 00:54:38.960 that for a second. And maybe some of you don't 948 00:54:38.960 --> 00:54:41.159 have to if you're unlucky enough. And I'm sorry, I'm 949 00:54:41.199 --> 00:54:43.800 sorry to hear that if that's the case, But just 950 00:54:43.840 --> 00:54:46.480 imagine this for a second. Everyone around you at your 951 00:54:46.519 --> 00:54:49.480 company is getting laid off left and right, and you 952 00:54:49.519 --> 00:54:52.480 think you might be next. Your manager calls you in 953 00:54:52.519 --> 00:54:55.000 for a meeting, but it turns out you're fine. She 954 00:54:55.119 --> 00:54:57.440 says that you're too valuable for the company to lose. 955 00:54:57.480 --> 00:54:59.599 But there's a problem. You got to take a cut 956 00:54:59.639 --> 00:55:03.559 to yourself salary and say you're making pretty good money 957 00:55:03.800 --> 00:55:06.079 by twenty nineteen standards, at least like one hundred grand 958 00:55:06.079 --> 00:55:09.320 a year. Fifteen percent of that is fifteen grand. But 959 00:55:09.360 --> 00:55:12.320 that's not all. You can't negotiate this. You're just lucky 960 00:55:12.360 --> 00:55:16.039 that you're still here. And you know how bad the 961 00:55:16.119 --> 00:55:19.159 job market is fifteen to thirty percent unemployment overnight, after all, 962 00:55:19.480 --> 00:55:22.320 So what else can you do besides grit your teeth 963 00:55:22.639 --> 00:55:25.559 and take it. I mean, what other choice you have 964 00:55:26.199 --> 00:55:29.760 besides resort to begging on the street for food. And 965 00:55:29.800 --> 00:55:32.800 this is not an exaggeration. This is how bad it got, 966 00:55:33.039 --> 00:55:37.320 not begging for money food. Michael Ballile describes the pretty 967 00:55:37.320 --> 00:55:40.519 wretched conditions of everyday American life and some pretty nightmarish 968 00:55:40.559 --> 00:55:44.760 terms here. Quote. The signs of want were everywhere, with 969 00:55:44.880 --> 00:55:47.320 half the workers in the industrial areas of the country 970 00:55:47.400 --> 00:55:50.719 either out of work or only haphazardly employed, reduced to 971 00:55:50.719 --> 00:55:53.519 begging for food and waiting patiently for things to turn around. 972 00:55:54.320 --> 00:55:57.760 Anyone who looked closely at American cities would see disease, defeat, 973 00:55:57.880 --> 00:56:01.000 and death. Visitors to baltim may have noticed that the 974 00:56:01.039 --> 00:56:03.559 streets reeked of sewage, but they did not know that 975 00:56:03.599 --> 00:56:06.719 the drinking water was contaminated and contagious diseases found a 976 00:56:06.760 --> 00:56:09.360 breeding ground in the cramped apartments of the poor, killing 977 00:56:09.440 --> 00:56:11.239 up to one hundred and thirty nine infants in a 978 00:56:11.280 --> 00:56:16.519 single week unquote. While we have to take most news stories, 979 00:56:16.559 --> 00:56:20.000 both back then and now, frankly with a grain of 980 00:56:20.039 --> 00:56:24.440 salt thanks to their yellow nature. Utah's Salt Lake Weekly 981 00:56:24.519 --> 00:56:28.360 Tribune described the direness of the situation facing many Americans, 982 00:56:28.679 --> 00:56:32.480 talking of a rise in quote rape, robbery, and murder unquote, 983 00:56:33.079 --> 00:56:38.079 with quote women going into prostitution for bread unquote end quote, 984 00:56:38.360 --> 00:56:42.760 men going to vagabondage for lack of opportunity to labor unquote. 985 00:56:43.159 --> 00:56:46.599 Journalist left Kadio Hearn, writing in eighteen seventy seven, described 986 00:56:46.599 --> 00:56:50.920 the destitution he witnessed in the city of Cincinnati. Quote. 987 00:56:50.960 --> 00:56:54.280 These wanderings in the haunts of the poor, among shadowy 988 00:56:54.360 --> 00:56:58.800 tenement houses and dilapidated cottages and blind foul alleys with 989 00:56:58.880 --> 00:57:03.519 quaint names suggesting deformity and darkness, somehow compelled the fantasmal 990 00:57:03.559 --> 00:57:06.679 retrospect of the experience, which clings to the mind with 991 00:57:06.840 --> 00:57:12.440 nightmare tendency unquote. Hearn continues to describe, in pretty darkly 992 00:57:12.639 --> 00:57:16.079 poetic terms that this mass of pitiful people were just 993 00:57:16.320 --> 00:57:20.800 lying there in these wet, dank tenement apartments, simply waiting 994 00:57:20.840 --> 00:57:23.320 to die, or, as he put it, waiting to be 995 00:57:23.360 --> 00:57:28.800 absorbed into quote the shadow itself being led through the 996 00:57:28.840 --> 00:57:32.519 tenement by Cincinnati's overseer of the poor. He continued to 997 00:57:32.559 --> 00:57:36.119 describe the horror of what he witnessed in this tenement 998 00:57:36.159 --> 00:57:40.400 house quote. The scene lay in the second story of 999 00:57:40.440 --> 00:57:43.320 a sooty frame perched on the ragged edge of Eggleston 1000 00:57:43.360 --> 00:57:46.800 Avenue hill. The sufferer was an aged man whose limbs 1001 00:57:46.800 --> 00:57:50.159 and body were swollen by disease to a monstrous size, 1002 00:57:50.519 --> 00:57:52.440 and for whom the mercy of death could not have 1003 00:57:52.480 --> 00:57:55.920 been far distant. The room was similar to other rooms, 1004 00:57:56.320 --> 00:57:58.960 excepting that in the center of the weak floora yawning, 1005 00:57:59.079 --> 00:58:02.880 ragged hole had been partly covered by a broken bottomed washtub. 1006 00:58:03.639 --> 00:58:07.159 The slowly dying man moaned feebly at intervals and muttered 1007 00:58:07.199 --> 00:58:14.280 patient prayers in the Irish tongue. Unquote. Herne finally describes 1008 00:58:14.320 --> 00:58:19.519 what really truly hit home for me, how truly awful 1009 00:58:19.719 --> 00:58:22.880 things were during the Depression of the eighteen seventies, especially 1010 00:58:22.920 --> 00:58:26.639 in these tenement houses, when he describes a horrible sound, 1011 00:58:26.679 --> 00:58:30.800 probably one of the worst sounds anyone can hear, was 1012 00:58:30.800 --> 00:58:34.280 coming up through the floorboards of the tenement house, he writes, quote, 1013 00:58:34.480 --> 00:58:37.360 there came up through the broken planking, a voice of cursing, 1014 00:58:37.559 --> 00:58:40.039 the voice of a furious woman, and a sound of 1015 00:58:40.079 --> 00:58:43.599 heavy blows mingled with the cry of a beaten child. 1016 00:58:44.039 --> 00:58:47.280 Some little one was being terribly whipped, and its treble 1017 00:58:47.400 --> 00:58:51.079 was strained to that hoarse scream, which betrays an agony 1018 00:58:51.119 --> 00:58:54.920 of helpless pain and fear and pleading to merciless ears. 1019 00:58:55.719 --> 00:58:58.519 To the listener, it seemed that the whipping would never end. 1020 00:58:59.000 --> 00:59:02.360 The sharp blows to sended without regularity, in a rapid shower, 1021 00:59:02.400 --> 00:59:04.760 which seemed to promise that the punishment could only be 1022 00:59:04.840 --> 00:59:08.000 terminated by fatigue and the part of the punisher. The 1023 00:59:08.039 --> 00:59:11.920 screams gradually grew hoarser and horser, with longer intervals between each, 1024 00:59:12.320 --> 00:59:15.800 until they ceased altogether, and only a choking gurgle was audible. 1025 00:59:17.119 --> 00:59:20.159 Then the sound of whipping ceased. There was a sudden 1026 00:59:20.239 --> 00:59:23.480 noise as of something flung heavily down, and then another 1027 00:59:23.519 --> 00:59:29.679 horse curse. This isn't a scene from the dark Ages 1028 00:59:29.719 --> 00:59:33.039 of Europe or from a Cormack McCarthy novel like Blood 1029 00:59:33.079 --> 00:59:36.639 Meridian or The Road. This kind of scene, this kind 1030 00:59:36.679 --> 00:59:40.960 of thing was happening all over America to countless families, 1031 00:59:41.119 --> 00:59:43.119 and it wasn't even one hundred and fifty years ago. 1032 00:59:44.559 --> 00:59:48.280 The working class was the class that was hit hardest 1033 00:59:48.559 --> 00:59:51.960 by this constant horror, for sure, and had to live 1034 00:59:52.039 --> 00:59:55.679 through this nightmare day after day. But the middle class 1035 00:59:55.760 --> 00:59:58.280 was getting whipped up into their own hysteria because of this. 1036 00:59:58.960 --> 01:00:02.239 It wasn't just about the fear of losing one's livelihood 1037 01:00:02.280 --> 01:00:05.119 or being subjected to the horrors reported by journalists like Hern, 1038 01:00:05.159 --> 01:00:08.119 though I do suspect that was the primary subconscious reason 1039 01:00:08.119 --> 01:00:11.480 for this hysteria. But this hysteria turned into more of 1040 01:00:11.519 --> 01:00:15.719 a moral panic about tramps filling every city. The middle 1041 01:00:15.719 --> 01:00:19.920 class was treating tramps essentially like they would a zombie apocalypse. 1042 01:00:20.599 --> 01:00:23.440 To hear many people of the time tell it, every 1043 01:00:23.599 --> 01:00:26.920 city resembled skid row here in Los Angeles, just minus 1044 01:00:26.960 --> 01:00:29.400 the broken meth pipes and use needles. And while that 1045 01:00:29.519 --> 01:00:33.840 might not esthetically be far off the tramp quote unquote 1046 01:00:33.920 --> 01:00:37.480 basically slangford unemployed worker in this case was the scourge 1047 01:00:37.480 --> 01:00:40.599 of society and destroying it with his laziness, vice, and 1048 01:00:40.679 --> 01:00:43.480 even violence. Like I said, it was like a zombie 1049 01:00:43.519 --> 01:00:46.599 apocalypse as far as these newspapers and middle class panickers 1050 01:00:46.599 --> 01:00:50.480 were concerned. The tramp was essentially the late nineteenth century 1051 01:00:50.559 --> 01:00:53.880 version of the racial dog whistle thug that we sometimes 1052 01:00:53.960 --> 01:00:57.000 hear being thrown around in twenty nineteen, but referring to 1053 01:00:57.079 --> 01:01:00.840 a lower class unemployed worker in this case. It might 1054 01:01:00.880 --> 01:01:03.159 sound strange in this day and age to use a 1055 01:01:03.239 --> 01:01:06.599 term like the tramp scare, but that really is what 1056 01:01:06.639 --> 01:01:10.840 this was a mass fear of the homeless and jobless. Nowadays, 1057 01:01:10.880 --> 01:01:13.880 we either toss a book to the highway panhandler or 1058 01:01:13.920 --> 01:01:16.519 drive on past, and you might hear the off color 1059 01:01:16.559 --> 01:01:19.719 comment every now and then, but I can't imagine it's 1060 01:01:19.760 --> 01:01:21.360 too often, at least if you live in a big 1061 01:01:21.400 --> 01:01:23.559 city like I do, to hear people speak about the 1062 01:01:23.599 --> 01:01:28.360 homeless in fearful tones. In short, the middle class, both 1063 01:01:28.519 --> 01:01:31.239 the lower and upper middle class, which were new distinctions 1064 01:01:31.239 --> 01:01:34.320 in the eighteen seventies, they were terrified of tramps. Like 1065 01:01:34.360 --> 01:01:36.480 I said, they looked at them like it was a 1066 01:01:36.559 --> 01:01:42.679 zombie infestation. But I think also what's very interesting is 1067 01:01:42.719 --> 01:01:45.760 that what I don't find zombies scary, but I think 1068 01:01:45.800 --> 01:01:49.800 people find zombies scary because of what they represent, not 1069 01:01:49.920 --> 01:01:51.840 of the zombies themselves. They might be a little grossed 1070 01:01:51.840 --> 01:01:54.400 out by them, but they're scared of what zombies represent, 1071 01:01:55.239 --> 01:01:59.400 being dead and yet not being trapped within a dead mind, 1072 01:01:59.440 --> 01:02:03.280 being unable to control your own behavior. I think that 1073 01:02:03.440 --> 01:02:07.599 fear of representation is indeed why people were afraid of tramps. 1074 01:02:07.880 --> 01:02:11.280 These tramps represented what both these lower and upper middle 1075 01:02:11.280 --> 01:02:14.760 class Americans feared they could become if the already unsteady 1076 01:02:14.800 --> 01:02:18.719 foundation upon which this middle class existed collapsed any further. 1077 01:02:18.920 --> 01:02:22.559 This is why they dismissed tramps as being lazy rather 1078 01:02:22.639 --> 01:02:25.400 than the victims of the economic circumstances they were also 1079 01:02:25.519 --> 01:02:29.599 victims of that everyone was a victim of. Newspapers and magazines, 1080 01:02:29.639 --> 01:02:32.480 though didn't help, because they were constantly blaring headlines about 1081 01:02:32.559 --> 01:02:35.920 quote unquote an army of tramps and made comparisons to 1082 01:02:35.960 --> 01:02:38.360 both the Reign of Terror and revolutionary France from nearly 1083 01:02:38.360 --> 01:02:42.880 one hundred years earlier. Newspapers would continually produce vague headlines 1084 01:02:42.920 --> 01:02:47.400 and stories without important details, but full of robbery, rape, 1085 01:02:47.400 --> 01:02:50.639 and even murder, all being attributed to tramps. Looking at 1086 01:02:50.679 --> 01:02:53.639 these kinds of headlines now, all these stories read more 1087 01:02:53.719 --> 01:02:57.519 like the vague headlines about a Kardashian that you see 1088 01:02:57.519 --> 01:02:59.440 in the checkout line at the grocery store. It was 1089 01:02:59.480 --> 01:03:02.760 just gossip. There were stories of tramps who were only 1090 01:03:02.800 --> 01:03:06.159 taking jobs, you know, the things that they wanted most 1091 01:03:06.280 --> 01:03:08.920 ever since losing theirs, mind you, but never mind that 1092 01:03:08.960 --> 01:03:12.480 pesky logic. They were taking jobs to serve as covers 1093 01:03:12.480 --> 01:03:14.639 so they could steal from their employer. That was what 1094 01:03:14.679 --> 01:03:19.000 these headlines tended to suggest. And that's so outlandish at 1095 01:03:19.039 --> 01:03:21.440 this point in our story that I can't help but 1096 01:03:21.679 --> 01:03:23.920 just smirk at it every time I see these headlines. 1097 01:03:24.639 --> 01:03:27.880 There were absolutely confirmed cases where gangs of tramps did 1098 01:03:27.920 --> 01:03:31.440 commit crimes, but these were relatively small in number and 1099 01:03:31.559 --> 01:03:34.239 really just served to confirm a growing problem in the 1100 01:03:34.280 --> 01:03:37.599 eighteen seventies caused by the economic collapse. This is the 1101 01:03:37.599 --> 01:03:40.400 problem of class tension. This is what we could I 1102 01:03:40.440 --> 01:03:43.559 guess call the I guess we could call it the 1103 01:03:43.639 --> 01:03:47.280 dash of sauce, the dash of pepper, maybe of maybe 1104 01:03:47.320 --> 01:03:50.599 the spices in general. I already use this salt analogy earlier, 1105 01:03:50.599 --> 01:03:52.320 so I don't want to use that again, but I'll say, 1106 01:03:52.679 --> 01:03:54.960 you know, the rest of the spices into our populous 1107 01:03:55.079 --> 01:03:59.639 backlash soup. Michael Bellile explains, however, that this class tension, 1108 01:03:59.679 --> 01:04:03.880 while relevant, wasn't meant to stay constrained simply in these 1109 01:04:04.000 --> 01:04:08.239 class based terms. Quote. As Edmund Morgan pointed out for 1110 01:04:08.280 --> 01:04:11.360 the colonial period see Van Woodward for the late nineteenth 1111 01:04:11.400 --> 01:04:14.679 century and Dan Carter for the mid twentieth century, class 1112 01:04:14.719 --> 01:04:19.880 tensions can be sidestepped by appeals to racism unquote. And 1113 01:04:19.920 --> 01:04:22.519 this is what leads us to Neil Ferguson's fourth ingredient 1114 01:04:22.719 --> 01:04:27.440 for his patented populist backlash super recipe arise in immigration. 1115 01:04:30.039 --> 01:04:33.119 William Graham Sumner, professor at Yale and considered to be 1116 01:04:33.159 --> 01:04:36.280 the father of American sociology, documented the number of immigrants 1117 01:04:36.320 --> 01:04:38.679 who arrived in the wake of the economic collapse of 1118 01:04:38.679 --> 01:04:41.760 the eighteen seventies to be one hundred sixty nine nine 1119 01:04:41.840 --> 01:04:45.039 hundred eighty six, sixty percent of whom came from Western 1120 01:04:45.039 --> 01:04:48.199 and Northern Europe. No one really cared all that much 1121 01:04:48.239 --> 01:04:51.000 by the eighteen seventies about that sixty percent. People like 1122 01:04:51.079 --> 01:04:54.119 Sumner and really most Americans with immigration on their mind 1123 01:04:54.119 --> 01:04:56.239 at that time, really only cared about that other forty 1124 01:04:56.239 --> 01:04:58.599 percent who had been building up during the last couple 1125 01:04:58.639 --> 01:05:01.239 of decades, and they were mostly made up of people 1126 01:05:01.239 --> 01:05:04.639 coming from one place, and that one place was China. 1127 01:05:06.000 --> 01:05:08.280 The rise of immigration in the twenty first century has 1128 01:05:08.320 --> 01:05:11.079 only reached its current peak levels in recent years of 1129 01:05:11.119 --> 01:05:14.960 around fourteen percent overall. At one other time in United 1130 01:05:14.960 --> 01:05:18.199 States history, and that's the mid to late nineteenth century. 1131 01:05:18.679 --> 01:05:21.679 Much of our current fourteen percent peak, which was existing 1132 01:05:21.719 --> 01:05:24.400 at the time of the twenty sixteen election, began in 1133 01:05:24.400 --> 01:05:27.039 the nineteen eighties and was largely coming from immigrants, both 1134 01:05:27.119 --> 01:05:30.239 legal and illegal, arriving from Latin America. But the vast 1135 01:05:30.280 --> 01:05:33.119 majority of non European immigrants coming to the United States 1136 01:05:33.239 --> 01:05:35.719 during the first peak of the mid nineteenth century were 1137 01:05:35.760 --> 01:05:39.639 coming from China. The primary reason for this massive influx 1138 01:05:39.679 --> 01:05:42.880 back then was simple, since it was really the exact 1139 01:05:42.960 --> 01:05:45.480 same reason so many Americans on the East Coast were 1140 01:05:45.519 --> 01:05:49.800 rushing towards the West, and that was gold. The California 1141 01:05:49.840 --> 01:05:52.800 gold Rush as we know it, began in January of 1142 01:05:52.840 --> 01:05:55.320 eighteen forty eight when a foreman working for a man 1143 01:05:55.440 --> 01:05:58.880 named John Sutter near what's now Sacramento found something shiny 1144 01:05:58.920 --> 01:06:01.800 in the water wheel of Sutter River Mill. Cut to 1145 01:06:01.840 --> 01:06:04.639 the following year, number of people coming to California to 1146 01:06:04.679 --> 01:06:06.960 strike it rich on this gold was swelling towards the 1147 01:06:06.960 --> 01:06:10.039 eventual peak of three hundred thousand, a massive spike in 1148 01:06:10.079 --> 01:06:12.719 the population that would eventually include tens and then even 1149 01:06:12.880 --> 01:06:16.559 hundreds of thousands of Chinese coming across the Pacific. It's 1150 01:06:16.559 --> 01:06:19.039 often said that people come to the United States searching 1151 01:06:19.039 --> 01:06:22.239 for a better life, and that's definitely true a lot 1152 01:06:22.239 --> 01:06:24.400 of the time. I'd say most of the time, even 1153 01:06:24.679 --> 01:06:27.079 and the influx of Chinese into the United States in 1154 01:06:27.079 --> 01:06:30.400 the nineteenth century was no different most Chinese peasants at 1155 01:06:30.400 --> 01:06:33.199 the time. The primary demographic of Chinese folks who came 1156 01:06:33.199 --> 01:06:36.360 to the United States, they were dirt poor. This was 1157 01:06:36.400 --> 01:06:39.519 because they were still living in what we could charitably 1158 01:06:39.599 --> 01:06:43.840 call destitute serfdom. During the nineteenth century. They were still 1159 01:06:43.840 --> 01:06:46.880 being ruled by the Qing dynasty, which involves a whole 1160 01:06:46.920 --> 01:06:50.599 other set of ethnic, cultural, and violent drama that goes 1161 01:06:50.639 --> 01:06:52.559 back a few hundred years before this time that we 1162 01:06:52.639 --> 01:06:54.880 just don't have the time to cover here. It would 1163 01:06:54.880 --> 01:06:58.079 just take too long. Sticking to the mid nineteenth century, 1164 01:06:58.280 --> 01:07:01.599 the late journalists and historian Ira Chang, in her amazing 1165 01:07:01.639 --> 01:07:04.400 book about the History of the Chinese in America, describes 1166 01:07:04.440 --> 01:07:07.159 how most Chinese citizens lived in their part of Asia 1167 01:07:07.239 --> 01:07:10.760 during this time. In pretty vivid terms here quote, most 1168 01:07:10.800 --> 01:07:13.840 people in China lived in the countryside as peasants, serving 1169 01:07:13.840 --> 01:07:17.480 as the nation's raw muscle. Their costumes rarely varied in 1170 01:07:17.559 --> 01:07:21.000 South and central China. The men wore baggy cotton trousers, 1171 01:07:21.360 --> 01:07:24.159 sandals of leather or grass, and broad brimmed hats to 1172 01:07:24.159 --> 01:07:26.920 protect their faces from the sun. Their lives followed an 1173 01:07:27.000 --> 01:07:30.679 endless cycle dictated by the seasons, pushing plows behind water 1174 01:07:30.679 --> 01:07:33.239 buffalo to break the soil and prepare the seed bed, 1175 01:07:33.679 --> 01:07:37.320 planting rice seedlings by hand and ankle deep water, stepping 1176 01:07:37.360 --> 01:07:40.440 backward as they progressed from row to neat row, scything 1177 01:07:40.480 --> 01:07:43.559 the rice stocks at harvest, then threshing them over hard 1178 01:07:43.559 --> 01:07:48.559 earth floor. In short, lives spent generation after generation and 1179 01:07:48.719 --> 01:07:55.000 non stop backbreaking labor unquote. This backbreaking labor that Iris 1180 01:07:55.079 --> 01:07:58.519 Chanks speaks of wasn't even the peasant's own. It didn't 1181 01:07:58.519 --> 01:08:00.840 even belong to them. Remember, they they were living at 1182 01:08:00.840 --> 01:08:03.920 the pleasure of their emperor, essentially a god king. But 1183 01:08:03.960 --> 01:08:06.280 more importantly, they were living at the pleasure of the 1184 01:08:06.360 --> 01:08:10.119 landowners and the magistrates that ruled over the landowners. Chang 1185 01:08:10.159 --> 01:08:13.159 reports that By the nineteenth century, an estimated eighty to 1186 01:08:13.280 --> 01:08:15.840 ninety percent of Chinese citizens were living in this quote 1187 01:08:15.880 --> 01:08:19.199 unquote dirt poor context his peasants, and as she puts it, 1188 01:08:19.319 --> 01:08:22.720 quote no group in China worked harder for so little 1189 01:08:22.840 --> 01:08:27.119 than the peasants unquote. Chang also described the pretty awful 1190 01:08:27.159 --> 01:08:30.880 living conditions, sleeping on mats with bamboo pillows and using 1191 01:08:30.920 --> 01:08:33.560 only quote an armload of fuel to warm and feed 1192 01:08:33.600 --> 01:08:36.680 a dozen people unquote, not to mention eating things like 1193 01:08:36.760 --> 01:08:39.560 bark and clay during times of famine, which tended to 1194 01:08:39.600 --> 01:08:42.840 happen a lot over the centuries. This led to a 1195 01:08:42.920 --> 01:08:46.920 fundamental appreciation of food, especially meat, in times of plenty 1196 01:08:46.960 --> 01:08:49.479 and in times of want. If you're Chinese or have 1197 01:08:49.640 --> 01:08:52.880 Chinese family members, you'll know that the biggest difference between 1198 01:08:52.920 --> 01:08:55.560 American folk and Chinese folk is just how much is 1199 01:08:55.560 --> 01:08:59.479 wasted in American cooking, contrasted with how little is wasted 1200 01:08:59.560 --> 01:09:04.319 in Chinese cooking. Generation after generation of thankless hard living 1201 01:09:04.319 --> 01:09:07.199 conditions like the ones who just described, that's what allows 1202 01:09:07.319 --> 01:09:11.159 this mentality of not wasting anything to develop in a 1203 01:09:11.199 --> 01:09:14.800 group of people. And by thankless, I mean what I 1204 01:09:14.800 --> 01:09:17.960 said before this labor was not even their own. Neither 1205 01:09:18.039 --> 01:09:21.039 was their land. This was serfdom. This is where the 1206 01:09:21.039 --> 01:09:24.800 peasants essentially use their labor and their crops to pay 1207 01:09:24.840 --> 01:09:28.479 for the privilege of living on their land. Social advancement 1208 01:09:28.560 --> 01:09:31.239 was basically frozen in place. It's about as conservative as 1209 01:09:31.239 --> 01:09:33.760 you can possibly get. The only way to move up 1210 01:09:33.760 --> 01:09:36.399 the social ladder was first to be male, and second 1211 01:09:36.399 --> 01:09:39.279 to do well enough on these next two impossible imperial 1212 01:09:39.319 --> 01:09:41.680 exams that would let young men become ministers for the 1213 01:09:41.680 --> 01:09:46.159 Manchu government, making them the bosses of the backbreaking landowners. 1214 01:09:46.560 --> 01:09:49.840 The incredibly fierce competition in these exams, as well as 1215 01:09:49.880 --> 01:09:52.680 the unfair advantages given to the wealthy families like the 1216 01:09:52.720 --> 01:09:56.760 land owning ones, unsurprisingly created a pretty morally bankrupt and 1217 01:09:56.800 --> 01:10:00.840 fundamentally corrupt system. Now, granted, that was the idea. The 1218 01:10:00.840 --> 01:10:03.439 Manchus and their Qing dynasty had been ruling over the 1219 01:10:03.479 --> 01:10:06.359 Han majority for over two centuries, acting essentially as an 1220 01:10:06.399 --> 01:10:09.800 occupying force. And for context, the Han make up about 1221 01:10:09.920 --> 01:10:12.479 ninety percent of all Chinese people on the planet, so 1222 01:10:12.520 --> 01:10:15.800 they were the vast majority. These imperial exams and the 1223 01:10:15.800 --> 01:10:18.279 culture surrounding them were just a method of controlling the 1224 01:10:18.319 --> 01:10:20.640 local populace by keeping all of the Han at each 1225 01:10:20.680 --> 01:10:25.560 other's proverbial throats in constant competition to improve their social standing. 1226 01:10:26.279 --> 01:10:29.159 But the regular Han people could also be at each 1227 01:10:29.159 --> 01:10:31.920 other's throats in a literal sense as well, especially if 1228 01:10:31.960 --> 01:10:34.640 a young man from the community passed his exams and 1229 01:10:34.680 --> 01:10:38.479 became the community's governmental magistrate, which is essentially like Charlie 1230 01:10:38.520 --> 01:10:41.399 finding the golden ticket to Willie Wanka's chocolate factory, but 1231 01:10:41.520 --> 01:10:44.039 only if Charlie was so competitive and entitled to his 1232 01:10:44.079 --> 01:10:48.640 achievements that he became a complete and total sociopath. Iris 1233 01:10:48.720 --> 01:10:51.239 Chang describes these men and the reign of terror they 1234 01:10:51.279 --> 01:10:56.800 tended to bring after scoring this proverbial golden ticket quote. 1235 01:10:56.840 --> 01:11:01.520 Such men often ruled their districts like totalitarian despots. Virtually 1236 01:11:01.520 --> 01:11:04.199 no redress could be taken against any official who broke 1237 01:11:04.239 --> 01:11:08.079 the law, because he was the law. A Chinese magistrate could, 1238 01:11:08.159 --> 01:11:11.520 with no threat of retaliation, accuse a peasant of banditry, 1239 01:11:11.640 --> 01:11:14.159 throw him in jail, take his property, and even execute 1240 01:11:14.199 --> 01:11:16.560 him if he proved a troublesome prisoner. If he lusted 1241 01:11:16.560 --> 01:11:18.560 after a girl in the village, he could coerce her 1242 01:11:18.560 --> 01:11:21.079 father to surrender her to him as one of his concubines. 1243 01:11:21.600 --> 01:11:24.399 So absolute was his power that a Chinese man once 1244 01:11:24.439 --> 01:11:27.199 told a Western observer, quote, I would rather be mayor 1245 01:11:27.239 --> 01:11:31.239 in China than president of the United States unquote. So 1246 01:11:32.359 --> 01:11:36.439 imagine that you're one of these peasants living in this way, 1247 01:11:36.520 --> 01:11:40.760 working for nothing, constantly in brutal competition for something you're 1248 01:11:40.920 --> 01:11:45.600 really unlikely to get, and always terrified that you could 1249 01:11:45.640 --> 01:11:48.319 come across a government minister having a bad day. So 1250 01:11:48.439 --> 01:11:51.000 if there's a chance to escape this kind of life, 1251 01:11:51.079 --> 01:11:54.520 you're probably going to take it right. And that's exactly 1252 01:11:54.680 --> 01:11:59.119 what many young men in China did, especially after opportunities 1253 01:11:59.119 --> 01:12:01.800 for better employment in the port cities of southern China 1254 01:12:01.840 --> 01:12:05.359 completely disappeared. That was thanks to a British cause credit 1255 01:12:05.399 --> 01:12:09.239 crisis that disintegrated over one hundred thousand jobs in the area. 1256 01:12:09.640 --> 01:12:13.279 And this massive escape from the destitution of Chinese living 1257 01:12:13.439 --> 01:12:16.680 was all but assured once these young men and their 1258 01:12:16.720 --> 01:12:19.880 family started hearing tales of gum Sum or the Gold 1259 01:12:19.960 --> 01:12:24.159 Mountain across the Pacific in California. It's safe to say 1260 01:12:24.239 --> 01:12:27.800 that it's not that surprising that thousands of young men 1261 01:12:27.880 --> 01:12:30.000 jumped at the chance to strike at rich overseas as 1262 01:12:30.119 --> 01:12:35.199 quickly as possible. Chinese people had indeed existed in the 1263 01:12:35.279 --> 01:12:39.359 United States before the Gold Rush, but in statistically invisible numbers. 1264 01:12:39.840 --> 01:12:43.760 Iris Chang places the estimate at around fifty people by 1265 01:12:43.760 --> 01:12:47.560 eighteen forty eight, and most of them were really just 1266 01:12:47.680 --> 01:12:51.720 side shows in circuses and anthropological showcases. There was a 1267 01:12:51.880 --> 01:12:55.159 Fung Moi, recorded as the first Chinese woman ever to 1268 01:12:55.199 --> 01:12:57.279 come to America, who was presented as part of a 1269 01:12:57.359 --> 01:13:00.479 cultural exhibit in eighteen thirty four. And there were the 1270 01:13:00.520 --> 01:13:04.079 famous Bunker brothers Chang and Eng, who were, as it happens, 1271 01:13:04.079 --> 01:13:07.079 the origin of the term Siamese twins, since they were 1272 01:13:07.079 --> 01:13:10.600 indeed conjoined and originally from the former Ssiam, but were 1273 01:13:10.640 --> 01:13:14.439 ethnically Chinese. These guys are actually really fascinating characters in 1274 01:13:14.479 --> 01:13:18.399 the law of American carnivals and entertainment from the nineteenth century, 1275 01:13:19.000 --> 01:13:20.560 not just for the fact that they married a couple 1276 01:13:20.640 --> 01:13:23.840 of non conjoined white women and became filthy rich while 1277 01:13:23.840 --> 01:13:26.640 they were doing their act, but also because they ended 1278 01:13:26.680 --> 01:13:29.479 up owning a plantation in the South, and weird or 1279 01:13:29.560 --> 01:13:32.119 shocking as this might sound to our modern ears, actually 1280 01:13:32.199 --> 01:13:35.520 own thirty three black slaves and were actually pretty adored 1281 01:13:35.520 --> 01:13:38.439 by the white aristocratic community surrounding them, despite appearing so 1282 01:13:38.520 --> 01:13:42.039 alien to the local population. That all being said, while 1283 01:13:42.199 --> 01:13:45.199 there was certainly a vague awareness of China itself, the 1284 01:13:45.239 --> 01:13:47.640 Orient as it would be called, and its people, mostly 1285 01:13:47.680 --> 01:13:51.760 thanks to diplomatic and religious missions, newspaper articles and books 1286 01:13:51.760 --> 01:13:55.359 concerning international affairs, and really just tall tales sold around 1287 01:13:55.399 --> 01:13:58.039 the campfire and in the schoolyard, most Americans had never 1288 01:13:58.119 --> 01:14:01.560 even seen a Chinese person. Littlone knew anything about their 1289 01:14:01.960 --> 01:14:06.359 rich cultural traditions or customs, or their vast history. So 1290 01:14:06.520 --> 01:14:09.439 when hundreds of Chinese started arriving, and then those hundreds 1291 01:14:09.479 --> 01:14:12.720 of Chinese quickly started turning into thousands of Chinese, it's 1292 01:14:13.039 --> 01:14:16.520 not that surprising that this rapid growth started to put 1293 01:14:16.760 --> 01:14:19.560 attension in the air, namely in California and on the 1294 01:14:19.560 --> 01:14:22.960 rest of the West Coast. This distinction is important for 1295 01:14:23.000 --> 01:14:24.680 the last part of our story, by the way, since 1296 01:14:24.720 --> 01:14:27.680 east of the Rockies there was barely a perception of 1297 01:14:27.680 --> 01:14:30.600 the rapid growth in Chinese immigration, but we'll return to 1298 01:14:30.640 --> 01:14:33.520 that part later. By the way, this is a really 1299 01:14:33.560 --> 01:14:36.520 hard thing for us to imagine now in twenty nineteen, 1300 01:14:37.079 --> 01:14:39.159 I'd be hard pressed to find a person with an 1301 01:14:39.199 --> 01:14:41.680 Internet connection in the United States who hasn't at least 1302 01:14:41.760 --> 01:14:44.000 seen a picture of someone from a different ethnic group 1303 01:14:44.039 --> 01:14:46.359 than them. That's not to say that this is some 1304 01:14:46.399 --> 01:14:50.760 sort of bulletproof vest against bigoted assumptions, but it is 1305 01:14:50.840 --> 01:14:53.279 to say that people in the United States will never 1306 01:14:53.359 --> 01:14:56.239 have that blind spot ever again. But back in the 1307 01:14:56.319 --> 01:14:59.920 nineteenth century, the American people definitely did have that blind spot, 1308 01:15:00.479 --> 01:15:03.279 and it did affect their perceptions of the Chinese, including 1309 01:15:03.319 --> 01:15:06.800 how to treat them when times got tough. It also 1310 01:15:06.840 --> 01:15:10.439 certainly didn't help that in the mid nineteenth century, Americans 1311 01:15:10.479 --> 01:15:13.439 had a much different sense of what a pretty famous 1312 01:15:13.560 --> 01:15:18.359 twentieth century German demagogue will call Lebensraem or living space. 1313 01:15:19.319 --> 01:15:22.720 Iris Chang actually describes a case that would be a 1314 01:15:22.720 --> 01:15:25.920 lot funnier if not for the disturbing implication behind it 1315 01:15:26.199 --> 01:15:30.159 of an Illinois man leaving Illinois itself during this period 1316 01:15:30.199 --> 01:15:34.000 because quote, people were settling in right under his nose. 1317 01:15:34.439 --> 01:15:38.840 Unquote right under his nose to this guy meant twelve 1318 01:15:39.039 --> 01:15:43.920 miles away. Just try to imagine how crowded this must 1319 01:15:43.960 --> 01:15:46.680 have felt if he had moved up to Chicago from 1320 01:15:46.680 --> 01:15:49.159 where he was living, especially if he gotten his time 1321 01:15:49.199 --> 01:15:52.199 machine traveled through time and then went there. Now twelve 1322 01:15:52.279 --> 01:15:56.800 miles away. Really that's right under his nose. But now, 1323 01:15:57.000 --> 01:15:59.760 in all seriousness, try to imagine how a guy like this, 1324 01:16:00.159 --> 01:16:02.720 a pretty typical American at the time, how he might 1325 01:16:02.760 --> 01:16:05.239 have felt if people from a strange land that he 1326 01:16:05.520 --> 01:16:09.479 may have heard of in books and newspapers or had 1327 01:16:09.479 --> 01:16:11.640 been told about by friends of his but he had 1328 01:16:11.680 --> 01:16:15.359 never seen before. If these people started to arrive, bringing 1329 01:16:15.399 --> 01:16:21.600 their atypical appearance, language, food, customs, customs, and all these 1330 01:16:21.640 --> 01:16:24.680 things that were completely alien to him, he was so 1331 01:16:24.760 --> 01:16:28.840 put off by other, most likely also white Americans, showing 1332 01:16:28.920 --> 01:16:32.319 up arriving about twelve miles away from him, that he 1333 01:16:32.439 --> 01:16:35.960 just up and left the state. And I'm not making 1334 01:16:36.000 --> 01:16:39.560 excuses for xenophobia, by the way, I'm just trying to 1335 01:16:39.560 --> 01:16:43.680 paint a picture of what America was like when the Chinese, 1336 01:16:43.800 --> 01:16:46.479 which were the first ethnic group to enter the United 1337 01:16:46.520 --> 01:16:51.399 States with completely unfamiliar cultural standards and physical appearance, compared 1338 01:16:51.439 --> 01:16:54.399 to the arrivals from Europe, who had already gone through 1339 01:16:54.439 --> 01:16:57.399 their own hurdles with the No Nothing movements pathological hatred 1340 01:16:57.479 --> 01:17:00.439 of the Irish only a couple decades earlier. I'm just 1341 01:17:00.479 --> 01:17:03.439 trying to paint a picture of what it was like 1342 01:17:03.720 --> 01:17:06.960 when the Chinese started to arrive in California in search 1343 01:17:07.000 --> 01:17:10.399 of their gold mountain. And this isn't to say that 1344 01:17:10.479 --> 01:17:14.359 it was a holy negative reception that they received, especially 1345 01:17:14.399 --> 01:17:18.359 not at first. Most Americans were actually fascinated by the 1346 01:17:18.439 --> 01:17:21.760 Chinese of anything. San Francisco had actually become a massive, 1347 01:17:22.640 --> 01:17:26.239 really extremely cultured city by the standards of the time, 1348 01:17:26.560 --> 01:17:29.920 really quick after the Gold Rush began, largely thanks to 1349 01:17:30.039 --> 01:17:33.520 the gold that was financing its growth. Intellectual types like 1350 01:17:33.560 --> 01:17:35.800 Mark Twain, who I quoted earlier, He would make San 1351 01:17:35.840 --> 01:17:38.560 Francisco his home during the eighteen sixties, along with many 1352 01:17:38.640 --> 01:17:42.279 other famous intellectuals and writers. And Mark Twain himself even 1353 01:17:42.279 --> 01:17:45.039 wrote positively of his first impressions of the Chinese as 1354 01:17:45.159 --> 01:17:49.920 quote quiet, peaceable, tractable, and free from drunkenness unquote, and 1355 01:17:50.039 --> 01:17:53.319 that quote a disorderly Chinaman is rare, and a lazy 1356 01:17:53.359 --> 01:17:57.319 one does not exist unquote. Kind of a backhanded compliment 1357 01:17:57.399 --> 01:18:00.359 by today's standards, but nevertheless, it was a very positive 1358 01:18:00.399 --> 01:18:03.640 way to look at a strange arrival for Americans of 1359 01:18:03.680 --> 01:18:07.079 the mid to late nineteenth century. Iris Chang, to quote 1360 01:18:07.079 --> 01:18:10.880 her again, describes what she calls the quote avid curiosity 1361 01:18:10.920 --> 01:18:13.680 about the new ideas and experiences unquote of the early 1362 01:18:13.840 --> 01:18:17.279 San Franciscans and how that and a common purpose sort 1363 01:18:17.319 --> 01:18:20.199 of helped the Chinese arrivals be initially accepted so easily. 1364 01:18:20.880 --> 01:18:23.960 She writes, quote, if San Francisco did not initially resist 1365 01:18:24.000 --> 01:18:26.880 their arrival, perhaps it was because almost everyone in San 1366 01:18:26.880 --> 01:18:30.199 Francisco had come from somewhere else. By eighteen fifty three, 1367 01:18:30.720 --> 01:18:33.720 more than half of the San Francisco population was foreign born, 1368 01:18:33.800 --> 01:18:36.640 and in a city united by the single driving obsession 1369 01:18:36.680 --> 01:18:41.000 to make money, only one color seemed to matter, gold unquote. 1370 01:18:42.000 --> 01:18:44.720 So there was certainly tension in those early years. But 1371 01:18:45.119 --> 01:18:47.840 in some ways, the strangeness, the novelty really is a 1372 01:18:47.840 --> 01:18:50.359 better way of putting it, of this new culture of 1373 01:18:50.399 --> 01:18:53.520 men showing up in California is actually what diffused it. 1374 01:18:54.119 --> 01:18:57.239 There's this great piece of what Iris Chang calls quote 1375 01:18:57.279 --> 01:19:01.319 unquote gold Rush folklore in which the owner of one 1376 01:19:01.359 --> 01:19:03.880 of the many Chinese restaurants cropping up all over San 1377 01:19:03.920 --> 01:19:07.039 Francisco was closing up shop and a bunch of these 1378 01:19:07.159 --> 01:19:11.119 drunk miners just crashed through his front door. Now, instead 1379 01:19:11.119 --> 01:19:13.520 of trying to get these guys to leave or threatening 1380 01:19:13.600 --> 01:19:17.199 them or whatever. He decides to feed them. So he 1381 01:19:17.359 --> 01:19:20.079 orders his cook to fry up all the table scraps 1382 01:19:20.119 --> 01:19:22.159 that they hadn't yet tossed in the trash, like shreds 1383 01:19:22.199 --> 01:19:25.239 of veggies, pieces of dark meat, oils, and sauces. The 1384 01:19:25.359 --> 01:19:29.800 result a little dish known as chop suey. Now true 1385 01:19:29.840 --> 01:19:33.439 or not, this tall tale is a great way to 1386 01:19:33.520 --> 01:19:35.560 describe what it was like to be Chinese in those 1387 01:19:35.600 --> 01:19:39.239 early days during this spike, this beginning of the spike, 1388 01:19:39.279 --> 01:19:42.279 I should say, in immigration, there's an atmosphere thick with tension, 1389 01:19:42.319 --> 01:19:46.760 but the ability to diffuse it still existed. But unfortunately 1390 01:19:47.760 --> 01:19:51.640 this was going to start changing, first into resentment and jealousy, 1391 01:19:51.960 --> 01:19:54.520 and then into the outright hatred of the kind with 1392 01:19:54.560 --> 01:19:57.279 which we opened our story with the story of the 1393 01:19:57.319 --> 01:20:01.600 eighteen seventy one Los Angeles Pogram of the Chinese. This 1394 01:20:01.640 --> 01:20:04.399 is because the American prospectors had started to resent the 1395 01:20:04.479 --> 01:20:07.880 Chinese for and I am not kidding here, working harder 1396 01:20:07.920 --> 01:20:10.640 than them, and not just working harder than them, but 1397 01:20:10.880 --> 01:20:14.399 working harder than them and doing better than them. There 1398 01:20:14.439 --> 01:20:16.960 was a story of a Chinese prospector who bought a 1399 01:20:17.000 --> 01:20:19.199 cabin from a group of miners who hadn't had much 1400 01:20:19.279 --> 01:20:21.600 luck in the area, and they were just happy to 1401 01:20:21.600 --> 01:20:24.079 make a chunk of change by selling him the cabin. 1402 01:20:24.319 --> 01:20:27.439 Shortly afterward, though, using the techniques he'd learned from his 1403 01:20:27.560 --> 01:20:29.800 time toiling away as a peasant back home in China, 1404 01:20:30.159 --> 01:20:33.000 this guy patiently sifted through all of the dirt the 1405 01:20:33.039 --> 01:20:36.000 men had been shaking out gold nuggets from, and collected 1406 01:20:36.079 --> 01:20:39.039 enough gold dust while in this cabin to make a 1407 01:20:39.199 --> 01:20:41.720 pretty tidy sum and return home to China to be 1408 01:20:41.840 --> 01:20:45.680 a rich man. If resentment at that kind of ingenuity 1409 01:20:45.880 --> 01:20:50.840 can't be called entitlement, I don't really know what can. So, 1410 01:20:51.680 --> 01:20:54.600 Like most things, while the resentment starting to be directed 1411 01:20:54.600 --> 01:20:57.239 at these men was largely motivated by jealousy, it very 1412 01:20:57.319 --> 01:21:00.760 quickly became cultural and flat out racial. The more alien 1413 01:21:00.840 --> 01:21:03.039 from the majority, the easier it is to do this 1414 01:21:03.079 --> 01:21:06.079 to a minority, hard working or otherwise. It reached the 1415 01:21:06.079 --> 01:21:10.159 California State legislature pretty quickly with testimony that quote, their 1416 01:21:10.199 --> 01:21:13.079 presence here is a great moral and social evil, a 1417 01:21:13.119 --> 01:21:17.159 disgusting scab upon the fair face of society, a puturefying 1418 01:21:17.239 --> 01:21:22.119 sore upon the body politic. In short, a nuisance unquote. 1419 01:21:22.319 --> 01:21:26.039 This kind of hateful rhetoric would be just the beginning. 1420 01:21:26.840 --> 01:21:29.920 After the California state government started to apply quote unquote 1421 01:21:29.920 --> 01:21:34.159 coolly taxes on immigrant laborers, Chinese laborers specifically, the target 1422 01:21:34.199 --> 01:21:38.720 of the populace backlash was basically identified right there. Taxes 1423 01:21:38.760 --> 01:21:41.960 and licensing fees were common ways the government had answered 1424 01:21:41.960 --> 01:21:45.560 people's grumbling about the Chinese, but it became legal as well. 1425 01:21:46.199 --> 01:21:50.039 The Chinese identity was actually placed under California's Criminal Preceding Act, 1426 01:21:50.039 --> 01:21:53.319 which made it illegal for blacks, mixed race, and American 1427 01:21:53.359 --> 01:21:55.920 Indians to provide evidence in a criminal trial. So the 1428 01:21:56.000 --> 01:21:59.399 Chinese were now legally speaking quote unquote colored. They were 1429 01:21:59.439 --> 01:22:02.600 finally to fight as non white in a legal capacity. 1430 01:22:03.800 --> 01:22:06.600 This new expansion of this law got a white man 1431 01:22:06.680 --> 01:22:09.119 named George W. Hall off the hook for murdering a 1432 01:22:09.199 --> 01:22:12.840 Chinese man named Ling Singh. Chinese people couldn't become citizens 1433 01:22:12.840 --> 01:22:15.560 thanks to the infamous seventy to ninety Naturalization Acts, so 1434 01:22:15.680 --> 01:22:18.239 they had no political recourse to fight against these laws 1435 01:22:18.279 --> 01:22:22.159 at the polls. Reet prices also became prohibitively discriminatory, with 1436 01:22:22.359 --> 01:22:24.800 a white man only having to pay two hundred dollars 1437 01:22:24.840 --> 01:22:27.199 a month for a house, while a Chinese man had 1438 01:22:27.239 --> 01:22:31.479 to pay five hundred. Despite all this, the number of 1439 01:22:31.560 --> 01:22:34.920 Chinese appearing on the West Coast continued to just keep increasing. 1440 01:22:35.279 --> 01:22:38.239 Some Americans were uneasy by the fact that most Chinese 1441 01:22:38.279 --> 01:22:41.600 stayed close together, largely didn't speak very much English, and 1442 01:22:41.640 --> 01:22:44.479 made no effort to meaningfully assimilate, at least in any 1443 01:22:44.479 --> 01:22:47.439 way deemed meaningful by the Americans they lived with and near. 1444 01:22:48.439 --> 01:22:51.760 And yet other Americans were nervous at the idea of 1445 01:22:51.920 --> 01:22:56.479 the Chinese assimilating. Newspapers across San Francisco printed these editorial 1446 01:22:56.760 --> 01:23:00.680 screeds saying that the Chinese were quote more a far 1447 01:23:00.760 --> 01:23:04.000 worse class to have among us than the negro unquote, 1448 01:23:04.279 --> 01:23:07.520 while the fears of quote unquote pagan hordes would pepper 1449 01:23:07.600 --> 01:23:11.960 the Washington discourse over the years. This basically trapped the 1450 01:23:12.079 --> 01:23:15.800 Chinese living in America just smack dab in the middle 1451 01:23:15.800 --> 01:23:19.079 of a cultural double standard. And this wasn't just because 1452 01:23:19.079 --> 01:23:21.159 of the gold Rush. By the late eighteen sixties and 1453 01:23:21.159 --> 01:23:24.359 into the eighteen seventies, the Chinese were everywhere west of 1454 01:23:24.399 --> 01:23:27.399 the Rockies thanks to something even more valuable than gold 1455 01:23:27.439 --> 01:23:29.439 that we actually already touched on earlier in our story 1456 01:23:29.439 --> 01:23:32.439 when we talked about the robber barons like Andrew Carnegie, 1457 01:23:32.640 --> 01:23:36.399 I'm talking about the trans Continental Railroad. The sort of 1458 01:23:36.439 --> 01:23:40.199 cultural awareness that most Americans today have about the Chinese 1459 01:23:40.319 --> 01:23:43.039 in America has to do mostly with the railroad, usually 1460 01:23:43.119 --> 01:23:46.039 in passing reference at best. And there's a reason we 1461 01:23:46.079 --> 01:23:49.920 fixate on that. This is because thousands of Chinese were 1462 01:23:50.000 --> 01:23:53.399 ultimately instrumental in the construction of the thirty three thousand 1463 01:23:53.399 --> 01:23:57.279 miles of railroad that snaked around our country. Iris Chang 1464 01:23:57.319 --> 01:24:00.479 reports that at the peak of the Central Pacific Railways instruction, 1465 01:24:01.079 --> 01:24:04.520 ten thousand of the workers were Chinese. And what doing 1466 01:24:04.600 --> 01:24:06.880 you know it? The same resentment felt by the gold 1467 01:24:06.960 --> 01:24:10.720 Russian forty nine ers who were suspicious of Chinese industriousness 1468 01:24:10.720 --> 01:24:14.039 existed here too. But everyone in this case was in 1469 01:24:14.079 --> 01:24:17.359 the same boat. Once the railroad was finished in eighteen 1470 01:24:17.399 --> 01:24:22.399 sixty nine, everyone Chinese, white, whatever, was out of a job. 1471 01:24:22.640 --> 01:24:25.600 That is, until the factories and other industrial professions started 1472 01:24:25.600 --> 01:24:29.560 excitedly hiring this quote unquote COOLi labor that cost them 1473 01:24:29.640 --> 01:24:32.600 less and was way more efficient than the labor of 1474 01:24:32.640 --> 01:24:35.640 the white working class that was getting increasingly organized and 1475 01:24:35.800 --> 01:24:39.800 willing to fight for their employment rights. This influx of 1476 01:24:39.880 --> 01:24:42.720 Chinese laborers became part of what was starting to become 1477 01:24:42.760 --> 01:24:45.359 known as the Koli trade. And I've said coolly a 1478 01:24:45.359 --> 01:24:47.960 couple times here. You might be sensitive to that word. 1479 01:24:48.000 --> 01:24:50.239 It is. It is and has been used as a slur. 1480 01:24:50.560 --> 01:24:52.680 But there is a history behind it that I kind 1481 01:24:52.680 --> 01:24:54.079 of want to get into here, just to give you 1482 01:24:54.119 --> 01:24:57.720 some context. The term kooli is actually derived from the 1483 01:24:57.800 --> 01:25:02.840 Chinese term kouli, which literally translates to hard strength. This 1484 01:25:02.960 --> 01:25:05.640 term has, like I was saying, a long, storied and 1485 01:25:05.680 --> 01:25:08.640 actually pretty dark history. But in the interest of keeping 1486 01:25:08.640 --> 01:25:12.560 this lengthy aside brief, it was essentially exploitive contract labor 1487 01:25:12.720 --> 01:25:16.439 organized by corrupt Chinese businessmen over in China making deals 1488 01:25:16.479 --> 01:25:20.239 with American companies to export easily manipulated young men for 1489 01:25:20.399 --> 01:25:24.159 cheap labor in the United States, basically a step above slavery. 1490 01:25:24.800 --> 01:25:29.199 This kind of labor, though, undercut the worth of American 1491 01:25:29.239 --> 01:25:33.000 workers and their labor and became central to the otherization 1492 01:25:33.079 --> 01:25:36.039 of not just Chinese workers, but Chinese people in general. 1493 01:25:36.359 --> 01:25:39.600 Nuance has never really been the American people's strong suit. 1494 01:25:40.399 --> 01:25:42.760 A famous case of Chinese labor is facing the brunt 1495 01:25:42.840 --> 01:25:46.319 of This otherization actually happened in North Adams, Massachusetts. In 1496 01:25:46.399 --> 01:25:50.239 eighteen seventy a shoe factory owner named Calvin Simpson fired 1497 01:25:50.319 --> 01:25:52.520 all of his employees when they all organized a strike 1498 01:25:52.560 --> 01:25:55.920 for better wages. He couldn't hire more white workers because 1499 01:25:55.960 --> 01:25:58.119 the shoemakers are part of the Knights of Saint Crispin, 1500 01:25:58.520 --> 01:26:01.479 which was an extremely power powerful union on the East Coast, 1501 01:26:01.560 --> 01:26:04.560 and they will block any attempts to hire scabs by 1502 01:26:04.600 --> 01:26:07.159 convincing the scabs or the would be scabs, I should say, 1503 01:26:07.199 --> 01:26:09.039 to join the strike as soon as they arrived, and 1504 01:26:09.039 --> 01:26:12.279 they usually worked. I can just imagine, though, the light 1505 01:26:12.319 --> 01:26:16.439 bulb appearing over Simpson's head as he read the newspaper 1506 01:26:16.439 --> 01:26:19.439 over his morning coffee and read a story about the 1507 01:26:19.520 --> 01:26:23.520 Chinese industriousness in a San Francisco factory. As soon as 1508 01:26:23.520 --> 01:26:25.479 he read about that, and that light bulb went off, 1509 01:26:25.520 --> 01:26:29.039 he immediately hired seventy five Chinese laborers through what we 1510 01:26:29.079 --> 01:26:32.960 could probably call a coolie agency named Kwang Chong Wing 1511 01:26:33.039 --> 01:26:37.239 and Company, which specialized in importing cheap labor from China. 1512 01:26:37.600 --> 01:26:40.239 And when these Chinese laborers arrived in North Adams at 1513 01:26:40.279 --> 01:26:43.319 the train station, laborers and labor supporters were there to 1514 01:26:43.319 --> 01:26:47.279 meet them. Not exactly all smiles. The Nation reported at 1515 01:26:47.279 --> 01:26:50.159 the time quote a large and hostile crowd met them 1516 01:26:50.159 --> 01:26:52.800 at the depot, hooted them, hustled them somewhat, and threw 1517 01:26:52.840 --> 01:26:56.920 stones at them. Unquote. This was as bad as it 1518 01:26:56.960 --> 01:26:58.840 got at the time, and in the end, the East 1519 01:26:58.840 --> 01:27:02.119 Coast was actually a much more accepting environment of Chinese 1520 01:27:02.159 --> 01:27:04.720 labor than the West Coast was and would become. But 1521 01:27:05.479 --> 01:27:08.039 this reaction in North Adams to the arrival of these 1522 01:27:08.119 --> 01:27:11.199 Chinese labors can seen as a sort of a pretty 1523 01:27:11.239 --> 01:27:14.239 dark bit of foreshadowing for the kinds of attitudes directed 1524 01:27:14.600 --> 01:27:16.840 at a group so unlike all the other groups and 1525 01:27:16.880 --> 01:27:19.800 so willing to do what others wouldn't for a fraction 1526 01:27:19.840 --> 01:27:23.520 of the cost. Because out west things were getting much worse, 1527 01:27:23.720 --> 01:27:27.359 mass violence and pograms were becoming increasingly common, especially in 1528 01:27:27.399 --> 01:27:30.159 cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, where the Chinese 1529 01:27:30.159 --> 01:27:34.479 were concentrated in California. This is why I opened our 1530 01:27:34.520 --> 01:27:37.880 story with the particularly horrifying case of the Los Angeles 1531 01:27:38.000 --> 01:27:41.439 Chinatown massacre of eighteen seventy one. This was starting to 1532 01:27:41.479 --> 01:27:45.399 occur with more frequency, and it represents the true culmination 1533 01:27:45.479 --> 01:27:48.520 of the populace backlash, where it was heading and who 1534 01:27:48.520 --> 01:27:51.399 the target was going to be. In other words, and 1535 01:27:51.479 --> 01:27:54.600 given what was going on, especially with the rise of 1536 01:27:54.680 --> 01:27:58.520 immigration just happening to coincide with an economic collapse, not 1537 01:27:58.640 --> 01:28:01.640 to mention the perception and of corruption and gross inequality, 1538 01:28:01.680 --> 01:28:04.439 those things have been covering for the last while. Most 1539 01:28:04.479 --> 01:28:07.560 sane historians would agree that it's not too surprising that 1540 01:28:07.600 --> 01:28:10.359 things started turning out the way they did, especially given 1541 01:28:10.399 --> 01:28:12.239 the nature of the times. In the nature of the nation, 1542 01:28:12.800 --> 01:28:17.560 as Iris Chang impressively puts it, quote, racial and ethnic 1543 01:28:17.600 --> 01:28:20.560 tensions simmerre just below the surface and virtually all multi 1544 01:28:20.600 --> 01:28:24.000 ethnic societies, but it usually takes an economic crisis to 1545 01:28:24.000 --> 01:28:27.159 blow the lid off civility and allow deep seated hatred 1546 01:28:27.159 --> 01:28:30.560 to degenerate into violence. When our livelihoods are at stake, 1547 01:28:30.720 --> 01:28:33.560 when we are desperate, when families are uncertain where their 1548 01:28:33.600 --> 01:28:35.920 next meal is coming from, when adults fear for the 1549 01:28:35.960 --> 01:28:38.960 futures of their children, it is natural to ask why 1550 01:28:39.000 --> 01:28:42.880 fortune has treated us so cruelly, And in these moments 1551 01:28:42.960 --> 01:28:46.399 we are all vulnerable to explanations that easily assign blame 1552 01:28:46.439 --> 01:28:49.079 to some outside group. Perhaps it goes back to our 1553 01:28:49.079 --> 01:28:52.319 primitive origins when in threatening times our personal safety was 1554 01:28:52.399 --> 01:28:55.520 best assured by sticking with our own tribe. But for 1555 01:28:55.600 --> 01:28:58.760 whatever reasons, a general rule of history seems to be 1556 01:28:58.960 --> 01:29:01.720 that the more people feel insecure about their own well being, 1557 01:29:02.319 --> 01:29:04.479 the more likely they will join with those of close 1558 01:29:04.479 --> 01:29:09.760 affinity and striking out at some alien group. The question 1559 01:29:09.920 --> 01:29:14.920 then becomes obvious who will they join? Because it's important 1560 01:29:14.920 --> 01:29:17.680 for us to remember here, none of the violence that 1561 01:29:17.720 --> 01:29:20.359 I described at the outset of our story was part 1562 01:29:20.399 --> 01:29:24.039 of an overarching goal or campaign, and wasn't really led 1563 01:29:24.079 --> 01:29:27.079 by anyone. When it comes down to it, things like 1564 01:29:27.119 --> 01:29:30.159 the Chinatown massacre of eighteen seventy one in Los Angeles 1565 01:29:30.199 --> 01:29:36.920 were simply extreme, disorganized, nebulous expressions, illogical conclusions, if you will, 1566 01:29:37.000 --> 01:29:41.199 of the widespread existential tension that arose from this rapid 1567 01:29:41.239 --> 01:29:44.760 increase of immigration. Alongside the other ingredients for Neil Ferguson's 1568 01:29:44.760 --> 01:29:50.720 populist backlash, these were all diffuse hostilities, and we need 1569 01:29:50.720 --> 01:29:53.960 to remember that diffuse hostilities toward any kind of group, 1570 01:29:54.000 --> 01:29:58.479 whether it's racial, religious, or even simply political, it's a 1571 01:29:58.520 --> 01:30:02.199 sign that you're only one ingredient away from a true 1572 01:30:02.239 --> 01:30:06.279 populist backlash and its lasting effects. We're about to receive 1573 01:30:06.399 --> 01:30:11.359 in our story that last true ingredient. So let's recap. 1574 01:30:11.760 --> 01:30:14.479 You have the perception of corruption, you have the increase 1575 01:30:14.479 --> 01:30:17.319 in income inequality and the perceptions that come along with that. 1576 01:30:17.760 --> 01:30:20.640 You have the unprecedented economic collapse, and you have the 1577 01:30:20.640 --> 01:30:25.039 first peak increase in immigration. You have these four things 1578 01:30:25.039 --> 01:30:29.520 happening all at once, converging perfectly prepping the people with 1579 01:30:29.720 --> 01:30:34.199 enough tension, resentment, and eventually just flat out rage and 1580 01:30:34.319 --> 01:30:38.359 hatred to create a populist backlash. But getting people to 1581 01:30:38.439 --> 01:30:42.399 act as one is harder than you might think. Like 1582 01:30:42.439 --> 01:30:45.680 I said, you'll see loose expressions of organization like the 1583 01:30:45.720 --> 01:30:49.800 eighteen seventy one Chinatown massacre, but in the end these 1584 01:30:49.840 --> 01:30:53.600 are part of formless rage, nebulous, to use the word 1585 01:30:53.640 --> 01:30:57.479 I used earlier. You don't actually have people acting as 1586 01:30:57.560 --> 01:30:59.800 one with a true purpose in things like that. It's 1587 01:30:59.840 --> 01:31:03.159 just mob not unless you add the fifth and in 1588 01:31:03.199 --> 01:31:07.760 some ways the most important central ingredient to the populist backlash, 1589 01:31:07.800 --> 01:31:10.800 soup that had Chef Neil Ferguson talked about way back 1590 01:31:10.840 --> 01:31:15.239 in twenty sixteen. To preface this coming storm, We're going 1591 01:31:15.279 --> 01:31:17.880 to turn again to our friend Michael Bellile, who writes, quote, 1592 01:31:18.359 --> 01:31:23.279 it seemed that the whole edifice was collapsing. Depression, government corruption, 1593 01:31:23.760 --> 01:31:28.680 racial violence, stolen elections, class conflict, and myriad forms of 1594 01:31:28.680 --> 01:31:32.760 potential violence appeared to be tearing society apart. Numerous visitors 1595 01:31:32.760 --> 01:31:35.359 to the United States held to the conviction that trouble 1596 01:31:35.439 --> 01:32:19.000 lay ahead unquote, this is where we get our demagogue. 1597 01:32:21.119 --> 01:32:24.479 A demagogue, almost by his or her very nature, is 1598 01:32:24.680 --> 01:32:29.000 basically a clown at first, second, and even third glance. 1599 01:32:29.439 --> 01:32:33.000 There's something kind of ridiculous about what makes demagogue so 1600 01:32:33.119 --> 01:32:37.520 compelling to so many people. Demagogues know how to work 1601 01:32:37.560 --> 01:32:42.640 their way into your mind with brash claims, hyperbole, usually 1602 01:32:42.720 --> 01:32:46.039 a professed mortar complex when they're attacked, and just a 1603 01:32:46.079 --> 01:32:49.239 bunch of wild promises that make no sense even when 1604 01:32:49.239 --> 01:32:52.920 given just a cursory amount of scrutiny, and in some 1605 01:32:52.960 --> 01:32:57.319 ways most importantly, catchphrases. While we have the self directed 1606 01:32:57.479 --> 01:33:01.399 chance of build the wall, echoing a countless rallies and 1607 01:33:01.439 --> 01:33:05.840 demonstrations all throughout twenty sixteen, there was a very different 1608 01:33:06.039 --> 01:33:10.279 and yet strikingly similar phrase being employed at the end 1609 01:33:10.319 --> 01:33:13.600 of every speech given by this man. The main character 1610 01:33:13.640 --> 01:33:19.479 of our story, the Chinese must go. The man, This man, 1611 01:33:19.600 --> 01:33:22.640 our demagogue who made that his trademark, was a man 1612 01:33:22.680 --> 01:33:26.479 so remarkable that he was, of course largely forgotten by history. 1613 01:33:27.520 --> 01:33:33.560 His name was Dennis Kearney. You'd be forgiven for immediately 1614 01:33:33.600 --> 01:33:37.000 scratching your head and saying, who I mean? This is 1615 01:33:37.039 --> 01:33:39.239 what a lot of people might have said before Dennis 1616 01:33:39.279 --> 01:33:42.000 Kearney's rise to fame as well and in the decades 1617 01:33:42.000 --> 01:33:45.680 after his peak, as he began his march into historical obscurity, 1618 01:33:46.279 --> 01:33:49.720 he was the living embodiment of lightning in a bottle, or, 1619 01:33:49.760 --> 01:33:51.760 as Neil Ferguson put it as he wrapped up his 1620 01:33:51.840 --> 01:33:55.960 Populous Backlash super recipe during his twenty sixteen presentation, quote, 1621 01:33:56.359 --> 01:34:00.520 Dennis Kearney was the Donald Trump of the eighteen seventies. Unquote. 1622 01:34:01.119 --> 01:34:04.920 Kearney was the demagogue that the populace backlash was waiting for, 1623 01:34:05.119 --> 01:34:08.680 directing the people's indignation in terms that only a demagogue 1624 01:34:08.760 --> 01:34:13.800 could quote. These leprous chinamen are about the meanest creatures 1625 01:34:13.800 --> 01:34:17.239 that God Almighty ever put breath into the question is 1626 01:34:17.640 --> 01:34:20.800 are the chinamen to occupy this country or the white man? 1627 01:34:21.239 --> 01:34:23.399 Will you assist us in ridding this country of the 1628 01:34:23.399 --> 01:34:27.159 moonlight lepers. All in favor of the Chinaman, hold up 1629 01:34:27.159 --> 01:34:29.840 your hands, no one, and all in favor of the 1630 01:34:29.880 --> 01:34:35.000 white man, up hands unquote. So let's get back to 1631 01:34:35.079 --> 01:34:38.199 the question you're most likely still wondering. Who was he? 1632 01:34:39.680 --> 01:34:43.079 Dennis Kearney was actually not an American by birth. He 1633 01:34:43.159 --> 01:34:46.159 was an Irishman. He had been born in County Cork, 1634 01:34:46.239 --> 01:34:49.039 Ireland in eighteen forty seven, and was part of a 1635 01:34:49.079 --> 01:34:53.279 stereotypically large Irish family with six brothers. Kearney's father died 1636 01:34:53.600 --> 01:34:57.239 when Dennis was only eleven years old, and doing what 1637 01:34:57.319 --> 01:34:59.520 I suppose is only natural for an eleven year old 1638 01:34:59.560 --> 01:35:02.920 boy to do when his father dies, young Dennis decided 1639 01:35:03.159 --> 01:35:05.359 a life on the ocean was for him and became 1640 01:35:05.399 --> 01:35:09.079 a sailor on a clipper ship called the Shooting Star. Now, 1641 01:35:09.079 --> 01:35:12.199 despite being just a kid, he actually managed to become 1642 01:35:12.319 --> 01:35:15.439 first mate and even captain during his years on the sea, 1643 01:35:15.720 --> 01:35:18.439 and he would later claim that he quote circumnavigated the 1644 01:35:18.479 --> 01:35:23.039 globe and visited many parts of the Earth's surface unquote. 1645 01:35:23.079 --> 01:35:25.479 He would eventually land in San Francisco and get married 1646 01:35:25.520 --> 01:35:28.079 when he was twenty three, and promptly become a small 1647 01:35:28.079 --> 01:35:31.479 business owner, purchasing a draying business, which was basically a 1648 01:35:31.560 --> 01:35:34.199 nineteenth century version of a trucking company in which goods 1649 01:35:34.239 --> 01:35:37.760 were hauled around by a fleet of wagons. This business 1650 01:35:37.760 --> 01:35:40.920 that he was running became quite successful, making him pretty wealthy, 1651 01:35:40.920 --> 01:35:45.399 and he began making enormous investments in mining companies. But then, 1652 01:35:45.920 --> 01:35:48.279 like the thousands of other Americans we talked about earlier, 1653 01:35:48.439 --> 01:35:51.840 the crash of eighteen seventy three happened and he lost everything. 1654 01:35:52.880 --> 01:35:56.039 It's after the crash that we see a shift in 1655 01:35:56.119 --> 01:36:00.439 Kearney's interests in a more trivial parallel with our current resident. 1656 01:36:00.760 --> 01:36:03.840 Kearney abstained from drinking and smoking, which was unlike many 1657 01:36:03.880 --> 01:36:05.760 men of his day who had lost as much as 1658 01:36:05.760 --> 01:36:08.960 he had. But replacing those vices, he made it a 1659 01:36:08.960 --> 01:36:12.279 point to start honing his skills in public speaking fame 1660 01:36:12.399 --> 01:36:16.119 seeking as well by participating in debates in a club 1661 01:36:16.239 --> 01:36:19.880 known as a lyceum of self culture. These skills that 1662 01:36:19.920 --> 01:36:22.760 he worked on and honed paid off, because as he 1663 01:36:22.840 --> 01:36:25.359 started to show his face around San Francisco politics in 1664 01:36:25.359 --> 01:36:28.520 the eighteen seventies, he became known as a quote unquote 1665 01:36:28.560 --> 01:36:32.319 ready and forcible speaker, especially as he started emerging as 1666 01:36:32.319 --> 01:36:35.039 the main attraction at the San Francisco Sandlots as they 1667 01:36:35.079 --> 01:36:38.159 were known, which became a prime venting place for out 1668 01:36:38.159 --> 01:36:40.840 of work laborers and men who had lost everything in 1669 01:36:40.840 --> 01:36:44.159 the eighteen seventy three crash, just as he had. It 1670 01:36:44.199 --> 01:36:46.920 was during these sandlot rallies where Kearney would develop his 1671 01:36:47.000 --> 01:36:49.600 build the Wall esque battle cry of the Chinese must Go, 1672 01:36:49.760 --> 01:36:52.199 with which he closed every speech he made. It was 1673 01:36:52.199 --> 01:36:56.199 his catchphrase. The repeated successes of Kearney's speeches and his 1674 01:36:56.399 --> 01:37:00.439 rising popularity made it almost a foregone conclusion to his 1675 01:37:00.760 --> 01:37:03.800 thousands of fans and supporters that he would become elected 1676 01:37:03.840 --> 01:37:07.199 as President of the Working Men's Party of California, which 1677 01:37:07.319 --> 01:37:11.520 did indeed happen. With this new found position of influence, 1678 01:37:11.800 --> 01:37:14.920 he began to dedicate himself to making his chapter of 1679 01:37:14.960 --> 01:37:18.239 the nationwide Working Men's Party the most powerful and influential 1680 01:37:18.279 --> 01:37:22.600 populist third party in American history. Like any good demagogue 1681 01:37:22.640 --> 01:37:25.479 who came before or after him, Kearney had a trademark 1682 01:37:25.520 --> 01:37:29.319 speaking style and a set of identifiable mannerisms that he 1683 01:37:29.399 --> 01:37:31.800 began to develop in those early days on the San 1684 01:37:31.800 --> 01:37:35.399 Francisco sandlots. He would perfect them later on as he 1685 01:37:35.439 --> 01:37:38.399 toured the United States, spreading his populist message, so much 1686 01:37:38.439 --> 01:37:40.640 so that a lot of ink was actually spilled in 1687 01:37:40.640 --> 01:37:44.800 the press at the time simply describing his appearance and presentation. 1688 01:37:46.039 --> 01:37:49.039 And this appearance in presentation was for the time, to 1689 01:37:49.359 --> 01:37:54.239 put it, mildly electrifying. To further draw our comparisons between 1690 01:37:54.239 --> 01:37:58.279 the demagogue then and the demagogue now. Politicians, union men, 1691 01:37:58.600 --> 01:38:01.800 popular public figures of the time, none of them spoke 1692 01:38:02.000 --> 01:38:06.840 like this. This was new, this was novel. Kearney's extremely 1693 01:38:06.920 --> 01:38:11.880 atypical style is what made him so popular. Historian Andrew Goyori, 1694 01:38:11.960 --> 01:38:14.880 whose excellent book Closing the Gate contains probably the most 1695 01:38:14.920 --> 01:38:19.039 thorough look at Kearney, describes it as follows. Quote. He 1696 01:38:19.159 --> 01:38:21.920 dresses The New York Tribune reported, just like his class, 1697 01:38:22.119 --> 01:38:25.159 in a dark rough jacket, a blue or checked muslin shirt, 1698 01:38:25.479 --> 01:38:28.479 and a short silk cravat tied in a sailor's nod. 1699 01:38:28.640 --> 01:38:31.279 One of his trademarks was, after speaking and getting hot, 1700 01:38:31.439 --> 01:38:33.800 to throw off his coat dramatically and unbutton his collar. 1701 01:38:33.880 --> 01:38:36.680 Gestures had always provoked a storm of applause. Then he 1702 01:38:36.720 --> 01:38:39.960 would stand quote with his thumbs in the armholes of 1703 01:38:39.960 --> 01:38:44.079 his vest unquote, waiting for the ovation to subside. As 1704 01:38:44.079 --> 01:38:46.800 he spoke, the former seaman would march phrenetically up and 1705 01:38:46.840 --> 01:38:49.720 down the platform quote as though pacing the deck of 1706 01:38:49.760 --> 01:38:54.359 a vessel unquote. If this sort of physically conscious thing 1707 01:38:55.079 --> 01:39:00.000 isn't sounding vaguely familiar already. Another speaking tactic of Kearney's 1708 01:39:00.199 --> 01:39:03.359 was to use his hands in a very obvious way 1709 01:39:03.399 --> 01:39:06.880 to make a point. Right before he made his point, 1710 01:39:07.159 --> 01:39:10.079 he would stop talking for a second while raising his 1711 01:39:10.159 --> 01:39:12.920 right hand in suspense, like a conductor in front of 1712 01:39:12.920 --> 01:39:16.199 an orchestra, and then he would to quote another observer 1713 01:39:16.239 --> 01:39:19.439 at the time quote hurl it toward the audience as 1714 01:39:19.439 --> 01:39:22.479 though he were throwing a stone unquote, and then he 1715 01:39:22.479 --> 01:39:26.560 would enunciate his words quote forcibly ejected like a hot 1716 01:39:26.600 --> 01:39:30.720 shot from a battery unquote. He would eject this quote 1717 01:39:30.760 --> 01:39:33.439 unquote hot shot from a battery in the direction of 1718 01:39:33.479 --> 01:39:36.359 not just the Chinese and their immigration the fourth ingreading 1719 01:39:36.399 --> 01:39:39.359 to the populist backlash, remember, and his primary target most 1720 01:39:39.399 --> 01:39:42.680 of the time, but also the quote unquote thieving capitalist 1721 01:39:42.760 --> 01:39:45.600 as he called them, among other things, while at the 1722 01:39:45.640 --> 01:39:48.319 same time saying that the time had come to give 1723 01:39:48.520 --> 01:39:51.319 all the financial power of the country to the workingmen. 1724 01:39:52.319 --> 01:39:56.079 He spared no viciousness when he spoke of business owners, bankers, 1725 01:39:56.199 --> 01:39:59.000 and anyone else who could be considered a capitalist, as 1726 01:39:59.000 --> 01:40:00.760 in the men who not only caused the panic and 1727 01:40:00.800 --> 01:40:03.239 the depression, but also who continued to get richer as 1728 01:40:03.399 --> 01:40:07.000 the unemployed workingmen grew poorer. In other words, he used 1729 01:40:07.000 --> 01:40:10.520 two of the main outrages ingredients remember of this populist 1730 01:40:10.520 --> 01:40:13.119 backlash to rally his people. He even went so far 1731 01:40:13.159 --> 01:40:15.640 at one of his Sandlock gatherings in eighteen seventy seven, 1732 01:40:15.680 --> 01:40:19.000 to recommend that every workingman watching him at that moment 1733 01:40:19.039 --> 01:40:22.159 go out by themselves a gun, and that every capitalist 1734 01:40:22.199 --> 01:40:24.199 should be hung from the neck until they were dead. 1735 01:40:24.800 --> 01:40:28.119 He would bellow out claims that the mansions belonging to 1736 01:40:28.119 --> 01:40:30.319 the upper class needed to be burned to the ground, 1737 01:40:30.520 --> 01:40:33.640 and he would encourage everyone listening to quote cut the 1738 01:40:33.680 --> 01:40:38.199 capitalists to pieces. And he also launched attacks directed at 1739 01:40:38.199 --> 01:40:40.880 the other key ingredient of the populist backlash, the corrupt 1740 01:40:40.960 --> 01:40:45.159 politicians of both parties, the Washington elite. Instead of saying 1741 01:40:45.560 --> 01:40:48.640 that it was time to drain the swamp, he would claim, quote, 1742 01:40:48.960 --> 01:40:51.720 they have seized upon the government by bribery and corruption. 1743 01:40:52.119 --> 01:40:55.279 They have made speculation in public robbery as science. They 1744 01:40:55.279 --> 01:40:58.159 have loaded the nation, the state, the county, and the 1745 01:40:58.159 --> 01:41:02.560 city with debt. Instead of saying drain the swamp, he 1746 01:41:02.600 --> 01:41:06.000 would make threats that quote, bullets will replace ballots unquote, 1747 01:41:06.079 --> 01:41:08.119 until the capitalists were run out of power and to 1748 01:41:08.119 --> 01:41:11.720 be replaced with the working class. Banners and signs were 1749 01:41:11.800 --> 01:41:14.319 being carried around by his supporters at his rallies, and 1750 01:41:14.359 --> 01:41:17.720 these banners and sides would include effigies of bondholders and 1751 01:41:17.760 --> 01:41:21.359 elected officials being hung, along with captions like quote sure 1752 01:41:21.439 --> 01:41:25.439 cure for corrupt officials. Kearney has come unquote. And Kearney 1753 01:41:25.520 --> 01:41:28.720 spared no expense with his vitriol and took no partisanside 1754 01:41:28.720 --> 01:41:31.720 with it either. According to him, his only side was 1755 01:41:31.720 --> 01:41:34.920 the side of the workingman, the ones forgotten by Washington. 1756 01:41:35.680 --> 01:41:37.960 In one of his later speeches that he made in Boston, 1757 01:41:38.039 --> 01:41:40.439 he rolled all of the grievances, all the elements of 1758 01:41:40.479 --> 01:41:43.560 the populist backlash, rolled it all into one when he 1759 01:41:43.600 --> 01:41:46.760 proclaimed the following quote, it will be well for you 1760 01:41:46.840 --> 01:41:49.359 to know some of the issues that deceive the democratic 1761 01:41:49.399 --> 01:41:52.239 thief and the Republican robber out of sight in California. 1762 01:41:52.680 --> 01:41:56.920 The workingmen of California are becoming overpressed. The capitalistic thief 1763 01:41:56.960 --> 01:42:00.119 and land pirate of California, instead of employing the poor 1764 01:42:00.199 --> 01:42:03.159 white man of that beautiful and golden state, send across 1765 01:42:03.159 --> 01:42:06.680 to Asia, the oldest despotism on earth, and there, contracting 1766 01:42:06.720 --> 01:42:09.479 with a band of leprous Chinese pirates, brought them to 1767 01:42:09.520 --> 01:42:12.159 California and now uses them as a knife to cut 1768 01:42:12.199 --> 01:42:14.840 the throats of honest laboring men in that state. A 1769 01:42:14.920 --> 01:42:17.720 Chinaman will live on rice and rats. They will sleep 1770 01:42:17.760 --> 01:42:20.079 one hundred in a room that one white man wants 1771 01:42:20.079 --> 01:42:25.239 for his wife and family. But as you can see, 1772 01:42:25.399 --> 01:42:27.880 while he would use the other ingredients as a base 1773 01:42:27.960 --> 01:42:32.720 for his vitriol, it would always come back to the Chinese. 1774 01:42:32.840 --> 01:42:35.840 A lot of Kearny's lambassing of the Chinese is very 1775 01:42:35.880 --> 01:42:40.159 easily boiled down to simple race baiting rhetoric, often simply 1776 01:42:40.159 --> 01:42:43.359 employed for cheap laughs, as the transcripts of these speeches 1777 01:42:43.359 --> 01:42:47.399 and the crowd's reactions show. During his eighteen seventy seven 1778 01:42:47.439 --> 01:42:50.600 Sandlot harangues, he would make pronouncements that range from simple 1779 01:42:50.640 --> 01:42:55.439 conspiracy mongerine, such as unsubstantiated claims of Chinese being secretly 1780 01:42:55.479 --> 01:42:58.840 smuggled into America down from British Columbia up from Mexico 1781 01:42:59.279 --> 01:43:03.159 to outright calls for exclusion and deportation. In one of 1782 01:43:03.199 --> 01:43:06.279 his Sandlots speeches in October eighteen seventy seven, Kiarni would 1783 01:43:06.279 --> 01:43:11.199 proclaim to a massive crowd of cheering workingmen and curious onlookers. Quote, 1784 01:43:11.399 --> 01:43:13.760 before you and before the world, we declare that the 1785 01:43:13.840 --> 01:43:16.920 Chinamen must leave our shores. We declare that white men 1786 01:43:17.000 --> 01:43:20.319 and women, and boys and girls cannot live as the 1787 01:43:20.319 --> 01:43:23.279 people of the Great Republic should and compete with the 1788 01:43:23.319 --> 01:43:26.600 single Chinese coolie in the labor market. Death is preferable 1789 01:43:26.640 --> 01:43:30.840 to an American to life on a par with the Chinaman. Unquote. 1790 01:43:30.880 --> 01:43:33.119 And if you think that Kearney stopped short of invoking 1791 01:43:33.199 --> 01:43:36.319 force or violence to achieve this end, you'd be mistaken. 1792 01:43:36.880 --> 01:43:39.800 According to several speech transcripts and witness statements reported by 1793 01:43:39.840 --> 01:43:41.680 Iris Chang And in her book on the Chinese in 1794 01:43:41.720 --> 01:43:44.520 America and Betty Lee Sung in her own Kearney would 1795 01:43:44.520 --> 01:43:48.520 outright imply extermination or at least violence to drive the 1796 01:43:48.600 --> 01:43:52.039 Chinese out of San Francisco. He'd have ideas that would 1797 01:43:52.079 --> 01:43:53.720 be so hair brained that they would be funny if 1798 01:43:53.720 --> 01:43:57.159 they weren't terrifying in their implications. These included releasing balloons 1799 01:43:57.159 --> 01:44:01.000 carrying dynamite over Chinatown and letting laws of physics do 1800 01:44:01.079 --> 01:44:04.199 the rest of the work for them. And while it's 1801 01:44:04.439 --> 01:44:07.560 most certainly true that it's not always fair to pin 1802 01:44:07.680 --> 01:44:10.600 the blame of outside rhetoric for the actions of individuals, 1803 01:44:11.119 --> 01:44:15.039 we can draw at least at least one direct instance 1804 01:44:15.039 --> 01:44:18.159 of brutal violence to the rhetoric of Dennis Kearney. On 1805 01:44:18.239 --> 01:44:21.960 March thirteenth, eighteen seventy seven, six Chinese woodcutters were calling 1806 01:44:22.000 --> 01:44:24.880 it a day after a long afternoon of work at 1807 01:44:24.880 --> 01:44:28.720 their employer's wood shopping camp about two miles outside of Chico, California. 1808 01:44:29.119 --> 01:44:31.359 They were all gathered in the living area of their 1809 01:44:31.359 --> 01:44:33.600 cabin that they were staying in. They were settling in 1810 01:44:33.640 --> 01:44:36.119 for their nightly meal, laughing and relaxing. According to the 1811 01:44:36.119 --> 01:44:39.319 sole member of the group who survived, this is why 1812 01:44:39.359 --> 01:44:41.920 they never noticed that they were being watched from the 1813 01:44:41.960 --> 01:44:46.520 darkness outside of their cabin. Suddenly, many shots were fired 1814 01:44:46.880 --> 01:44:50.000 from pistols and rifles, and five men and a boy 1815 01:44:50.359 --> 01:44:53.000 burst into the cabin and riddled five of the six 1816 01:44:53.079 --> 01:44:56.600 Chinese men with bullets. Following the mass shooting, the killers 1817 01:44:56.640 --> 01:44:58.760 made sure to douse all of the bodies and the 1818 01:44:58.800 --> 01:45:01.760 cabin itself with a gallon of kerosene before setting everything 1819 01:45:01.800 --> 01:45:05.479 on fire, basically destroying any physical evidence except for the 1820 01:45:05.560 --> 01:45:08.239 charred remains of the men they killed, though they obviously 1821 01:45:08.279 --> 01:45:10.399 didn't account for the testimony of the sole survivor of 1822 01:45:10.399 --> 01:45:13.159 their mass murder, who had escaped when he heard the shots. 1823 01:45:14.760 --> 01:45:18.680 Following the Chico massacre, the Sacramento Daily Union reported that 1824 01:45:18.720 --> 01:45:23.520 the perpetrators were quote beyond all question, white men unquote. 1825 01:45:23.560 --> 01:45:26.479 The article continued its analysis of the crime with the 1826 01:45:26.520 --> 01:45:31.319 following ominous words, quote it is evident, however, that this 1827 01:45:31.560 --> 01:45:34.399 and other crimes of the same kind, had been perpetrated 1828 01:45:34.439 --> 01:45:38.560 by ruffians who possessed some kind of organization and to 1829 01:45:38.600 --> 01:45:43.800 support one another in their infamous practices unquote. Sure enough, 1830 01:45:44.159 --> 01:45:46.880 one of the perpetrators was caught, and, after some questioning, 1831 01:45:46.960 --> 01:45:49.920 finally admitted that what they had done was under the 1832 01:45:50.039 --> 01:45:54.039 orders of the Workingmen's Party leadership. Unfortunately, the party's leaders 1833 01:45:54.039 --> 01:45:57.520 couldn't be convicted of any crime because the evidence remained circumstantial. 1834 01:45:58.079 --> 01:46:01.159 Kearney would continue his anti China these stump speeches throughout 1835 01:46:01.159 --> 01:46:04.000 the remainder of eighteen seventy seven, as working class strikes 1836 01:46:04.760 --> 01:46:08.159 raged across the country, and its popularity would only continue 1837 01:46:08.199 --> 01:46:12.279 to increase. Kearney's blaming of the Chinese for the lack 1838 01:46:12.319 --> 01:46:14.760 of work for the working class in the late eighteen 1839 01:46:14.800 --> 01:46:18.319 seventies was easy, and it was easy for a lot 1840 01:46:18.319 --> 01:46:21.720 of reasons. One of these reasons was because it was 1841 01:46:21.800 --> 01:46:25.880 in essence true that Chinese workers were replacing white ones 1842 01:46:25.920 --> 01:46:29.640 in certain jobs. But the problem with this view is 1843 01:46:29.720 --> 01:46:31.960 that it left out the important fact that the only 1844 01:46:32.079 --> 01:46:35.680 reason the Chinese were being hired by businesses was because 1845 01:46:35.800 --> 01:46:39.319 the businesses wanted cheaper labor that didn't have the tendency 1846 01:46:39.359 --> 01:46:43.000 to organize and strike for higher pay or better working conditions, 1847 01:46:43.319 --> 01:46:46.159 as we saw earlier in our story with the North 1848 01:46:46.159 --> 01:46:49.600 Adams incident. But the important thing to remember is that 1849 01:46:49.640 --> 01:46:53.439 while the racial and cultural quote unquote otherness of the 1850 01:46:53.520 --> 01:46:58.199 Chinese certainly contributed to them being easily being made targets, 1851 01:46:58.720 --> 01:47:01.560 this was just a number game, at least initially on 1852 01:47:01.600 --> 01:47:04.960 the West Coast, because in San Francisco by eighteen seventy one, 1853 01:47:05.159 --> 01:47:08.960 there were two whites and one Chinese for every available job. 1854 01:47:09.760 --> 01:47:12.319 But we should be real here. If it hadn't been 1855 01:47:12.359 --> 01:47:16.159 the Chinese, it would have been someone else. As Iris 1856 01:47:16.279 --> 01:47:19.079 Chang said earlier in our story, quote, all of us 1857 01:47:19.119 --> 01:47:22.720 are vulnerable to explanations that easily assigned blame to some 1858 01:47:22.920 --> 01:47:27.399 outside group unquote. And this had been seen before. The 1859 01:47:27.439 --> 01:47:32.479 general hostility of Americans toward the Irish, German and Italian 1860 01:47:32.520 --> 01:47:35.760 immigrants only three decades earlier shows us as pretty clearly. 1861 01:47:36.279 --> 01:47:39.359 And believe me, the irony of an irishman, a man who, 1862 01:47:39.359 --> 01:47:41.319 if he'd been alive and trying to find a job 1863 01:47:41.359 --> 01:47:44.840 in America those three decades earlier, a man who would 1864 01:47:44.880 --> 01:47:47.960 have faced a similar level of discrimination as the kind 1865 01:47:48.000 --> 01:47:51.880 he was currently heaping on the Chinese. This irony was 1866 01:47:52.199 --> 01:47:56.079 not lost on contemporaries either, invoking the site of the 1867 01:47:56.119 --> 01:47:59.520 no Irish need apply signs plastered all over American cities 1868 01:47:59.560 --> 01:48:02.520 during the ages forties and eighteen fifties. The famous novelist 1869 01:48:02.560 --> 01:48:05.640 Robert Lewis Stevenson, writer of Treasure Island and the Strange 1870 01:48:05.680 --> 01:48:08.399 Case of Doctor Jekyl and Mister Hyde, he wrote in 1871 01:48:08.439 --> 01:48:11.560 a piece in The Amateur Immigrant during all of this 1872 01:48:11.640 --> 01:48:15.479 anti Chinese sentiment quote a while ago, it was the Irish. 1873 01:48:15.680 --> 01:48:20.239 Now it is the Chinese who must go, regardless of 1874 01:48:20.479 --> 01:48:25.000 historical ironies or the inevitability of ethnic targeting. Kearney had 1875 01:48:25.039 --> 01:48:28.279 his targets, and he had his persona, his character, the 1876 01:48:28.319 --> 01:48:30.600 firebrand who stood up for the working men against the 1877 01:48:30.720 --> 01:48:33.800 encroachment of the yellow Horde from the Orient. To put 1878 01:48:33.840 --> 01:48:37.560 it in crude terms, from that era. In other words, 1879 01:48:37.640 --> 01:48:40.920 Kearney was well aware of how he could take advantage 1880 01:48:40.920 --> 01:48:44.520 of the suffering and resentments of his constituents, all tied 1881 01:48:44.560 --> 01:48:47.479 to the first three ingredients of our populist backlash, the 1882 01:48:47.520 --> 01:48:51.119 perception of corruption, inequality, and the results of the economic crash. 1883 01:48:51.119 --> 01:48:55.000 Remember and create a laser focus for this suffering and 1884 01:48:55.119 --> 01:48:59.079 resentment onto the fourth ingredient, the rise in immigration. In 1885 01:48:59.119 --> 01:49:02.439 other words, like all demagogues, Kearney possessed a keen awareness 1886 01:49:02.439 --> 01:49:05.319 of the observation from Michael Bellile that we laid out 1887 01:49:05.319 --> 01:49:09.239 earlier that class tensions can be sidestepped by appeals to racism. 1888 01:49:09.399 --> 01:49:13.039 In other words, it didn't matter whether or not Kearney 1889 01:49:13.079 --> 01:49:15.399 actually believed in his heart the things that he was 1890 01:49:15.439 --> 01:49:18.439 saying about the Chinese, because all that mattered to him 1891 01:49:18.720 --> 01:49:23.399 was that they worked. We know this because it wasn't 1892 01:49:23.439 --> 01:49:26.720 always this way with Dennis Kearny as a member of 1893 01:49:26.760 --> 01:49:29.880 the Draymen and Teamsters Union. Kearney was a union man 1894 01:49:29.920 --> 01:49:32.279 earlier in his career, which is where he got his 1895 01:49:32.399 --> 01:49:34.920 first true taste of political power when he became the 1896 01:49:34.960 --> 01:49:37.880 leader of the Workingmen's Party of California in eighteen seventy seven. 1897 01:49:38.359 --> 01:49:40.239 Like we were talking about earlier, but this was happening 1898 01:49:40.399 --> 01:49:43.319 just as the Great Strikes of eighteen seventy seven, the 1899 01:49:43.319 --> 01:49:46.439 great insurrection of American workingmen that was actually covered quite 1900 01:49:46.520 --> 01:49:49.600 well in Sam Davis's Inward Empire podcast. I might ass 1901 01:49:49.640 --> 01:49:51.600 you should check that out if you want more detail 1902 01:49:51.640 --> 01:49:55.000 on the Great Strike. But these strikes, the Great Strikes 1903 01:49:55.000 --> 01:49:57.560 of eighteen seventy seven, they were in full swing. Well, 1904 01:49:57.640 --> 01:50:00.560 Kearney was experiencing his rise to power. Here's a thing. 1905 01:50:00.880 --> 01:50:03.640 It's a mistake to assume that this was because Kearney 1906 01:50:03.840 --> 01:50:06.520 was a tried and true friend of the working man. 1907 01:50:07.279 --> 01:50:11.439 This indeed might be sounding familiar to those of you 1908 01:50:11.520 --> 01:50:14.720 who paid close attention to those rallies and speeches in 1909 01:50:14.720 --> 01:50:17.359 twenty sixteen, But this, in my view at least, is 1910 01:50:17.479 --> 01:50:21.000 really what takes the cake. When I invoke catchphrases about 1911 01:50:21.039 --> 01:50:24.800 the quote unquote original Donald Trump. Kearney's words of support 1912 01:50:25.479 --> 01:50:28.239 and even love of the working men of America were 1913 01:50:28.279 --> 01:50:33.439 words of convenience. He had found a vibrant, fertile political market, 1914 01:50:33.560 --> 01:50:36.960 and he had tapped into it with a vengeance. And 1915 01:50:37.119 --> 01:50:39.560 don't think that this is just me being cynical, or 1916 01:50:39.560 --> 01:50:43.279 even modern historians who have covered Kearney are just being 1917 01:50:43.319 --> 01:50:47.000 cynical and using the historical twenty twenty hindsight goggles. A 1918 01:50:47.039 --> 01:50:50.239 contemporary of Kearney's, the famous labor writer Henry George, wrote 1919 01:50:50.239 --> 01:50:53.600 about Kearney's political opportunism as Kearney was making his rounds 1920 01:50:53.600 --> 01:50:57.000 across the country in eighteen seventy eight. George's commentary is 1921 01:50:57.039 --> 01:50:59.239 one of the primary sources that we can turn to 1922 01:50:59.319 --> 01:51:01.600 for some sense, for a more accurate sense of what 1923 01:51:01.640 --> 01:51:04.520 the pre Kearney labor movement thought of the guy who was, 1924 01:51:04.840 --> 01:51:08.079 in essence at this time, stealing their thunder. Recalling Kearney's 1925 01:51:08.119 --> 01:51:10.560 earlier appearances at the Lyceum of Self Culture, where he 1926 01:51:10.640 --> 01:51:14.239 was cutting his teeth on public speaking, George wrote, quote, 1927 01:51:14.319 --> 01:51:17.319 he was noticeable not merely for the bitter vulgarity of 1928 01:51:17.359 --> 01:51:20.560 his attacks upon all forms of religion, especially that in 1929 01:51:20.600 --> 01:51:23.159 which he had been reared, the Catholic, but for the 1930 01:51:23.279 --> 01:51:26.800 venom with which he abused the working classes and took 1931 01:51:26.840 --> 01:51:31.159 on every occasion what passed for the capitalistic side unquote. 1932 01:51:32.000 --> 01:51:35.880 George continues with a revelation that even I have to admit, 1933 01:51:36.079 --> 01:51:39.640 shocked me after hearing and reading all this stuff about 1934 01:51:39.680 --> 01:51:43.520 Dennis Kearney his hatred for the Chinese immigrant. But this 1935 01:51:43.560 --> 01:51:46.760 didn't shock me just because of the apparent inconsistency with 1936 01:51:46.800 --> 01:51:49.880 the character of Kearney that would begin to emerge along 1937 01:51:49.880 --> 01:51:53.239 with his fame, but also with how similar it seems 1938 01:51:53.239 --> 01:51:57.079 to fall in line with the inconsistent ideological methodology of 1939 01:51:57.119 --> 01:52:02.039 a certain president of the United States, say quote, with 1940 01:52:02.079 --> 01:52:05.199 all the vehemence with which he has since invaghed against 1941 01:52:05.279 --> 01:52:09.600 quote unquote thieving capitalists and quote unquote lecherous bondholders. He 1942 01:52:09.720 --> 01:52:13.680 denounced the laziness and extravagance of working men, declared that 1943 01:52:13.760 --> 01:52:20.880 wages were far too high, and defended Chinese immigration unquote. Wow, 1944 01:52:21.239 --> 01:52:25.760 So we can see here that this guy Dennis Kearney, 1945 01:52:25.760 --> 01:52:30.479 who spent so much energy and became monumentally successful and 1946 01:52:30.640 --> 01:52:36.399 famous defending the American workingman and excoriating the Chinese as pests. 1947 01:52:36.439 --> 01:52:39.479 Only a few short years earlier, he couldn't wait to 1948 01:52:39.520 --> 01:52:43.279 call unemployed workers bums, which he did, and even defend 1949 01:52:43.279 --> 01:52:47.199 the rights of the Chinese to come into America. Quite 1950 01:52:47.199 --> 01:52:50.039 a change of heart, wouldn't you say. But let's be 1951 01:52:50.159 --> 01:52:53.640 charitable for just a second. Is it possible that Kearney 1952 01:52:53.720 --> 01:52:56.319 simply changed his mind? People changed their minds all the time. 1953 01:52:56.680 --> 01:52:59.880 Is it possible that maybe he saw things in the 1954 01:53:00.039 --> 01:53:02.760 culture that maybe he read the tea leaves, or maybe 1955 01:53:02.800 --> 01:53:06.520 even experience enough rough realities that showed him the way 1956 01:53:06.600 --> 01:53:10.800 he believed things truly were. Of course, anything is possible. 1957 01:53:10.840 --> 01:53:13.840 Maybe he met enough out of work laborers with truly 1958 01:53:14.000 --> 01:53:17.600 moving stories of losing their livelihoods, and he simply latched 1959 01:53:17.600 --> 01:53:20.319 onto the most obvious solution that the men who weren't working, 1960 01:53:20.560 --> 01:53:23.399 the white men, weren't working because of the men who 1961 01:53:23.439 --> 01:53:27.159 were working, the Chinese men. This is certainly possible. I 1962 01:53:27.319 --> 01:53:32.600 can't pretend it's not. But Dennis Kearney was anything but stupid. 1963 01:53:33.000 --> 01:53:35.840 He may have been uneducated, he was very uneducated, but 1964 01:53:35.960 --> 01:53:38.880 he wasn't stupid. He knew how to read a room. 1965 01:53:39.119 --> 01:53:42.680 As we saw earlier. I mean, he understood what comedians 1966 01:53:42.720 --> 01:53:44.960 today called crowd work, in some ways the most fun 1967 01:53:45.000 --> 01:53:48.079 part of a stand up comedy show. But he understood 1968 01:53:48.159 --> 01:53:50.840 crowd work far better than most public speakers of his day. 1969 01:53:50.880 --> 01:53:52.640 I don't even know how many public speakers of his 1970 01:53:52.680 --> 01:53:57.039 day understood that concept. Kearney had basically developed a routine. 1971 01:53:57.079 --> 01:54:00.239 Like I've been saying, he developed a character. What else 1972 01:54:00.239 --> 01:54:02.880 do you think he's doing when he strips off the 1973 01:54:03.000 --> 01:54:06.439 more formal coat and rolls up his shirt sleeves, If not, 1974 01:54:06.680 --> 01:54:09.960 you know, making himself more similar in appearance, at least 1975 01:54:10.000 --> 01:54:12.760 to the men he's addressing. What else do you think 1976 01:54:12.800 --> 01:54:16.079 he's doing when he's issuing calls and responses, you know, 1977 01:54:16.239 --> 01:54:19.079 encouraging the crowd to get involved with his performance. He 1978 01:54:19.119 --> 01:54:22.279 would even make direct claims of his own humility and 1979 01:54:22.680 --> 01:54:26.279 humble status. He'd make extra effort to distance himself from 1980 01:54:26.359 --> 01:54:30.760 the elites he that claimed they spoke for the working man. 1981 01:54:31.000 --> 01:54:34.479 In his speech at Fanowell Hall in Boston, he proclaimed, 1982 01:54:34.560 --> 01:54:38.479 quote my fellow countrymen, as the humble representative of the 1983 01:54:38.560 --> 01:54:42.239 humble classes, the poor working classes. I appear before you 1984 01:54:42.279 --> 01:54:45.720 tonight with no flowery phrases with which to garnish my speech, 1985 01:54:46.000 --> 01:54:49.279 no classical language with which to fool my hearers. The 1986 01:54:49.319 --> 01:54:52.279 English language, I believe, contains in the neighborhood of sixty 1987 01:54:52.359 --> 01:54:54.960 thousand words. I am in possession of a few hundred 1988 01:54:55.000 --> 01:54:57.399 of those words, and I use them. This is a 1989 01:54:57.439 --> 01:54:59.960 free country, and the people clamor for the liberty of speed, 1990 01:55:00.640 --> 01:55:03.199 I use my clamor for the liberty of speech. I 1991 01:55:03.319 --> 01:55:07.039 use my humble, plain unvarnished words to extol virtue and 1992 01:55:07.119 --> 01:55:11.600 condemn robbery unquote. All of these words, these quote unquote 1993 01:55:11.680 --> 01:55:15.279 humble words of his, were interspersed with moments of uproarious 1994 01:55:15.319 --> 01:55:18.800 clapping and applause from the crowd of thousands at this 1995 01:55:18.840 --> 01:55:23.000 particular speech watching him speak, and it's not surprising given 1996 01:55:23.079 --> 01:55:25.840 what he's saying. What he's saying here is that he's 1997 01:55:25.880 --> 01:55:29.159 not like these other speakers, these elites with their stiff, 1998 01:55:29.199 --> 01:55:33.159 rehearsed phrases about coming together when all they want to 1999 01:55:33.199 --> 01:55:36.479 do is keep us apart. Really, he's speaking quote unquote 2000 01:55:36.479 --> 01:55:39.199 plainly and has no desire to talk down to these folk, 2001 01:55:39.239 --> 01:55:42.119 because he actually cares about them and knows they're smarter 2002 01:55:42.159 --> 01:55:44.720 than the elites think they are. Yet another thing that 2003 01:55:44.800 --> 01:55:49.279 sounds familiar, wouldn't you say? Now, someone this aware of 2004 01:55:49.319 --> 01:55:52.600 his own performance and of his own words is not 2005 01:55:52.720 --> 01:55:55.800 a simple bigot looking for someone to blame all of 2006 01:55:55.840 --> 01:55:58.720 his problems on. Sure, he might have had a legitimate 2007 01:55:58.760 --> 01:56:00.720 chip on his shoulder. He might have had actually hated 2008 01:56:00.720 --> 01:56:04.159 the Chinese. But no one makes such an abrupt ideological 2009 01:56:04.239 --> 01:56:08.439 about face unless they realize, as Kearney very obviously did, 2010 01:56:08.840 --> 01:56:11.960 that his harangues about lazy workers and well deserving immigrants 2011 01:56:12.000 --> 01:56:15.079 weren't getting through to anybody at this debate club, at 2012 01:56:15.079 --> 01:56:18.159 the Lyceum for Self Culture, or in the unions, or 2013 01:56:18.159 --> 01:56:22.159 to really anyone at all. He needed to change tactics, 2014 01:56:22.159 --> 01:56:24.640 and he knew that, and that's exactly what he did. 2015 01:56:24.920 --> 01:56:27.760 And wouldn't you know it, shortly after this change of 2016 01:56:27.840 --> 01:56:31.119 tax who started becoming a household name, not just in 2017 01:56:31.159 --> 01:56:34.039 those sandlots in San Francisco, but in California itself and 2018 01:56:34.039 --> 01:56:38.920 then even the entire West Coast. Yeah, Dennis Kearney. Again, 2019 01:56:39.399 --> 01:56:42.960 this is not historical. Twenty twenty hindsight goggles. Henry George 2020 01:56:43.039 --> 01:56:47.079 understood Kearney's skill and appeal all too well in this 2021 01:56:47.319 --> 01:56:50.039 flowery conclusion of the piece that he wrote about the 2022 01:56:50.039 --> 01:56:54.239 guy quote. Whatever be his future career, Kearney has already 2023 01:56:54.319 --> 01:56:57.720 made what will be regarded by thousands and thousands of men, 2024 01:56:57.920 --> 01:57:00.640 many of them have much greater abilities as a dazzling, 2025 01:57:00.760 --> 01:57:05.159 brilliant success. An unknown dray man, destitute of advantages, without 2026 01:57:05.199 --> 01:57:08.840 following or influence, he has simply by appealing to popular 2027 01:57:08.880 --> 01:57:13.279 discontent and arousing the uneasy timidity with which is its correlative, 2028 01:57:13.640 --> 01:57:16.479 risen to the rank of a great leader, and drunk 2029 01:57:16.520 --> 01:57:19.279 the suites of power and fame. He knows what it 2030 01:57:19.319 --> 01:57:21.960 is to be the hero and the master of surging multitudes, 2031 01:57:22.159 --> 01:57:24.800 To draw forth their applause by a word, to hush 2032 01:57:24.840 --> 01:57:27.119 them into silence with a wave of his hand, to 2033 01:57:27.159 --> 01:57:30.239 be garlanded with flowers, to be drawn in triumph through 2034 01:57:30.279 --> 01:57:32.960 the crowded streets, to be attended wherever he went by 2035 01:57:33.000 --> 01:57:37.199 a retinue of reporters and correspondents. To rise every morning 2036 01:57:37.239 --> 01:57:39.800 to find the newspapers filled with him. To have men 2037 01:57:40.079 --> 01:57:41.920 who would not have noticed him if he had stuck 2038 01:57:41.960 --> 01:57:44.359 to his dray, slink by night to his house, or 2039 01:57:44.439 --> 01:57:47.800 solicit his favors by go betweens. To look upon high 2040 01:57:47.840 --> 01:57:50.840 officials as the creatures of his making. To be known 2041 01:57:50.920 --> 01:57:53.760 and talked about, not merely through the whole country, but 2042 01:57:53.840 --> 01:57:57.039 over the world. Whatever becomes of Kearney, and it would 2043 01:57:57.079 --> 01:57:59.119 be rash to predict that his career is yet over. 2044 01:57:59.439 --> 01:58:03.199 This lesson will not be lost. The wave rises, curls, 2045 01:58:03.319 --> 01:58:07.359 and subsides, and where was its white crest? Are but 2046 01:58:07.520 --> 01:58:11.520 some spumes of foam. But the impulse is perpetuated, and 2047 01:58:11.600 --> 01:58:21.439 another wave swells up. A good demagogue, indeed, and also 2048 01:58:21.840 --> 01:58:25.159 like any good demagogue hungry for power and influence, whose 2049 01:58:25.560 --> 01:58:30.000 impulse is perpetuated in another wave is swelling up, Kiarni 2050 01:58:30.039 --> 01:58:33.399 would not be content keeping this household name confined to 2051 01:58:33.439 --> 01:58:36.000 one region, the shores of the Pacific. In this case, 2052 01:58:36.039 --> 01:58:39.439 he needed to expand his brand. This is why in 2053 01:58:39.520 --> 01:58:42.039 July of eighteen seventy eight, Kearney took his show on 2054 01:58:42.079 --> 01:58:44.479 the road and landed first in Boston, where a lot 2055 01:58:44.479 --> 01:58:46.680 of the choice quotes of his that we've gone through 2056 01:58:46.840 --> 01:58:50.079 earlier in our story came from when he got to Boston. 2057 01:58:50.119 --> 01:58:51.920 When he got to the East Coast, he wasn't welcomed 2058 01:58:51.920 --> 01:58:55.000 by everybody, including all of the working men that he addressed. 2059 01:58:55.239 --> 01:58:57.800 A lot of them actually held very little sympathy for 2060 01:58:57.880 --> 01:59:01.640 his anti Chinese message, since, as historian Andrew Goory, who 2061 01:59:01.640 --> 01:59:04.159 had been quoting Astuteley and frequently points out in his 2062 01:59:04.239 --> 01:59:07.319 book Closing the Gate when talking about Kearney's tour out east, 2063 01:59:07.880 --> 01:59:10.640 East Coast laborers and most laborers and union members in 2064 01:59:10.680 --> 01:59:15.079 general were actually opposed to contract immigration rather than immigration 2065 01:59:15.159 --> 01:59:17.239 in general. They were opposed to the Cooley trade that 2066 01:59:17.279 --> 01:59:20.000 we talked about a little while ago. Now, this would 2067 01:59:20.119 --> 01:59:24.039 change over time as times remained hard and got harder 2068 01:59:24.079 --> 01:59:27.119 in some cases, but this distinction between contract labor and 2069 01:59:27.119 --> 01:59:29.680 immigrant labor was something that gave a lot of the 2070 01:59:29.720 --> 01:59:34.239 smaller populist movements out east more moral integrity and nuance 2071 01:59:34.319 --> 01:59:39.199 in their West Coast counterparts. However, I do think that 2072 01:59:39.319 --> 01:59:44.039 Gory misses a crucial point in probing the big why 2073 01:59:44.680 --> 01:59:48.319 of these East Coast laborers being more tolerant despite frequently 2074 01:59:48.359 --> 01:59:53.319 referencing this fact. However, I do think Goory misses a 2075 01:59:53.439 --> 01:59:57.840 very crucial point in probing the sort of big why 2076 01:59:57.960 --> 02:00:01.479 of these East Coast laborers being more tolerant. Despite frequently 2077 02:00:01.479 --> 02:00:06.000 referencing this fact, There were hardly any Chinese laborers east 2078 02:00:06.079 --> 02:00:08.359 of the Rockies during the eighteen seventies and even into 2079 02:00:08.399 --> 02:00:11.039 the eighteen eighties. I mean I mentioned this before. I 2080 02:00:11.039 --> 02:00:13.680 mean it's not even just Chinese laborers. Chinese people in 2081 02:00:13.760 --> 02:00:18.199 general were basically an alien race from another planet. East 2082 02:00:18.199 --> 02:00:21.000 of the Rockies, people knew what they were in the 2083 02:00:21.000 --> 02:00:25.279 most general sense. But again, most people east of the 2084 02:00:25.359 --> 02:00:29.079 Rockies had never even seen a Chinese person period. In fact, 2085 02:00:29.319 --> 02:00:32.520 over ninety nine percent of all Chinese immigrants in the 2086 02:00:32.640 --> 02:00:35.920 United States were on the West Coast. I'm not making excuses, 2087 02:00:35.920 --> 02:00:39.680 by the way, for the abject bigotry of Californians and 2088 02:00:39.800 --> 02:00:42.039 other West Coast populis, but we do have to be 2089 02:00:42.079 --> 02:00:44.600 real here. For a second, the East Coast populace and 2090 02:00:44.680 --> 02:00:48.239 laborers had no incentive to blame their woes on the 2091 02:00:48.319 --> 02:00:51.720 Chinese people coming to America. They were often being threatened 2092 02:00:51.720 --> 02:00:53.920 by their employers that they would be replaced with cheap, 2093 02:00:53.960 --> 02:00:57.560 cooly labor, for sure, but there were very few cheap coolies, 2094 02:00:57.600 --> 02:00:59.880 so it was just easier for them to see straight 2095 02:01:00.159 --> 02:01:03.760 and understand that the real villain in these circumstances was 2096 02:01:03.760 --> 02:01:05.760 indeed the owner of the company trying to screw them 2097 02:01:05.760 --> 02:01:09.239 out of decent pay. So, in other words, the inherent 2098 02:01:09.359 --> 02:01:12.680 vulnerability of an aggrieved laboring class of populace to cheap 2099 02:01:12.760 --> 02:01:16.199 appeals of natism and racism was less inherent with the 2100 02:01:16.199 --> 02:01:18.880 East Coasters because they just simply had no group to 2101 02:01:19.479 --> 02:01:22.800 easily other eyes like their West Coast cousins did so, 2102 02:01:22.880 --> 02:01:25.720 like I was saying, the concept of cheap Chinese labor 2103 02:01:25.880 --> 02:01:28.920 was essentially as alien as the Chinese were themselves to 2104 02:01:28.960 --> 02:01:32.960 the East Coast Americans. So while Kearney initially drew crowds 2105 02:01:33.000 --> 02:01:36.840 supportive of his racist invective during his East Coast tour, 2106 02:01:37.199 --> 02:01:39.880 this wasn't to say that he or his racist rhetoric 2107 02:01:40.000 --> 02:01:43.279 was largely embraced by the organized working class. And it 2108 02:01:43.399 --> 02:01:46.920 wasn't just the inability for the working class out east 2109 02:01:46.960 --> 02:01:50.960 to sympathize with his rhetoric's racist overtones. It was actually 2110 02:01:51.039 --> 02:01:53.800 the lack of precision in his goals that they found 2111 02:01:53.800 --> 02:01:57.359 most frustrating. He kept his rhetoric pretty vague throughout his tour, 2112 02:01:57.399 --> 02:02:00.520 occasionally shouting about quote taking the life of any man 2113 02:02:00.520 --> 02:02:03.520 who attempts to debar the voters from exercising their right 2114 02:02:03.560 --> 02:02:08.279 of suffrage and quote hunting down and shooting unquote and 2115 02:02:08.399 --> 02:02:11.039 he elected official who went back on its promises. All 2116 02:02:11.880 --> 02:02:14.760 very clear and obvious ways at playing into the political 2117 02:02:14.840 --> 02:02:18.079 corruption ingredient of the populace backlash, by the way, but 2118 02:02:18.239 --> 02:02:23.039 he very rarely offered specific policy prescriptions. It was all 2119 02:02:23.079 --> 02:02:26.560 about ensuring the victory of the working Man's Party in 2120 02:02:26.600 --> 02:02:29.279 the upcoming eighteen seventy eight elections. Or, as he would 2121 02:02:29.319 --> 02:02:32.279 put it, quote, put all of your issues into one pot, 2122 02:02:32.479 --> 02:02:34.760 screw a cover on it, and tie it so tightly 2123 02:02:34.800 --> 02:02:36.880 that nobody could lift it until you elect working men 2124 02:02:36.920 --> 02:02:42.399 to office. Unquote. Pretty familiar, vague stuff, right, And while 2125 02:02:42.439 --> 02:02:47.000 he was indeed ostensibly speaking for them, labor leaders out 2126 02:02:47.000 --> 02:02:51.640 east started asking questions. Historian Andrew Gyori again. He describes 2127 02:02:51.680 --> 02:02:55.800 a scene between Kearney and labor leaders in the following quote. 2128 02:02:56.119 --> 02:02:59.520 Precisely what issues Kearney wanted workers to pool he never 2129 02:02:59.560 --> 02:03:02.520 spelled out. In Cincinnati, labor leaders asked what he meant 2130 02:03:02.520 --> 02:03:05.640 by the slogan Yury quotes from various eight August eighteen 2131 02:03:05.640 --> 02:03:08.319 seventy eight issues of newspapers. Here, knock the first man 2132 02:03:08.359 --> 02:03:11.039 down who disagrees with you. He told them, capture the state. 2133 02:03:11.479 --> 02:03:14.199 But asked one of the labor leaders, suppose you were 2134 02:03:14.239 --> 02:03:18.960 asked some plan or reason for pooling issues. Damn such conundrums, 2135 02:03:19.039 --> 02:03:22.960 Kearney retorted, the people are starving. Ain't that enough? For many? 2136 02:03:23.119 --> 02:03:26.279 It was not in God's name. When newspaper pleaded give 2137 02:03:26.359 --> 02:03:31.119 us some ideas, propose something, but Kearney refused, offering neither 2138 02:03:31.159 --> 02:03:38.239 programs nor solutions unquote. This is yet another very important 2139 02:03:38.239 --> 02:03:42.000 mark of a demagogue, appeals to emotion, singling out the 2140 02:03:42.119 --> 02:03:46.680 enemy and proposing very little specifically at least except victory, 2141 02:03:46.920 --> 02:03:49.800 a general sense of victory for the cause. This is 2142 02:03:49.880 --> 02:03:53.680 why the closest thing to a policy prescription that Kearney 2143 02:03:53.680 --> 02:03:56.079 had while on his East Coast tour was ensuring the 2144 02:03:56.079 --> 02:03:59.520 election of Representative Benjamin F. Butler in the gubernatorial race 2145 02:03:59.520 --> 02:04:01.840 for message who sits in the eighteen seventy eight election 2146 02:04:02.520 --> 02:04:05.000 under the Greenbacker banner. Though one of the many third 2147 02:04:05.039 --> 02:04:08.000 parties of the era, Kearney would continually endorse the quote 2148 02:04:08.039 --> 02:04:11.920 unquote chivalrous Butler in his speeches because his game, his 2149 02:04:12.119 --> 02:04:15.079 ultimate goal in all this this is important, was very simple. 2150 02:04:15.760 --> 02:04:19.520 Kearney wanted to establish a power base for himself through 2151 02:04:19.560 --> 02:04:22.680 Butler and what Andrew Giory calls quote an alliance among 2152 02:04:22.720 --> 02:04:27.479 workers and Greenbackers. With Butler and himself at the helm unquote. 2153 02:04:28.479 --> 02:04:30.800 This part of our story is pretty fun because during 2154 02:04:30.840 --> 02:04:34.159 his East Coast adventures, Kearney was even less welcomed by 2155 02:04:34.159 --> 02:04:36.560 most of the press at the time. And this is where, 2156 02:04:36.600 --> 02:04:38.399 and this is why it's fun. This is where, in 2157 02:04:38.439 --> 02:04:41.680 my view, the parallels between Dennis Kearney and Donald Trump, 2158 02:04:41.800 --> 02:04:45.880 and really any parallels between any populist, ostensible populist and 2159 02:04:45.920 --> 02:04:48.760 another come into laser sharp focus. For most people I've 2160 02:04:48.760 --> 02:04:52.640 talked to about this man and what I've admittedly like 2161 02:04:52.680 --> 02:04:54.800 I was saying, this is fun. I've been the most 2162 02:04:54.800 --> 02:04:59.159 excited to play with this stuff. So, like both president 2163 02:04:59.239 --> 02:05:03.560 and candidate t Dennis Kearney had nothing but the most 2164 02:05:03.960 --> 02:05:07.239 poisonous contempt for the press, both in his rhetoric and 2165 02:05:07.359 --> 02:05:09.520 in his heart. I think this is actually something he 2166 02:05:09.560 --> 02:05:13.760 did believe. The level of integrity possessed by the press, 2167 02:05:13.800 --> 02:05:16.840 both in the eighteen seventies and in the twenty tens, incidentally, 2168 02:05:17.479 --> 02:05:19.840 can certainly be debated, and I do have my own 2169 02:05:19.880 --> 02:05:23.439 personal hot takes on all that, but that's a different 2170 02:05:23.479 --> 02:05:26.920 story for a different day and probably a different podcast. 2171 02:05:27.359 --> 02:05:31.239 The point is that Kearney's and usually most populous contempt 2172 02:05:31.279 --> 02:05:34.079 for the press was shared by them in kind, since 2173 02:05:34.520 --> 02:05:37.199 he was locked in what felt like a perpetual war 2174 02:05:37.279 --> 02:05:40.279 of words with them during the entirety of his East 2175 02:05:40.319 --> 02:05:45.520 Coast tour. For all of the current US president's contemptuous 2176 02:05:45.560 --> 02:05:50.039 comments about the press being fake news or being unfairly 2177 02:05:50.079 --> 02:05:54.680 treated by partisan pundits, after reading about Dennis Kearney's relationship 2178 02:05:54.720 --> 02:05:57.960 with the press, specifically the East Coast press, I think 2179 02:05:58.039 --> 02:06:00.920 that not only did his invective ten to leave President 2180 02:06:00.960 --> 02:06:04.199 Trump's miles in the dust, but I think he basically 2181 02:06:04.279 --> 02:06:07.560 laid the groundwork for how demagogus would talk about the 2182 02:06:07.640 --> 02:06:09.279 press for the next century and a half in the 2183 02:06:09.359 --> 02:06:12.439 United States. Donald Trump has probably never heard of Dennis Kearney, 2184 02:06:12.479 --> 02:06:15.359 but you'd be forgiven for not thinking for a second 2185 02:06:15.399 --> 02:06:17.960 that he might have somehow gotten a hold of some 2186 02:06:18.079 --> 02:06:21.159 of the quotes that we're about to get into here 2187 02:06:21.199 --> 02:06:24.560 and then maybe crafted his own more modern versions of them, 2188 02:06:25.520 --> 02:06:28.199 Because without missing a beat during his first speech in 2189 02:06:28.319 --> 02:06:31.399 Boston from which we quoted earlier, Kearney started going out 2190 02:06:31.479 --> 02:06:34.199 of his way to mock and smear the press when 2191 02:06:34.239 --> 02:06:37.640 he said the following quote, First and foremost, I will 2192 02:06:37.640 --> 02:06:40.720 pay my respects to the newspapers. The newspapers from the 2193 02:06:40.760 --> 02:06:43.760 earliest history of printing have been running the interest, take 2194 02:06:43.800 --> 02:06:47.520 it down, reporters of cutthroats, political bilks, daylight thieves, and 2195 02:06:47.600 --> 02:06:51.199 midnight assassins. A newspaper is an enterprise like all other 2196 02:06:51.279 --> 02:06:54.800 business enterprises. For the villainous serpent like slimy imps of 2197 02:06:54.880 --> 02:06:59.520 hell that run these newspapers, I have the utmost contempt unquote. 2198 02:07:00.399 --> 02:07:02.960 He did make in that speech an olive branch distinction 2199 02:07:03.039 --> 02:07:07.279 of sorts, but between reporters and the owners of the newspapers. 2200 02:07:07.319 --> 02:07:10.079 But this was a case like it's often said in 2201 02:07:10.119 --> 02:07:13.319 the Game of Thrones books, his words were wind. In 2202 02:07:13.359 --> 02:07:17.960 the same speech he called the Associated Press quote a villainous, thieving, 2203 02:07:18.039 --> 02:07:22.560 infamous band of scallowags that aim to control public opinion unquote, 2204 02:07:22.600 --> 02:07:26.479 and in another he called them a quote unquote old prostitute. 2205 02:07:27.399 --> 02:07:30.600 In another speech, when he mentioned the Boston Herald, a 2206 02:07:30.640 --> 02:07:34.359 paper critical of him, the crowd started hissing, responding in kind, 2207 02:07:34.439 --> 02:07:37.920 Kearney then shouted, quote, I now proposed three groans for 2208 02:07:38.000 --> 02:07:41.520 that slimy sheet unquote, which was followed by three loud 2209 02:07:41.520 --> 02:07:44.800 groans from the crowd. And in a speech in Cincinnati, 2210 02:07:44.920 --> 02:07:47.239 he actually took a few moments to browbeat the quote 2211 02:07:47.680 --> 02:07:52.359 line venial venereal press of the United States unquote. But 2212 02:07:52.920 --> 02:07:55.039 and this is actually a little less funny because, in 2213 02:07:55.079 --> 02:07:57.800 perhaps one of the most symbolic moments of the whole tour, 2214 02:07:58.119 --> 02:07:59.680 while he was in New York City, he held up 2215 02:07:59.680 --> 02:08:02.000 a cop of the New York Tribune. He called its 2216 02:08:02.119 --> 02:08:05.319 editor quote the organ of the plunderers unquote, and then 2217 02:08:05.359 --> 02:08:08.199 he tore the paper to pieces. This is where it's 2218 02:08:08.239 --> 02:08:13.920 less funny, because the entire crowd erupted into cheers. The 2219 02:08:13.960 --> 02:08:17.840 press did indeed respond in kind, with some pretty choice descriptions, 2220 02:08:17.840 --> 02:08:20.439 including the New York Times calling him quote an eminent 2221 02:08:20.640 --> 02:08:25.000 blatherskite unquote, and the Chicago Times referring to him as 2222 02:08:25.039 --> 02:08:30.479 a quote flatulent little brat unquote. The Boston Transcript said, quote, 2223 02:08:30.800 --> 02:08:33.640 he is simply a blatant booby with a profane and 2224 02:08:33.680 --> 02:08:38.600 bullying rigamarole of epithets unquote, while the Philadelphia Inquirer said 2225 02:08:38.720 --> 02:08:42.640 that quote Kearney's only talent is the billionsgate fishwife's talent 2226 02:08:42.720 --> 02:08:45.640 for vituperation, and his head is as empty of ideas 2227 02:08:45.640 --> 02:08:49.039 as his mouth is full of oaths and rivalry. Unquote, 2228 02:08:49.960 --> 02:08:52.920 and the nation which we now ironically in this case 2229 02:08:52.920 --> 02:08:57.199 associate with more left leaning, supposedly anti racist branded politicking, 2230 02:08:57.720 --> 02:09:01.079 actually went for the racially charged at hominem jugular by 2231 02:09:01.119 --> 02:09:04.760 saying that he looked like quote a naked bushman unquote 2232 02:09:05.119 --> 02:09:07.880 end quote, the lowest type of demagogue that has yet 2233 02:09:07.880 --> 02:09:12.520 appeared in history unquote. But I do think my favorite 2234 02:09:12.560 --> 02:09:15.840 insult throwing Kearney's way during this time actually came from 2235 02:09:15.840 --> 02:09:18.319 a guy who will come into play toward the end 2236 02:09:18.359 --> 02:09:20.399 of our story, and not necessarily in the way you 2237 02:09:20.479 --> 02:09:23.640 might think given what he says here, Senator James G. 2238 02:09:23.840 --> 02:09:27.760 Blaine from Maine, when he called Kearney quote an unduly 2239 02:09:27.800 --> 02:09:34.239 inflated sack of very bad gas unquote. Now I won't 2240 02:09:34.279 --> 02:09:38.079 pretend that I understand every term throwing Keiarney's way by 2241 02:09:38.079 --> 02:09:40.600 the press. I'm not even sure Google knows what a 2242 02:09:40.640 --> 02:09:45.840 blatherskite is, and I've never met a Billionsgate fishwife. But 2243 02:09:46.359 --> 02:09:48.760 I think the parallels between the New York Times coverage 2244 02:09:48.760 --> 02:09:52.479 of Dennis Kearney and Donald Trump hasn't changed much in 2245 02:09:52.520 --> 02:09:56.319 the intervening century and a half. But there's something more 2246 02:09:56.359 --> 02:10:00.399 striking here that Andrew Gyory, in a very important reading 2247 02:10:00.439 --> 02:10:03.000 of this story, says of the New York Tribune's coverage 2248 02:10:03.000 --> 02:10:06.920 of Kearney that, quote, although they lavish column after column 2249 02:10:06.960 --> 02:10:10.239 on his tour, it called him a quote particularly stupid 2250 02:10:10.279 --> 02:10:14.840 and uninteresting creature unquote, who appealed only quote to those 2251 02:10:14.880 --> 02:10:21.520 who like profanity, indecency, and coarse, vulgar and savage brutishness unquote. 2252 02:10:22.119 --> 02:10:25.479 Not only are the Trump Kearney parallels obvious when looking 2253 02:10:25.479 --> 02:10:27.239 at how the Tribune was going out of their way 2254 02:10:27.279 --> 02:10:32.239 to insult Kearney's supporters and fans in some pretty base 2255 02:10:32.439 --> 02:10:35.039 terms as a means of retaliating against him for all 2256 02:10:35.079 --> 02:10:38.399 the awful things he was saying about them, but the 2257 02:10:38.479 --> 02:10:42.039 parallels are also pretty obvious when you consider the symbiotic 2258 02:10:42.399 --> 02:10:45.840 relationship between the press and the demagogue. How nothing in 2259 02:10:45.880 --> 02:10:51.800 that respect changes. Jory also notes that the mainstream media's 2260 02:10:51.800 --> 02:10:54.720 attacks on Kearney were actually motivated by a desire to 2261 02:10:54.720 --> 02:10:58.079 skewer the labor movement. Whether or not Kearney really was 2262 02:10:58.119 --> 02:11:00.159 a man of the people was irrelevant to them. He 2263 02:11:00.239 --> 02:11:03.359 claimed that he spoke for workingmen. Crowds of thousands showed 2264 02:11:03.399 --> 02:11:05.800 up to cheer for him. If so, facto, the working 2265 02:11:05.920 --> 02:11:09.520 man was at fault for this man's popularity. As we've 2266 02:11:09.560 --> 02:11:11.640 covered with a lot of things in this story, and 2267 02:11:11.760 --> 02:11:15.840 specifically with labor movement, it wasn't quite so simple, but 2268 02:11:16.199 --> 02:11:19.560 it never is with a demagogue. As it turns out, 2269 02:11:19.640 --> 02:11:22.439 Kearney's audiences during his East Coast tour were in the 2270 02:11:22.479 --> 02:11:26.840 class sense, pretty diverse. Some publications indicated that the crowds 2271 02:11:26.840 --> 02:11:29.279 who appeared to see Kearney were part of the quote 2272 02:11:29.319 --> 02:11:32.760 unquote best known citizens of their respective cities, and that 2273 02:11:32.880 --> 02:11:36.079 quote judging from their dress and appearance, was composed of 2274 02:11:36.159 --> 02:11:40.800 business or professional men unquote. Yori makes some very nuanced 2275 02:11:40.800 --> 02:11:43.720 observations about Kearney's success as a speaker on his East 2276 02:11:43.720 --> 02:11:46.000 Coast tour, and I want to get into them here 2277 02:11:46.039 --> 02:11:49.239 because he explains that, based on the volumes of testimony 2278 02:11:49.520 --> 02:11:52.359 and varied opinions given at the time, most of what 2279 02:11:52.479 --> 02:11:55.319 drove Keierney's popularity on the East Coast was sort of 2280 02:11:55.319 --> 02:11:59.199 a nice combo of boredom, curiosity, and the drive to 2281 02:11:59.199 --> 02:12:01.680 seek novel enters. Taman, It's why we browse YouTube for 2282 02:12:01.720 --> 02:12:03.920 hours on end and suddenly it's four in the morning. 2283 02:12:04.600 --> 02:12:08.439 As Gjory says, quote, theater and concert halls could hardly 2284 02:12:08.439 --> 02:12:12.239 compete with the excitement of a compelling, never before seen speaker. Quote. 2285 02:12:12.800 --> 02:12:15.000 Jory then goes on to quote the Boston transcript who 2286 02:12:15.000 --> 02:12:18.640 wrote of Kearney, quote, he was a circus and clown combined, 2287 02:12:19.000 --> 02:12:21.680 and the attraction proved great enough to hold the spectators 2288 02:12:21.720 --> 02:12:26.840 pretty well together. Unquote, despite the fact that many people 2289 02:12:26.920 --> 02:12:29.840 saw and in some cases still see President Trump as 2290 02:12:29.840 --> 02:12:33.239 a circus and clown combined, to quote the Boston transcript. 2291 02:12:33.239 --> 02:12:37.000 There again, this is also where you could say where 2292 02:12:37.000 --> 02:12:38.560 we kind of come to a small hiccup in our 2293 02:12:38.600 --> 02:12:42.640 comparison between Donald Trump and Dennis Kearney. This treatment of 2294 02:12:42.720 --> 02:12:46.840 Kearney as essentially a side show by the public didn't 2295 02:12:46.880 --> 02:12:49.840 result in an overwhelming victory of his cause, unlike the 2296 02:12:49.920 --> 02:12:53.720 victory Trump scored in twenty sixteen. While the Kearney endorsed 2297 02:12:53.720 --> 02:12:56.279 Benjamin F. Butler, who we were talking about a moment ago, 2298 02:12:56.479 --> 02:12:59.079 he did capture a strikingly high number of votes for 2299 02:12:59.079 --> 02:13:01.560 a third party in the eighteen seventy eight election. It 2300 02:13:01.600 --> 02:13:04.039 was a one hundred and nine thousand or so compared 2301 02:13:04.079 --> 02:13:06.600 to the Republican victors one hundred and thirty five thousand, 2302 02:13:06.880 --> 02:13:11.000 So that's not bad for a third party, but Butler 2303 02:13:11.119 --> 02:13:13.880 still lost, and this left Kearney without a sort of 2304 02:13:13.880 --> 02:13:17.399 official power broker on the East Coast. Not that this 2305 02:13:17.520 --> 02:13:19.840 mattered anyway, though, since he was starting to be seen 2306 02:13:19.880 --> 02:13:22.920 as a toxic element by both his political supporters and 2307 02:13:23.079 --> 02:13:26.560 even his crowds, not to mention just sort of starting 2308 02:13:26.560 --> 02:13:29.880 to be seen as tiresome and predictable. And while many 2309 02:13:29.880 --> 02:13:33.800 of his political allies simply started quietly turning their backs 2310 02:13:33.800 --> 02:13:37.319 on him, the crowds were much more obvious in their 2311 02:13:37.359 --> 02:13:40.720 dismissal of him. They were bored, They were simply bored, 2312 02:13:40.800 --> 02:13:44.000 and they wanted something new. This is because the crowd 2313 02:13:44.039 --> 02:13:48.399 participation at Kearney's rallies had been gradually turning less into 2314 02:13:48.520 --> 02:13:52.840 enthusiastic support and more into a back and forth heckel 2315 02:13:52.920 --> 02:13:55.720 fest between him and his onlookers, which had in turn 2316 02:13:56.159 --> 02:13:59.239 started to become a simple source of entertainment for many 2317 02:13:59.479 --> 02:14:01.680 in the crowd, who were looking for a laugh at 2318 02:14:01.720 --> 02:14:03.920 this point more than they were for a source of 2319 02:14:04.159 --> 02:14:09.319 validation for social grievances related to unemployment and whatnot. Again, remember, 2320 02:14:09.359 --> 02:14:12.119 they didn't really care about Chinese immigration on the East Coast. 2321 02:14:12.159 --> 02:14:13.760 So he wasn't going to really be able to whip 2322 02:14:13.800 --> 02:14:16.760 them up into a frenzy with that, So really it 2323 02:14:16.800 --> 02:14:18.960 was just a sort of source of entertainment for them, 2324 02:14:19.000 --> 02:14:22.680 of live of free live entertainment, because he didn't charge 2325 02:14:22.680 --> 02:14:25.199 for these speeches. He actually did pass a hat around 2326 02:14:25.239 --> 02:14:27.800 for people to give donations, like a suggested donation kind 2327 02:14:27.840 --> 02:14:29.640 of thing like that you see at a community theater. 2328 02:14:30.119 --> 02:14:32.359 But in the end, these were free events. It was 2329 02:14:32.399 --> 02:14:36.840 free entertainment for a very bored populace. So this populace 2330 02:14:36.920 --> 02:14:40.640 they would cheer every time Kierney would let loose a 2331 02:14:40.680 --> 02:14:43.439 swear at the time, like a hell or a thief 2332 02:14:43.880 --> 02:14:48.279 or a bondholder, very like like strong terms. And they 2333 02:14:48.319 --> 02:14:50.720 really love these terms though, because they kind of become 2334 02:14:50.760 --> 02:14:53.039 part of his routine. They were catchphrases. It's kind of 2335 02:14:53.079 --> 02:14:55.720 like if you listen to those old stand up specials 2336 02:14:55.760 --> 02:14:59.239 of Andrew dice Clay, you'll actually hear the people who 2337 02:14:59.279 --> 02:15:02.520 really love his material shouting out the punchlines for him. 2338 02:15:03.039 --> 02:15:05.439 Like it's just it's not common in stand up comedy, 2339 02:15:05.439 --> 02:15:07.640 but it's definitely something that happens when you get to 2340 02:15:07.640 --> 02:15:11.039 a certain level of success. There was actually even but 2341 02:15:11.199 --> 02:15:13.000 in the case of Kearney, there was actually even an 2342 02:15:13.000 --> 02:15:16.199 account from the Boston transcript again that at the end 2343 02:15:16.279 --> 02:15:19.640 of one of his Boston speeches quote, the laughter began 2344 02:15:19.720 --> 02:15:23.119 to predominate over the applause, and people listened and thought 2345 02:15:23.119 --> 02:15:26.039 it fun, getting amusement not only out of what was said, 2346 02:15:26.319 --> 02:15:29.399 but out of the speaker's manner of saying it. Unquote. 2347 02:15:30.039 --> 02:15:32.800 No one was taking him seriously anymore, and there were 2348 02:15:32.880 --> 02:15:35.239 even cases where his speeches had to be cut short 2349 02:15:35.319 --> 02:15:39.760 due to the growing bored hostility of the crowd. This 2350 02:15:39.840 --> 02:15:44.000 perfectly illustrates the problem with laughter on its own, at 2351 02:15:44.079 --> 02:15:47.880 least as entertainment. If what's causing the laughter doesn't change 2352 02:15:47.880 --> 02:15:50.880 its tune or its routine, that laughter is going to 2353 02:15:50.920 --> 02:15:54.399 recede really fast, and eventually that will turn into boredom, 2354 02:15:54.840 --> 02:15:58.279 if not outright hostility. We actually saw this play out 2355 02:15:58.279 --> 02:16:00.960 perfectly in this classic episod of The Simpsons that you 2356 02:16:01.000 --> 02:16:04.279 might remember, where Bart becomes a sensation for causing a 2357 02:16:04.319 --> 02:16:07.199 disaster and crusty the clowns set like knocking a bunch 2358 02:16:07.239 --> 02:16:09.520 of stuff over and then simply saying I didn't do it. 2359 02:16:10.479 --> 02:16:12.720 Sure enough, the culture couldn't get enough of the eye 2360 02:16:12.760 --> 02:16:15.920 didn't do it boy, if you remember the episode, But 2361 02:16:16.079 --> 02:16:17.880 the same culture that couldn't get enough of the I 2362 02:16:17.960 --> 02:16:20.760 didn't do it boy couldn't care less after it was 2363 02:16:20.800 --> 02:16:25.720 oversaturated with his face, voice, essence, everything. So when the 2364 02:16:25.760 --> 02:16:28.439 last no longer came Bart had a door slammed in 2365 02:16:28.479 --> 02:16:31.880 his face. And this same thing essentially happened to Dennis Kearney. 2366 02:16:32.399 --> 02:16:35.760 On November seventeenth, eighteen seventy eight, he gave a farewell speech, 2367 02:16:36.360 --> 02:16:39.000 made some vague claim that he was needed by the 2368 02:16:39.040 --> 02:16:42.600 workingman back in San Francisco, and left. As The Boston 2369 02:16:42.639 --> 02:16:46.280 Globe reported, this farewell speech was I would say the 2370 02:16:46.319 --> 02:16:50.600 definition of a dud quote. During the speech, which occupied 2371 02:16:50.639 --> 02:16:54.200 about an hour, the large crowd were exceedingly quiet and 2372 02:16:54.280 --> 02:16:57.639 only a few interruptions were made. No enthusiasm was evinced, 2373 02:16:57.760 --> 02:17:01.159 and the whole speech fell flat at the clothes. The 2374 02:17:01.280 --> 02:17:08.000 large crowd quickly dispersed. Dennis Kearney's play for power and 2375 02:17:08.040 --> 02:17:11.000 influence beyond the Rockies, I think it's safe to say 2376 02:17:11.040 --> 02:17:16.639 had clearly failed. Now, wait, what I thought Dennis Kearney 2377 02:17:16.719 --> 02:17:19.200 was the original Donald Trump. That's what you're thinking, right, 2378 02:17:19.840 --> 02:17:23.600 And you're right. The difference here is very much. Indeed, 2379 02:17:23.639 --> 02:17:27.479 that where Donald Trump has succeeded, Dennis Kearney had failed. 2380 02:17:28.079 --> 02:17:31.040 On the one hand, while Donald Trump may have slightly 2381 02:17:31.079 --> 02:17:34.639 tweaked his speeches and statements and tweets, they have all 2382 02:17:34.680 --> 02:17:38.680 remained relatively one note. And while there is an element 2383 02:17:38.719 --> 02:17:43.200 of unpredictability that people associated with candidate Trump, his unpredictability 2384 02:17:43.399 --> 02:17:45.840 was actually pretty mundane and was in and of itself 2385 02:17:45.840 --> 02:17:48.559 pretty predictable, much in the same way as Dennis Kearney's 2386 02:17:48.559 --> 02:17:52.239 behavior became really predictable. And yet, on the other hand, 2387 02:17:52.639 --> 02:17:56.360 Donald Trump became the president and Dennis Kearney became a 2388 02:17:56.399 --> 02:17:59.479 walking joke to just about everybody east of the Rockies. 2389 02:17:59.479 --> 02:18:02.079 He became a punchline. So not so much of an 2390 02:18:02.120 --> 02:18:04.479 original Donald Trump, right, was this all a bunch of hype? 2391 02:18:05.280 --> 02:18:11.200 Not so fast? Like everything in our story, everything involving demagogues, 2392 02:18:11.479 --> 02:18:15.920 Nothing is quite that simple. Because remember, even though he 2393 02:18:16.120 --> 02:18:18.159 was a failure on the East Coast due to the 2394 02:18:18.159 --> 02:18:21.319 crux of his arguments, Dennis Kearney was still the voice 2395 02:18:21.319 --> 02:18:23.920 of the people out west, and he would continue to 2396 02:18:24.000 --> 02:18:28.319 deliver hundreds of speeches in support of workers and back 2397 02:18:28.360 --> 02:18:31.040 to opposing the continued immigration of the Chinese. He would 2398 02:18:31.040 --> 02:18:34.040 even be arrested for his trouble, making him kind of 2399 02:18:34.040 --> 02:18:38.000 a folk hero. But again, this was all confined to 2400 02:18:38.000 --> 02:18:40.920 the West Coast. And while it might sound silly given 2401 02:18:41.120 --> 02:18:43.600 all the mockery he'd endured that drove him home to 2402 02:18:43.639 --> 02:18:48.120 San Francisco and his subsequent confinement there, his rhetoric had 2403 02:18:48.239 --> 02:18:52.639 been and would ultimately be, far more successful and influential 2404 02:18:52.760 --> 02:18:58.079 than anyone could have possibly imagined. Andrew Giory, in summarizing 2405 02:18:58.120 --> 02:19:02.520 Kearney's impacts, says the following quote. In one crucial respect, 2406 02:19:02.719 --> 02:19:06.000 Kearney was a dazzling success. He showed that a forceful 2407 02:19:06.000 --> 02:19:08.680 speaker could stir a crowd to its feet in the 2408 02:19:08.760 --> 02:19:13.159 East by mouthing virulent, racist, anti Chinese epithets. No matter 2409 02:19:13.239 --> 02:19:16.120 that the crowd embraced many classes and segments of society, 2410 02:19:16.600 --> 02:19:20.200 No matter that people came to laugh and shout, No 2411 02:19:20.360 --> 02:19:23.639 matter that numerous workers in labor leaders had renounced Kearney 2412 02:19:23.639 --> 02:19:27.000 and his anti Chinese message to people trying to gauge 2413 02:19:27.040 --> 02:19:31.520 public opinion, the spontaneous agitation of the quote unquote rabble 2414 02:19:31.959 --> 02:19:34.319 carried more weight than all of the scattered voices from 2415 02:19:34.360 --> 02:19:37.319 the working class community that rose up in protest the 2416 02:19:37.360 --> 02:19:42.399 divergence between public opinion and perceptions of public opinion would 2417 02:19:42.440 --> 02:19:48.479 have tragic consequences in the years to come unquote. Before 2418 02:19:48.520 --> 02:19:51.920 you think this is overstating it, consider this one of 2419 02:19:51.959 --> 02:19:54.959 Dennis Kearney's stops on his East Coast tour earlier on, 2420 02:19:55.040 --> 02:19:57.360 in fact, before he was reduced to a quote unquote 2421 02:19:57.399 --> 02:19:59.399 laughing stock, as a number of sources at the time 2422 02:19:59.399 --> 02:20:03.000 put it, and probably his most important stop was with 2423 02:20:03.079 --> 02:20:06.200 none other than the President of the United States, Rutherford B. Hayes, 2424 02:20:06.959 --> 02:20:10.360 while meeting with Hayes, or a meeting between Denny and 2425 02:20:10.559 --> 02:20:12.840 Ruthy or Denny and Ruthie. I'm not sure how they 2426 02:20:12.840 --> 02:20:15.040 pronounced it. As one newspaper pudd it at the time, 2427 02:20:15.600 --> 02:20:18.440 Kearney really only spoke about one issue, which was really 2428 02:20:18.520 --> 02:20:20.799 because it was the only issue he knew anything about 2429 02:20:21.200 --> 02:20:23.600 as a West Coast populist demagogue in the eighteen seventies, 2430 02:20:23.600 --> 02:20:27.799 the issue of Chinese immigration. Hayes's response to Kearney's concerns 2431 02:20:27.799 --> 02:20:31.360 on the issue, though he said, quote, I think Congress 2432 02:20:31.360 --> 02:20:34.280 next winner will come to a definite conclusion favorable to 2433 02:20:34.360 --> 02:20:39.280 your people on this question unquote, and unlike Kearney's words 2434 02:20:39.360 --> 02:20:42.319 ninety nine percent of the time the president's words were 2435 02:20:42.360 --> 02:20:46.879 not winned. One month after Keiarney's unceremonious exodus out west, 2436 02:20:47.280 --> 02:20:50.959 the San Francisco Chronicle reported the following quote, the Chinese 2437 02:20:51.040 --> 02:20:53.840 question has of late excited a great deal more interest 2438 02:20:53.920 --> 02:20:56.239 among public men at the Capitol than it has ever 2439 02:20:56.319 --> 02:21:01.200 before been possible to arouse. Unquote. Only one month after that, 2440 02:21:01.680 --> 02:21:05.040 the tiny snowball began rolling down the hill. On January 2441 02:21:05.040 --> 02:21:08.200 twenty eighth, eighteen seventy nine, the House of Representatives passed 2442 02:21:08.200 --> 02:21:11.559 something called the fifteen Passenger Bill. This restricted the number 2443 02:21:11.639 --> 02:21:14.040 of Chinese immigrants on ships bound of the US, as 2444 02:21:14.120 --> 02:21:17.120 the name of the bill suggests, to fifteen maximum. Any 2445 02:21:17.200 --> 02:21:19.399 number over that would subject the owner of the ship 2446 02:21:19.440 --> 02:21:22.360 to one hundred dollars a head per person over the 2447 02:21:22.399 --> 02:21:27.159 fifteen limit. This act and the acts and treaties to 2448 02:21:27.200 --> 02:21:31.719 come would be justified in purely racial terms that senators 2449 02:21:31.719 --> 02:21:35.280 and congressmen would speak of as if they were foregone conclusions. 2450 02:21:36.200 --> 02:21:39.639 The Republican senator from California, Newton Booth, would say, quote, 2451 02:21:39.920 --> 02:21:43.000 the darkest passages of human history have been enacted when 2452 02:21:43.040 --> 02:21:47.840 alien races have been brought into contact unquote. Democratic Senator 2453 02:21:47.879 --> 02:21:52.440 Lafayette Grover from Oregon would say, attempting to evoke scary, 2454 02:21:52.760 --> 02:21:56.559 horrifying images that were the result of misagenation, quote, we 2455 02:21:56.639 --> 02:21:59.559 want no more mixture of races. No strong nation was 2456 02:21:59.559 --> 02:22:05.159 ever hone of mongrel races of men unquote. Oregon's Republican counterpart, 2457 02:22:05.239 --> 02:22:07.920 John H. Mitchell would describe Chinese immigration as a quote 2458 02:22:07.959 --> 02:22:11.440 unquote great anaconda while trying to give face to quote 2459 02:22:11.479 --> 02:22:15.799 the contaminating, corroding, and destructive effects of the Asiatic barbarians 2460 02:22:16.879 --> 02:22:19.959 in his home and in neighbor states out west, and 2461 02:22:20.200 --> 02:22:23.319 Republican John P. Jones of Nevada, along with many other 2462 02:22:23.360 --> 02:22:26.479 senators in Congressman over the next few years, would pretty 2463 02:22:26.520 --> 02:22:29.280 much give Kearney a run for his money in racist 2464 02:22:29.360 --> 02:22:33.000 rhetoric by explaining the real reason for opposing Chinese immigration 2465 02:22:33.079 --> 02:22:36.840 when he said, quote, we oppose their coming because our 2466 02:22:36.879 --> 02:22:40.680 sturdy Aryan tree will wither in root, trunk, and branch 2467 02:22:40.920 --> 02:22:44.000 if this noxious vibe be permitted to entwine itself around 2468 02:22:44.040 --> 02:22:48.840 it unquote. But here's the striking thing. In the wake 2469 02:22:48.879 --> 02:22:51.079 of the fifteen Passenger Bill and in the years that 2470 02:22:51.159 --> 02:22:55.319 followed it, wasn't just the Western members of Congress who 2471 02:22:55.399 --> 02:22:59.879 took to the podium to decry the evils of Chinese immigration, 2472 02:23:00.200 --> 02:23:03.200 because out West, Kearney and his brand of racist rhetorics 2473 02:23:03.200 --> 02:23:05.760 still had influence. Like I was saying before, so it's 2474 02:23:05.920 --> 02:23:08.399 pretty unsurprising that they'd be pushing for a bill like 2475 02:23:08.440 --> 02:23:11.040 the fifteen Passenger Bill and everything that came afterward. Right, 2476 02:23:11.840 --> 02:23:14.600 But how does that explain the multitudes of East Coast 2477 02:23:14.680 --> 02:23:20.040 politicians expressing similar sentiments. Republican James G. Blaine of Maine, 2478 02:23:20.239 --> 02:23:23.959 who we mentioned earlier and also partly famous for supporting 2479 02:23:24.040 --> 02:23:27.200 Chinese immigration earlier in the eighteen seventies, had suddenly made 2480 02:23:27.200 --> 02:23:30.520 a politically convenient about face, especially with the eighteen eighty 2481 02:23:30.559 --> 02:23:33.040 election looming on the horizon and talk of who was 2482 02:23:33.079 --> 02:23:36.360 going to replace Ruther Fraud as he was being called. Still, 2483 02:23:36.719 --> 02:23:39.479 I mean, that does matter. It might be cynical, but 2484 02:23:39.520 --> 02:23:42.280 that does play a part for why James G. Blaine 2485 02:23:42.280 --> 02:23:45.280 decided to make this about face, because he addressed Congress 2486 02:23:45.319 --> 02:23:48.959 in February of eighteen seventy nine invoked images of quote 2487 02:23:49.000 --> 02:23:52.319 the vast and calculable hordes in China unquote that would 2488 02:23:52.399 --> 02:23:56.719 quote throttle and impair the prosperity of the United States unquote. 2489 02:23:57.079 --> 02:24:00.200 And this is really key here, that the West Coast 2490 02:24:00.239 --> 02:24:03.520 was facing the choice, the supposed choice of living in 2491 02:24:03.600 --> 02:24:08.000 quote the civilization of Christ or the civilization of Confucius. 2492 02:24:09.559 --> 02:24:12.760 Further justifying the violation of the treaty that the United 2493 02:24:12.799 --> 02:24:16.639 States had long established with China and pushing closer toward 2494 02:24:16.639 --> 02:24:20.079 a complete halt of immigration, he concluded his speech to 2495 02:24:20.120 --> 02:24:24.079 Congress with the following quote, The Asiatic cannot go on 2496 02:24:24.239 --> 02:24:27.639 with our population and make a homogeneous element. The idea 2497 02:24:27.639 --> 02:24:30.319 of comparing European immigration with an immigration that has no 2498 02:24:30.399 --> 02:24:33.319 regard for family, that does not recognize the relation of 2499 02:24:33.440 --> 02:24:36.239 husband and wife, that does not observe the tie of 2500 02:24:36.319 --> 02:24:39.600 parent and child, that does not have, in the slightest degree, 2501 02:24:39.639 --> 02:24:44.120 the ennobling and civilizing influences of the Hearthstone and the Fireside. 2502 02:24:44.200 --> 02:24:46.520 I am opposed to the Chinese coming here. I am 2503 02:24:46.520 --> 02:24:49.399 opposed to making them citizens. I am opposed to making 2504 02:24:49.440 --> 02:24:55.200 them voters. Quote. The point here is this, all of 2505 02:24:55.239 --> 02:24:58.799 these men knew an opportunity to take advantage of racial 2506 02:24:58.840 --> 02:25:01.920 tensions to get things done, because when it came down 2507 02:25:01.920 --> 02:25:05.360 to it, this was never actually about race for the 2508 02:25:05.440 --> 02:25:09.239 United States Congress. The fact that it wasn't was why 2509 02:25:09.319 --> 02:25:12.319 things got as bad as they did. The fact that 2510 02:25:12.360 --> 02:25:14.799 there was no principle is why things got as bad 2511 02:25:14.879 --> 02:25:19.520 as they did. This was all about fear, Washington's fear, 2512 02:25:19.920 --> 02:25:23.559 fear of the working class. Because remember, we're in the 2513 02:25:23.600 --> 02:25:27.360 middle of a populist backlash, one that resulted from everything 2514 02:25:27.440 --> 02:25:30.440 wretched and violent and awful that we got into earlier 2515 02:25:30.440 --> 02:25:35.760 in this story. Almost all American politicians were terrified of 2516 02:25:35.920 --> 02:25:38.239 another working class revolt, similar to the one that had 2517 02:25:38.280 --> 02:25:40.719 occurred a few years before, in which the rumblings of 2518 02:25:40.719 --> 02:25:43.760 the populist backlash that had been brewing reached their breaking point. 2519 02:25:44.239 --> 02:25:47.280 The Great Strike of eighteen seventy seven was a dark 2520 02:25:47.319 --> 02:25:51.000 cloud hanging over Congress, and politicians were looking for any 2521 02:25:51.040 --> 02:25:55.079 way too. As Michael Belile puts it, sidestep issues of 2522 02:25:55.120 --> 02:25:59.920 class with simple racism. Class was not workable in the 2523 02:26:00.040 --> 02:26:02.799 political realm as far as they were concerned, race was. 2524 02:26:03.719 --> 02:26:08.280 And since these Chinamen weren't the recently liberated and politically 2525 02:26:08.399 --> 02:26:12.360 valuable former slave class of Black Americans, and since these 2526 02:26:12.559 --> 02:26:16.399 Chinamen were really just an unassimilated, strange looking race of strangers, 2527 02:26:16.440 --> 02:26:20.120 from across the sea. They were fair game, right, And 2528 02:26:20.559 --> 02:26:22.799 if they could frame the loss of jobs and poor 2529 02:26:22.879 --> 02:26:26.360 livelihood of the agitated working class as being one directly 2530 02:26:26.399 --> 02:26:30.200 related to the spike in Chinese immigration, even if it 2531 02:26:30.319 --> 02:26:32.760 was only confined to one part of the country, all 2532 02:26:32.760 --> 02:26:36.520 the better. Right. It wasn't the fault of corrupt business 2533 02:26:36.559 --> 02:26:40.399 practices in backdoor legislation. It was the fault of these 2534 02:26:40.520 --> 02:26:43.760 immigrants working on the cheap right. As our frequently cited 2535 02:26:43.840 --> 02:26:48.120 historian Andrew Giori puts it, quote, rhetoric, bigotry, and national 2536 02:26:48.159 --> 02:26:52.000 policy would at last converge as the Chinese temporarily replace 2537 02:26:52.079 --> 02:26:55.239 blacks to become the most officially despised people in America. 2538 02:26:55.959 --> 02:26:59.680 After a brief hiatus inspired by Civil War idealism, racism 2539 02:26:59.719 --> 02:27:03.680 was back and fashion. Only the target had shifted on quote. 2540 02:27:04.959 --> 02:27:09.680 Such was the mentality of hundreds of scared, shitless cynical 2541 02:27:09.719 --> 02:27:15.120 politicians in Washington. President Hayes would ultimately veto the fifteen 2542 02:27:15.120 --> 02:27:17.959 Passenger Bill. But as we can see, members of Congress, 2543 02:27:18.000 --> 02:27:21.520 both both prominent Easterners and devoted Westerners, they weren't about 2544 02:27:21.559 --> 02:27:24.760 to let this issue die. They'd gone too far. Messages 2545 02:27:24.760 --> 02:27:28.600 were being sent clearly by both politicians and their company 2546 02:27:28.600 --> 02:27:31.360 owning friends and cronies. As stated by Andrew Yori in 2547 02:27:31.440 --> 02:27:35.239 his book, quote, you are replaceable and your replacements are 2548 02:27:35.280 --> 02:27:39.719 ready unquote, referring to the hypothetical multitudes of cheaper, non 2549 02:27:39.840 --> 02:27:43.200 unionized Chinese labor that would put all these white and 2550 02:27:43.440 --> 02:27:47.079 frankly black and all other races, all these workers out 2551 02:27:47.120 --> 02:27:50.239 of a job. This was designed to raise tensions, and 2552 02:27:50.360 --> 02:27:52.840 it did work, because in the first month of eighteen 2553 02:27:52.920 --> 02:27:56.559 eighty you actually start to see labor groups finally flip. 2554 02:27:56.799 --> 02:27:59.639 They begin to speak out against Chinese immigration in general, 2555 02:28:00.079 --> 02:28:04.280 opposed to just imported contract labor, Congress's side stepping of 2556 02:28:04.280 --> 02:28:07.079 class issues with appeals to racism. To use that phrase again, 2557 02:28:07.600 --> 02:28:10.639 they were working and the alienated working classes could now 2558 02:28:11.040 --> 02:28:15.120 rush to the comforting bosom of their representatives, who claimed 2559 02:28:15.120 --> 02:28:18.799 that they had the solution to all their problems. None 2560 02:28:18.840 --> 02:28:23.079 of this was helped by typically hyperbolic and opportunistic press, 2561 02:28:23.239 --> 02:28:25.600 who didn't miss a beat to completely forget all the 2562 02:28:25.639 --> 02:28:27.840 criticism they had of Dennis Kearney and stir up the 2563 02:28:27.879 --> 02:28:30.520 tension with quotes like this one from the Chicago News 2564 02:28:30.520 --> 02:28:33.440 in early eighteen eighty quote the Mongolian is taking his 2565 02:28:33.559 --> 02:28:36.479 cue and heading eastward well New York of Voca Dennis 2566 02:28:36.520 --> 02:28:41.760 Kearney unquote. All of this fed into the presidential election 2567 02:28:41.840 --> 02:28:46.600 of eighteen eighty and beyond. Really James Garfield was elected president, 2568 02:28:46.680 --> 02:28:49.680 all while being implored by the California Republicans, all of 2569 02:28:49.719 --> 02:28:52.920 whom were emboldened to out Kearney, Dennis Kearney and his 2570 02:28:52.959 --> 02:28:56.639 even more powerful Workingmen's Party to come out strong against 2571 02:28:56.719 --> 02:29:00.559 Chinese immigration. President Garfield didn't have much of a chance 2572 02:29:00.600 --> 02:29:03.559 to act on the anti Chinese sentiments swarly to the 2573 02:29:03.559 --> 02:29:06.040 country that he did sort of tepidly support, But he 2574 02:29:06.040 --> 02:29:07.760 didn't really have a chance to do anything about it, 2575 02:29:07.840 --> 02:29:10.040 seeing as he was assassinated in the summer of eighteen 2576 02:29:10.079 --> 02:29:14.120 eighty one, leaving his vice President Chester A. Arthur in charge. 2577 02:29:14.600 --> 02:29:16.479 He was the one holding the reins on the Chinese 2578 02:29:16.479 --> 02:29:20.360 immigration question, and after a treaty with China making immigration 2579 02:29:20.440 --> 02:29:23.559 restriction legal, I'm part of the US government, so nothing 2580 02:29:23.639 --> 02:29:27.639 illegal or untoward legally speaking, could happen if they decided 2581 02:29:27.680 --> 02:29:32.200 to suddenly close immigration to China. Exclusion advocates within Congress 2582 02:29:32.239 --> 02:29:36.360 just wasted no time in drafting what would become probably, 2583 02:29:37.399 --> 02:29:40.000 if not the most infamous, one of the most infamous 2584 02:29:40.000 --> 02:29:44.319 pieces of racist legislation in United States history. That's the 2585 02:29:44.399 --> 02:29:50.120 Chinese Exclusion Act. The obvious congressional supporters of the Chinese 2586 02:29:50.120 --> 02:29:53.520 Exclusion Act came from out West, like California's Republican Senator 2587 02:29:53.600 --> 02:29:56.920 John F. Miller, who made the argument during the deliberations 2588 02:29:56.959 --> 02:29:59.639 that the Chinese living in his state were quote inhabitants 2589 02:29:59.639 --> 02:30:02.760 of another their planet unquote, and that they were quote 2590 02:30:03.040 --> 02:30:06.760 machine like of obtuse nerve, but little affected by heat 2591 02:30:06.840 --> 02:30:10.600 or cold, wiry, sinewy, with muscles of iron. They are 2592 02:30:10.639 --> 02:30:15.280 automatic engines of flesh and blood. They are patient, stolid, unemotional, 2593 02:30:15.399 --> 02:30:20.559 and heard together like beasts. He continued to evoke images 2594 02:30:20.600 --> 02:30:23.959 of an America quote resonant with the sweet voices of 2595 02:30:24.079 --> 02:30:28.040 flaxen haired children unquote, and would call to maintain quote 2596 02:30:28.280 --> 02:30:32.959 American Anglo Saxon civilization without the contamination or adulteration from 2597 02:30:32.959 --> 02:30:37.520 the gang green of Oriental civilization unquote. And when making 2598 02:30:37.559 --> 02:30:40.520 his case for passing the act that would completely exclude 2599 02:30:40.680 --> 02:30:43.959 the Chinese from entering the United States, Miller said, quote 2600 02:30:44.280 --> 02:30:47.840 why not discriminate? Why aid in the increase and distribution 2601 02:30:48.000 --> 02:30:51.239 over our domain of a degraded and inferior race and 2602 02:30:51.319 --> 02:30:55.639 the progenitors of an inferior sort of men unquote. You 2603 02:30:55.680 --> 02:30:59.239 would think that there would be descent to sentiments like 2604 02:30:59.280 --> 02:31:02.239 this in Congress by the time the Chinese Exclusion Act 2605 02:31:02.239 --> 02:31:04.520 of eighteen eighty two entered the debate stage, and you'd 2606 02:31:04.559 --> 02:31:07.559 be right. There was descent, but it was muted descent. 2607 02:31:07.959 --> 02:31:10.719 It was always preceded or closed with a lot of 2608 02:31:10.799 --> 02:31:14.200 throat clearing about how the senator or congressman opposing the 2609 02:31:14.200 --> 02:31:16.840 Act wasn't too fond of the Chinese, or their inability 2610 02:31:16.840 --> 02:31:20.159 to assimilate, or their heathen or pagan ways, and was 2611 02:31:20.239 --> 02:31:23.959 usually followed by more practical than moral reasons for allowing 2612 02:31:24.000 --> 02:31:27.399 the continuity of immigration, like the one Southern Democrat who 2613 02:31:27.399 --> 02:31:30.200 opposed the bill, Joseph E. Brown of Georgia, who simply 2614 02:31:30.200 --> 02:31:32.799 said that the United States should continue its relationship with 2615 02:31:32.920 --> 02:31:35.520 China since it was a fertile market or as he 2616 02:31:35.600 --> 02:31:38.120 put it, quote a wide open field for US unquote, 2617 02:31:38.159 --> 02:31:40.920 and that there was quote unquote boundless trade, and that 2618 02:31:41.000 --> 02:31:43.920 this was necessary. But some of the reasons for opposing 2619 02:31:43.959 --> 02:31:46.479 the act were made. They were made as matters of 2620 02:31:46.520 --> 02:31:50.239 moral principle, especially from the pro abolition types, the Republicans 2621 02:31:50.239 --> 02:31:54.000 who ostensibly still followed in Abraham Lincoln's footsteps. This is 2622 02:31:54.000 --> 02:31:56.719 why the speech given by Ohio Republican Ezra Tailor, who 2623 02:31:56.799 --> 02:31:59.200 is an important figure of the time because he represented 2624 02:31:59.239 --> 02:32:03.440 the slain President Garfield's district, so people were paying extra 2625 02:32:03.440 --> 02:32:05.559 attention to him at the time, But the fact that 2626 02:32:05.600 --> 02:32:08.879 he was a pro abolition old school Republican in that 2627 02:32:09.079 --> 02:32:13.559 sense makes his speech extra depressing because while giving his speech, 2628 02:32:14.200 --> 02:32:18.079 Taylor initially invoked the images of walls being built as 2629 02:32:18.120 --> 02:32:21.840 he expressed his opposition to the bill, and even harangued 2630 02:32:21.879 --> 02:32:25.600 against the racist tone being set by the overall discussion 2631 02:32:25.600 --> 02:32:28.920 of exclusion. He said, quote, we know not when the 2632 02:32:28.959 --> 02:32:31.440 next wall will be erected. I would deem the new 2633 02:32:31.440 --> 02:32:34.520 country we will have after this bill becomes laws changed 2634 02:32:34.559 --> 02:32:37.120 from the old country we have today, as our country 2635 02:32:37.159 --> 02:32:39.680 would have been changed if the rebellion of eighteen sixty 2636 02:32:39.719 --> 02:32:43.000 one had succeeded. We talk in regard to the differences 2637 02:32:43.040 --> 02:32:46.000 between races, and I am astonished at the way we talk. 2638 02:32:46.559 --> 02:32:48.840 I know our books speak of it learnedly. There are 2639 02:32:48.879 --> 02:32:52.399 heaps of nonsense in some books. Others may say, throw 2640 02:32:52.520 --> 02:32:56.280 sentiment aside. But the Republican Party is founded on sentiment, 2641 02:32:56.479 --> 02:33:01.319 and it cannot throw sentiment aside. And that sounds great, right, 2642 02:33:01.559 --> 02:33:07.479 noble even, And yet the noble principled Ezra Taylor couldn't 2643 02:33:07.479 --> 02:33:10.319 help himself as he closed his speech with the following 2644 02:33:10.360 --> 02:33:14.719 remarks quote, I hope my remarks have not been understood 2645 02:33:14.760 --> 02:33:17.840 as favoring a further immigration of the Chinese. I want 2646 02:33:17.879 --> 02:33:20.879 no more of them, But I talk only of this bill, 2647 02:33:20.959 --> 02:33:22.680 and I do not mean to be in the least 2648 02:33:22.760 --> 02:33:26.319 understood as favoring that immigration. I deplore their presence here 2649 02:33:26.440 --> 02:33:32.600 as much as any man. Unquote. This would be really 2650 02:33:32.680 --> 02:33:36.520 funny in its irony if its implications weren't so cruel. 2651 02:33:37.760 --> 02:33:41.520 But in my view, it was probably the famous Republican 2652 02:33:41.559 --> 02:33:44.239 abolitionist from really back in the day at the time 2653 02:33:44.280 --> 02:33:47.920 and civil rights advocate George F. Edmonds, who gave probably 2654 02:33:47.920 --> 02:33:50.799 the most telling speech of all for this part of 2655 02:33:50.799 --> 02:33:54.440 our story, for this sort of epilogue, I guess, like 2656 02:33:54.520 --> 02:33:56.920 the other two guys I've quoted, he came out in 2657 02:33:56.959 --> 02:33:59.440 opposition of the bill, though his opposition was mostly over 2658 02:33:59.479 --> 02:34:02.639 the specific of the initial time frame of the exclusion. 2659 02:34:02.639 --> 02:34:05.680 He suggested five years instead of ten. This gave his 2660 02:34:05.719 --> 02:34:09.520 testimony a bizarre having his cake and eating it too, 2661 02:34:09.639 --> 02:34:12.040 kind of stank on it. And believe me, the press 2662 02:34:12.079 --> 02:34:14.319 took note of this too at the time, because he 2663 02:34:14.399 --> 02:34:17.799 still supported exclusion despite coming out against the bill. And 2664 02:34:17.879 --> 02:34:21.959 yet I think Edmund's speech also had probably the most 2665 02:34:21.959 --> 02:34:26.280 important representative point of view of what everything we've been 2666 02:34:26.280 --> 02:34:30.680 talking about, this idea of a populist backlash, and what 2667 02:34:30.719 --> 02:34:34.319 it all amounts to, what it all leads to, the 2668 02:34:34.319 --> 02:34:40.120 policy that emerges in response to the malformed, malignant anger 2669 02:34:40.319 --> 02:34:44.840 of the people. The policy that gets formed by the elites, 2670 02:34:45.159 --> 02:34:48.639 but whose responsibility can be conveniently passed on to the 2671 02:34:48.760 --> 02:34:52.200 very people that demanded action from these elites, but didn't 2672 02:34:52.200 --> 02:34:56.479 bother to hold them accountable for their cynicism. This was 2673 02:34:56.559 --> 02:35:00.719 all made crystalline when Edmunds made his clothes remarks in 2674 02:35:00.760 --> 02:35:04.959 the matter of the Chinese Exclusion Act quote, no republic 2675 02:35:05.000 --> 02:35:08.760 can succeed that has not a homogeneous population. That was, 2676 02:35:08.799 --> 02:35:11.559 for so long a time the curse of the Southern States. 2677 02:35:12.120 --> 02:35:15.440 It was the want of homogeneity that has promoted political 2678 02:35:15.479 --> 02:35:19.799 discord and discontent among our fellow citizens. Every people and 2679 02:35:19.879 --> 02:35:24.000 every church, every little community must decide what persons other 2680 02:35:24.079 --> 02:35:26.959 than itself are to be received into it and become 2681 02:35:27.079 --> 02:35:33.440 part of it unquote. In other words, this isn't our problem, 2682 02:35:33.799 --> 02:35:37.559 and it isn't really our decision. This is what the 2683 02:35:37.600 --> 02:35:46.159 people want. Populism I Principle zero, many sentiments supporting white labor, 2684 02:35:46.600 --> 02:35:50.360 and admissions that quote the gate must be closed unquote. Later, 2685 02:35:51.120 --> 02:35:54.200 the Chinese Exclusion Act was approved on March twenty third, 2686 02:35:54.319 --> 02:35:56.639 eighteen eighty two, at a vote of one hundred and 2687 02:35:56.639 --> 02:36:00.120 sixty seven in favor to sixty six opposed, with with 2688 02:36:00.120 --> 02:36:03.760 fifty seven members of Congress not even voting. Two months later, 2689 02:36:03.840 --> 02:36:08.440 President Chester A. Arthur signed the bill. Through repeated renewals 2690 02:36:08.520 --> 02:36:13.239 and additions to this act and its precedence, the Chinese 2691 02:36:13.280 --> 02:36:16.159 would no longer be welcome in the United States for 2692 02:36:16.399 --> 02:36:20.319 another one hundred years. Those Chinese that remained in the 2693 02:36:20.399 --> 02:36:23.719 United States, mostly on the West Coast, they be hounded 2694 02:36:23.760 --> 02:36:27.239 and harassed out of their homes and many times openly murdered, 2695 02:36:27.399 --> 02:36:30.719 mirroring the anti Chinese Los Angeles pogram of eighteen seventy 2696 02:36:30.760 --> 02:36:33.159 one with which we opened our story, and or the 2697 02:36:33.200 --> 02:36:37.120 Workingmen's Party ordained massacre of the Chinese miners in Chico 2698 02:36:37.239 --> 02:36:40.319 that we talked about earlier. Oregon Snake River masacer of 2699 02:36:40.360 --> 02:36:42.959 eighteen eighty seven comes to mind, in which thirty one 2700 02:36:43.239 --> 02:36:46.239 Chinese miners were as a federal official investigating it at 2701 02:36:46.280 --> 02:36:50.000 the time, put it quote shot, cut up, stripped, and 2702 02:36:50.079 --> 02:36:53.040 thrown into the river unquote by a mob of ranchers 2703 02:36:53.040 --> 02:36:56.760 and school aged boys. Historian David Stratton, when writing about 2704 02:36:56.760 --> 02:37:00.760 the pogram, described victim's body parts having been taken as 2705 02:37:00.799 --> 02:37:04.479 souvenirs by the mob, with quote, A Chinese skull fashioned 2706 02:37:04.520 --> 02:37:07.079 into a sugar bowl graced the kitchen table of one 2707 02:37:07.200 --> 02:37:12.959 ranch home for many years unquote. The Chinese Exclusion Act 2708 02:37:13.000 --> 02:37:17.280 didn't cause this massacre, but the political realities that the 2709 02:37:17.319 --> 02:37:20.680 acts passage had created certainly made it easier for the 2710 02:37:20.719 --> 02:37:24.840 state to justify acquitting the three perpetrators of this mascre 2711 02:37:24.879 --> 02:37:28.120 that it brought to trial. Whether or not this was 2712 02:37:28.200 --> 02:37:32.399 hardwired racism was irrelevant. Taking the side of some slain 2713 02:37:32.559 --> 02:37:36.159 Chinaman in the years following the Exclusion Act and everything 2714 02:37:36.159 --> 02:37:39.520 that had led up to it was politically inconvenient at best, 2715 02:37:40.360 --> 02:37:45.200 but more likely political suicide at worst. It was a 2716 02:37:45.239 --> 02:37:50.079 perfect political confluence, a populist backlash made useful by the 2717 02:37:50.120 --> 02:37:54.479 elitist political class, But it wasn't that clear at the time, 2718 02:37:54.520 --> 02:37:58.440 and arguably still isn't. Andrew Giory very astutely points out 2719 02:37:58.719 --> 02:38:01.040 that by the time the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed 2720 02:38:01.040 --> 02:38:03.959 in eighteen eighty two, and after its effects had begun 2721 02:38:04.000 --> 02:38:07.319 to spread outward, it was increasingly difficult to see where 2722 02:38:07.360 --> 02:38:11.079 this all came from. He writes, quote who was behind 2723 02:38:11.079 --> 02:38:15.040 the Chinese Exclusion Act? Was it simply the work of politicians? 2724 02:38:15.959 --> 02:38:18.159 Or were the nations elected leaders responding to the will 2725 02:38:18.200 --> 02:38:21.479 of the American people? After so many years of agitation 2726 02:38:21.600 --> 02:38:23.760 on the subject, it was no longer easy to tell. 2727 02:38:24.639 --> 02:38:28.120 Politicians angling for office had, no doubt, swung many people 2728 02:38:28.120 --> 02:38:31.159 to their side, and the momentum, in turn, had forced 2729 02:38:31.159 --> 02:38:35.159 other politicians to fall in line. Public opinion and politicians 2730 02:38:35.159 --> 02:38:37.319 fed on each other, and by eighteen eighty two it 2731 02:38:37.319 --> 02:38:42.799 had become difficult to separate the two forces unquote. Here's 2732 02:38:42.840 --> 02:38:46.120 the thing, though, If we examined this movement and the 2733 02:38:46.239 --> 02:38:50.760 many other movements born from a populous backlash closely and together, 2734 02:38:51.600 --> 02:38:54.680 we should realize that it will always be impossible to 2735 02:38:54.680 --> 02:38:58.879 say whose quote unquote fault. Things like the Chinese Exclusion 2736 02:38:58.920 --> 02:39:02.680 Act or the Trump administration's twenty seventeen travel ban are 2737 02:39:03.840 --> 02:39:07.239 seeking to find fault in stories like this is a 2738 02:39:07.280 --> 02:39:11.000 fool's errand they come from a confluence of factors and 2739 02:39:11.040 --> 02:39:14.600 forces that take place over a wide span of time. 2740 02:39:16.079 --> 02:39:19.040 But one thing is for sure. If you have head 2741 02:39:19.120 --> 02:39:23.159 chef Neil Ferguson's five ingredients for a populous backlash, it 2742 02:39:23.280 --> 02:39:26.319 is all but certain that things like this will happen, 2743 02:39:26.639 --> 02:39:30.799 regardless of you, or your parties, or your country's political bias. 2744 02:39:31.520 --> 02:39:34.399 It doesn't matter if you have a demogogue like Dennis 2745 02:39:34.440 --> 02:39:38.120 Kearney or Donald Trump running around while you have the 2746 02:39:38.159 --> 02:39:42.680 other four ingredients present the perception of rampant corruption, the 2747 02:39:42.719 --> 02:39:46.479 gross inequality, the effects of an economic crisis, and a 2748 02:39:46.600 --> 02:39:50.680 rise in immigration. If those other ingredients are there, the 2749 02:39:50.760 --> 02:39:54.159 demagogue shaped void will be filled by someone in the 2750 02:39:54.200 --> 02:39:58.200 stead of those unwilling to fill it themselves. And even 2751 02:39:58.360 --> 02:40:02.079 if that demagogue arrives and is quickly laughed off the stage, 2752 02:40:02.719 --> 02:40:05.319 there's no reason to sit back and automatically breathe a 2753 02:40:05.319 --> 02:40:08.159 sigh of relief. We can see from this story that 2754 02:40:08.200 --> 02:40:11.719 the effects can linger on for a very very long 2755 02:40:11.760 --> 02:40:17.319 time without anyone being the wiser. After all, all of 2756 02:40:17.319 --> 02:40:20.680 the politicians involved in the passage of the Chinese Exclusion 2757 02:40:20.680 --> 02:40:25.319 Act had either completely distanced themselves from Dennis Kearney, forgotten him, 2758 02:40:25.440 --> 02:40:27.559 or had never really even been his ally to begin with, 2759 02:40:28.440 --> 02:40:31.799 He'd essentially become a non entity in Washington. And yet 2760 02:40:32.399 --> 02:40:37.319 during this whole legislative process, this march toward the exclusion 2761 02:40:37.399 --> 02:40:40.719 of an entire race of people from entering the United States, 2762 02:40:41.399 --> 02:40:44.120 a House representative named Martin Townsend out of New York 2763 02:40:44.200 --> 02:40:48.159 was quoted as saying the following, Dennis Kearney is now 2764 02:40:48.239 --> 02:41:29.559 represented in the National Halls. So, as you have probably 2765 02:41:29.680 --> 02:41:33.760 noticed at various points actually throughout our story, Dennis Kearney 2766 02:41:33.799 --> 02:41:37.120 is not a one to one carbon copy of the 2767 02:41:37.159 --> 02:41:39.680 forty fifth President of the United States. He is the 2768 02:41:39.680 --> 02:41:41.799 original Donald Trump. But Donald Trump is not a clone 2769 02:41:41.840 --> 02:41:45.799 of him. I mean, Kearney's origins were obviously far different. 2770 02:41:46.000 --> 02:41:49.760 He wasn't American, and he was born quite poor and 2771 02:41:49.799 --> 02:41:52.079 could very easily be described as a self made man 2772 02:41:52.079 --> 02:41:55.600 who had no advantages granted upon him. He also, probably 2773 02:41:55.639 --> 02:42:00.280 most importantly, never became president. As I mentioned earlier, Ny 2774 02:42:00.280 --> 02:42:04.120 continued his political activities with the California Workingmen's Party throughout 2775 02:42:04.120 --> 02:42:06.440 the lead up to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which he 2776 02:42:06.479 --> 02:42:10.079 did support, and he would make hundreds of relatively well 2777 02:42:10.120 --> 02:42:14.719 received speeches throughout the early eighteen eighties. But eventually he 2778 02:42:14.719 --> 02:42:17.680 would return to operating his business, and he would buy 2779 02:42:17.760 --> 02:42:20.239 himself a valuable plot of land where he would quietly 2780 02:42:20.280 --> 02:42:23.000 retire until his death in nineteen oh seven, after which 2781 02:42:23.040 --> 02:42:26.920 he would be largely forgotten by anyone without an interest 2782 02:42:26.959 --> 02:42:30.040 in California labor history, at least quite a far cry 2783 02:42:30.319 --> 02:42:35.639 from President of the United States. However, it's not simple 2784 02:42:35.719 --> 02:42:40.079 biographical information that creates our story's main through line of 2785 02:42:40.200 --> 02:42:45.120 pinpointing this quote unquote original Donald Trump. It's the historical 2786 02:42:45.200 --> 02:42:48.920 circumstances in which they both existed and of which they 2787 02:42:48.920 --> 02:42:53.200 both took advantage that makes these men tethered through time. 2788 02:42:54.719 --> 02:42:58.760 Despite never becoming president, Kearney did set the tone. He created, 2789 02:42:58.760 --> 02:43:03.520 the rhetoric, he crafted, the excuses and the justifications, and 2790 02:43:03.760 --> 02:43:07.920 all of these things turned into more rhetoric from higher 2791 02:43:07.920 --> 02:43:12.600 and higher offices and eventually turned into cold, hard policy 2792 02:43:13.200 --> 02:43:17.159 policy that lasted well into the twentieth century and arguably 2793 02:43:17.200 --> 02:43:20.159 affected the racial demographics and attitudes of the United States 2794 02:43:20.200 --> 02:43:25.799 for even longer. This isn't necessarily just about Donald Trump 2795 02:43:25.920 --> 02:43:29.840 or Dennis Kearny, though the parallels are striking and fun even, 2796 02:43:31.200 --> 02:43:35.120 But this is really about populism and its inherent vulnerabilities, 2797 02:43:35.159 --> 02:43:38.079 whether we're watching it gained steam with the working class 2798 02:43:38.559 --> 02:43:41.479 in the eighteen seventies or watching it gain traction with 2799 02:43:41.600 --> 02:43:44.159 both political parties in the years since twenty sixteen, and 2800 02:43:44.239 --> 02:43:48.000 without missing a beat, potentially being molded into something ugly. 2801 02:43:50.200 --> 02:43:53.120 Populism is a force. It's not a person. It's a 2802 02:43:53.120 --> 02:43:57.799 culmination of circumstances and realities. We can see this with 2803 02:43:57.840 --> 02:44:00.360 what happened in twenty sixteen, and we can see this 2804 02:44:00.399 --> 02:44:04.120 happen in eighteen seventy eight. The language was there, the 2805 02:44:04.200 --> 02:44:07.959 feelings were there, all of it was in place, and 2806 02:44:08.120 --> 02:44:12.120 all it required was a strangely gifted outsider who could 2807 02:44:12.159 --> 02:44:15.559 whip the people listening up into a frenzy. Whether that 2808 02:44:15.600 --> 02:44:19.360 person is a self made Irish American dray Man who 2809 02:44:19.719 --> 02:44:25.079 whipped resentful broken in the end really just scared Americans 2810 02:44:25.200 --> 02:44:30.319 into a nativist frenzy before fading into obscurity, or whether 2811 02:44:30.360 --> 02:44:33.120 it's a coddled, thin skin new York or real estate 2812 02:44:33.159 --> 02:44:36.559 magnate who did the same and became elected President of 2813 02:44:36.600 --> 02:44:41.719 the United States. So yes, unlike Donald Trump, Dennis Kearney 2814 02:44:41.799 --> 02:44:45.760 never became president. But when we look at Dennis Kearney 2815 02:44:45.879 --> 02:44:49.399 and the effects of his demagoguery that were the culmination 2816 02:44:49.520 --> 02:44:52.479 of the populist backlash of the eighteen seventies, it shows 2817 02:44:52.559 --> 02:44:56.600 us that you don't need to become president for your nativist, 2818 02:44:56.719 --> 02:45:01.680 populist rhetoric to become policy. In fact, if that rhetoric 2819 02:45:01.920 --> 02:45:04.600 is coming from the office of the president, one could 2820 02:45:04.639 --> 02:45:08.000 even say that there is a certain disadvantage to that you, 2821 02:45:08.360 --> 02:45:11.200 as a citizen, know where that rhetoric is coming from. 2822 02:45:11.280 --> 02:45:13.799 The spotlight is always on the guy saying it. Everything 2823 02:45:14.079 --> 02:45:19.120 he says is quoted and requoted, tweeted, retweeted. It's always 2824 02:45:19.159 --> 02:45:21.600 on display for the world to see and more importantly, 2825 02:45:21.639 --> 02:45:26.280 to challenge, unlike when the rhetoric comes from someone smaller, 2826 02:45:26.399 --> 02:45:31.000 from strikingly effective opportunist who knows how to speak to 2827 02:45:31.680 --> 02:45:35.719 and ostensibly for the people, and who manages to fade 2828 02:45:35.719 --> 02:45:40.920 into the obscurity of history. So when someone starts echoing 2829 02:45:41.120 --> 02:45:44.399 his sentiments nearly a century and a half later, all 2830 02:45:44.440 --> 02:45:48.280 we can do is sputter and disbelief. And then when 2831 02:45:48.520 --> 02:45:53.719 someone starts winning elections with those ancient, forgotten sentiments, all 2832 02:45:53.719 --> 02:45:57.719 we can do is weep and moan and declare. But 2833 02:45:57.760 --> 02:46:48.600 that's impossible. All right, Hey, everybody, glad to have you 2834 02:46:48.639 --> 02:46:51.239 still listening, if you're still here. I just want to 2835 02:46:51.239 --> 02:46:53.200 give a quick shout out to all the people who've 2836 02:46:53.239 --> 02:46:57.479 been supporting this show over on Patreon and substack at 2837 02:46:57.719 --> 02:47:01.239 the comrades and friends level or a bar that includes 2838 02:47:01.559 --> 02:47:07.120 Bob Downing, Eric Hodges, Greg Hunter, so so Skipachaco, Molly Pan, 2839 02:47:07.479 --> 02:47:12.680 John Pisano, Anna r PJ Raider, Matthew m Rice, Emily Schmidt, 2840 02:47:12.879 --> 02:47:16.120 and of course f you. I really appreciate all the 2841 02:47:16.200 --> 02:47:18.319 support you guys have been giving me over the years. 2842 02:47:18.360 --> 02:47:21.799 In many cases it's been incredible, and I was really 2843 02:47:21.799 --> 02:47:24.799 happy to share this old episode with all of you guys, 2844 02:47:25.440 --> 02:47:27.680 as embarrassing as it might be to a certain degree 2845 02:47:27.719 --> 02:47:31.440 to hear myself six years ago talking with any sort 2846 02:47:31.479 --> 02:47:34.399 of authority, but you know, I had a good time 2847 02:47:34.440 --> 02:47:38.159 with this episode at the time, and just thinking about 2848 02:47:38.200 --> 02:47:42.159 this stuff these days. For obvious reasons, eighteen seventy six 2849 02:47:42.280 --> 02:47:44.719 was a long time ago, but in the grand scheme 2850 02:47:44.719 --> 02:47:46.879 of things, especially in the timescale I've worked with with 2851 02:47:46.959 --> 02:47:50.239 this show, not that long ago. It's kind of wild 2852 02:47:50.319 --> 02:47:53.079 right anyway, Hope you're all staying safe out there, and 2853 02:47:53.200 --> 02:47:58.159 please stay tuned for the next proper episode of History Impossible. 2854 02:47:58.440 --> 02:47:59.040 Thanks again