1 00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:09,040 This programme contains some strong language 2 00:00:10,840 --> 00:00:12,760 The American dream. 3 00:00:12,760 --> 00:00:14,120 What does that phrase even mean? 4 00:00:14,120 --> 00:00:16,760 Cos it's wildly open to interpretation. 5 00:00:16,760 --> 00:00:18,600 But I think to a lot of Americans 6 00:00:18,600 --> 00:00:22,560 it's being given the chance to do your work with dignity. 7 00:00:22,560 --> 00:00:25,080 So, for the next 90 minutes or so, 8 00:00:25,080 --> 00:00:27,840 we're going to examine the old American work ethic, 9 00:00:27,840 --> 00:00:30,960 and try to understand how, far too often, labour 10 00:00:30,960 --> 00:00:33,200 seems to get in the way of work. 11 00:00:33,200 --> 00:00:36,440 If you don't know the difference between labour and work, 12 00:00:36,440 --> 00:00:39,600 it's like the difference between sleeping and dreaming. 13 00:00:39,600 --> 00:00:42,760 In other words, the American dream is littered 14 00:00:42,760 --> 00:00:44,960 with a lot of lumpy mattresses. 15 00:00:44,960 --> 00:00:46,240 Did you like that metaphor? 16 00:00:46,240 --> 00:00:49,040 I did. There's going to be plenty more, so stick around. 17 00:00:52,800 --> 00:00:54,600 The notion of the American dream 18 00:00:54,600 --> 00:00:57,160 has been embedded in America's creation myth 19 00:00:57,160 --> 00:01:00,680 since the day the first Pilgrims planted their buckled boots on 20 00:01:00,680 --> 00:01:02,680 Plymouth Rock. Which actually never happened 21 00:01:02,680 --> 00:01:06,240 because Plymouth Rock is the size of a small garden feature. 22 00:01:06,240 --> 00:01:10,480 But the hard work ethic and the very definition of success itself 23 00:01:10,480 --> 00:01:12,400 has mutated over the years. 24 00:01:12,400 --> 00:01:15,480 From something spiritual, to something material, 25 00:01:15,480 --> 00:01:19,120 to something that nowadays seems almost undefinable. 26 00:01:19,120 --> 00:01:22,960 Still, it's the cement that unifies Americans. 27 00:01:24,520 --> 00:01:25,600 From industrialists... 28 00:01:26,840 --> 00:01:27,840 ..to politicians... 29 00:01:29,440 --> 00:01:30,440 ..to artists... 30 00:01:31,880 --> 00:01:32,880 ..to writers... 31 00:01:34,200 --> 00:01:36,520 ..to the everyday working stiff, 32 00:01:36,520 --> 00:01:38,320 the message is the same. 33 00:01:38,320 --> 00:01:40,040 Put in a little elbow grease, 34 00:01:40,040 --> 00:01:42,120 and your efforts will be rewarded. 35 00:01:43,480 --> 00:01:45,640 But it doesn't always work out that way. 36 00:01:45,640 --> 00:01:47,840 Sometimes the dream turns into a nightmare. 37 00:02:10,920 --> 00:02:15,360 America was founded on the idea of redemption, second chance, 38 00:02:15,360 --> 00:02:19,160 a fresh start, if you're willing to put your back to the plough. 39 00:02:20,280 --> 00:02:24,440 No country has condensed its creation myth more than America - 40 00:02:24,440 --> 00:02:28,120 you were a slave, or an indentured servant, 41 00:02:28,120 --> 00:02:30,600 lazy, alcoholic, landless, 42 00:02:30,600 --> 00:02:33,240 impoverished, riddled with typhoid, 43 00:02:33,240 --> 00:02:35,960 or accidentally tomahawked by a Mohican, 44 00:02:35,960 --> 00:02:40,160 guess what? You're not making it into America's history books. 45 00:02:40,160 --> 00:02:44,280 Americans celebrate exceptionalism and progress. 46 00:02:44,280 --> 00:02:47,280 It's a reason that we call ourselves "the" land of opportunity 47 00:02:47,280 --> 00:02:48,880 and not "a" land of opportunity, 48 00:02:48,880 --> 00:02:52,600 because apparently most Americans have never heard of New Zealand. 49 00:02:52,600 --> 00:02:55,800 But here's the thing - for every industrial achievement, 50 00:02:55,800 --> 00:02:59,760 for every rags-to-riches story, for every great invention, 51 00:02:59,760 --> 00:03:04,800 from this incredibly pliant but durable jacket, to this smartphone, 52 00:03:05,160 --> 00:03:09,320 somewhere scores of people are hunched over workbenches 53 00:03:09,320 --> 00:03:13,480 trying desperately not to stitch or solder their fingers together. 54 00:03:13,480 --> 00:03:15,720 If hard work is so ethical, 55 00:03:15,720 --> 00:03:17,720 how come there's seldom anything ethical 56 00:03:17,720 --> 00:03:19,360 about making people work hard? 57 00:03:22,360 --> 00:03:24,280 When Americans talk about a work ethic, 58 00:03:24,280 --> 00:03:27,920 what they mean is hard effort is its own virtue. 59 00:03:27,920 --> 00:03:30,560 It's a doctrine that came across on the Mayflower 60 00:03:30,560 --> 00:03:33,040 the day the Puritans set sail for Plymouth Rock. 61 00:03:34,360 --> 00:03:37,400 The Mayflower sailed into Cape Cod, Massachusetts, 62 00:03:37,400 --> 00:03:40,880 in November of 1620 after a 66-day voyage. 63 00:03:40,880 --> 00:03:43,520 Now, it's generally noted about half the people on the boats were 64 00:03:43,520 --> 00:03:47,000 separatists, Calvinists - but here's a more specific breakdown. 65 00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:48,640 33 of those people were elderly, 66 00:03:48,640 --> 00:03:50,840 and pretty much wished they'd died on the boat 67 00:03:50,840 --> 00:03:52,280 before they ever arrived. 68 00:03:52,280 --> 00:03:55,480 Another 57 realised immediately what a horrible, 69 00:03:55,480 --> 00:03:57,960 horrible mistake they made leaving Europe. 70 00:03:57,960 --> 00:04:00,400 The remaining 42 set about making 71 00:04:00,400 --> 00:04:04,080 the lives of the other 90 excruciatingly miserable. 72 00:04:04,080 --> 00:04:06,200 It's kind of like Butlin's, but worse. 73 00:04:07,800 --> 00:04:11,200 The first couple years were really hard, 74 00:04:11,200 --> 00:04:14,920 they came over, and the first year they planted their crops 75 00:04:14,920 --> 00:04:18,920 and enough of them came up that they could survive another year. 76 00:04:18,920 --> 00:04:21,400 But the following year it didn't do so well, 77 00:04:21,400 --> 00:04:23,400 and it looked like the crops would fail 78 00:04:23,400 --> 00:04:25,840 and that would have been the end of the colony. 79 00:04:25,840 --> 00:04:28,120 So the Puritans who settled the colonies 80 00:04:28,120 --> 00:04:30,560 in North America were predisposed to misery. 81 00:04:30,560 --> 00:04:34,120 They believed they were the people that the Book of Revelations 82 00:04:34,120 --> 00:04:36,040 had chosen to go into the wilderness 83 00:04:36,040 --> 00:04:38,040 because some shit was about to go down. 84 00:04:38,040 --> 00:04:41,720 So they were willing to flagellate themselves with toil because that 85 00:04:41,720 --> 00:04:44,560 is an inherent Calvinist principle. 86 00:04:44,560 --> 00:04:48,880 OK, in essence, Calvinism goes like this - God has predetermined who's 87 00:04:48,880 --> 00:04:51,080 making the team and it's the hardest workers. 88 00:04:51,080 --> 00:04:52,840 But just because you're on the team 89 00:04:52,840 --> 00:04:54,720 doesn't mean you're in the starting line-up, 90 00:04:54,720 --> 00:04:57,240 but if you don't act like you're in the starting line-up you're 91 00:04:57,240 --> 00:04:58,880 not even going to make the team. 92 00:04:58,880 --> 00:05:01,080 Man's character, fate, and morality 93 00:05:01,080 --> 00:05:02,960 are determined by his labours. 94 00:05:08,200 --> 00:05:10,680 If you were educated or aristocratic, 95 00:05:10,680 --> 00:05:12,280 you were called master or mistress. 96 00:05:12,280 --> 00:05:15,880 If you were a craftsman like a wheelwright or glass-blower, 97 00:05:15,880 --> 00:05:17,920 you were a goodman. Beneath the goodmen 98 00:05:17,920 --> 00:05:19,600 were the indentured servants. 99 00:05:19,600 --> 00:05:22,080 Beneath the indentured servants were the kids, 100 00:05:22,080 --> 00:05:24,040 who were exploited beyond belief. 101 00:05:24,040 --> 00:05:26,280 Put out to labour from sun-up till sundown. 102 00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:32,880 So a typical day in a Puritan kid's life would probably consist of 103 00:05:32,880 --> 00:05:34,440 awakening before dawn, 104 00:05:34,440 --> 00:05:38,040 sitting down to a hot steaming bowl of grubs and larvae, 105 00:05:38,040 --> 00:05:42,280 then they would be sent out into a field where they might be strapped 106 00:05:42,280 --> 00:05:45,040 to a large immovable boulder in the hopes that 107 00:05:45,040 --> 00:05:47,920 a sudden growth spurt would dislodge the thing. 108 00:05:47,920 --> 00:05:51,080 Afterwards, four or five hours in a dank schoolhouse, 109 00:05:51,080 --> 00:05:53,320 where the only books were a Bible 110 00:05:53,320 --> 00:05:57,160 and a trilogy called Thousands And Thousands Of Mohicans, 111 00:05:57,160 --> 00:06:00,640 Not So Many Mohicans, Last Of The Mohicans. 112 00:06:00,640 --> 00:06:04,640 And afterwards, chores such as sewing by candlelight 113 00:06:04,640 --> 00:06:06,360 until you went blind, 114 00:06:06,360 --> 00:06:08,760 or assisting Mom through yet another stillbirth. 115 00:06:10,760 --> 00:06:11,960 Good times. 116 00:06:13,680 --> 00:06:16,480 Everyone knew their place, and everything was achieved 117 00:06:16,480 --> 00:06:17,920 for the greater glory of God. 118 00:06:17,920 --> 00:06:21,160 If you think about it, there is no more effective incentive to work 119 00:06:21,160 --> 00:06:24,840 than the notion that when a flashing white-hot streak of lightning fills 120 00:06:24,840 --> 00:06:29,320 the sky, and a blindingly bright figure of Christ descends to Earth 121 00:06:29,320 --> 00:06:30,640 to pluck his chosen ones, 122 00:06:30,640 --> 00:06:33,880 you don't really want to be caught goofing off at the water cooler. 123 00:06:51,520 --> 00:06:54,360 The belief in personal salvation through work 124 00:06:54,360 --> 00:06:56,720 is how the Plymouth colony survived. 125 00:06:56,720 --> 00:06:58,600 Work, work, work, work, work. 126 00:06:58,600 --> 00:07:01,600 Idle hands are the devil's workshop. 127 00:07:01,600 --> 00:07:04,640 They proved that you could tame the American wilderness, 128 00:07:04,640 --> 00:07:07,800 but the flood of people who followed - the Amish, the Quakers, 129 00:07:07,800 --> 00:07:09,720 the Lutherans, the Protestants, 130 00:07:09,720 --> 00:07:12,480 the Catholics - they didn't adhere to that same aesthetic. 131 00:07:12,480 --> 00:07:15,960 Probably because they looked at these right-wing religious zealots, 132 00:07:15,960 --> 00:07:18,200 and thought to themselves, "Hey, wait a minute, 133 00:07:18,200 --> 00:07:20,080 "if hard work is the core of spirituality, 134 00:07:20,080 --> 00:07:22,560 "how come the most spiritual people of all - 135 00:07:22,560 --> 00:07:24,120 "monks - don't work at all?" 136 00:07:25,880 --> 00:07:27,680 Major paradigm shift. 137 00:07:27,680 --> 00:07:31,240 Religious freedom gave way to personal motivation. 138 00:07:37,840 --> 00:07:40,600 By the middle of the 18th century in America, 139 00:07:40,600 --> 00:07:43,880 a good deal of secularisation had taken place. 140 00:07:43,880 --> 00:07:46,240 The idea that one worked for the glory of God 141 00:07:46,240 --> 00:07:50,240 was slowly replaced with the byword "usefulness". 142 00:07:50,240 --> 00:07:52,280 America was still a spindly legged puppy, 143 00:07:52,280 --> 00:07:55,520 and the only way it was going to survive was if every man, woman, 144 00:07:55,520 --> 00:07:58,680 and child expended some dogged persistence. 145 00:07:58,680 --> 00:08:00,560 Benjamin Franklin, more than anyone else, 146 00:08:00,560 --> 00:08:03,120 condensed this idea into the kind of aphorisms 147 00:08:03,120 --> 00:08:05,960 that stuck easily into people's heads. 148 00:08:05,960 --> 00:08:08,840 He invented the bumper sticker before there were bumpers. 149 00:08:24,400 --> 00:08:26,720 Franklin was America's first 150 00:08:26,720 --> 00:08:29,760 exemplary model of the self-made man. 151 00:08:29,760 --> 00:08:33,800 He was born poor in the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1706. 152 00:08:33,800 --> 00:08:36,440 At the age of ten, taught himself to read Latin, 153 00:08:36,440 --> 00:08:37,960 but dropped out of school. 154 00:08:37,960 --> 00:08:40,720 He invented swim fins for the hands. 155 00:08:40,720 --> 00:08:43,360 So you knew this guy was going places. 156 00:08:43,360 --> 00:08:45,080 Then he became a printer's apprentice, 157 00:08:45,080 --> 00:08:46,400 and that the age of 24 started 158 00:08:46,400 --> 00:08:50,680 publishing, under a pseudonym, Poor Richard's Almanac. 159 00:08:50,680 --> 00:08:55,120 A compendium of idioms and weather forecasts and predictions, 160 00:08:55,120 --> 00:08:58,320 written in a vernacular that regular people could relate to. 161 00:08:59,360 --> 00:09:01,040 "A penny saved is a penny earned." 162 00:09:03,040 --> 00:09:05,800 "Fish and visitors stink after three days." 163 00:09:06,920 --> 00:09:09,480 "I believe that once all the hoopla has died down, 164 00:09:09,480 --> 00:09:12,200 "that The Dave Clark Five will be bigger than The Beatles." 165 00:09:14,080 --> 00:09:17,520 1730, he was elected official printer for Pennsylvania, 166 00:09:17,520 --> 00:09:19,480 cranking out state currency. 167 00:09:19,480 --> 00:09:23,040 The man was literally given a license to print money. 168 00:09:23,040 --> 00:09:27,000 He would go on to invent the Franklin stove, bifocals, 169 00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:28,480 American independence, 170 00:09:28,480 --> 00:09:32,320 and something else but I can't quite think of right now. 171 00:09:32,320 --> 00:09:33,920 It'll come to me. 172 00:09:33,920 --> 00:09:35,960 He was an abolitionist and a vegetarian. 173 00:09:38,600 --> 00:09:42,440 It would have been useful if Franklin had invented the wristwatch 174 00:09:42,440 --> 00:09:44,920 because his exhortations about time equating money 175 00:09:44,920 --> 00:09:48,200 would have been lost on most 18th-century New Englanders. 176 00:09:48,200 --> 00:09:50,200 They didn't know what time it was. 177 00:09:50,200 --> 00:09:52,840 They knew when the sun came up, when the sun went down, 178 00:09:52,840 --> 00:09:55,040 they knew when it was planting season, 179 00:09:55,040 --> 00:09:57,040 harvest season, fallow season. 180 00:09:57,040 --> 00:09:59,200 It was a self-employed nation. 181 00:09:59,200 --> 00:10:02,200 Industrious but not yet industrial. 182 00:10:02,200 --> 00:10:04,720 It was a very simple economic tenant. 183 00:10:04,720 --> 00:10:06,880 A man's efforts are his to exert, 184 00:10:06,880 --> 00:10:09,440 and the successes are his to be reaped. 185 00:10:14,360 --> 00:10:17,160 For a short period, this pure fiduciary equation worked. 186 00:10:19,080 --> 00:10:23,920 But then that pesky old southern bugaboo, cotton, raised its head. 187 00:10:23,920 --> 00:10:28,040 Cotton. It's hard to believe that a huge chunk of America's problems, 188 00:10:28,040 --> 00:10:33,040 racial tensions, the Mason-Dixon line, the Civil War, Reconstruction, 189 00:10:33,040 --> 00:10:36,960 Jim Crow laws, the KKK, civil rights, 190 00:10:36,960 --> 00:10:41,320 some bigoted 20-year-old kid running a Dodge Challenger into a group of 191 00:10:41,320 --> 00:10:45,920 protesters, every dumbass, redneck, 192 00:10:45,920 --> 00:10:50,120 cracker-barrel shred of racism that exists in America is the indirect 193 00:10:50,120 --> 00:10:54,320 result of a fabric - a fabric. 194 00:10:54,320 --> 00:10:57,680 God, if only northerners had been happy wearing wool 195 00:10:57,680 --> 00:11:01,480 or hemp or muskrat pelts, America would be a different nation. 196 00:11:01,480 --> 00:11:03,160 A nation itching and 197 00:11:03,160 --> 00:11:07,560 scratching its sweaty ass off but a less racist nation. 198 00:11:17,800 --> 00:11:20,680 In our historically redacted world, we like to think that the north was 199 00:11:20,680 --> 00:11:23,080 anti-slavery and thus morally superior to the south, 200 00:11:23,080 --> 00:11:25,440 but that's not remotely the case. 201 00:11:25,440 --> 00:11:27,680 Southern slavery and King cotton 202 00:11:27,680 --> 00:11:30,840 were inextricably intertwined with the north. 203 00:11:33,720 --> 00:11:38,760 The founding of the Merrimack Mills in lower Massachusetts in 1822 204 00:11:39,200 --> 00:11:40,840 changed the industrial order in America. 205 00:11:42,200 --> 00:11:44,520 It was the first mega-factory. 206 00:11:46,160 --> 00:11:50,160 All that cotton picked by bonded slaves from the south came here, 207 00:11:50,160 --> 00:11:52,480 where it was loomed by wage slaves 208 00:11:52,480 --> 00:11:55,160 or, as we like to call them, women. 209 00:11:57,760 --> 00:12:02,480 The way the mills first got their employees was Francis Cabot Lowell, 210 00:12:02,480 --> 00:12:05,760 the founder of the Lowell manufacturing industry. 211 00:12:05,760 --> 00:12:08,920 He went out to farm communities throughout New England, 212 00:12:08,920 --> 00:12:13,200 himself, and he would talk to groups of farmers, and say, "Send us your 213 00:12:13,200 --> 00:12:15,160 "daughters, we're going to take care of them, 214 00:12:15,160 --> 00:12:18,240 "we're going to keep them on the morally straight and narrow, 215 00:12:18,240 --> 00:12:20,480 "we are going to make sure they're educated, 216 00:12:20,480 --> 00:12:21,800 "we're going to pay them well. 217 00:12:21,800 --> 00:12:25,800 "Send us your daughters and they'll be working in our companies, making 218 00:12:25,800 --> 00:12:29,200 "American products, and you can be proud of them." 219 00:12:30,240 --> 00:12:33,400 Ranging in age from seven to 35, 220 00:12:33,400 --> 00:12:36,320 the mill girls - or mules, as they came to be known - 221 00:12:36,320 --> 00:12:38,800 worked an average of 73 hours a week. 222 00:12:38,800 --> 00:12:42,320 They slept six to a room in dormitories and after work they were 223 00:12:42,320 --> 00:12:45,760 encouraged by the mills' matrons to read and write and paint - 224 00:12:45,760 --> 00:12:48,080 you know, to improve their standing in society. 225 00:12:48,080 --> 00:12:52,000 They even had their own publication - the Lowell Offering - 226 00:12:52,000 --> 00:12:55,600 full of poems and short stories celebrating the enlightened culture 227 00:12:55,600 --> 00:12:58,240 of being strapped to a card spinner for 14 hours a day. 228 00:13:00,320 --> 00:13:03,360 When the girls first came here it was really seen as 229 00:13:03,360 --> 00:13:07,440 this revolutionary new way of running America. 230 00:13:07,440 --> 00:13:09,440 This new industry, this new opportunity. 231 00:13:09,440 --> 00:13:12,400 I'm not sure if they were looked up to but they were applauded - 232 00:13:12,400 --> 00:13:14,880 they were applauded for taking the chance 233 00:13:14,880 --> 00:13:16,640 and going to work for themselves. 234 00:13:16,640 --> 00:13:20,000 Almost immediately, a kind of proto-feminist argument arose. 235 00:13:20,000 --> 00:13:22,240 Were these mill girls being exploited, 236 00:13:22,240 --> 00:13:26,240 or were they emancipated because they had paying jobs? 237 00:13:26,240 --> 00:13:29,560 As opposed to staying on the farm and earning zilch. 238 00:13:29,560 --> 00:13:32,960 Sure it was a lousy wages, they were medically misunderstood, 239 00:13:32,960 --> 00:13:37,960 they were an nonentity at the ballot box, but they were making money. 240 00:13:39,440 --> 00:13:41,760 No. 241 00:13:41,760 --> 00:13:44,800 ALARM AND MACHINES RUNNING 242 00:13:52,480 --> 00:13:54,960 SHOUTS: It was shit! 243 00:13:54,960 --> 00:13:56,640 God! 244 00:13:56,640 --> 00:13:59,520 Imagine listening to this for 16 hours a day. 245 00:13:59,520 --> 00:14:01,640 This is worse than a Kasabian album. 246 00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:06,400 The more highfalutin members of New England Society 247 00:14:06,400 --> 00:14:09,960 took the term "mill girl" and turned it into a class slur. 248 00:14:14,840 --> 00:14:18,040 There were rumours started about loose morality, 249 00:14:18,040 --> 00:14:20,760 that they were going out and doing things 250 00:14:20,760 --> 00:14:24,000 that girls of New England shouldn't be doing, 251 00:14:24,000 --> 00:14:25,680 so the reputation started to change. 252 00:14:26,840 --> 00:14:29,600 As the decades went on and more and more mills were built, 253 00:14:29,600 --> 00:14:30,880 wages went down, 254 00:14:30,880 --> 00:14:34,240 and it was the immigrant women who started to work in the mills. 255 00:14:34,240 --> 00:14:36,880 Then it was seen really as dirty work 256 00:14:36,880 --> 00:14:39,360 that only dirty people would do. 257 00:14:39,360 --> 00:14:42,600 Because these women weren't home scrubbing and baking and ringing 258 00:14:42,600 --> 00:14:45,600 and washing, they weren't fit for breeding or marriage, 259 00:14:45,600 --> 00:14:47,880 and that's where we get the term spinster. 260 00:14:55,440 --> 00:14:57,840 the gnarled fingers of young women, 261 00:14:57,840 --> 00:15:00,000 America entered its industrial age. 262 00:15:06,560 --> 00:15:09,800 The self-employed enterprises gave way to factories. 263 00:15:09,800 --> 00:15:13,800 People engaged in mind-numbing specialised tasks 264 00:15:13,800 --> 00:15:15,920 making things for the nation to use 265 00:15:15,920 --> 00:15:17,840 when the nation wasn't working. 266 00:15:17,840 --> 00:15:21,880 Which was practically never. 267 00:15:21,880 --> 00:15:25,760 The work ethic had become a maze of paradoxes. 268 00:15:25,760 --> 00:15:29,360 On the one hand, it impelled the restless energy of a young nation. 269 00:15:29,360 --> 00:15:32,400 America had become a powerhouse and there was a sense of mission. 270 00:15:33,880 --> 00:15:37,680 But these same workers were trapped in a cycle of monotony, 271 00:15:37,680 --> 00:15:41,000 forced discipline. Where was the individual creativity? 272 00:15:41,000 --> 00:15:43,960 Where was that sense of usefulness that Franklin liked to talk about? 273 00:15:45,440 --> 00:15:46,760 By the mid-1800s, 274 00:15:46,760 --> 00:15:50,560 the northern United States was one giant steaming workhouse. 275 00:15:50,560 --> 00:15:53,160 Consumed by the idea that a man's physical output 276 00:15:53,160 --> 00:15:54,840 determined his destiny. 277 00:15:58,000 --> 00:16:01,280 So, there was no excuse not to bust your butt. 278 00:16:01,280 --> 00:16:03,120 Now maybe you're thinking, "Geez, Rich, 279 00:16:03,120 --> 00:16:04,880 "didn't people ever lighten up back then? 280 00:16:04,880 --> 00:16:07,120 "They couldn't have spent all their time working." 281 00:16:07,120 --> 00:16:10,080 Well, of course there was leisure time. 282 00:16:10,080 --> 00:16:12,880 There was baseball and cracker jacks. 283 00:16:12,880 --> 00:16:15,120 A day at the track. Parades, 284 00:16:15,120 --> 00:16:19,200 capades and county fairs, where the gals dressed in gingham. 285 00:16:19,200 --> 00:16:22,200 If you had a little cash you could take in the follies. 286 00:16:24,640 --> 00:16:27,120 Now, if you were a kid, you might spend a lot of leisure time 287 00:16:27,120 --> 00:16:29,520 sitting down with your McGuffey Reader - 288 00:16:29,520 --> 00:16:31,760 the most popular schoolbook at the time, 289 00:16:31,760 --> 00:16:34,040 full of wisdom and lifestyle tips. 290 00:16:35,280 --> 00:16:39,600 "Lucy has a new box, a big box, let us go and see it. 291 00:16:39,600 --> 00:16:41,520 "Lucy's box is red. 292 00:16:43,200 --> 00:16:46,000 "It is a hot day, let us go out. 293 00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:49,080 "Let us go out with our dog, to the new cut hay. 294 00:16:49,080 --> 00:16:51,520 "Let us put hay on our dog. 295 00:16:51,520 --> 00:16:53,720 "It will be fun. Let us go." 296 00:16:55,680 --> 00:16:58,800 And in the evening, the family would sit around and play a wildly popular 297 00:16:58,800 --> 00:17:02,840 board game called The Checkered Game of Life. 298 00:17:02,840 --> 00:17:04,880 # The game of life... # 299 00:17:04,880 --> 00:17:08,440 It was invented in 1860, by a man named Milton Bradley, 300 00:17:08,440 --> 00:17:12,240 and quickly became the favoured parlour pastime in America. 301 00:17:12,240 --> 00:17:15,840 The object of the game was to reach successful old age - 302 00:17:15,840 --> 00:17:17,320 which, at the time, was about 45 - 303 00:17:17,320 --> 00:17:22,360 along the way trying to avoid such misfortunes as disgrace, property, 304 00:17:23,240 --> 00:17:28,280 crime, prison, the fat office, and suicide. 305 00:17:28,440 --> 00:17:29,560 Fun for the whole family. 306 00:17:34,600 --> 00:17:36,120 That's life! 307 00:17:38,200 --> 00:17:41,720 The game is still popular today, but it's been updated a bit. 308 00:17:41,720 --> 00:17:44,080 For instance, you now achieve success 309 00:17:44,080 --> 00:17:46,320 by graduating college, getting a job, 310 00:17:46,320 --> 00:17:50,320 finding a spouse, finding a home, buying a car, 311 00:17:50,320 --> 00:17:53,680 the suicide option has been replaced by bankruptcy, 312 00:17:53,680 --> 00:17:57,160 but you can work your way out of total financial devastation 313 00:17:57,160 --> 00:18:00,120 by merely helping the homeless or recycling. 314 00:18:00,120 --> 00:18:01,760 Just like real life. 315 00:18:07,920 --> 00:18:10,120 The whole notion of the American dream, 316 00:18:10,120 --> 00:18:11,920 the land of opportunity, 317 00:18:11,920 --> 00:18:14,320 is predicated on cultivation. 318 00:18:14,320 --> 00:18:17,040 Anyone who's ever seen some fossilised septuagenarian 319 00:18:17,040 --> 00:18:19,080 pottering around their sad allotment 320 00:18:19,080 --> 00:18:21,320 can see how elated they are when they coax a few 321 00:18:21,320 --> 00:18:23,560 runner beans into existence. 322 00:18:23,560 --> 00:18:27,680 Why? Cos dirt makes people happy. 323 00:18:27,680 --> 00:18:30,640 The notion of owning the proverbial 40 acres and a mule 324 00:18:30,640 --> 00:18:34,920 was irresistible to a lot of Americans. In 1860, 325 00:18:34,920 --> 00:18:38,320 true freedom for a lot of Americans lay out west. 326 00:18:42,520 --> 00:18:44,560 The famous John Gast painting, 327 00:18:44,560 --> 00:18:45,920 American Progress, 328 00:18:45,920 --> 00:18:47,920 sums it up pretty succinctly. 329 00:18:47,920 --> 00:18:51,720 Old America was a greasy mechanic trapped in a mind-numbing production 330 00:18:51,720 --> 00:18:55,120 line with some fat, rich boss breathing down its neck. 331 00:18:55,120 --> 00:18:57,840 New America, an ethereal female spirit 332 00:18:57,840 --> 00:19:01,160 stringing telegraph wire like a Wichita lineman. 333 00:19:02,280 --> 00:19:05,920 If the Wichita lineman was wearing a diaphanous negligee, 334 00:19:05,920 --> 00:19:09,600 shepherding steam engines and wagon trains across the Great Plains 335 00:19:09,600 --> 00:19:12,280 towards untold riches, 336 00:19:12,280 --> 00:19:16,680 while terrorised buffalo and Indians scampered off into the margins. 337 00:19:16,680 --> 00:19:18,360 Who wouldn't want a piece of that? 338 00:19:25,040 --> 00:19:28,440 As America expanded, more and more Europeans followed, 339 00:19:28,440 --> 00:19:30,920 trailing in the celestial prop wash 340 00:19:30,920 --> 00:19:34,120 of that floating female godhead of fortune. 341 00:19:34,120 --> 00:19:36,320 I told you there'd be more metaphors. 342 00:19:36,320 --> 00:19:40,280 One group in particular made the most of their new-found opportunity. 343 00:19:40,280 --> 00:19:41,280 Germans. 344 00:19:47,920 --> 00:19:51,360 46 million Americans have some kind of German ancestry, 345 00:19:51,360 --> 00:19:55,280 and that makes them the largest ethnic majority in America. 346 00:19:55,280 --> 00:19:57,200 How did this happen? 347 00:19:57,200 --> 00:20:00,400 Well, in 1848 a wave of rebellion broke out 348 00:20:00,400 --> 00:20:05,160 against the autocratic princes and barons who ruled Germany. 349 00:20:05,160 --> 00:20:08,920 Which at the time was a loose collection of near-feudal states. 350 00:20:08,920 --> 00:20:11,440 After the revolt, some of these rabble-rousers 351 00:20:11,440 --> 00:20:13,600 and organisers hotfoot it for America. 352 00:20:13,600 --> 00:20:16,960 Fortunately their arrival coincided with the signing of 353 00:20:16,960 --> 00:20:19,800 the Homestead Act, which had opened up the Midwest to settlers. 354 00:20:26,880 --> 00:20:30,160 So, these God-centric German folk moved West, 355 00:20:30,160 --> 00:20:34,840 settling along the Mississippi River in places like Iowa, or Illinois. 356 00:20:34,840 --> 00:20:37,560 They brought with them a more precise work ethic 357 00:20:37,560 --> 00:20:41,360 and some pretty nifty inventive ideas. 358 00:20:41,360 --> 00:20:44,760 A lot of these early German colonies were very hard-core religious - 359 00:20:44,760 --> 00:20:49,760 Moravians, Waldensians, Amish, Hutterites - you know, old school. 360 00:20:50,160 --> 00:20:53,640 But even the most pious German can't seem to help himself when it comes 361 00:20:53,640 --> 00:20:56,640 to work. By God, they've got to invent something! 362 00:20:56,640 --> 00:20:58,520 That's why here at the Amana colonies, 363 00:20:58,520 --> 00:21:03,520 a religious commune which, up until 1939, operated off of a mill race 364 00:21:03,760 --> 00:21:05,880 invented the microwave. 365 00:21:11,280 --> 00:21:13,840 The Amana radarange 366 00:21:13,840 --> 00:21:18,360 is the first home-use microwave technology ever 367 00:21:18,360 --> 00:21:21,000 invented, and you're looking at the very first model 368 00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:22,640 ever made in the whole world. 369 00:21:22,640 --> 00:21:25,040 So this actually wasn't called a microwave, 370 00:21:25,040 --> 00:21:27,600 this is called a radarange. It's a Radarange, yes. 371 00:21:27,600 --> 00:21:31,240 They trademarked the technology and everything, and eventually of course 372 00:21:31,240 --> 00:21:34,240 that technology was taken to other places, 373 00:21:34,240 --> 00:21:37,040 and so they obviously couldn't call it a Radarange, 374 00:21:37,040 --> 00:21:40,360 otherwise that was copyright infringements and so people 375 00:21:40,360 --> 00:21:43,240 called it a microwave, and that's what it's been called ever since. 376 00:21:43,240 --> 00:21:45,600 Right. But it's really a Radarrange. 377 00:21:45,600 --> 00:21:47,880 Correct. There's radar in there. Yeah. 378 00:21:50,160 --> 00:21:52,840 By the 1960s, 379 00:21:52,840 --> 00:21:55,840 Amana appliances had become a household name - 380 00:21:55,840 --> 00:21:59,960 what every housewife and game show contestant dreamed of. 381 00:21:59,960 --> 00:22:03,200 So, while some Germans made a life for themselves in the Midwest 382 00:22:03,200 --> 00:22:05,440 trying to revolutionise how we eat popcorn, 383 00:22:05,440 --> 00:22:07,400 a good number moved to big cities, 384 00:22:07,400 --> 00:22:12,040 trying to revolutionise the labour movement. 385 00:22:12,040 --> 00:22:15,240 The Germans who settled in Chicago in the 1800s were a completely 386 00:22:15,240 --> 00:22:17,480 different culture than those pious, 387 00:22:17,480 --> 00:22:20,360 prune-faced Puritans who settled in Massachusetts. 388 00:22:20,360 --> 00:22:24,120 Let me put it another way - Germans don't take a lot of shit. 389 00:22:28,720 --> 00:22:33,320 The atmosphere of labour relations in Chicago in the late 19th century 390 00:22:33,320 --> 00:22:35,600 was a tinderbox to say the least. 391 00:22:35,600 --> 00:22:39,200 There were relentless strikes, raw-knuckle demonstrations. 392 00:22:39,200 --> 00:22:42,880 Flash-point confrontations between workers and owners. 393 00:22:42,880 --> 00:22:46,800 Often organised by outside agitators who wanted a radical change 394 00:22:46,800 --> 00:22:48,280 in how America worked. 395 00:22:55,040 --> 00:22:58,520 There's a term in the United States for the lethargy and the lack of 396 00:22:58,520 --> 00:23:01,400 productiveness that Americans feel at the beginning of the workweek - 397 00:23:01,400 --> 00:23:03,400 it's called Blue Monday. 398 00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:06,440 The saying goes, "Never buy a car made on a Monday." 399 00:23:06,440 --> 00:23:10,080 Well, Germans had the same term - blaumachen. 400 00:23:10,080 --> 00:23:13,120 But it describes the restlessness that Germans feel 401 00:23:13,120 --> 00:23:15,240 when they're sitting around on a Monday 402 00:23:15,240 --> 00:23:17,040 waiting for indigo dye to dry. 403 00:23:17,040 --> 00:23:21,080 Germans don't like not being productive. 404 00:23:21,080 --> 00:23:25,720 Do you understand? Chicago in 1880 was full of Germans and Bohemians, 405 00:23:25,720 --> 00:23:28,120 companies like Pullman and MacCormick 406 00:23:28,120 --> 00:23:29,960 paid them $1.50 a day, 407 00:23:29,960 --> 00:23:31,920 they worked 60 hours a week, 408 00:23:31,920 --> 00:23:36,800 six days a week, and because Germans expect to be paid for their efforts, 409 00:23:36,800 --> 00:23:40,520 things weren't exactly Gemutlichkeit. 410 00:23:40,520 --> 00:23:42,600 The Haymarket tragedy of 1886 411 00:23:42,600 --> 00:23:45,880 is probably the singular most critical event 412 00:23:45,880 --> 00:23:48,080 in the history of American workers' rights. 413 00:23:52,440 --> 00:23:54,960 May 4th 1886, 414 00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:59,960 when a protest was held against police brutality in Chicago 415 00:24:01,280 --> 00:24:03,720 with the hope that 20,000 people would come. 416 00:24:06,600 --> 00:24:08,600 The background of all this, of course, 417 00:24:08,600 --> 00:24:10,360 is a fight for the eight-hour day, 418 00:24:10,360 --> 00:24:13,080 the right to organise, the right to free speech, 419 00:24:13,080 --> 00:24:18,120 all the things that were suppressed by the owners of industry. 420 00:24:21,880 --> 00:24:24,640 The rally is called, it's disorganised, 421 00:24:24,640 --> 00:24:29,320 it's terrible weather and only 2,000, 2,500 people show up. 422 00:24:31,040 --> 00:24:33,360 So they mounted these hay wagons to talk, 423 00:24:33,360 --> 00:24:35,160 and used fiery rhetoric about, 424 00:24:35,160 --> 00:24:37,240 "This has to stop, this attack on workers, 425 00:24:37,240 --> 00:24:39,120 "we are trying to organise unions." 426 00:24:41,800 --> 00:24:44,800 Towards the end of the rally, most of the crowd had left, 427 00:24:44,800 --> 00:24:47,560 there's 250 people in the crowd, 428 00:24:47,560 --> 00:24:52,040 and the final speaker, Samuel Fielden, is speaking, 429 00:24:52,040 --> 00:24:57,080 and the Police Inspector Bomfield marches his 176 police officers 430 00:24:58,120 --> 00:25:00,360 up to the crowd, and says, "I command you 431 00:25:00,360 --> 00:25:03,200 "in the name of the people to disperse." 432 00:25:03,200 --> 00:25:07,520 And Samuel Fielden says, "But this is a peaceable meeting." 433 00:25:07,520 --> 00:25:09,200 And at that very moment, 434 00:25:09,200 --> 00:25:12,560 what is observed is a five-pound dynamite bomb 435 00:25:12,560 --> 00:25:16,360 that lands at the foot of the police and kills a policemen. 436 00:25:16,360 --> 00:25:19,440 That explosion blew out the lights, 437 00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:21,720 and the police were armed and they started shooting. 438 00:25:27,120 --> 00:25:29,240 The bomb blast killed seven policemen. 439 00:25:29,240 --> 00:25:32,040 In the ensuing violence, four workers were killed, 440 00:25:32,040 --> 00:25:33,680 many more were injured. 441 00:25:33,680 --> 00:25:36,840 The next day, martial law is declared in Chicago, 442 00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:39,560 and within a short period of time 443 00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:43,080 this great, incredible, unfair trial takes place 444 00:25:43,080 --> 00:25:46,480 and eight men are convicted of conspiracy 445 00:25:46,480 --> 00:25:49,160 to commit violence and murder. 446 00:25:49,160 --> 00:25:53,160 Six of them German-born, one American-born and one from England. 447 00:25:54,640 --> 00:25:59,320 Americans were being told that long-haired, creepy, socialist 448 00:25:59,320 --> 00:26:04,360 German agitators, bomb-throwers are trying to ruin our way of life. 449 00:26:05,000 --> 00:26:06,840 That was the rhetoric in the newspapers. 450 00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:14,120 It's about the basic fundamental democratic, and what is so much an 451 00:26:14,320 --> 00:26:17,800 American ideal, the right to freely assemble, 452 00:26:17,800 --> 00:26:19,400 the right to organise, 453 00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:22,440 and the suppression of that is really what 454 00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:25,280 the Haymarket story is about. 455 00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:37,360 One of the great anomalies of the US is that, unlike the UK or Australia, 456 00:26:37,360 --> 00:26:39,400 it's never had a Labour Party. 457 00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:43,360 You know, a political party made up of and representing workers. 458 00:26:43,360 --> 00:26:46,160 Why? Because the first labour movements in America 459 00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:49,040 managed to let anarchists slip into their ranks. 460 00:26:49,040 --> 00:26:51,400 Ever since, labour movements have been infected 461 00:26:51,400 --> 00:26:53,280 with that dreaded word - socialism. 462 00:26:53,280 --> 00:26:56,280 Which in America is a word that easily morphs into the next 463 00:26:56,280 --> 00:26:58,000 word - communism. 464 00:26:59,760 --> 00:27:02,560 The Haymarket Tragedy in Chicago reverberated 465 00:27:02,560 --> 00:27:06,280 throughout the world and Chi-Town was now being perceived 466 00:27:06,280 --> 00:27:08,720 as a hotbed of pink-tinged radicalism. 467 00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:10,720 Social decay, poverty, 468 00:27:10,720 --> 00:27:13,280 still smouldering from the devastating fire 469 00:27:13,280 --> 00:27:15,840 that had nearly destroyed it in 1871, 470 00:27:15,840 --> 00:27:18,720 and even worse, it had never won a World Series. 471 00:27:18,720 --> 00:27:20,280 Frankly, the place was a mess. 472 00:27:28,280 --> 00:27:31,520 So what do you do when you want a makeover in the eyes of the world? 473 00:27:31,520 --> 00:27:34,240 When you want to show the big boys in London and Paris 474 00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:36,640 that you're a major player on the world stage? 475 00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:38,560 You throw a party! 476 00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:43,520 The 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago was a World's Fair that made 477 00:27:43,920 --> 00:27:46,920 other World's Fairs look like one of those skanky, syphilitic, 478 00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:49,320 fun fairs in Skegness on a Friday night. 479 00:27:54,600 --> 00:27:59,160 The city dredged 200 acres of swampland in South Chicago, 480 00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:01,880 constructed an entire city out of plaster, 481 00:28:01,880 --> 00:28:03,400 built a midway, 482 00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:06,640 and introduced the world to carbonated drinks, hamburgers, 483 00:28:06,640 --> 00:28:08,800 indoor lighting, bearded lady midgets, 484 00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:11,200 the Ferris wheel, ragtime music, 485 00:28:11,200 --> 00:28:14,520 hoochie coochie shows and the Pledge of Allegiance. 486 00:28:14,520 --> 00:28:19,560 It really shined a light on Chicago and the work ethic of Americans 487 00:28:19,680 --> 00:28:22,640 because people were aware of the fire in 1871, 488 00:28:22,640 --> 00:28:24,520 and you're talking that 489 00:28:24,520 --> 00:28:29,200 the city burned to the ground only 20 years prior to this. 490 00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:33,600 So the amount of work and the amount of work even leading up to 491 00:28:33,600 --> 00:28:36,760 even possibly competing to have the fair was huge, 492 00:28:36,760 --> 00:28:39,000 but this was kind of proof positive 493 00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:41,560 that they had really risen from the ashes 494 00:28:41,560 --> 00:28:43,520 and had really shone a light on 495 00:28:43,520 --> 00:28:46,600 the American worker, the Chicago worker, 496 00:28:46,600 --> 00:28:49,120 and what people can accomplish 497 00:28:49,120 --> 00:28:51,200 if they really put their minds to something. 498 00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:55,200 And really everybody wanted it - from the hourly wager 499 00:28:55,200 --> 00:28:57,240 to the rich elite people. 500 00:28:57,240 --> 00:29:00,520 It was here that Henry Ford saw the internal combustion engine 501 00:29:00,520 --> 00:29:03,160 that would give him the idea for a horseless carriage. 502 00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:06,800 It inspired L Frank Baum to write The Wizard of Oz. 503 00:29:06,800 --> 00:29:09,640 It was the template for future prefab wonders 504 00:29:09,640 --> 00:29:12,480 like Disneyland and Las Vegas. 505 00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:14,920 20 million people visited the Columbian Expo 506 00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:16,320 in the six months it ran. 507 00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:18,560 Shortly after it closed, it caught fire, 508 00:29:18,560 --> 00:29:21,640 and melted to the ground like a 600-acre marshmallow. 509 00:29:21,640 --> 00:29:23,600 But it changed the way the world viewed America 510 00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:26,720 and the way Americans viewed themselves. 511 00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:29,600 The designers of the fairs originally wanted this to be 512 00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:31,520 greater and grander than any other fair. 513 00:29:31,520 --> 00:29:34,160 I mean, when you talk 200 buildings over 600 acres 514 00:29:34,160 --> 00:29:35,920 just placing your eyes on everything 515 00:29:35,920 --> 00:29:39,120 would be over 300 miles of walking and it would take over two weeks. 516 00:29:39,120 --> 00:29:42,560 And this was an opportunity for someone who had never...probably 517 00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:47,600 never left Chicago to actually go and see things from, like, over 51 518 00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:50,280 different countries that were represented at the fair. 519 00:29:51,600 --> 00:29:54,000 What the Expo achieved was to create 520 00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:56,920 the concept of mass marketing and packaging. 521 00:29:56,920 --> 00:30:00,200 After the Expo, Americans became brand-conscious - 522 00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:02,080 they didn't want any pancake syrup, 523 00:30:02,080 --> 00:30:05,560 they wanted the pancake syrup they'd seen at the Expo. 524 00:30:05,560 --> 00:30:08,480 The one that emanated from the corpus of a smiling black woman 525 00:30:08,480 --> 00:30:10,160 who called herself Aunt Jemima. 526 00:30:10,160 --> 00:30:12,800 America had become a consumer economy. 527 00:30:15,560 --> 00:30:19,320 The beginning of the 20th century was the singularly most mind-blowing 528 00:30:19,320 --> 00:30:23,240 decade of progression in the history of history. 529 00:30:23,240 --> 00:30:25,960 What? Did you get a new iPhone X in 2018? 530 00:30:25,960 --> 00:30:28,320 Good for you. Do you know how much things changed 531 00:30:28,320 --> 00:30:31,280 between 1900 and 1910? 532 00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:37,000 Well, in 1900, 533 00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:41,320 an American might be sitting around trying not to contract diphtheria, 534 00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:45,880 waiting for a horse-drawn cart to deliver some unpasteurised milk. 535 00:30:45,880 --> 00:30:47,640 A mere ten years later, 536 00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:51,360 conceivably that same person could be driving to an airfield in Dayton 537 00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:55,880 Ohio in a model T car, listening to a wireless radio broadcast through a 538 00:30:55,880 --> 00:30:57,400 plastic headset, 539 00:30:57,400 --> 00:31:01,160 wearing clothes freshly laundered in an electric washing machine, and 540 00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:03,800 taking pics along the way with a Brownie camera. 541 00:31:03,800 --> 00:31:07,760 While in an alternative universe, if you believe this guy's theory, 542 00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:10,680 people were doing the same thing, except they were moving slower and 543 00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:13,120 they would have shrunk somewhat in mass. 544 00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:15,960 America had become a consumptive nation. 545 00:31:15,960 --> 00:31:18,240 Its trade output was the largest in the world. 546 00:31:18,240 --> 00:31:20,400 Stuff, stuff, stuff. 547 00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:23,160 The world could not get enough of what America was cranking out. 548 00:31:23,160 --> 00:31:25,360 Now, you would think with all this innovation, 549 00:31:25,360 --> 00:31:28,600 that workers' rights would have progressed, but no. 550 00:31:28,600 --> 00:31:31,000 Things were rolling along, but health care? 551 00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:33,160 Forget it. Paid vacations? 552 00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:36,680 Come on. Labour unions had no power whatsoever. 553 00:31:43,200 --> 00:31:46,120 Still they continued to fight for shorter hours 554 00:31:46,120 --> 00:31:47,720 and better working conditions. 555 00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:52,160 The phrase that became popular during that period was, 556 00:31:52,160 --> 00:31:54,920 "Eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep, 557 00:31:54,920 --> 00:31:56,840 "eight hours for what we will." 558 00:31:56,840 --> 00:32:00,320 Right. And the idea that eight hours for what we will would be to 559 00:32:00,320 --> 00:32:03,000 get educated, and to be able to finally 560 00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:07,360 have the things that the wealthy seemed to be able to have. 561 00:32:07,360 --> 00:32:09,880 Of course, the wealthy bosses, the Scrooge McDucks 562 00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:14,120 swimming in pools of 100 dollar bills resisted this fiercely. 563 00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:21,400 Most of the captains of American industry 564 00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:25,400 have at one point or another had their workers shot. 565 00:32:25,400 --> 00:32:28,360 Go on, named any rich American industrials. 566 00:32:30,080 --> 00:32:32,360 George Pullman, school dropout, 567 00:32:32,360 --> 00:32:36,240 invented the Pullman car. Hooray! Everyone can sleep on trains. 568 00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:40,680 Except for the 30 protesting workers at the Pullman brand in Chicago, who 569 00:32:40,680 --> 00:32:44,000 were gunned down by federal marshals acting on Pullman's behest. 570 00:32:45,560 --> 00:32:48,440 John D Rockefeller, school dropout, 571 00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:52,120 founded standard oil. Everyone can heat their homes! 572 00:32:52,120 --> 00:32:56,000 Except for the 66 striking miners, wives and children killed by 573 00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:59,480 Rockefeller's deputised militia in Ludlow, Colorado. 574 00:32:59,480 --> 00:33:04,440 Henry Ford, school dropout. Every American can now afford a car. 575 00:33:04,440 --> 00:33:08,920 Except for the 64 laid-off employees machine-gunned by security guards at 576 00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:11,640 Ford's plant in Dearborn, Michigan. 577 00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:15,120 The evil-eyed Thomas Edison, school dropout. 578 00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:18,440 OK, he never had any of his workers shot but he once electrocuted an 579 00:33:18,440 --> 00:33:21,440 elephant just to spite his arch nemesis Nikola Tesla. 580 00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:26,600 When Edison wasn't shooting current through circus animals, 581 00:33:26,600 --> 00:33:29,280 he was illuminating America, with his light bulb. 582 00:33:29,280 --> 00:33:31,520 But technological advances like this 583 00:33:31,520 --> 00:33:34,800 actually had a detrimental effect on the average worker. 584 00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:40,000 The great saviour of modern progress, indoor lighting, 585 00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:42,840 just meant that people worked longer hours. 586 00:33:42,840 --> 00:33:46,200 Manufacturers, who by nature are cold-blooded bastards, 587 00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:49,160 strived to get even more out of their workers. 588 00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:51,360 Something called Taylorism was born. 589 00:33:57,080 --> 00:34:00,720 Frederick Taylor was a mechanical engineer from Philadelphia, 590 00:34:00,720 --> 00:34:04,160 who, while working at the Bethlehem Steel Corporation in Pennsylvania, 591 00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:08,800 became obsessed with time, motion, and human productivity. 592 00:34:08,800 --> 00:34:13,720 He invented the term "management consultant" and then became one. 593 00:34:13,720 --> 00:34:16,760 Now basically Taylor was that jobsworth twit at work. 594 00:34:16,760 --> 00:34:18,560 You know - the one who insists 595 00:34:18,560 --> 00:34:21,200 there's only one right way to do anything. 596 00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:24,080 Except he took it to lunatic lengths. 597 00:34:24,080 --> 00:34:27,720 He watched men loading pig iron and calculated the most efficient way to 598 00:34:27,720 --> 00:34:32,000 wield a pig iron shovel, so that the maximum amount of pig iron could be 599 00:34:32,000 --> 00:34:34,840 lifted in the shortest amount of pig time. 600 00:34:34,840 --> 00:34:38,280 He invented something called the auto stereo cyclo chronograph, 601 00:34:38,280 --> 00:34:39,920 and ran around the country 602 00:34:39,920 --> 00:34:43,760 delivering his pig iron calculations and micro motion studies. 603 00:34:44,920 --> 00:34:48,480 So naturally Taylor's studies were adopted by factory owners and 604 00:34:48,480 --> 00:34:50,400 workers were stripped of the last few remaining 605 00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:53,040 ounces of dignity that they owned. 606 00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:56,440 Victorian nervousness, the Protestant ethic, craftsmanship, 607 00:34:56,440 --> 00:34:59,200 pride - they were gone. 608 00:34:59,200 --> 00:35:00,760 In fact, Taylor was so efficient 609 00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:03,960 that he accomplished everything he wanted to with his life 610 00:35:03,960 --> 00:35:06,600 by the age of 45, so then he retired and spent the 611 00:35:06,600 --> 00:35:09,920 remainder of his life staring at his stopwatch waiting to die. 612 00:35:13,480 --> 00:35:17,600 The workers of America were once again becoming dehumanised. 613 00:35:19,560 --> 00:35:22,200 Reduced to mindless repetition just like 614 00:35:22,200 --> 00:35:24,600 in those old Northern factory days. 615 00:35:26,480 --> 00:35:28,440 Where had the craftsmanship gone? 616 00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:32,840 To live the American dream you need to be happy in your work. 617 00:35:32,840 --> 00:35:35,760 Otherwise it's not a dream, it's a nightmare. 618 00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:41,680 You're lucky enough to have an occupation 619 00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:44,680 where you're making something artistic or creative, 620 00:35:44,680 --> 00:35:46,560 you're probably a happy worker. 621 00:35:46,560 --> 00:35:48,520 If you're making something out of scarcity, 622 00:35:48,520 --> 00:35:50,560 you're probably a happy worker. 623 00:35:50,560 --> 00:35:53,400 That's why luthiers are probably a lot happier 624 00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:55,120 than people making smartphones. 625 00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:03,200 There's an old saying, 626 00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:05,520 "I hope they make Martins in heaven, 627 00:36:05,520 --> 00:36:07,880 "cos I know they make Gibsons in hell." 628 00:36:07,880 --> 00:36:09,600 Actually, I just made that up. 629 00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:11,640 But if there is a workers' heaven, 630 00:36:11,640 --> 00:36:13,960 then it's here in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, 631 00:36:13,960 --> 00:36:16,000 home of Martin guitars, 632 00:36:16,000 --> 00:36:19,040 where every instrument is still crafted by hand. 633 00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:22,520 And if you own one, the chances are the person who made it 634 00:36:22,520 --> 00:36:24,760 is just as happy about that as you are. 635 00:36:26,640 --> 00:36:31,680 A lot of people have been here for a long time, 636 00:36:32,320 --> 00:36:35,000 there's a lot of pride in what we do, 637 00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:37,560 but the question specifically about the work ethic, 638 00:36:37,560 --> 00:36:40,360 I think they see that when they come in, nobody is sweating, 639 00:36:40,360 --> 00:36:44,440 but we're working pretty hard and consistently focusing on quality. 640 00:36:47,480 --> 00:36:50,280 There's a tremendous satisfaction in working with your hands, 641 00:36:50,280 --> 00:36:52,760 creating something by innate skill, 642 00:36:52,760 --> 00:36:55,600 whether you're carving it from scratch out of rosewood 643 00:36:55,600 --> 00:36:57,560 or restoring it to its former glory. 644 00:36:59,040 --> 00:37:01,960 The best part of this job is making, and is 645 00:37:01,960 --> 00:37:04,880 you know, getting an instrument together 646 00:37:04,880 --> 00:37:07,880 for someone to play, and enjoy playing music with. 647 00:37:07,880 --> 00:37:11,280 That's what music is all about, so that's what I get to do. 648 00:37:11,280 --> 00:37:13,720 I get to make people happy with 649 00:37:13,720 --> 00:37:16,160 getting an instrument for them, you know? 650 00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:19,080 So you worked in England and you worked in America? 651 00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:23,040 Do you see a difference in the work ethic between Brits and Americans? 652 00:37:23,040 --> 00:37:25,160 Yeah, yeah, there's a difference. 653 00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:30,240 I think the Americans, they like to work longer hours. 654 00:37:32,920 --> 00:37:36,720 Several of my colleagues here, they have two or three jobs, 655 00:37:36,720 --> 00:37:41,120 and I think that's part of the American dream, is to strive for the 656 00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:42,520 materialistic things in life. 657 00:37:49,080 --> 00:37:51,600 What truly makes work a happy experience? 658 00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:55,920 Well, obviously, you know, a positive work environment, 659 00:37:55,920 --> 00:37:58,120 a balance between work and leisure, 660 00:37:58,120 --> 00:38:00,320 being rewarded for your efforts. 661 00:38:00,320 --> 00:38:02,040 But there's something else. 662 00:38:02,040 --> 00:38:05,160 Making something of quality. 663 00:38:05,160 --> 00:38:06,840 Something with a soul. 664 00:38:06,840 --> 00:38:08,440 Look, I don't want to get all 665 00:38:08,440 --> 00:38:11,800 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance on you here, 666 00:38:11,800 --> 00:38:15,240 but when a worker knows that his efforts are going to result in 667 00:38:15,240 --> 00:38:17,600 something useful, something lasting, 668 00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:20,080 something infused with artistry, 669 00:38:20,080 --> 00:38:22,560 well, it's a beautiful thing. 670 00:38:22,560 --> 00:38:25,400 You only have to look at a 55 T-bird. 671 00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:26,880 The Golden Gate Bridge. 672 00:38:26,880 --> 00:38:28,920 An airstream trailer, for crying out loud. 673 00:38:28,920 --> 00:38:32,520 Like, the workers who build them are rational people - 674 00:38:32,520 --> 00:38:34,200 you're a rational guy, right? 675 00:38:34,200 --> 00:38:36,520 Yeah. And the product itself is romantic. 676 00:38:36,520 --> 00:38:40,520 If you get a combination of rational and romantic, you get quality. 677 00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:44,440 And that's the secret to worker happiness. 678 00:38:44,440 --> 00:38:45,920 Love the thing you do. 679 00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:47,520 It's that simple, folks. 680 00:38:57,840 --> 00:39:02,360 1920s America was a time of dramatic social and political change. 681 00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:05,840 For the first time, more Americans lived in cities than on farms. 682 00:39:05,840 --> 00:39:08,440 It was roaring, the Jazz age. 683 00:39:08,440 --> 00:39:10,280 Prohibition. Hemingway. Fitzgerald. 684 00:39:10,280 --> 00:39:13,920 Why, if you didn't know better, you could swear Americans were 685 00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:15,360 starting to get a little culture. 686 00:39:18,080 --> 00:39:20,280 An art movement began to gestate. 687 00:39:20,280 --> 00:39:23,280 A movement that at its core was anti-industrialist. 688 00:39:25,120 --> 00:39:27,320 The arts and crafts movement in the '20s 689 00:39:27,320 --> 00:39:29,360 wasn't just an artistic construct. 690 00:39:29,360 --> 00:39:31,600 It was a backlash to the barbaric crap 691 00:39:31,600 --> 00:39:33,160 America was churning out 692 00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:36,440 and the conditions in which that crap was being produced. 693 00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:38,800 It advocated economic and social reform 694 00:39:38,800 --> 00:39:42,280 by returning to simplicity and traditionalism. 695 00:39:42,280 --> 00:39:45,000 This derived more or less from the British social critic 696 00:39:45,000 --> 00:39:49,840 John Ruskin, who believed that the moral and social health of a nation 697 00:39:49,840 --> 00:39:52,760 was directly related to its art, its architecture, 698 00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:55,360 and to the nature of the work itself. 699 00:39:55,360 --> 00:40:00,360 This is a mission-style oak 700 00:40:00,360 --> 00:40:03,480 handcrafted rocking chair, 701 00:40:03,480 --> 00:40:06,280 based on the works of Gustav Stickley, 702 00:40:06,280 --> 00:40:10,760 one of the many artisans and craftsmen of the early 20th century 703 00:40:10,760 --> 00:40:12,520 who built Utopian societies, 704 00:40:12,520 --> 00:40:15,520 so that they could abide and work in peace in an effort 705 00:40:15,520 --> 00:40:19,760 to rekindle the true meaning of the phrase "work ethic". 706 00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:24,640 This isn't just a rocking chair - oh, no. 707 00:40:24,640 --> 00:40:27,840 This is a revolt against conventional life 708 00:40:27,840 --> 00:40:31,080 and its insensibility to beauty. 709 00:40:31,080 --> 00:40:35,200 Against cheap industrial progress and the even cheaper cheapness of 710 00:40:35,200 --> 00:40:38,200 the lives that were lost for that progress. 711 00:40:38,200 --> 00:40:41,320 It was made well and sold cheap. 712 00:40:41,320 --> 00:40:46,360 Today a genuine Stickley chair can go for upwards of five figures 713 00:40:46,960 --> 00:40:51,760 and many of them, many of them are owned by Barbra Streisand. 714 00:41:00,520 --> 00:41:03,880 Ultimately, the arts and crafts ethos would inform the work 715 00:41:03,880 --> 00:41:07,480 of Frank Lloyd Wright, a name that inspires reverential gasps 716 00:41:07,480 --> 00:41:11,160 whenever a highbrow discussion of American architecture takes place. 717 00:41:13,480 --> 00:41:18,160 Frank used a unique vocabulary of form and space and pattern which, 718 00:41:18,160 --> 00:41:20,520 when he wasn't banging the wives of his clients, 719 00:41:20,520 --> 00:41:23,080 changed the notion of what architecture should be 720 00:41:23,080 --> 00:41:24,200 to most Americans. 721 00:41:24,200 --> 00:41:27,960 He used open spaces and horizontal lines, 722 00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:31,640 and a free-flowing sense of proportion, 723 00:41:31,640 --> 00:41:34,160 all the while maintaining a heady arrogance 724 00:41:34,160 --> 00:41:37,560 and usurping the talents of the underlings who work for him. 725 00:41:37,560 --> 00:41:40,000 And banging the wives of his clients. 726 00:41:41,320 --> 00:41:45,560 Among his most notable creations are his house here in Oak Park Chicago, 727 00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:47,920 Falling Water in Pennsylvania, 728 00:41:47,920 --> 00:41:49,720 the Usonian homes of New York, 729 00:41:49,720 --> 00:41:51,640 the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, 730 00:41:51,640 --> 00:41:54,480 Taliesin in Wisconsin, where a disgruntled cook 731 00:41:54,480 --> 00:41:56,640 named Julian Carlton buried 732 00:41:56,640 --> 00:41:59,440 an axe in his mistress's head while Wright was away in Chicago 733 00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:01,520 on a so-called business trip. 734 00:42:01,520 --> 00:42:04,640 The cook then set fire to Wright's home and burned it to the ground, 735 00:42:04,640 --> 00:42:07,000 killing six more people. 736 00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:10,520 Many of these rooms are open to the public now, and allow visitors to 737 00:42:10,520 --> 00:42:15,080 wander around and gaze in amazement at Frank Lloyd Wright's handiwork, 738 00:42:15,080 --> 00:42:20,080 somehow conveniently overlooking the fact that a man put a fucking axe 739 00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:23,320 into the head of the woman Frank loved, 740 00:42:23,320 --> 00:42:26,640 and he had to bury her in a casket that he made with his own hands. 741 00:42:26,640 --> 00:42:30,800 Just about the most gut-wrenching, heartbreaking thing you can imagine. 742 00:42:30,800 --> 00:42:33,640 But, hey, come on, look at this filigree. 743 00:42:40,120 --> 00:42:41,880 What's the message here, folks? 744 00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:45,600 Life is a mixture of achievement and tragedy. 745 00:42:45,600 --> 00:42:47,440 If you've achieved something with your life, 746 00:42:47,440 --> 00:42:49,040 that's how the world remembers you. 747 00:42:49,040 --> 00:42:51,720 If you haven't, you're just some poor schmendrick 748 00:42:51,720 --> 00:42:54,760 whose mistress got killed by an axe-murderer. 749 00:43:06,360 --> 00:43:07,920 In terms of social reform, 750 00:43:07,920 --> 00:43:11,280 the arts and crafts movement was just a blip on the radar, 751 00:43:11,280 --> 00:43:14,560 pretty much killed off by the arrival of the Great Depression. 752 00:43:14,560 --> 00:43:17,080 It's pretty hard to take pride in your work when there isn't any. 753 00:43:24,960 --> 00:43:26,720 At the start of the 1930s, 754 00:43:26,720 --> 00:43:30,680 more than a quarter of America's wage-earners were on the skid. 755 00:43:30,680 --> 00:43:31,920 For most of that decade, 756 00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:34,160 America was in the throes of depression, 757 00:43:34,160 --> 00:43:35,600 and amidst this upheaval, 758 00:43:35,600 --> 00:43:37,760 writers and artists used their work 759 00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:40,040 to document the working man's struggles. 760 00:43:40,040 --> 00:43:41,840 To try to dignify it. 761 00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:44,160 John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice And Men 762 00:43:44,160 --> 00:43:46,480 told the story of George and Lennie, 763 00:43:46,480 --> 00:43:50,560 two fellas trying desperately to get a slice of the American dream. 764 00:43:50,560 --> 00:43:52,520 And guess what - it doesn't end well. 765 00:43:53,560 --> 00:43:55,160 The struggle for the American dream 766 00:43:55,160 --> 00:43:58,600 was a compelling narrative not only in much of America's literature, 767 00:43:58,600 --> 00:43:59,680 but in its art as well. 768 00:44:02,600 --> 00:44:04,680 Grant Woods' American Gothic is arguably 769 00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:07,400 the most recognisable painting in America, 770 00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:10,520 and its meaning has always been open to speculation. 771 00:44:10,520 --> 00:44:11,920 What's going on here? 772 00:44:11,920 --> 00:44:14,920 What's the relationship between this apparently 773 00:44:14,920 --> 00:44:16,280 humourless-looking couple, 774 00:44:16,280 --> 00:44:18,640 who look like their faces are being dragged into 775 00:44:18,640 --> 00:44:21,480 the fertile aisle of the soil right underneath their feet? 776 00:44:21,480 --> 00:44:23,320 What's with the pitchfork? 777 00:44:23,320 --> 00:44:25,160 And the frivolously ornate window? 778 00:44:25,160 --> 00:44:27,160 In an otherwise claptrap house. 779 00:44:27,160 --> 00:44:31,280 It's a real chin-scratcher, folks, but what the hell does it all mean? 780 00:44:32,440 --> 00:44:35,640 To me, these were the quintessential Americans. 781 00:44:35,640 --> 00:44:37,520 This was the American couple. 782 00:44:37,520 --> 00:44:41,920 A little kind of worn out but hard-working, really durable, 783 00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:46,440 resilient people, and for a long time that was my image of what the 784 00:44:46,440 --> 00:44:47,960 American people look like. 785 00:44:49,240 --> 00:44:52,480 This is like the stalwart 786 00:44:52,480 --> 00:44:56,240 and pretty grim or at least not very humorous 787 00:44:56,240 --> 00:45:00,040 people that were the backbone of the country. 788 00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:02,120 I think that's maybe what it meant. 789 00:45:02,120 --> 00:45:04,120 If you look at the painting, it's almost as if 790 00:45:04,120 --> 00:45:06,320 you can see two different images at the same time. 791 00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:11,040 One is of this hard-working, simple, rugged, Midwest couple, 792 00:45:11,040 --> 00:45:16,040 and at the other time you see this dour, maybe doubtful, adrift, 793 00:45:16,240 --> 00:45:20,160 lonely couple who don't seem particularly happy 794 00:45:20,160 --> 00:45:23,400 with the lot that life has given them. 795 00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:27,880 I think a represents a kind of 796 00:45:27,880 --> 00:45:32,320 joyless austerity in work. 797 00:45:32,320 --> 00:45:34,640 We don't quite know what to make of these people, 798 00:45:34,640 --> 00:45:37,120 we don't know what to make of their age differences, 799 00:45:37,120 --> 00:45:41,560 we don't know whether they are being ridiculed or celebrated, 800 00:45:41,560 --> 00:45:45,000 we don't know if they're from the 1930s or the 1890s. 801 00:45:45,000 --> 00:45:47,320 This is not an easy painting, it's very dour, 802 00:45:47,320 --> 00:45:52,040 it's very severe, and yet it does suggest 803 00:45:52,040 --> 00:45:56,320 one's complex relationship to work. 804 00:45:56,320 --> 00:45:59,320 The painting isn't called American Gothic because of the emotionally 805 00:45:59,320 --> 00:46:01,400 vacant couple, it's called American Gothic 806 00:46:01,400 --> 00:46:03,160 because of the house behind them. 807 00:46:03,160 --> 00:46:06,000 Which you could buy in a catalogue at the time. 808 00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:09,680 And the house's defining feature is the ornate window, 809 00:46:09,680 --> 00:46:12,040 that's what drew Grant Wood to it. 810 00:46:12,040 --> 00:46:15,120 In this sense, Gothic doesn't mean Teutonic, 811 00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:19,800 or Edgar Allen Poe, or The Cure, it just means ornate. 812 00:46:19,800 --> 00:46:22,640 To a lot of Americans, 813 00:46:22,640 --> 00:46:25,560 American Gothic represents the stigma of landlessness, 814 00:46:25,560 --> 00:46:29,320 the sort of poverty always hanging right over our heads. 815 00:46:29,320 --> 00:46:31,960 Because, in America, if you don't work, you starve. 816 00:46:31,960 --> 00:46:33,800 Literally, figuratively, 817 00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:36,840 spiritually, when American strangers meet, 818 00:46:36,840 --> 00:46:40,120 first thing they ask each other is, "What do you do?" 819 00:46:40,120 --> 00:46:42,600 Not, "What do you think? What do you feel?" 820 00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:44,240 "What do you do?" 821 00:46:44,240 --> 00:46:48,000 An American's character is defined by his labours. 822 00:46:48,000 --> 00:46:49,960 What is why this posing couple looks like 823 00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:52,760 they can't wait for Grant Wood to finish his portrait, 824 00:46:52,760 --> 00:46:54,640 so they can get back to pitchforking. 825 00:47:04,280 --> 00:47:07,480 Wood was a regionalist painter trying to capture the essence of the 826 00:47:07,480 --> 00:47:09,440 Midwest in his portraits. 827 00:47:09,440 --> 00:47:12,400 He put remarkable detail into the human characters he painted. 828 00:47:15,560 --> 00:47:18,280 But his landscapes are cartoonish. 829 00:47:18,280 --> 00:47:22,360 Grant Wood's version of Midwestern American is fat, bulbous, 830 00:47:22,360 --> 00:47:24,880 impossibly pregnant with greenery - 831 00:47:24,880 --> 00:47:26,880 why, a weed would be blasphemy. 832 00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:30,960 But Wood wasn't being naive, he was being satirical. 833 00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:36,560 In the real world, Wood's bountiful Midwest was blowing away. 834 00:47:36,560 --> 00:47:39,120 The Dust Bowl had devastated the land. 835 00:47:39,120 --> 00:47:41,960 Those hard-working farmers of the Midwest 836 00:47:41,960 --> 00:47:44,400 had actually overworked the soil. 837 00:47:44,400 --> 00:47:46,200 And the promise of endless abundance 838 00:47:46,200 --> 00:47:48,280 that America was built on had become a joke. 839 00:47:56,600 --> 00:47:58,880 in the Midwest in the 1930s, 840 00:47:58,880 --> 00:48:03,800 you have droughts, the Dust Bowl, farm strikes, labour unrest. 841 00:48:03,800 --> 00:48:08,480 None of this comes into the sunny landscapes of Grant Wood. 842 00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:12,040 He is as far removed as you could imagine, 843 00:48:12,040 --> 00:48:15,200 from the kind of turmoil of farming in the 1930s, 844 00:48:15,200 --> 00:48:17,360 and the reason for that is that, for him, 845 00:48:17,360 --> 00:48:21,040 farm-scapes had very little to do with the reality of farming. 846 00:48:21,040 --> 00:48:26,040 They are homages to the farms in an idealised sense of his childhood. 847 00:48:27,560 --> 00:48:31,320 Grant claimed to be the plainest kind of fella you can find. 848 00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:34,800 "There isn't a single thing I've done or experienced," he said, 849 00:48:34,800 --> 00:48:37,280 "that's been even the least bit exciting." 850 00:48:40,480 --> 00:48:43,520 He was a modest, homespun-looking guy, 851 00:48:43,520 --> 00:48:47,160 who you'd pass on any small-town streets and barely notice. 852 00:48:47,160 --> 00:48:49,040 But that was deceiving because, in fact, 853 00:48:49,040 --> 00:48:50,840 Wood was a classically trained artist 854 00:48:50,840 --> 00:48:52,760 who'd studied extensively in Europe, 855 00:48:52,760 --> 00:48:56,240 and could faithfully imitate the masters like Van Gogh or Monet. 856 00:48:58,120 --> 00:49:01,200 By 1930, the year that he painted American Gothic, 857 00:49:01,200 --> 00:49:04,440 Grant Wood had clearly come into his own distinctive style, 858 00:49:04,440 --> 00:49:05,880 and it divided people. 859 00:49:05,880 --> 00:49:08,200 Serious art critics, they didn't like it, 860 00:49:08,200 --> 00:49:11,000 they thought it was too naive and non-dimensional. 861 00:49:11,000 --> 00:49:14,400 You know, all those boob-shaped trees and hills, 862 00:49:14,400 --> 00:49:17,120 kind of stuff you would find in a gift shop. 863 00:49:17,120 --> 00:49:18,520 Way too feminine. 864 00:49:20,080 --> 00:49:23,920 Conversely, the human figures in his paintings are all masculine. 865 00:49:23,920 --> 00:49:25,520 Even the woman look like men. 866 00:49:27,160 --> 00:49:29,840 If his hard-working beefcake manly men figures 867 00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:32,680 remind you of anything, it might be this. 868 00:49:34,600 --> 00:49:36,800 Romantic nationalism. 869 00:49:36,800 --> 00:49:40,320 The idea that the superiority of a nation is tied to its terrain. 870 00:49:41,640 --> 00:49:44,560 The connection between Wood's work 871 00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:49,520 and a kind of fascist aesthetic is not a new idea. 872 00:49:52,800 --> 00:49:56,360 Horst Janssen, tried to discredit Wood 873 00:49:56,360 --> 00:49:59,840 in the years after Wood's death in 1942. 874 00:49:59,840 --> 00:50:01,880 Janssen was a die-hard modernist, 875 00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:06,200 he loathed Wood's work, and he wrote a very influential article 876 00:50:06,200 --> 00:50:08,640 in the mid-1940s comparing Wood's work 877 00:50:08,640 --> 00:50:10,920 to the aesthetic of the Third Reich. 878 00:50:10,920 --> 00:50:15,120 He was absolutely damning, it was terrible for his reputation. 879 00:50:15,120 --> 00:50:20,120 Wholly off the mark, but was very much a part of mid-1940s criticism 880 00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:22,240 after Wood's death, conveniently, 881 00:50:22,240 --> 00:50:25,280 when he could no longer defend himself. 882 00:50:25,280 --> 00:50:29,400 # New Country Corn Flakes 883 00:50:29,400 --> 00:50:30,960 # From fields of corn 884 00:50:30,960 --> 00:50:33,040 # So majestically waving. # 885 00:50:33,040 --> 00:50:36,520 No American painting has been more parodied than American Gothic. 886 00:50:36,520 --> 00:50:40,800 Anytime you want reduce someone to simple one-dimensional yokels, 887 00:50:40,800 --> 00:50:43,800 pose them with a pair of overalls and a pitchfork. 888 00:50:43,800 --> 00:50:47,880 # New Country Corn Flakes, They're made from corn. # 889 00:50:47,880 --> 00:50:50,680 All right, we get it, it's visual shorthand 890 00:50:50,680 --> 00:50:52,960 for people too uptight to relax. 891 00:50:52,960 --> 00:50:55,560 But relaxation was always going to be the antidote, 892 00:50:55,560 --> 00:50:58,400 to the chronic overwork that drives America. 893 00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:01,280 Give people something to do, placate them. 894 00:51:04,760 --> 00:51:08,680 The greatest work incentive America ever came up with was escaping the 895 00:51:08,680 --> 00:51:12,560 crap you put up with each day, and going into a darkroom, 896 00:51:12,560 --> 00:51:16,080 staring at a blank canvas that projected dreams onto it. 897 00:51:16,080 --> 00:51:20,960 In the year 1925, 50 million people a week went to the movies. 898 00:51:20,960 --> 00:51:23,520 The equivalent of half the nation's population. 899 00:51:23,520 --> 00:51:25,560 In Chicago, in 1929, 900 00:51:25,560 --> 00:51:28,760 theatres had enough seats for half the city's population 901 00:51:28,760 --> 00:51:30,360 to attend a movie each day. 902 00:51:34,800 --> 00:51:39,280 American cinema-goers were now being fed the American dream by Hollywood. 903 00:51:39,280 --> 00:51:41,320 Not only were they looking at themselves, 904 00:51:41,320 --> 00:51:44,000 they were looking at people who had reinvented themselves. 905 00:51:44,000 --> 00:51:47,440 And, for a few hours, everyone could escape reality. 906 00:51:47,440 --> 00:51:50,200 Before remembering that the next day they'd have to go back to the 907 00:51:50,200 --> 00:51:52,600 production line loading that pig iron. 908 00:52:00,520 --> 00:52:02,960 allowed film-makers and writers and artists 909 00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:04,800 to question the American dream. 910 00:52:04,800 --> 00:52:09,000 In fact, anytime a literary or artistic endeavour is designated the 911 00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:11,160 great American so-and-so, 912 00:52:11,160 --> 00:52:14,680 it's actually about how great America isn't. 913 00:52:14,680 --> 00:52:18,600 Take the great American novel, The Great Gatsby, what's it about? 914 00:52:18,600 --> 00:52:22,920 Self-made millionaire trying to use his ill-gotten gains to buy his way 915 00:52:22,920 --> 00:52:27,160 into Long Island society, but he can't have the one thing he wants, 916 00:52:27,160 --> 00:52:28,480 Daisy Buchanan... 917 00:52:29,600 --> 00:52:33,080 ..played by Mia Farrow in the 1974 film version of the book. 918 00:52:33,080 --> 00:52:36,000 Who convincingly portrayed the character's shallow quality. 919 00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:37,240 Why didn't you wait for me? 920 00:52:38,480 --> 00:52:39,520 Because... 921 00:52:40,960 --> 00:52:44,800 Rich girls don't marry poor boys, Jay Gatsby. 922 00:52:46,760 --> 00:52:50,360 The great American play, Death of a Salesman. 923 00:52:50,360 --> 00:52:53,320 The American dream has left Willy Lohman behind, 924 00:52:53,320 --> 00:52:54,800 but he can't let it go, 925 00:52:54,800 --> 00:52:58,280 and he tries heartbreakingly to instil it into his kid, Biff. 926 00:52:59,960 --> 00:53:01,880 Why is he crying? 927 00:53:01,880 --> 00:53:06,560 Dad, will you let me go, for God's sake? 928 00:53:08,160 --> 00:53:10,400 Will you take that phony dream, 929 00:53:10,400 --> 00:53:13,080 and burn it before something happens? 930 00:53:14,120 --> 00:53:17,400 The Great American movie, The Godfather. 931 00:53:17,400 --> 00:53:19,720 The violent criminal actually believes 932 00:53:19,720 --> 00:53:22,320 his family and his business can be accepted 933 00:53:22,320 --> 00:53:24,560 into mainstream American society, 934 00:53:24,560 --> 00:53:28,040 on his own insanely misguided terms. 935 00:53:28,040 --> 00:53:30,760 I worked my whole life, and I don't apologise, 936 00:53:30,760 --> 00:53:32,720 to take care of my family, 937 00:53:32,720 --> 00:53:35,440 and I refuse to be a fool, 938 00:53:35,440 --> 00:53:40,480 dancing on a string held by all those big shots. 939 00:53:42,320 --> 00:53:44,320 The message is always the same, 940 00:53:44,320 --> 00:53:46,640 OK, hard work may make you money, 941 00:53:46,640 --> 00:53:50,640 but it can't buy you love, or status, or redemption. 942 00:53:50,640 --> 00:53:52,680 When Americans get above their status, 943 00:53:52,680 --> 00:53:55,120 they become victims of tragedy. 944 00:53:55,120 --> 00:53:58,440 In a way, we are all not-so-great Gatsbys. 945 00:54:03,760 --> 00:54:05,800 By the time the '50s rolled around, 946 00:54:05,800 --> 00:54:07,560 the nightmare of the previous decades 947 00:54:07,560 --> 00:54:09,560 had comfortably reverted to a dream. 948 00:54:09,560 --> 00:54:12,440 Americans could pursue it with unbridled optimism, 949 00:54:12,440 --> 00:54:13,920 and, boy, did they ever. 950 00:54:13,920 --> 00:54:16,680 They bought everything they could get their hands on. 951 00:54:16,680 --> 00:54:17,960 It was all new and shiny 952 00:54:17,960 --> 00:54:20,280 and a reminder that they'd defeated fascism. 953 00:54:24,440 --> 00:54:27,960 The idea that the '50s was the golden age of happiness in America 954 00:54:27,960 --> 00:54:30,160 is one of the great lies of our history. 955 00:54:30,160 --> 00:54:32,880 Yeah, it was a great decade, if you were white and middle-class. 956 00:54:35,920 --> 00:54:38,080 There was peace and prosperity, 957 00:54:38,080 --> 00:54:40,000 Elvis, big fin Oldsmobiles. 958 00:54:41,160 --> 00:54:45,880 But the '50s was really a decade of physical and spiritual restlessness. 959 00:54:45,880 --> 00:54:49,360 Big-city northerners pulled up stakes and headed south and West. 960 00:54:50,560 --> 00:54:53,880 California's population grew by 49%, 961 00:54:53,880 --> 00:54:56,680 Florida's by 79%. 962 00:54:56,680 --> 00:55:00,880 By 1960, a third of America had traded in the urban grind 963 00:55:00,880 --> 00:55:03,560 for a driveway and a sad tree. 964 00:55:10,080 --> 00:55:11,440 Uncle Ike Eisenhower, 965 00:55:11,440 --> 00:55:13,480 America's non-politician President, 966 00:55:13,480 --> 00:55:17,600 worried that Americans were becoming deadened in mind and soul 967 00:55:17,600 --> 00:55:20,280 by a materialistic philosophy of life. 968 00:55:20,280 --> 00:55:24,560 So in 1957, he passed a bill to put "In God We Trust" 969 00:55:24,560 --> 00:55:26,480 on American money. 970 00:55:26,480 --> 00:55:29,320 Just to remind Americans that every impulsive purchase 971 00:55:29,320 --> 00:55:31,200 was a slap in God's face. 972 00:55:32,400 --> 00:55:35,080 There's something wrong with human nature! 973 00:55:35,080 --> 00:55:39,560 What is it in the nature of men that causes men to lie? 974 00:55:39,560 --> 00:55:41,200 And hate? And cheat? 975 00:55:41,200 --> 00:55:42,560 And steal? 976 00:55:45,400 --> 00:55:47,840 God started showing up on TV as well. 977 00:55:47,840 --> 00:55:50,680 His Earthly vessel was a lantern-jawed Calvinist preacher 978 00:55:50,680 --> 00:55:52,560 from North Carolina named Billy Graham. 979 00:55:53,680 --> 00:55:55,640 Graham's televised crusades... 980 00:55:55,640 --> 00:55:57,000 Yep, that's what he called them. 981 00:55:57,000 --> 00:55:59,000 ..were the equivalent of a rock concert, 982 00:55:59,000 --> 00:56:02,280 culminating in a discharge of salvation-seekers 983 00:56:02,280 --> 00:56:04,920 streaming toward his pulpit for repentance. 984 00:56:06,760 --> 00:56:09,360 Graham became America's first religious superstar. 985 00:56:09,360 --> 00:56:12,760 His message wasn't much different from those Massachusetts Puritans. 986 00:56:12,760 --> 00:56:14,640 Only God can judge. 987 00:56:14,640 --> 00:56:17,480 But a more self-centred piety was also forming, 988 00:56:17,480 --> 00:56:19,960 one that better served the working stiff of the '50s. 989 00:56:21,160 --> 00:56:24,200 This preacher promoted the gospel of self-esteem, 990 00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:25,880 and his God was less an avenging angel 991 00:56:25,880 --> 00:56:28,520 and more like a motivational speaker. 992 00:56:28,520 --> 00:56:33,560 In 1952, Doctor Norman Vincent Peale published a self-help book 993 00:56:33,720 --> 00:56:36,320 called The Power of Positive Thinking. 994 00:56:36,320 --> 00:56:39,480 It was, in essence, a dream manual supplanting the 995 00:56:39,480 --> 00:56:42,560 physical work ethic with self-realisation. 996 00:56:42,560 --> 00:56:45,400 Peale preached that what the mind can conceive and believe, 997 00:56:45,400 --> 00:56:46,520 the mind can achieve - 998 00:56:46,520 --> 00:56:49,000 through a combination of fate and self-confidence, 999 00:56:49,000 --> 00:56:52,280 any obstacle could be surmounted. 1000 00:56:52,280 --> 00:56:55,680 So the only logical conclusion for his followers was that if they did 1001 00:56:55,680 --> 00:56:59,600 exactly what this man said, they could end up just like him. 1002 00:56:59,600 --> 00:57:03,400 A man whose picture was on the cover of his own book. 1003 00:57:03,400 --> 00:57:06,880 And as they filed out of the auditorium after his sermons, 1004 00:57:06,880 --> 00:57:09,120 they got a double dose of inspiration, 1005 00:57:09,120 --> 00:57:12,000 by seeing that this man wasn't so high and mighty 1006 00:57:12,000 --> 00:57:15,520 that he wouldn't be seen standing in the lobby amidst 1007 00:57:15,520 --> 00:57:20,560 stacks of the very same book he'd just been talking about. 1008 00:57:24,520 --> 00:57:27,800 For three consecutive years between 1953 and 1956, 1009 00:57:27,800 --> 00:57:32,040 only the Bible outsold The Power Of Positive Thinking. 1010 00:57:32,040 --> 00:57:35,520 Church attendance rose by 20% in the '50s. 1011 00:57:35,520 --> 00:57:37,120 The rich didn't get much richer, 1012 00:57:37,120 --> 00:57:41,400 the poor didn't get much poorer but the middle class boomed! 1013 00:57:41,400 --> 00:57:43,000 Mushroomed! 1014 00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:47,520 In 50 short years, America had gone from a subsistence economy 1015 00:57:47,520 --> 00:57:51,640 to a consumer economy, to an acquisition economy. 1016 00:57:51,640 --> 00:57:56,080 In 1950, there were 10 million television sets, 1017 00:57:56,080 --> 00:57:58,120 by 1960, 47 million. 1018 00:57:58,120 --> 00:58:01,800 Many of them tuned in to see Ozzie and Harriet, 1019 00:58:01,800 --> 00:58:05,800 a sitcom about a conformist white suburban family, 1020 00:58:05,800 --> 00:58:10,800 mirroring the white suburban conformist families watching them. 1021 00:58:12,760 --> 00:58:15,120 you go in the other room and do it. I've got work do here. 1022 00:58:15,120 --> 00:58:18,640 You know, Sonny, I have a hunch we're not wanted around here. 1023 00:58:18,640 --> 00:58:20,000 You know, I think you're right. 1024 00:58:20,000 --> 00:58:22,840 You don't have to knock me over the knuckles with a wooden spoon. 1025 00:58:24,680 --> 00:58:26,680 Ha-ha! A wooden spoon. 1026 00:58:26,680 --> 00:58:28,240 Where's my knee? 1027 00:58:28,240 --> 00:58:31,160 The major networks created shows like Ozzie and Harriet, 1028 00:58:31,160 --> 00:58:35,080 Leave It To Beaver, and The Donna Reed Show to mollify viewers. 1029 00:58:35,080 --> 00:58:39,240 These characters didn't talk about the Marshall Plan or Palestine, 1030 00:58:39,240 --> 00:58:41,800 blacks and Mexicans didn't inhabit this world. 1031 00:58:41,800 --> 00:58:45,040 It was an antiseptic vision of middle-class America 1032 00:58:45,040 --> 00:58:48,480 where everything smelled minty fresh. 1033 00:58:48,480 --> 00:58:53,000 When any president from Reagan to Bush to Trump trots out that 1034 00:58:53,000 --> 00:58:55,440 Make America Great Again bromide, 1035 00:58:55,440 --> 00:58:57,600 this is the era they are invoking. 1036 00:58:57,600 --> 00:59:00,120 If the American Dream is a promise of upward mobility, 1037 00:59:00,120 --> 00:59:02,720 for one brief period in our history, it worked. 1038 00:59:02,720 --> 00:59:05,920 Assuming your idea of the American Dream is cultural malnutrition, 1039 00:59:05,920 --> 00:59:08,520 patio furniture and a sad tree. 1040 00:59:09,520 --> 00:59:11,520 What was so great about the '50s? 1041 00:59:11,520 --> 00:59:14,760 Well, the middle class mushroomed, the economy was robust, 1042 00:59:14,760 --> 00:59:18,000 the opening salvos to the civil rights movement were fired. 1043 00:59:18,000 --> 00:59:20,800 The interstate was built, people were going places. 1044 00:59:20,800 --> 00:59:23,240 So, naturally, something had to be invented 1045 00:59:23,240 --> 00:59:26,600 to tap into America's insecurity about its abundance. 1046 00:59:26,600 --> 00:59:28,480 The Red Scare. 1047 00:59:28,480 --> 00:59:30,000 I don't think you have 1048 00:59:30,000 --> 00:59:34,960 any conception of the dangers of the Communist Party. 1049 00:59:35,560 --> 00:59:37,600 The Communist witch-hunt of the '50s 1050 00:59:37,600 --> 00:59:41,120 orchestrated by the firebrand nutcase Joseph McCarthy 1051 00:59:41,120 --> 00:59:44,440 tapped into the heart of America's insecurity about its 1052 00:59:44,440 --> 00:59:45,880 new-found wealth. 1053 00:59:47,880 --> 00:59:50,440 A conformist, brainwashed nation was under threat 1054 00:59:50,440 --> 00:59:54,440 of being turned into a conformist brainwashed nation. 1055 00:59:54,440 --> 00:59:57,880 If fighting communists and getting a bit rough with them 1056 00:59:57,880 --> 01:00:02,000 is un-American, then I must plead guilty to being un-American. 1057 01:00:05,840 --> 01:00:08,640 The target of McCarthy and his right-wing zealots 1058 01:00:08,640 --> 01:00:10,280 was the working left. 1059 01:00:10,280 --> 01:00:13,240 The people who made their living as academics, politicians, 1060 01:00:13,240 --> 01:00:14,720 screenwriters, artists. 1061 01:00:14,720 --> 01:00:17,000 And the best thing you can do to an artist is to 1062 01:00:17,000 --> 01:00:19,440 tell him he can't be an artist. 1063 01:00:19,440 --> 01:00:21,040 The mass conformity of the '50s, 1064 01:00:21,040 --> 01:00:23,200 and the hysterical attempts to protect it 1065 01:00:23,200 --> 01:00:28,240 led to rock'n'roll, abstract Expressionism, beatniks, 1066 01:00:28,400 --> 01:00:33,440 the books of Hugh Selby, Henry Miller and that begat hippies, 1067 01:00:34,120 --> 01:00:38,720 counter-culturalism, the SDS, the Black Panthers, 1068 01:00:38,720 --> 01:00:42,200 LSD, Charles Manson, 1069 01:00:42,200 --> 01:00:45,840 alternative medicine, continental philosophy, 1070 01:00:45,840 --> 01:00:47,520 social media addiction, 1071 01:00:47,520 --> 01:00:51,360 and ultimately the dystopia that we live in today. 1072 01:00:53,360 --> 01:00:55,440 Although McCarthy was doing his best 1073 01:00:55,440 --> 01:00:58,440 to whip up his anti-Communist hysteria, 1074 01:00:58,440 --> 01:01:01,280 most Americans were just happy to live the dream. 1075 01:01:01,280 --> 01:01:05,840 Ensconced in a customised bungalow somewhere in rolling Meadows Estates 1076 01:01:05,840 --> 01:01:08,560 with a big old fancy set of wheels parked outside. 1077 01:01:18,320 --> 01:01:20,480 In a prefab world, craftsmanship 1078 01:01:20,480 --> 01:01:22,840 will always find a way to seep through. 1079 01:01:22,840 --> 01:01:26,040 You know, in the 1930s, it was a fancy, shmancy window 1080 01:01:26,040 --> 01:01:27,400 in a claptrap house. 1081 01:01:27,400 --> 01:01:30,240 In 1956, it was a Lincoln Premiere. 1082 01:01:30,240 --> 01:01:32,800 Look at this - chrome, tail fins, 1083 01:01:32,800 --> 01:01:36,920 white walls, tucked and rolled interior, plenty of headroom. 1084 01:01:36,920 --> 01:01:39,720 Seats 12 for dinner, six miles to a gallon, 1085 01:01:39,720 --> 01:01:43,840 Detroit was the manufacturing envy of the world. 1086 01:01:43,840 --> 01:01:47,440 You are about to witness the very exciting story 1087 01:01:47,440 --> 01:01:49,200 of a city and its people. 1088 01:01:50,240 --> 01:01:53,320 It will be an adventure that will open new sites 1089 01:01:53,320 --> 01:01:55,320 and familiar surroundings. 1090 01:01:58,360 --> 01:02:01,840 It was a time when America was bold and optimistic about its future and 1091 01:02:01,840 --> 01:02:04,840 Detroit responded with big cylinder monsters, 1092 01:02:04,840 --> 01:02:06,880 dripping with chrome and luxury. 1093 01:02:10,120 --> 01:02:12,800 This was, of course, the direct result of Henry Ford, who, 1094 01:02:12,800 --> 01:02:15,040 when he wasn't gunning down his employees, 1095 01:02:15,040 --> 01:02:16,840 had figured out how to get them to build a new 1096 01:02:16,840 --> 01:02:19,360 car every two and a half hours. 1097 01:02:19,360 --> 01:02:22,160 America was on the move, and Ford, Chrysler, 1098 01:02:22,160 --> 01:02:24,040 and General Motors sold millions. 1099 01:02:25,080 --> 01:02:29,960 Suffice it to say, Detroit was the industrial showpiece of the world. 1100 01:02:29,960 --> 01:02:32,960 A place where people could come to find opportunity, 1101 01:02:32,960 --> 01:02:35,080 the epitome of the American Dream. 1102 01:02:36,720 --> 01:02:38,400 Then it all went down the dumper. 1103 01:02:44,160 --> 01:02:46,320 How could the legacy of Henry Ford, 1104 01:02:46,320 --> 01:02:48,920 an industrialist so worldly admired 1105 01:02:48,920 --> 01:02:51,960 that Hitler himself had given him a shout out in Mein Kampf, 1106 01:02:51,960 --> 01:02:53,800 turn into this? 1107 01:02:58,480 --> 01:03:00,320 Nobody's buying tyres no more, for the 1108 01:03:00,320 --> 01:03:04,440 simple fact that, you know, the economy, the gas situation, it's 1109 01:03:04,440 --> 01:03:07,440 a major crisis. 1110 01:03:07,440 --> 01:03:10,520 There's a lot of people already laid off, and if any more 1111 01:03:10,520 --> 01:03:14,280 get laid off it's going to be a crisis out there, boy. 1112 01:03:14,280 --> 01:03:17,040 If they think the economy is bad now, 1113 01:03:17,040 --> 01:03:19,920 what is it going to be like when all them people are all laid off? 1114 01:03:19,920 --> 01:03:21,280 What are they going to do? 1115 01:03:21,280 --> 01:03:25,080 It seems like a crime and that would obviously go up, you know, 1116 01:03:25,080 --> 01:03:27,560 it would darn near make a Christian turn bad. 1117 01:03:31,120 --> 01:03:34,240 Detroit went bust because it made a product that many, 1118 01:03:34,240 --> 01:03:36,320 many Americans did not want, 1119 01:03:36,320 --> 01:03:39,480 and then once they lost that brand loyalty, 1120 01:03:39,480 --> 01:03:44,160 they could not figure out for many years how to recover it. 1121 01:03:44,160 --> 01:03:49,160 And what was one of the great, unionised, 1122 01:03:53,280 --> 01:03:57,080 in the entire world suddenly found itself with 1123 01:03:57,080 --> 01:04:00,120 shrinking prospects and ultimately most of them out of a job. 1124 01:04:01,560 --> 01:04:03,760 Not just on the auto assembly lines, 1125 01:04:03,760 --> 01:04:07,160 but companies that made parts to sell to GM, to sell to Ford, 1126 01:04:07,160 --> 01:04:08,600 to sell to Chrysler. 1127 01:04:08,600 --> 01:04:10,800 All those people out of business, 1128 01:04:10,800 --> 01:04:13,000 all those workers displaced, 1129 01:04:13,000 --> 01:04:16,880 and Detroit as a city collapsed in on itself, 1130 01:04:16,880 --> 01:04:20,680 and depopulated, and portions of it are coming back now, 1131 01:04:20,680 --> 01:04:24,160 but it's never going to be a great American city again. 1132 01:04:24,160 --> 01:04:25,600 It's a great tragedy, 1133 01:04:25,600 --> 01:04:27,680 it's a great tragedy brought about 1134 01:04:27,680 --> 01:04:29,880 not by the failure of the workers but 1135 01:04:29,880 --> 01:04:31,760 by the failures of the managerial class. 1136 01:04:32,840 --> 01:04:34,480 Let me tell you a little story. 1137 01:04:34,480 --> 01:04:36,280 When I was growing up in the south, 1138 01:04:36,280 --> 01:04:39,000 there was a fellow in our town used to just stand in the middle of the 1139 01:04:39,000 --> 01:04:40,840 road and just yell. 1140 01:04:40,840 --> 01:04:44,080 "Mustang shitbox!" That's all he would say, "Mustang shitbox!" 1141 01:04:44,080 --> 01:04:45,280 "Mustang shitbox!" 1142 01:04:46,360 --> 01:04:50,320 A bit of a fixture. So, naturally, we called him Mustang Shitbox, 1143 01:04:50,320 --> 01:04:54,040 and the story was that he'd gone to Detroit to work on Mustangs 1144 01:04:54,040 --> 01:04:55,800 because he loved Mustangs, 1145 01:04:55,800 --> 01:04:58,440 just lived and breathed Mustangs. 1146 01:04:58,440 --> 01:05:00,760 By the time he got the job, the production values 1147 01:05:00,760 --> 01:05:02,680 on the Mustang were so poor that 1148 01:05:02,680 --> 01:05:05,120 basically it was just a joke on wheels. 1149 01:05:05,120 --> 01:05:08,800 The soul of the machine was destroyed and it destroyed his soul. 1150 01:05:08,800 --> 01:05:11,120 And he came home just a broken man. 1151 01:05:11,120 --> 01:05:13,080 So what had happened? 1152 01:05:13,080 --> 01:05:15,520 Well, Ford had fallen on bad times, right? 1153 01:05:15,520 --> 01:05:18,440 Horrible design, bad management, 1154 01:05:18,440 --> 01:05:19,880 Japanese competition, 1155 01:05:19,880 --> 01:05:22,360 and. worst of all, the city of Detroit had turned its 1156 01:05:22,360 --> 01:05:24,720 back on Ford. Wouldn't help him out. 1157 01:05:24,720 --> 01:05:29,800 Ford built Detroit. When it needed Detroit's help, Detroit shafted it. 1158 01:05:30,560 --> 01:05:32,000 So what are you saying, Rich? 1159 01:05:32,000 --> 01:05:33,480 Detroit ruined a human being? 1160 01:05:33,480 --> 01:05:34,880 No, I'm not saying that at all. 1161 01:05:34,880 --> 01:05:37,360 I mean truth is, Mustang Shitbox, that guy, 1162 01:05:37,360 --> 01:05:41,640 that dude was messed up long before he went to Detroit, whoa. 1163 01:05:43,600 --> 01:05:47,360 Our town should've never let him go in the first place, that's my point. 1164 01:05:47,360 --> 01:05:50,080 Communities are supposed to take care of their people. 1165 01:06:04,520 --> 01:06:06,840 For the people of small-town America, 1166 01:06:06,840 --> 01:06:11,040 security comes from being part of a company and part of the community. 1167 01:06:11,040 --> 01:06:13,200 So what do you do when the wheels fall off? 1168 01:06:26,840 --> 01:06:29,080 This is Lancaster, Ohio. 1169 01:06:29,080 --> 01:06:33,800 In 1947, this town was featured on the cover of Forbes magazine as the 1170 01:06:33,800 --> 01:06:36,280 quintessential American town. 1171 01:06:36,280 --> 01:06:38,600 Home of the Anchor Hocking glass Company, 1172 01:06:38,600 --> 01:06:41,600 the largest manufacturer of table glassware in the world. 1173 01:06:41,600 --> 01:06:43,520 Everybody loved Anchor Hocking, 1174 01:06:43,520 --> 01:06:46,840 if you gave your mum Anchor Hocking glasses at Christmas, 1175 01:06:46,840 --> 01:06:48,640 you were good for the year. 1176 01:06:48,640 --> 01:06:50,880 Then something horrible happened. 1177 01:06:50,880 --> 01:06:52,880 The company got sold to a bigger company, 1178 01:06:52,880 --> 01:06:56,240 they sold it to another company, 1179 01:06:56,240 --> 01:07:00,080 and every one of them just squeezed the profits right off the top. 1180 01:07:00,080 --> 01:07:03,760 They pilfered, they purloined, they plundered it, 1181 01:07:03,760 --> 01:07:06,840 people would come to work and not even know who owned the company that 1182 01:07:06,840 --> 01:07:08,400 day, this is the kind of town that 1183 01:07:08,400 --> 01:07:11,240 even Springsteen wouldn't write a song about. It's that grim. 1184 01:07:12,680 --> 01:07:15,000 We have a higher poverty rate than we once had. 1185 01:07:15,000 --> 01:07:17,080 My wife is a teacher in the school system, 1186 01:07:17,080 --> 01:07:19,040 and we have a 50% or so poverty rate, 1187 01:07:19,040 --> 01:07:20,640 people that receive free lunches, 1188 01:07:20,640 --> 01:07:23,320 that type of thing, which just did not used to be the case, 1189 01:07:23,320 --> 01:07:25,200 this used to be a very upper-middle-class town. 1190 01:07:25,200 --> 01:07:28,200 There's not as many jobs. There's more families struggling, 1191 01:07:28,200 --> 01:07:32,600 There's not any help for anybody. 1192 01:07:32,600 --> 01:07:37,560 And if you need help for things, you don't meet those requirements. 1193 01:07:38,680 --> 01:07:41,040 It's like they make it impossible around here to live. 1194 01:07:52,000 --> 01:07:55,600 In these economically depressed regions of the American Midwest 1195 01:07:55,600 --> 01:07:59,480 and Great Lakes region, Lancaster, Youngstown, Detroit, 1196 01:07:59,480 --> 01:08:01,120 these famous examples, 1197 01:08:01,120 --> 01:08:03,880 there seems to be a real crisis of confidence. 1198 01:08:03,880 --> 01:08:06,160 People feel trapped in these communities. 1199 01:08:06,160 --> 01:08:10,280 They don't have the resources to leave, but at the same time staying 1200 01:08:10,280 --> 01:08:15,320 provides no standard of living, and it is emblematic of this 1201 01:08:15,760 --> 01:08:18,240 potential transformation, 1202 01:08:18,240 --> 01:08:22,240 this post-industrial transformation in the work ethic, 1203 01:08:22,240 --> 01:08:25,920 where a hard days' work doesn't provide a decent wage, 1204 01:08:25,920 --> 01:08:28,160 doesn't provide a living wage. 1205 01:08:28,160 --> 01:08:31,320 78% of the people in this town voted for Trump, 1206 01:08:31,320 --> 01:08:34,160 not because they wanted to, because they're desperate. 1207 01:08:36,880 --> 01:08:40,440 And so they pinned their hopes on a New York City millionaire with a bad 1208 01:08:40,440 --> 01:08:42,640 combover, who's never set foot in Ohio. 1209 01:08:42,640 --> 01:08:46,120 Unless, of course, that foot was covered in a golf shoe. 1210 01:08:46,120 --> 01:08:49,200 I want to make our military so strong, so powerful, 1211 01:08:49,200 --> 01:08:52,320 so great that nobody's going to mess with us. 1212 01:08:52,320 --> 01:08:54,760 When Trump got elected, a lot of people worried 1213 01:08:54,760 --> 01:08:56,280 he was going to start a war. 1214 01:08:56,280 --> 01:08:59,840 I don't think they foresaw he was going to restart the Civil War. 1215 01:08:59,840 --> 01:09:02,120 The only problem with the new old Civil War 1216 01:09:02,120 --> 01:09:04,840 is it's based on our revised ideas of morality. 1217 01:09:04,840 --> 01:09:06,040 What does that mean? 1218 01:09:06,040 --> 01:09:07,960 OK, let me ask you this. 1219 01:09:07,960 --> 01:09:09,720 Why has it taken 160 years 1220 01:09:09,720 --> 01:09:13,240 for all those Confederate statues to be demolished? 1221 01:09:13,240 --> 01:09:15,480 Because up until a few years ago, 1222 01:09:15,480 --> 01:09:19,880 most white people didn't actually think they were that racist. 1223 01:09:19,880 --> 01:09:23,720 This nation today, regardless of social class, 1224 01:09:23,720 --> 01:09:26,600 is more deeply divided than it has been 1225 01:09:26,600 --> 01:09:29,000 at any time since the Civil War. 1226 01:09:29,000 --> 01:09:31,080 You have to take into account that 1227 01:09:31,080 --> 01:09:33,520 the Republican Party has essentially 1228 01:09:33,520 --> 01:09:36,360 become the National White People's Party. 1229 01:09:36,360 --> 01:09:40,760 And large numbers of middle-class Americans are not white. 1230 01:09:40,760 --> 01:09:44,520 Interestingly, it's the regions where we have the highest levels of 1231 01:09:44,520 --> 01:09:49,080 immigrant populations are booming economically, are the most diverse, 1232 01:09:49,080 --> 01:09:50,520 and are the most prosperous. 1233 01:09:50,520 --> 01:09:52,920 Diversity and prosperity seem to go hand-in-hand. 1234 01:09:54,080 --> 01:09:57,160 So if I'm watching Fox News and I hear how immigrants are ruining the 1235 01:09:57,160 --> 01:10:00,800 country, I'm going to probably be much more likely to believe that - 1236 01:10:00,800 --> 01:10:03,520 if there are not immigrants who I've actually met, 1237 01:10:03,520 --> 01:10:06,080 and live in the community and I see that they're contributing. 1238 01:10:06,080 --> 01:10:08,680 It easier to stereotype and dehumanise 1239 01:10:08,680 --> 01:10:11,120 that which you've never met before. 1240 01:10:27,960 --> 01:10:30,240 Americans like to brag that they don't have a 1241 01:10:30,240 --> 01:10:31,760 class system like Britain - 1242 01:10:31,760 --> 01:10:34,240 you know all that Downton Abbey stuff. 1243 01:10:34,240 --> 01:10:37,000 They like to think that travel and distance 1244 01:10:37,000 --> 01:10:40,280 and migration turns them into a homogenised society 1245 01:10:40,280 --> 01:10:42,200 with a shared work ethic. 1246 01:10:42,200 --> 01:10:44,040 That's total bullshit. 1247 01:10:44,040 --> 01:10:46,480 America has a class system, it's very simple. 1248 01:10:46,480 --> 01:10:49,360 When you go to work, if your name is on the outside of the building you 1249 01:10:49,360 --> 01:10:50,640 work in, you're rich. 1250 01:10:50,640 --> 01:10:53,240 If your name is on your desk, you're middle class. 1251 01:10:53,240 --> 01:10:56,240 If you're name is on your shirt, you're fucking poor! 1252 01:10:56,240 --> 01:10:57,960 It's like I said earlier, 1253 01:10:57,960 --> 01:11:00,960 when Americans raise above their status, 1254 01:11:00,960 --> 01:11:02,560 they are victims of tragedy. 1255 01:11:02,560 --> 01:11:05,960 When they can't raise above their status, they're victims of comedy. 1256 01:11:05,960 --> 01:11:09,880 A lot of the sitcoms in the early days of television 1257 01:11:09,880 --> 01:11:14,560 cast poor workers and white trash as objects of disparagement. 1258 01:11:14,560 --> 01:11:17,840 Struggling to maintain some semblance of pride. 1259 01:11:22,520 --> 01:11:23,880 The Honeymooners! 1260 01:11:23,880 --> 01:11:27,000 When you saw the opening titles to The Honeymooners, 1261 01:11:27,000 --> 01:11:29,360 you knew it was a show where Jackie Gleason, 1262 01:11:29,360 --> 01:11:31,080 playing a Brooklyn bus driver, 1263 01:11:31,080 --> 01:11:34,880 and Art Carney, a sewer worker, were trying to reach for the moon. 1264 01:11:35,840 --> 01:11:37,280 They would constantly invent 1265 01:11:37,280 --> 01:11:39,840 get-rich-quick schemes that ultimately backfired. 1266 01:11:39,840 --> 01:11:43,360 And it was hilarious watching two men repeatedly fail at 1267 01:11:43,360 --> 01:11:45,920 the American Dream while wrecking their own homes. 1268 01:11:53,000 --> 01:11:55,240 Jed Clampett and his hillbilly family 1269 01:11:55,240 --> 01:11:57,960 trying to reconcile their Depression-era roots 1270 01:11:57,960 --> 01:12:01,120 with the millionaire denizens of Southern California. 1271 01:12:01,120 --> 01:12:05,560 Loping around, spouting corn-fed homilies out of lopsided mouths, 1272 01:12:05,560 --> 01:12:07,560 Americans lapped it up, 1273 01:12:07,560 --> 01:12:10,360 subconsciously understanding that poor people in America 1274 01:12:10,360 --> 01:12:12,240 may never escape their plight, 1275 01:12:12,240 --> 01:12:15,120 but can at least win an occasional moral victory. 1276 01:12:15,120 --> 01:12:17,040 Especially when it meant that the rich folks 1277 01:12:17,040 --> 01:12:19,080 ended up looking more like the hillbillies. 1278 01:12:19,080 --> 01:12:20,960 Her and me is going out hunting. 1279 01:12:22,120 --> 01:12:24,720 Ain't that right, Miss Hathaway? 1280 01:12:24,720 --> 01:12:28,240 Yes... Yep! 1281 01:12:28,240 --> 01:12:33,320 Jethro, you can take that pink chicken back out to the cement pond. 1282 01:12:33,400 --> 01:12:37,360 We're going out to shoot us a nice, big, fluffy, souffle. 1283 01:12:40,880 --> 01:12:42,840 Gomer Pyle? Yes. 1284 01:12:42,840 --> 01:12:44,840 All in the Family? All in the Family. 1285 01:12:44,840 --> 01:12:46,760 The Jeffersons! Oh, I love the Jeffersons. 1286 01:12:46,760 --> 01:12:49,800 Oh, the Jeffersons! Good Times! Good Times. Yes. Yes. Jimmy Walker. 1287 01:12:49,800 --> 01:12:52,920 JJ Walker. That JJ was dynamite! 1288 01:12:52,920 --> 01:12:57,480 Oh, man! Television never seemed to reward the American worker with any 1289 01:12:57,480 --> 01:13:00,240 upward mobility, despite all their best efforts, you know. 1290 01:13:00,240 --> 01:13:03,400 These people could not escape the situation, know what I mean, Erika? 1291 01:13:03,400 --> 01:13:05,560 Yes. Cos if they could escape their situation, 1292 01:13:05,560 --> 01:13:07,720 it wouldn't be a situation comedy, right? 1293 01:13:07,720 --> 01:13:11,920 No. That class system Americans refuse to recognise, yeah, 1294 01:13:11,920 --> 01:13:13,880 well, it was all over the television. 1295 01:13:15,240 --> 01:13:19,240 Eventually, the TV working class families started moving upwards. 1296 01:13:19,240 --> 01:13:23,080 Middle-class, urban characters living in brick-walled lofts. 1297 01:13:23,080 --> 01:13:26,120 Nowadays, the middle class may be slathered all over television but 1298 01:13:26,120 --> 01:13:28,520 obviously that's not a real reflection, 1299 01:13:28,520 --> 01:13:31,160 because America's middle class is shrinking. 1300 01:13:34,680 --> 01:13:35,920 It's patently obvious 1301 01:13:35,920 --> 01:13:39,360 that America's middle class is slipping down the economic ladder. 1302 01:13:42,320 --> 01:13:44,280 How do you know the middle-class is shrinking? 1303 01:13:44,280 --> 01:13:48,200 Well, when politicians start using it as a political football. 1304 01:13:48,200 --> 01:13:53,200 I know why we are strong, I know why we have held together, 1305 01:13:53,520 --> 01:13:56,400 I know why we are united. 1306 01:13:56,400 --> 01:13:59,400 It's because there's always been a growing middle class, 1307 01:13:59,400 --> 01:14:04,440 this guy doesn't have a clue about the middle class, not a clue. 1308 01:14:07,120 --> 01:14:09,400 Does anyone have a clue about the middle class? 1309 01:14:09,400 --> 01:14:12,240 Course not. What does the term even mean? 1310 01:14:12,240 --> 01:14:13,880 Well, interestingly enough, 1311 01:14:13,880 --> 01:14:16,640 the middle class was invented by Benjamin Franklin. 1312 01:14:19,960 --> 01:14:23,640 He believed that Western migration would create class stability, 1313 01:14:23,640 --> 01:14:27,200 that the sheer size of America would reduce class conflict, 1314 01:14:27,200 --> 01:14:31,360 and that every American was entitled to a happy mediocrity. 1315 01:14:31,360 --> 01:14:36,280 And that's what the middle class is, the happy mediocrity. 1316 01:14:36,280 --> 01:14:39,040 The white-collar workers, the middle managers, 1317 01:14:39,040 --> 01:14:43,120 the guy or gal walking into some fluorescent hellhole every day, 1318 01:14:43,120 --> 01:14:45,120 sitting down at a gun-metal grey desk, 1319 01:14:45,120 --> 01:14:48,280 piled up with paperwork, and on the wall is a poster 1320 01:14:48,280 --> 01:14:53,280 of some skydivers holding hands and underneath it says, "Teamwork". 1321 01:14:53,440 --> 01:14:56,160 90% of Americans claim they're middle class. 1322 01:14:56,160 --> 01:14:58,080 In other words, marginally comfortable. 1323 01:14:58,080 --> 01:14:59,800 And it's those people who are seeing 1324 01:14:59,800 --> 01:15:02,520 those margins tighten everyday. 1325 01:15:15,440 --> 01:15:16,880 In the '70s and '80s, 1326 01:15:16,880 --> 01:15:21,920 the middle-class life in America became quite bumpy. 1327 01:15:22,320 --> 01:15:24,760 Under Nixon, you had price controls, 1328 01:15:24,760 --> 01:15:26,960 you had serious intervention. 1329 01:15:26,960 --> 01:15:29,360 In the economy post-Nixon, 1330 01:15:29,360 --> 01:15:34,400 you have the Carter Administration, where something that was 1331 01:15:34,960 --> 01:15:38,840 terrifying the middle class occurred, which was stagflation. 1332 01:15:38,840 --> 01:15:42,400 Productivity stopped growing, output stopped growing, 1333 01:15:42,400 --> 01:15:44,680 so people's incomes weren't increasing anymore, 1334 01:15:44,680 --> 01:15:47,560 but their expenses were through the roof. 1335 01:15:54,360 --> 01:15:58,680 America was heading into its worst economic crisis since the '30s. 1336 01:15:58,680 --> 01:16:01,440 And things weren't about to get any breezier. 1337 01:16:01,440 --> 01:16:04,000 Fortunately, a hero was waiting in the wings. 1338 01:16:06,600 --> 01:16:08,400 And once he got his pants on, 1339 01:16:08,400 --> 01:16:11,320 he'd come riding into Dodge City to clean the town up. 1340 01:16:15,200 --> 01:16:18,280 I'm speaking to you tonight to give you a report on the state of our 1341 01:16:18,280 --> 01:16:20,000 nation's economy. 1342 01:16:20,000 --> 01:16:23,240 I regret to say that we're in the worst economic mess 1343 01:16:23,240 --> 01:16:25,040 since the Great Depression. 1344 01:16:32,200 --> 01:16:34,080 He promised salvation, 1345 01:16:34,080 --> 01:16:37,880 he was going to reduce government spending, taxes, regulations. 1346 01:16:37,880 --> 01:16:38,920 Sound familiar? 1347 01:16:40,400 --> 01:16:42,800 Up until the 1980s, 1348 01:16:42,800 --> 01:16:47,840 most working people here in America who were middle class received a 1349 01:16:49,840 --> 01:16:51,080 defined-benefit pension. 1350 01:16:52,520 --> 01:16:56,400 Major companies were allowed to walk away from that commitment to the 1351 01:16:56,400 --> 01:16:59,680 social fabric, so that, one after another, 1352 01:16:59,680 --> 01:17:03,080 defined-benefit pension plans vanished. 1353 01:17:03,080 --> 01:17:04,720 That's a very significant event 1354 01:17:04,720 --> 01:17:06,680 because now people are insecure in their jobs, 1355 01:17:06,680 --> 01:17:11,600 and they're insecure in their prospects, 1356 01:17:11,600 --> 01:17:15,400 for a reasonably comfortable old age. 1357 01:17:23,640 --> 01:17:26,240 The middle class are the people who did everything right, 1358 01:17:26,240 --> 01:17:29,800 they got a college degree, they developed a marketable skill, 1359 01:17:29,800 --> 01:17:32,080 they built up a resume, they got married, 1360 01:17:32,080 --> 01:17:34,680 they cranked out a couple of kids, they bought a Chevy. 1361 01:17:34,680 --> 01:17:36,880 Modest, responsible people just trying 1362 01:17:36,880 --> 01:17:39,560 to get their slice of the American pie. 1363 01:17:39,560 --> 01:17:43,200 And now they're scrambling around job fairs or combing the 1364 01:17:43,200 --> 01:17:46,360 classifieds, going on to job websites, 1365 01:17:46,360 --> 01:17:50,000 listening to some self-styled vacuous guru 1366 01:17:50,000 --> 01:17:52,200 tell them how to get back the job they already had. 1367 01:17:56,200 --> 01:17:58,880 Now, I have a theory - and it's just a theory. 1368 01:17:58,880 --> 01:18:01,240 Craftsmen have to work with their hands, 1369 01:18:01,240 --> 01:18:03,200 artists work with their hearts, 1370 01:18:03,200 --> 01:18:05,200 rich people work with their brains, 1371 01:18:05,200 --> 01:18:07,240 poor people work with their backs, 1372 01:18:07,240 --> 01:18:10,520 but the middle class has to work with their personalities. 1373 01:18:10,520 --> 01:18:12,800 And if you've ever met Americans, 1374 01:18:12,800 --> 01:18:15,120 a good number of them can barely negotiate 1375 01:18:15,120 --> 01:18:17,880 the rope barriers in an airport check-in. 1376 01:18:22,520 --> 01:18:24,680 Yet they're expected to figure out 1377 01:18:24,680 --> 01:18:27,000 their place in the corporate beehive. 1378 01:18:27,000 --> 01:18:31,200 Who to boss around, who to be subservient to, whose ass to kiss, 1379 01:18:31,200 --> 01:18:35,520 whose ass to kick, how to handle the psychological demands, 1380 01:18:35,520 --> 01:18:38,960 the mind games, and the poorly defined expectations 1381 01:18:38,960 --> 01:18:41,400 dumped on them by corporate management. 1382 01:18:41,400 --> 01:18:44,640 And all the while trying to appear like they know what they're doing. 1383 01:18:44,640 --> 01:18:46,760 Corporate employers never say they're looking for a 1384 01:18:46,760 --> 01:18:49,160 hard worker, you know, someone who will give you 1385 01:18:49,160 --> 01:18:51,560 a straightforward exchange of wages for effort. 1386 01:18:51,560 --> 01:18:53,800 Nope, they need you to be outgoing, friendly, 1387 01:18:53,800 --> 01:18:57,360 resourceful, qualified, dedicated, and passionate. 1388 01:19:03,960 --> 01:19:06,600 Let's face it, if you can fake all those emotions, 1389 01:19:06,600 --> 01:19:08,960 what the hell are you doing working at Yo-Yo Tech? 1390 01:19:08,960 --> 01:19:12,840 You should be in Hollywood accepting an Oscar for Best Actor. 1391 01:19:12,840 --> 01:19:14,480 Yeah, the middle class is struggling, 1392 01:19:14,480 --> 01:19:18,960 you can blame it on the crash of 2008 or stagnant wage growth, 1393 01:19:18,960 --> 01:19:21,240 or downsizing or outsourcing, 1394 01:19:21,240 --> 01:19:25,480 but that doesn't answer the simple basic question - 1395 01:19:25,480 --> 01:19:27,840 why did you get shitcanned and not the other guy? 1396 01:19:27,840 --> 01:19:30,960 Because the other guy had better people skills than you. 1397 01:19:30,960 --> 01:19:32,880 You weren't dynamic enough, 1398 01:19:32,880 --> 01:19:35,920 you didn't read enough motivational material. 1399 01:19:35,920 --> 01:19:38,920 How can you take the abuse you get on a sit? 1400 01:19:38,920 --> 01:19:41,760 What you need is a rousing motivational tirade - 1401 01:19:41,760 --> 01:19:43,360 kind of like Alec Baldwin 1402 01:19:43,360 --> 01:19:44,680 in Glengarry Glen Ross. 1403 01:19:45,600 --> 01:19:47,720 I can go out there tonight, 1404 01:19:47,720 --> 01:19:49,640 the materials you got, 1405 01:19:49,640 --> 01:19:51,440 make myself 15,000 dollars. 1406 01:19:51,440 --> 01:19:53,440 Tonight, in two hours - can you? 1407 01:19:56,160 --> 01:19:57,200 Can you? 1408 01:20:00,320 --> 01:20:02,320 Go and do likewise. 1409 01:20:02,320 --> 01:20:06,320 AIDA, get mad you son of a bitches, get mad. 1410 01:20:06,320 --> 01:20:08,120 You know what it takes to sell real estate? 1411 01:20:11,440 --> 01:20:14,320 It takes brass balls to sell real estate. 1412 01:20:19,440 --> 01:20:23,400 America doesn't have brass balls anymore, we left them on the moon, 1413 01:20:23,400 --> 01:20:25,400 that was our last team success. 1414 01:20:25,400 --> 01:20:28,680 Nowadays, success is measured through personal growth. 1415 01:20:28,680 --> 01:20:32,320 Yeah, you can walk through any book store and pass that one section, 1416 01:20:32,320 --> 01:20:36,640 try not to be reminded why you, personally, are a big loser. 1417 01:20:36,640 --> 01:20:39,440 Generally these will follow two different approaches, 1418 01:20:39,440 --> 01:20:41,880 there is the numerical approach to success, 1419 01:20:41,880 --> 01:20:44,640 you know, the seven habits of highly effective people, 1420 01:20:44,640 --> 01:20:49,680 the five-second rule, the 40 pillars of pyramidal success. 1421 01:20:50,680 --> 01:20:55,320 Or it's some sort of anthropomorphic vaguely childlike approach. 1422 01:20:55,320 --> 01:20:58,000 Barking Up The Wrong Tree. 1423 01:20:58,000 --> 01:21:00,160 Who moved my cheese? 1424 01:21:00,160 --> 01:21:02,120 Eat that frog. 1425 01:21:02,120 --> 01:21:04,640 The Uterus Is A Feature, Not A Bug. 1426 01:21:04,640 --> 01:21:08,880 I don't even know where to begin not knowing what that means. 1427 01:21:14,720 --> 01:21:17,560 The straightforward approach to self-improvement 1428 01:21:17,560 --> 01:21:19,520 by men like Norman Vincent Peale 1429 01:21:19,520 --> 01:21:23,480 has given way to a litany of bona fide gibberish by clowns 1430 01:21:23,480 --> 01:21:25,920 such as Seth Godin, 1431 01:21:25,920 --> 01:21:29,680 author and corporate guru who somehow manages to string words, 1432 01:21:29,680 --> 01:21:33,080 images and balloons into some sort of narrative event. 1433 01:21:33,080 --> 01:21:37,440 Getting started with this is really hard, but if you do the physics, 1434 01:21:37,440 --> 01:21:40,320 after the first two breaths, 1435 01:21:40,320 --> 01:21:43,840 the percentage change in latex that you're making gets smaller and 1436 01:21:43,840 --> 01:21:46,040 smaller and smaller with each breath. 1437 01:21:47,480 --> 01:21:51,560 And then the model is if you can get the first two breaths over with, 1438 01:21:51,560 --> 01:21:54,680 you're gonna get the balloon filled up, cos it's downhill from there. 1439 01:21:54,680 --> 01:21:58,240 At the beginning, there's lots and lots and lots of argument, 1440 01:21:58,240 --> 01:22:00,360 and discussion with the lizard brain. 1441 01:22:00,360 --> 01:22:03,280 As if the only thing holding you back is that crazy 1442 01:22:03,280 --> 01:22:05,200 lizard running around inside your brain. 1443 01:22:05,200 --> 01:22:07,360 You know, that's good advice for Jim Morrison, 1444 01:22:07,360 --> 01:22:09,040 that is useless for the corporate world. 1445 01:22:09,040 --> 01:22:13,040 The corporate world doesn't want you to be successful or dynamic. 1446 01:22:13,040 --> 01:22:15,640 The corporate world doesn't even know your name. 1447 01:22:15,640 --> 01:22:17,720 That's why they gave you a laminate. 1448 01:22:27,080 --> 01:22:28,920 America has become a country where 1449 01:22:28,920 --> 01:22:32,600 you can create your own fantasy of what it means to be an American. 1450 01:22:32,600 --> 01:22:35,480 You don't even have to bother working anymore. 1451 01:22:35,480 --> 01:22:38,360 The self-made man has become the self-made-up man online 1452 01:22:38,360 --> 01:22:41,280 where you really can invent yourself. Quite literally, 1453 01:22:41,280 --> 01:22:44,960 you can be just exactly whoever you want to be online. 1454 01:22:44,960 --> 01:22:47,320 You can be any age, race, gender, 1455 01:22:47,320 --> 01:22:49,440 class, educational level, 1456 01:22:49,440 --> 01:22:52,440 you can completely fabricate yourself. 1457 01:22:52,440 --> 01:22:54,320 Now that may not be in the spirit of 1458 01:22:54,320 --> 01:22:56,680 the hard work to earn the American Dream, 1459 01:22:56,680 --> 01:23:01,400 but it's still very much in line with this re-creation of identity. 1460 01:23:01,400 --> 01:23:05,400 Nobody can prove the truth because nobody knows what the truth is. 1461 01:23:05,400 --> 01:23:07,200 And if you can't prove the truth, 1462 01:23:07,200 --> 01:23:09,320 just prove the other person is lying. 1463 01:23:09,320 --> 01:23:11,440 That's the world we live in. 1464 01:23:11,440 --> 01:23:16,440 An entire generation of selfie stick-wielding narcissistic fuckwits 1465 01:23:17,120 --> 01:23:21,080 who believe that every opinion is valid, every belief is relative, 1466 01:23:21,080 --> 01:23:24,640 and you can define yourself by something other than what you do. 1467 01:23:25,800 --> 01:23:29,520 I believe we can keep the promise of our founder, 1468 01:23:29,520 --> 01:23:32,200 the idea that if you're willing to work hard, 1469 01:23:32,200 --> 01:23:35,560 it doesn't matter who you are, or where you come from, 1470 01:23:35,560 --> 01:23:38,560 or what you look like, or where you love, 1471 01:23:38,560 --> 01:23:42,560 it doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian, 1472 01:23:42,560 --> 01:23:46,000 or Native American, or young or old, 1473 01:23:46,000 --> 01:23:49,960 or rich or poor, abled, disabled, gay or straight. 1474 01:23:49,960 --> 01:23:53,760 You can make it here in America if you're willing to try! 1475 01:24:01,880 --> 01:24:05,040 The US of A sells itself as the land where 1476 01:24:05,040 --> 01:24:07,680 you can rise from rags to riches. 1477 01:24:07,680 --> 01:24:11,040 Opportunity is the main component of that ethos. 1478 01:24:11,040 --> 01:24:15,160 In 1931, the author and social critic James Truslow Adams 1479 01:24:15,160 --> 01:24:19,400 coined a phrase for it - "the American Dream". 1480 01:24:19,400 --> 01:24:22,400 Back then, it had more to do with idealism than materialism. 1481 01:24:26,680 --> 01:24:29,640 Too many of us now tend to worship 1482 01:24:29,640 --> 01:24:32,920 self-indulgence and consumption. 1483 01:24:34,640 --> 01:24:39,680 Human identity is no longer defined by what one does... 1484 01:24:42,400 --> 01:24:44,760 ..but by what one owns. 1485 01:24:45,800 --> 01:24:49,000 The greatest misconception of the American Dream, and this has been 1486 01:24:49,000 --> 01:24:50,800 documented in years of polling, 1487 01:24:50,800 --> 01:24:52,960 that it really doesn't mean wealth. 1488 01:24:52,960 --> 01:24:56,600 In fact, wealth usually comes in toward the bottom of what people 1489 01:24:56,600 --> 01:24:58,440 associate with the American Dream. 1490 01:24:58,440 --> 01:25:02,200 Towards the very top, the things people most associate the dream with 1491 01:25:02,200 --> 01:25:04,960 are family, community, freedom. 1492 01:25:04,960 --> 01:25:08,960 Wealth plays a role but not a predominant role, 1493 01:25:08,960 --> 01:25:10,960 and it's not central. 1494 01:25:10,960 --> 01:25:13,680 When Americans are free to pursue their dreams, 1495 01:25:13,680 --> 01:25:16,280 there is no limit to what we can achieve. 1496 01:25:16,280 --> 01:25:19,080 This is truly an exciting time in our country. 1497 01:25:19,080 --> 01:25:22,960 Every day, we are accomplishing great things for our people. 1498 01:25:22,960 --> 01:25:26,840 We are really moving along, we are bringing back our jobs, 1499 01:25:26,840 --> 01:25:30,560 we are making America great again. Thank you. 1500 01:25:30,560 --> 01:25:34,640 One of the interesting similarities between Trump and Obama is 1501 01:25:34,640 --> 01:25:36,040 their adherence to the dream. 1502 01:25:36,040 --> 01:25:38,200 Barack Obama, the subtitle of his book, 1503 01:25:38,200 --> 01:25:40,960 the Audacity of Hope, is reclaiming the American dream, 1504 01:25:40,960 --> 01:25:44,320 that there was something good that we've lost or neglected. 1505 01:25:44,320 --> 01:25:48,240 Donald Trump, what prefaced "Let's make America great again" 1506 01:25:48,240 --> 01:25:50,120 was a phrase along the lines of, 1507 01:25:50,120 --> 01:25:52,160 "Sadly, the American Dream is dead, 1508 01:25:52,160 --> 01:25:54,240 "but if I get elected, I'm going to bring it back 1509 01:25:54,240 --> 01:25:55,960 "bigger and better than before." 1510 01:25:55,960 --> 01:26:01,000 We will make America wealthy again! 1511 01:26:01,000 --> 01:26:05,120 Having said that, it seems for the first time in generations as if Americans view 1512 01:26:05,120 --> 01:26:08,520 the notion that they'll be more 1513 01:26:08,520 --> 01:26:13,560 successful than their parents as not guaranteed. 1514 01:26:13,960 --> 01:26:16,840 70% of Americans hate their jobs. 1515 01:26:16,840 --> 01:26:20,120 Many of them to the Nicholson-esque extreme in The Shining. 1516 01:26:20,120 --> 01:26:21,880 So why do we do it? 1517 01:26:21,880 --> 01:26:25,960 Cos it feels good when we stop, that's why. 1518 01:26:25,960 --> 01:26:28,800 Despite all the rhetoric, America's actually only 1519 01:26:28,800 --> 01:26:31,600 the 17th hardest working country on the planet. 1520 01:26:31,600 --> 01:26:34,280 They're 11th in gender pay disparity, 1521 01:26:34,280 --> 01:26:36,800 they're number two in workplace injuries, 1522 01:26:36,800 --> 01:26:40,560 and number one in unpaid workers' holidays. 1523 01:26:40,560 --> 01:26:44,360 But that doesn't bother Americans because we inherently believe we 1524 01:26:44,360 --> 01:26:46,680 shouldn't be paid to sit on a beach, 1525 01:26:46,680 --> 01:26:50,120 rubbing suntan lotion into our fat necks. 1526 01:26:50,120 --> 01:26:52,160 A holiday is an experience, 1527 01:26:52,160 --> 01:26:56,240 and Americans prefer things to experiences. 1528 01:26:56,240 --> 01:27:01,280 Things like a big plasma screen TV and patio furniture, 1529 01:27:02,360 --> 01:27:04,280 God bless 'em. 1530 01:27:04,280 --> 01:27:07,640 The Protestant work ethic is never going to go away, 1531 01:27:07,640 --> 01:27:10,360 it's part of our metaphoric identity. 1532 01:27:10,360 --> 01:27:14,280 But, despite what old Donnie T says, 1533 01:27:14,280 --> 01:27:16,520 what made America great was the 1534 01:27:16,520 --> 01:27:19,320 Protestants, the Germans, the Irish, 1535 01:27:19,320 --> 01:27:24,040 the Muslims, the African-Americans, the Asians, 1536 01:27:24,040 --> 01:27:28,360 and the Mexicans who came here, just like those Puritans, 1537 01:27:28,360 --> 01:27:31,200 in the haphazard chance they might find 1538 01:27:31,200 --> 01:27:34,040 redemption in dignity in their work. 1539 01:27:34,040 --> 01:27:36,640 And barring that, a big old plasma screen TV, 1540 01:27:36,640 --> 01:27:39,320 and patio furniture will do very nicely. 1541 01:27:40,360 --> 01:27:44,320 Maybe this can all best be summed up in the philosophical ramblings of 1542 01:27:44,320 --> 01:27:46,800 that astute Canadian band, Loverboy. 1543 01:27:46,800 --> 01:27:49,240 So I'll let them speak for themselves. 1544 01:27:52,040 --> 01:27:56,200 # Everybody's working for the weekend 1545 01:27:58,520 --> 01:28:02,040 # Everybody wants a little romance 1546 01:28:02,040 --> 01:28:05,120 # Hey, yeah 1547 01:28:05,120 --> 01:28:08,920 # Everybody's goin' off the deep end 1548 01:28:11,360 --> 01:28:16,400 # Everybody needs a second chance, oh 1549 01:28:16,720 --> 01:28:19,560 # You want a piece of my heart 1550 01:28:19,560 --> 01:28:23,000 # You better start from the start 1551 01:28:23,000 --> 01:28:25,640 # You wanna be in the show 1552 01:28:25,640 --> 01:28:28,600 # Come on, baby, let's go. #