William Tyler
Factory Production Line and Much More

William Tyler - Factory Production Line and Much More

- And hello, everyone. And before I start on today’s talk, I was asked last time if I would say something about the years that women first went to universities in the States. And someone else emailed me with a story about women at work in the 1970s. And that story of women at work in the 1970s resonated with me because the same attitudes towards women workers were apparent here in Britain at the same time. Then I got thinking about women at university, and there are very similar parallels in similar dates between America and Britain. And I’ve said many times that the history of our two countries does go in tandem quite a bit, and it does in terms of women having the vote after the First World War and of women in higher education. Now, the first reference I can find to women in America is in the year that Victoria came to the throne in Britain, that is 1837 when the first female students were admitted to Oberlin, O-B-E-R-L-I-N, Oberlin College. In 1840, the first female graduate in the States, a woman called Catherine Brewer gained a degree at what is now the Wesleyan College.

These were, in both cases, they were women’s institutions of higher education. In the same way that in Oxford and Cambridge, they established women’s colleges. In other words, women’s education was separate from that of men. In 1920, Harvard first admitted women, and that is parallel to the University of Cambridge admitting women in Britain. In 1945, wow, at the end of the Second World War, Harvard first admitted female medical students. And apparently they gave the male medical students a vote on it, expected them to vote against women. But for a joke, apparently, they all voted in favour of women, so Harvard had to take them, I guess. That’s probably a story that’s an anti-Harvard story, but there is an interesting butt about women doctors. I come from the city of Bristol where I was born in Britain, and there was a woman called Elizabeth Blackwell who was a Bristolian born in 1821. And she was not allowed to study medicine or practise medicine in Britain.

So she went to the States with her family, and she got her degree in America. And subsequently came back, and was admitted to practise both in Britain and in France. But she felt happier back in New York. She returned to New York and with her sister, who had now qualified as a doctor, and one other female doctor, they established, in 1857, the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. I think that’s a very interesting link between the two countries, your country, if you’re American listening, and my country Britain. We live in a woke age, and I’m not woke, and I don’t think many of you listening will be woke, but it is interesting to note that in Britain, the first female doctor was a transvestite. It was a man dressed as a woman who practised, and didn’t declare until he was on his deathbed that he wasn’t a woman at all, but a man. I think that would make huge possibilities for Hollywood in this day and age. But more importantly, women’s higher education begins at the end of the 19th century, basically. And their recognition in some professions is in the 20th century.

And that’s true, and if you are Canadian or Australian listening, it mirrors your experiences as well. In the Western world, these dates are fairly similar. There’s a long history behind it, as we talked about before. I should come back to women’s rights later in the series. But today my talk is what President Coolidge referred to as, “The business of America is business.” We’re looking at business, we’re looking at production, we’re looking at the economic life of the United States from the latter part of the 19th century through to the Wall Street Crash in 1929. Indeed, we’ve noted before that by the turn of the century, in rough terms, by 1900, America had reached the position at that turn of the century in a way that Peter Clements, a historian, writes of in this way. He writes this, “The USA developed in terms of production, technology and consumption, all fusing together to create the wealthiest country on Earth by the early 20th century. By 1900, America was almost producing more iron and steel than Britain, Germany, and Russia combined.” Production, technology, and consumerism, those are the three guiding words of the capitalism of the 20th century.

And America was well in the lead by 1900 over the other major producers, Britain, the first in the Industrial Revolution, then the empire of Germany, then Russia. America is really forging ahead, both in terms of production, both in terms of technology, and finally in terms of consumerism and all that went with that, advertising and so forth. So we can say that, by 1900, America is economically taking the lead in world capitalism. This in turn allowed American governments to deploy what was known, or became known as dollar diplomacy. They could use the mighty dollar to control events in other countries. And I read this. Again, this is Clements’ writing. “Dollar diplomacy was the term by which the USA extended its influence in neighbouring countries by use of its economic muscle,” neighbouring countries is Central and South America, which America regarded as its backyard and it still does, and indeed it still influences, through economic muscle, events in South America and Central America. “For example, in 1911, America took over the management of the Nicaraguan economy when it couldn’t pay its foreign debts. It also muscled into a European-based consortium that was financing a major Chinese railway project because America realised the value of controlling railroads for economic purposes.”

In other words, it would improve trade between America and China if the railway was there and America had to have an interest in it. So it’s the mighty dollar. It is dollar diplomacy. Well, that’s true. However, when we come to post-World War II, the Cold War, if you like, and onwards from 1945 and onwards to the present day, America has continued to deploy the mighty dollar. But in addition, it’s also not been shy to apply its military power and deployment in various theatres of war across the world from 1945 onwards. Sometimes that’s engaging in war, think about Saddam Hussein, or its engaging in sending the material for war, as is now the case with Ukraine. So America, first powerful control, or attempted control of world affairs is through money, that never goes, but it adds in after 1945. And the answer why does it added in after 1945 is because the world split into two. It’s rather like a coconut that you carve into two and you have two halves.

The other half is of course the communist world of Russia and China, the Cold War world of America and its NATO allies and of Russia and China on the other hand. And from that, America could not withdraw. And from that, America was involved in, for example, putting money into Africa to balance money put in by Russia and China in Africa is a simple example, as well as by deploying troops in Korea. Now shortly after the end of the Second World War, the hold communism at bay. But it is with the dollar. And, of course, America couldn’t militarily act if it didn’t have the resources to be able to fund a mighty army, navy and subsequently air force and build the material in terms of tanks, ships and aircraft to be able to deploy around the world. But really there’s another side to that. And the other side to that is that, following the First World War, America, you remember from last week, refused to join the League of Nations. And what it is doing is to the default position of American foreign policy, which is to say isolationism, not an isolationism from the world, but isolationism from Europe.

It’s very concerned of what’s happening the other way, looking Pacific way rather than the Atlantic way. And so it withdrew into this isolationism. But even that wasn’t the entire picture. America simply couldn’t wash its hands of Europe and was to find out 20-odd years after the end of the First World War that it will be dragged back into Europe. We are becoming in the 20th century, we in terms of the world, is becoming a smaller place. Cough in Ohio, and I catch flu here in Britain, if you like. We are so interrelated that, for the most powerful Western capitalist country to withdraw completely, it makes no sense. Why not? Because America needs to trade. The whole basis of capitalism is trade. If you like, the trade is in two ways. First of all, you create an internal market, consumerism, American consumerism, which is arguably the first great consumer society, followed in Europe, particularly by Britain, but following really in the footsteps of the Americans.

So there’s internal consumerism, producing goods to sell to your own people, but to be powerful, is external consumerism, is selling your goods abroad to bring in money, but only money, to bring in raw materials which you may not have. This is particularly applies to Britain, but it also applies to the States as well. So that is by way of a sort of introduction, which I hope makes sense. I want now to turn specifically to production and to a particular short biography. One historian has written this, which I agreed with, an American historian. “The automobile became the backbone of the American economy in the 1920s and remains such until the 1970s. It profoundly altered the American landscape and American society.” But it also altered the world landscape, well, initially the Western advanced world landscape. The automobile is one of the huge major changes in society on a grand scale of history, not just the 20th century. Now in the name that leaps out as us, of course, is that of Henry Ford. Even though he’s reported to have said in 1916, “History is more or less bunk.”

Well, he said all sorts of things, many contradictory. My favourite quotation of Henry Ford, who is not a favourite person of mine, as we should discover in a moment, but Henry Ford said, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.” And we all agree with that. Those of us in our third age, even fourth age, know that we never stop learning. We learn right to the end. But it’s also, we should remember the Ford isn’t perfect in what he says. And we remember instead, the Latin tag, “mens sana in corpore sano,” a healthy mind in a body. Mind and body need to be kept exercised in old age, in young age as well, but in old age particularly, “mens sana in corpore sano.” That’s what I try and live by. And I’m sure many, many of you try to and are more successful than I mm in doing both. But let’s turn to Henry Ford then. You could say that Henry Ford’s story is the quintessential American story.

He was born in 1863 on a farm in Michigan. He left for the big lights of the city of Detroit, and he was age just 16. And there his interesting cars began in his early teens and later as a young man. In the 1880s, he began working on car engines in his spare time. In the next decade, he got a job with Edison Electrics. And he’s beginning to know about electricity, but he knows about car engines. In 1903, he made the big plunge and established the Ford Motor Company. So it’s really at the beginning of the century. Five years later in 1908, the Model T Ford hit the roads of America. And in developing mass production, Ford made himself one of the richest men in the country by the outbreak of World War I in 1914 for Europe, 1917 for America. One of his key beliefs, which underpinned 20th century capitalism was, as I’ve said in my introduction, consumerism. People needed to know that they needed a car, they wanted a car, you had to have a car.

And the conversations at this time of year at parties and so on would be, “Oh, you must come and see my car. It’s marvellous. You mean you haven’t got one? Oh really? You hear that, darling? They haven’t got one. Oh, well you must definitely come and see our car.” And it’s a status symbol. But it’s a status symbol that many Americans and subsequently other countries in Britain and France, Germany, it’s a status symbol that can be afforded not by the top elite, but by a much bigger slice of society. He believed that capitalism, and in particular, its subset of consumerism was the key to world peace. Well, we would say such a belief today was naive in the extreme. But Ford believed that people would want goods, consumer goods, and would not want to go to war. Well, we know the nonsense of that. But it meant that during the First World War, Ford became a pacifist and a hypocrite because the Ford Motor Company became a major provider of weapons both before and after America itself entered the war, making Ford even richer than he previously had been. At the time, Ford was very often referred to as a paternalistic employer. For those of you from Britain listening, he was the American equivalent of Lever Brothers, the soap producers up at Port Sunlight, or of Cadbury’s, the chocolate people at Bournville in Birmingham who treated their workforce well.

You want to work for people like that. And Ford basically doubled the daily wage for his workers to $5 a day. That had a big effect. It meant that people didn’t leave Ford’s for better pay elsewhere because he had the best pay. And for him it meant he didn’t have to invest in training new people, and thus his profits could go up and up and up. So both parties, both the workers and Ford, benefited from him putting up the daily wage, which he could well, of course, afford. He also introduced a five-day week in 1926, which was virtually unheard of anywhere else. When I first went to school, I had to go to school on Saturday mornings. My father used to work a six-day week, or sorry, a five-and-a-half-day week in the same. And many of you starting your careers would have worked a five-and-a-half-day week and maybe even a six-day week. Ford introduced the five-day week, giving people the whole of the weekend. He’s paid them double. He’s giving them the whole of every weekend. I mean, that’s, call it paternalistic.

I don’t suppose the workers minded. But, and it is a huge but, in fact it’s two huge buts when it comes to Ford. First of all, he was anti-union. He didn’t want to deal with unions in Ford works. Now, that raised enormous problems because many of the workers post-First World War were interested in forming unions. Ford employed a man called Harry Bennett who’d been a boxer in the American Navy. And he was put into what was called a service department. I mean, today I think he would be called a security chief. And Harry Bennett was, I don’t think putting too hard or harsh a phrase on it, was a nasty piece of work. He used intimidation tactics to squash union’s organising. Worse than that, in March of 1939, March of ‘39, during the Great Depression, remember America, for those who aren’t American, America isn’t concerned in that sense about war in Europe in March of '39, as European countries are.

During the Great Depression, unemployed car workers in Detroit staged a hunger march. The Ford workers staged a hunger march and marched on the Ford River Rouge complex, and presented 14 demands to Henry Ford. Now hungry marches are known across the world during The Hungry Thirties, nothing unusual. They are well organised, and they present these 14 demands very clear to Ford. He called the police out. And Harry, Harry Bennett, called out his own security forces. The police and the security forces opened fire on the unarmed workers. Over 60 suffered wounds and five were killed. Paternalistic? Only if you do what Mr. Ford wants you to do. And then we come to the second bigger but, which is Ford’s antisemitism. It’s the antisemitism, blatant public antisemitism, that places Ford in a, I was going to say, and I think I’ll stick by saying that, in a league of his own. He deployed all the antisemitic tropes that are to be found. He deployed it in his speeches, in books that he wrote, and in the newspaper that he owned, the Dearborn Independent.

And throughout the 1920s, 1920, '27, he was violently antisemitic. He believed that there was a vast Jewish conspiracy seeking to destroy traditional American values. Wow. I mean, that’s deep antisemitism. In 1920, Ford wrote this, “If fans wish to know the trouble with American baseball, they have it in three words, too much Jew.” He’s deeply antisemitic. He published articles in his newspaper, which he himself wrote. He also produced a headline, “The International Jew, the World’s Foremost Problems.” This book, that later was produced under that title, was published also in Germany. Let me quote this in the article on Ford that you can find on the internet. “In 1924, Heinrich Himmler described Ford as quote, 'One of our most valuable and important and witty fighters.’ Ford is the only American mentioned favourably in Hitler’s autobiography ‘Mein Kampf.’ Adolf Hitler himself wrote, quote, ‘Only a single great man, Ford, who to the Jews’ fury still maintains full independence from the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of 120 million.‘

Speaking in 1931 to a reporter from the Detroit News, Hitler said, 'I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration.’” his inspiration, “explaining his reason for keeping a life-sized portrait of Ford behind his desk.” Oh, wow. And Ford is behind his desk and in Hitler’s thoughts, not because Ford was a fascist in the normal sense of the word, a political fascist, but because he was an antisemite of the very worst order. One American historian has written that Hitler revered Ford, saying, this is Hitler, “I shall do my best to put his theories into practise in Germany.” They say the Volkswagen, the people’s car, was based on Henry Ford’s T car, Ford T. But it’s the antisemitism which is unspeakable. He lost a libel action in 1927. And he published a public apology. How you can publish an apology when you’ve been at it for seven years, writing the rubbish that he wrote, I do not know. But he sent a letter, a public letter of apology to Sigmund Livingston who was the president of the Anti-Defamation League. But he didn’t write the letter.

The letter was written for him by his head of security, Harry Bennett. This is no conversion. He remained an antisemite all his life. In 1938, the year before war broke out in Europe on Ford’s 75th birthday, he was presented by the German Nazi consult in Cleveland with the order of the Grand Cross of the Golden Eagle of Germany. He died in 1947. Some of you are highly literate, I know that, because you write and tell me so. Do you remember reading, maybe at school, Aldous Huxley’s book, “Brave New World,” which came out in 1932? And in that, Huxley describes a society organised on what we could call Fordist lines. The years a dated AF, or Anno Ford, in the year of Ford. And the expression, “my Ford,” is used in the book instead of my Lord. The Christian cross is replaced in the book with a capital T for the Model T Ford.

I’m going back to read “Brave New World.” I read it when I was, I don’t know, knee high to a grasshopper, as they say. I must read it again. So I’ve spoken a little bit about Henry Ford. Now I want to return to the wider picture and examine for a moment some of the effects of World War I on the American economy. First of all, on finance, you can’t have capitalism without finance. And this is David Reynolds’ history of America, which I’m using, and Reynolds rights this, “In 1913, the United States had been a net debtor to the tune of 1.7 billion dollars. By 1919, it was a net creditor as exactly the same level. This dramatic transformation reflected two related trends in war finance. Britain sold off its still substantial US investments, while America became the Allies’ main banker.” Wars benefit some. And it benefited America, certainly between 1914 and 1970 enormously. Of course, when America enters the war, it suffers the loss of all those young men. But between ‘14 and '17, when America is in isolationism, and it’s an argument of isolationism, it makes a lot of money.

But it’s not only finance, you need trade. And I’ve spoken about that before. It’s just not trade internally, but trade externally too. There’s a piece here I was going to share with you if I may. Trade, “USA traded far more with the Allies in the war than with Germany. And this was enhanced by the success of the Allied blockade of German ports. In 1914, for example, America exported $40 million in munitions to Britain. In 1916, it was 1.29 billion.” It’s making money, but it’s making money that Britain didn’t have. It’s supplying resources that Britain couldn’t produce. And without America’s backing, here in the first war, and then subsequently in the second war, without American pushing money into the system, Britain simply could not have survived. And arguably, well, I think not arguably, but without American involvement in both wars, subsequently 1917 and then 1942, without America’s involvement, the Allies might have lost. So what we’re saying is that the mighty dollar, I’m going back to where I began, the mighty dollar is important because it enables, it pushes in all of this armaments to Britain. But in the last resort, the dollar isn’t enough. What has to come is American military involvement.

So when I said America got involved because of the Cold War, absolutely true. But it got involved, if you like, when it enters World War II, except that the Cold War meant that America could never withdraw into isolationism as it was attempting to do after the First World War. So it’s the mighty dollar, but in the end, it’s the powerful fist of military might that America can deploy in defence of what Churchill would’ve called freedom and democracy. So it’s intriguing how America’s empire, or its role as an imperial power, is not like Britain’s role as an imperial power. America is defensive of the concepts of freedom and liberty, whereas Britain’s empire was based upon taking goods, raw materials cheaply from around the world and exporting manufactured goods to the same countries. The two empires are different. And, in fact, many American historians would objectively using the word empire about America. But it makes it simpler, I think, to understand the baton has passed in World War I from Britain to America. The torch, if you like, is handed on. But it’s not quite the same.

Britain and America’s power were both based upon economy and upon military might and power, but the deployment of that is different. America did not seek an empire where you could colour in bits of the world as America, and Britain did. But it’s nevertheless the same phenomenon. So we are talking about 1815 to the present day. Britain was the standard bearer for freedom and democracy against Bonaparte. It was against the Kaiser and against Nazism. But in the last two cases, unlike the first, America intervened militarily to ensure victory for freedom and democracy. And as a result, Britain can’t do it now. It would be laughable, but America can. But it is still interesting, particularly in the trouble in the Middle East, that Britain has marched almost side by side with America politically over the issues in the Middle East today. That whatever Americans sometimes say about France being our best ally in Europe, particularly after Britain withdrew from the EU, doesn’t really ring true it. It still needs somebody to say what America is doing is right, and it can pretty well always rely upon Britain to do that. So this is an interesting, on a huge canvas of history, not 10, 20, 100 years, on a huge canvas of history.

The two nations are still linked together, but the power has changed from one to the other. If this was before wokism, I would make a comparison to marriage, but I won’t do that. I should be in too much trouble if I did. Reno says this, “In trade, in the United States have become the world’s leading exporter, with nearly 1/6 of global export in 1929,” the year the Wall Street Crash, “and after Britain, the second largest importer as well, sucking in raw materials which booming economy. The lead sector for exports was automobiles and ancillary industries such as rubber and petroleum. US companies were also building their own plants abroad during the 1920s. In Britain, for instance, Ford established a major factory at Dagenham and General Motors,” American General Motors, “bought up the British company Vauxhall.” So American capitalism is moving into global capitalism, building car plants in Britain. Now we’re used to all of that today in a global society. But the changing nature of trade is American led.

It’s American led, if you want a crude date, from 1900 when America’s overtaking Britain and Germany in Europe as the major economic powerhouse. And that’s just another example of it, of opening its factories here. And in doing that, of course it influences things like, well, all sorts of things. Let me give you an example. When I was the inspector for adult education in the English county of Warwickshire and the head of service, we ran courses at Ford’s. Ford’s had a very specific sort of plant in Leamington Spa, and Ford’s had an extremely good reputation, Henry Ford long dead, Ford’s have a very good reputation for looking after their workers. And so we were able to approach Ford’s management to ask if we could run two sorts of courses. One were courses in basic literacy, reading and writing and maths, and the other was in race relations in terms of the Asian community that lived in Leamington Spa, many of whom worked for Ford’s. And Ford’s were very open about it.

We sent tutors in to work during lunch hours and so on. And so that is because Ford’s was an American company that saw this. We approached other British companies in the county that were large, and we didn’t get the same response as we got from Ford’s. And it’s just worth that as a silly small example, but a real example, in my experience, of how American industry and industrial practises hit other countries as well. But, there’s always a but in history, isn’t it? Always a but, always a but. People listen to me and they wait for me to say but. After the First World War, when the Russian czarist capitalist regime collapsed in revolution, in the October Revolution of 1917 and the Bolsheviks communists come to power, there was huge fear in America that communism would come to America and destroy the capitalist society that it been so successful, in the name, for raising up standards of living amongst what we might loosely call the middle class and even blue collar workers.

They were frightened that unionism, the thing that Ford panicked over, would allow creeping Bolshevism to come to the States. It’s called, in America, the Red Scare, S-C-A-R-E, scare, the Red Scare of the 1920s. Heale, in his history, on “Twentieth-Century America,” Heale writes this, “The Russian Revolution had it first been welcomed by the American public as a democratic uprising,” not least amongst Russian Jews who had fled from the pogroms from the 1890s to America,“ because they saw it as democratic revolution. "But its later Bolshevik term,” remember there were two revolutions in 1917. The first was indeed a democratic revolution, totally overthrown, of course, by Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution. “Its later Bolshevik term alarmed the American propertied classes.” It alarmed propertied classes across Europe. “Yet it exhilarated American radicals. And communist risings in Western and Central Europe in 1918 and 1990 immeasurably strengthened both radical hopes and conservative fears in America that the appeal of revolutionary communism knew no national boundaries.”

And in fact, Lenin’s key point is that communism is international and will spread across the world beginning, he thought, with Germany. “When in 1919 in America, bombs exploded in several cities and major steel and coal strikes wrench at the very core of American industrial capitalism, many Americans were ready to believe that Bolsheviks were abroad in the land.” They weren’t. But that’s what happens with fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of difference. So I’m in an office or a firm in America, and they come in and tell me the workers have gone on strike and I think, “My God, are they going to hang me from a lamppost because they’re all Bolsheviks?” No, they weren’t all Bolsheviks. They were simply striking for better working conditions, higher pay, exactly as all unionists were across the Western world. But 1919 saw more strikes in one year than America had ever seen before.

But even that isn’t unusual because Britain had more strikes during the course of the war, during the course of the war than it had before the war. And before the war, it had huge strikes and it had worse… This is something that is not simply American. It’s everywhere. But it hit Americans badly in terms of their fear of communism. It subsided, it subsided because it was never there, but it subsides. There was a fall in trade union membership of up to a quarter between 1920 and '23 in the States. Employers refuse to accept closed-shop unionism. In other words, only one union would control the workforce. So they accepted multiple unions, divide and rule, in other words. Employers introduced pensions and insurance plans. Now in Britain we had pensions guaranteed by the government before we reached the First World War. And there were insurance plans in, that’s because we had a left wing, liberal, radical government in power under Asquith. Here in America, it’s the employers themselves that see that, if they’re going to maintain their profits, they need to keep the workforce happy and they need to recruit and retain the workforce in the way that Ford had done.

And so pensions and union and insurance plans are introduced. There’s also a rise in wages. Now that’s very useful. A rise in wages leads to greater consumerism. And greater consumerism means everybody, to all intents and purposes, has an interest in the capitalist system. Because news coming out of Russia is it doesn’t work like that. Without consumerism, without high wages linked to consumerism, then the standard of living does not improve. And of course, we know that by the 1950s, 1980s if you like, the standard of living in Western Europe and America is far in excess of the standard of living in the USSR. And it’s the old bread and circuses of the Roman empire, give people consumer goods, cars, fridges, whatever, and you are not likely to have revolution. People have a vested interest in keeping the status quo. You get revolution when there are people at the bottom of society who have nothing to lose by going into revolt. And they can be led by intellectuals from the middle classes. But the intellectuals of the middle classes in Europe or in America can’t do that unless they have the followers in the working class.

And the working class don’t want to know, if they’re earning good money and buying goods, that they, their wives, their children want. Such is the root of capitalism. And that saw off the Red Scare of the 1920s. America also found new goods after the First World War to sell and spread its consumer ideology, if you like. Let me just read you a little piece here, if I may, from Clements’ book. “The USA had surplus goods for export and needed to protect its growing trade and investments abroad. For example, it heavily invested in sugar production in Cuba and Hawaii and needed naval bases to protect its trade routes to the Far East. Allied to this was the desire to exploit the resources of less-developed countries.” Exactly. So America’s pursuit of the mighty dollar leads to it developing a powerful navy, in the same way that Britain in the 19th century had created the greatest navy that the world had ever seen.

Now America turns to looking at naval strength. And the key player is an academic called Alfred Mahan, M-A-H-A-N. And he wrote a number of books, all of which were influential, about the importance of sea power, not in defence of the country necessarily, but in defence of world, American trade, or American trade across the world. It’s no different than Britain’s policy in the 19th century. And America’s just reached this, if you like, in a slightly different way than Britain had reached it. But it all comes, all amounts to the same thing exactly. “In 1892, Captain Alfred Mahan wrote two enormously influential books on the impact of sea power, both to extend national influence and to protect economic interests. Many politicians supported these ideas, and during the 1890s, the size of the US Navy rose from 12th to fifth largest in the world. The growth of the American Navy was increasingly seen as vital in America becoming a major world power.”

And it’s the development of the navy at this point, which is absolutely essential to the performance of America as the dominant country of the free and of democracy, economic strength and military strength aligned. Mahan himself is an interesting, Mahan himself, rather, is an interesting man. He lectured in naval history and tactics at the Naval Royal College. His books are well worth reading if you are interested in naval warfare today. His big book, “The Influence of Sea Power Upon History,” which took the story from 1660 to 1783, and “The Influence of Sea Power Upon the French Revolution and Empire,” and “The Sea Power in Relation to the War of 1812,” and “The Life of Nelson.” He was a huge historian, and he wrote these really influential books. Seldom do historians have such an impact on politicians, but Mahan is the exception. Politicians listen to what he said because it was absolutely right. There was no gain saying it.

Let me quote this historian, “Mahan believed that national greatness was inextricably associated with the sea, with its commercial use in peace and its control in war. And he used history as a stock of examples to exemplify his theories, arguing that the education of naval officers should be based on a rigorous study of history.” I lost a friend recently who did precisely that same job at Greenwich Naval College here in Britain, teaching history to naval officers, many of whom didn’t particularly want to learn about it. But Mahan is absolutely right. History has something to say. And certainly naval history is a fascinating subject, well, in its own right, but it’s a fascinating subject in terms of its links to the economy of both the British and the American, or if you want a different example, the Spanish and the French. You can take whatever examples you like. All of which are vitally important.

There seemed, by the end of the 1920s, there was nothing to stop the vibrant American industrial business, financial trade, consumer machine. It was the greatest in the world. Its technologies were changing almost weekly in terms of new techniques, new plans, new whatever. Its productions were fast, efficient, and its consumer goods were much in demand, both at home and abroad. It was a really powerful country. Nothing could go wrong. After all, we all know that capitalism is superior to communism, and they did in the 1920s. And this is captured in another book. And this is a book by Sinclair Lewis where the US economy is satirised. And he has a American businessman called F. Babbitt. The book is called “Babbitt.” It was published in 1922. And in the book there’s this piece. First of all, an introduction. “But Americans gave little thought to Russia in the 1920s.

Their main preoccupation seemed to be getting rich. Businessman, George F. Babbitt, the satirical creation of the novelist Sinclair Lewis, became the emblem of the age,” quote. And this is a quote from the book. “As he approached the office, he walked faster and faster, muttering, ‘guess better, guess better, hustle.’ All about him, the city was hustling for hustling’s sake. Many motors were hustling to pass one another in the hustling traffic. Men were hustling to catch trolleys, with another trolley a minute behind. And to leapfrog from the trolleys to gallop across the sidewalk, to hole themselves into buildings, into hustling express elevators. Men who had made 5,000 year before last and 10,000 last year, were urging on nerve-yelping bodies and patch teams as what they might make 20,000 this year. And the men who had broken, had broken completely down after making their recent thousand dollars were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through the vacations which the hustling doctors had ordered.” Hustling, the speed of American society.

Even after the Second World War, as a child, America was often portrayed to us because virtually no one, no one I knew had ever been to America, but America was portrayed as a hustling place. People were rushing around making money, doing things. Whereas in Britain we were rather stayed, and our economy was in decline. America looked as though it knew what the answers were, and so it did during that 1920s decade. And “Babbitt,” the book I’ve just quoted from, was published, as I said earlier, in 1922. And then, and then, the house of cards, it broke apart. The Wall Street Crash of 1929, and the subsequent depressive years of the 1930s. And despite all Roosevelt’s clever initiatives, unemployment went on rising. And he was saved by war. I don’t know if any of you are, there won’t be Americans because you had Vietnam, Korean, Vietnam. But if you are British listening, maybe Canadian or Australian, and you are my age and late at 70s, did your father ever say to you when you were teenagers and you were just being teenagers, didn’t he say, “We need a good war to sort you out?”

And I think my father’s generation genuinely believed that. And in terms of the American economy, American needed a good war, a war in which make money as well as saving the world. I mean, what could be better? But that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story not for today. It’s the story that I’m going to return to, not next week or the week after, because next week is Christmas Day, the following week is New Year’s Day. Which will pick up the story in three Monday’s time, which will be 2024, believe it or not. But I can’t end it there. And I need to just find a quotation I thought to end by. And I found a fantastic quotation. If you’re looking for American quotation in these years, go no further than Calvin Coolidge, the president. Coolidge said, “Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind.” Not a time or a season, but a state of mind. So let me finish by saying, at this holiday period, enjoy your families, and let us pray and hope for a far better 2024 than 2023. So God bless you all, and I’ll see you all three weeks time. Thanks for joining me on this excursion into American history. Let’s see if I’ve got any questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Well, I’m pleased you like my Christmas jumper. “Did you knit it yourself?” said to Nikki. Come on, come on. You have a very odd idea of me if you think I’m practical. No, and nor did my wife knit it. I don’t know, Nikki, if you are American, and whether what you have. We have these jumpers everywhere at Christmas. And we all buy them, and then you never wear them until next Christmas. There’s consumerism, in an American sense, alive and well in Britain in 2023.

Thank you, Hilton. That’s very kind of you.

Jonathan, “My mother completed her law studies at Liverpool University in Britain in ‘22. Several of her sisters went to university, one obtained a doctorate. I’m sure that was an exception to the rule.” It was, I had an aunt who went to Reading University before the First World War and got a degree in science. And that is unheard of really at the time. And her family disowned her. She was from a very middle class family. They disowned her. So she upped and went to South Africa and taught in South Africa. “Women’s College began in 1883. It shows up in the 'Murdoch Mysteries.’” Yeah, there were both in America and Britain and other countries as well. There were moves to establish women’s colleges, women’s universities in the States, women’s colleges here in Britain. And that was the breakthrough. But the big breakthrough comes when, as I said, universities like Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Yale begin to accept women in their own right and to give them their degrees. It seems incredible now to me. But when I go back to Oxford, I go to my college, and you walk in, and there’s lots of girls about who are students in the college. But when I was there in the 1960s, there weren’t any girls at all in our college. Most of the colleges were male. There were some female colleges, but most overwhelmingly were male. And we won’t go into what happened at night.

“Wikipedia says that Elizabeth Blackwell was rejected from each medical source she applied to, except Geneva Medical College in New York.” Absolutely right. “No British Medical College would take her because she was a woman. In which a male student voted in favour of Blackwell’s acceptance, albeit as a joke. So Harvard’s story’s really Geneva Medical College.” Oh, well done. Excellent.

Anthony, “Did America not finance our railways here at the end of 19th century?” Did they? Do you know, you’ve got me there, Anthony. I don’t know whether they, I don’t know the answer to that, I’m sorry. “Did America not finance our railways, British railways, here at the end of the 19th century?” I don’t know the answer to that. My family who built locomotives was still sending them across the empire at the end of the 19th century and indeed to America’s back door. One of our engines was sent to Cuba to work on the sugar plantations, and it was adjusted, so it ran not on coal, but on sugarcane. And my daughter went with her boyfriend a number of years ago to Cuba, and she actually saw our train. They were rather distinctive in design. When she went up, it was one of ours. Incredible.

“Minor correction,” no, youngin’, it’s a major correction. I said the word wrong. I pronounced it as though it was a British word, and she said it should be pronounced O-Berlin. Like “Oh! Calcutta!”

Jonathan, “Elon Musk is the today’s Henry Ford of antisemitism, although not in terms of generous wages.” Oh, I think that’s a point well made.

Q: David, “I presume that Ford did not hire Jews.”

A: No, he didn’t as far as I’m aware. Oh, thank you. Sorry.

Sue says, “Canadians appreciate your comments about Canadian practise when referring to England’s.” Well, it is because Canada, all the countries are by America, but Canada is so closely related and even more so in the period we’re talking about with Britain. And she goes on to say, “Canada is a multicultural country. There are no specific Canadian practises.”

David, that is a very good question. “Do we know why Ford was antisemitic?” No, I don’t. But maybe somebody does. I don’t know.

And Stan says, “Many Jews of my generation still do not buy Ford cars.” I was going to ask that Stan, actually. And it’s rather like British people after war refusing to buy anything that was made in Japan. “And Ford created the English version of the protocols of Zion,” says Stan. Absolutely right. Funnily enough, I that on my notes, and I just didn’t happen to say that, and I could have done, perhaps should have done. But when you talk, sometimes the flow goes and you’ve missed the opportunity.

“The Waste Makers” by Vance Packard, you know, I haven’t read anything by him for decades, “about consumerism applying obsolescence in the automobile industry says a lot about the rise in the American economy.” Vance Packard, I read, I can’t think in what context. I read him at university when I was doing a master’s in criminology. And he was a sociologist we had to read. I didn’t read him on the waste, I don’t think it was the waste, I don’t know what I read him on.

And Hannah says, “Jews didn’t buy Mercedes BMW, Miele or anything German at one time.” Same in Britain across wider than the American, wider than the Jewish community, Briton’s were like that.

Q: “Do you think America will survive its subcontracting of its manufacturing to the rest of the world?”

A: Well, that is, David, you’ve asked some difficult question. That is not just a difficult question, it’s a really good question. And there isn’t any easy answer to that. And America isn’t alone in that. Let me give you a British example. When I lived in the East of England, there was a very old factory that made working clothes, working men’s clothes. And it then developed into making more clothes because working men of the 19th century disappeared. He used to make smocks, the things that they wore. But then it turned into making men’s clothing in general, and it made them in this little town called Hather Hill on the Essex, Suffolk, Cambridge border. And they then, as things developed last few decades, they couldn’t afford to make them and sell them at a price that people would buy. So they upped their factory to Ireland and used their old factory in England simply as a warehouse from which to sell. But Ireland became too expensive, and they then shifted it to China using their warehouse in England as the base. And they had a member of the family, it was a family firm. They had a member of the family who used to spend three months at a time in China supervising the contracted-out work. Well, yes it works, but you mentioned China, and it sends other vibes to us. So David, I don’t know. I’m not an economist. I worry, I simply worry about how much influence China has across the world, not least in British universities, and I think in your universities as well, wherever you are listening from. China is spreading across Africa, but it’s also spreading across Europe in big ways. No, I’m not going to say anything. I had a thought come through. Sometimes you have to bite your tongue and not say things about, I had a thought about marriage, but I wasn’t going to use it.

Q: “Didn’t employers hire thugs to break up strikes by their workers?”

A: I guess you mean wider than America. Yeah, sometimes they did, that’s true. But the fact that five were actually killed, Ford workers were actually shot dead. In Britain, it tended to use police for this purpose, not thugs. Ford had both. It’s the fact that five died.

Louise, “That event during which workers at GM plant been protested by literally sitting down on the job led to the automaker recognising the UAW union. Chrysler followed soon after. Workers weren’t allowed bathroom breaks, and many soiled themselves while making parts.” Oh gosh. “Working 12 to 14 hour shifts, six days,” et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, the history of unionism across the Western world is a fascinating one. But I think we got an answer from Louise.

“In reply to one of the questions above, Ford did hire Jews and Jews, like my father, Sam Sweet, helped to organise the union, including at Flint in Britain, and the Overground Pass alluded to in today’s presentation that resulted in the deaths of striking workers, including a friend of my father’s.” Oh, crikey. Louise, that’s wonderful to have a piece of family history that enlightens us so. Thank you so much. That’s really great.

Michael, “Currently in America, the working classes moved decidedly to the right, the upper middle classes to the left.” Exactly the same phenomenon as in Britain. And the issue here is to do, and the issue here is to do with immigrants and immigration. And I suspect that underlies some of the American movement. It’s also to deal with populism, which our present government is an example, and of which Trump is the prime example of an attraction to populism. There are some dreadful figures being produced in America and Britain of how many young people would prefer dictatorship to democracy. Democracy is definitely under attack. The working classes moving to the right is extremely dangerous, in my view. It may not be in your view.

Q: “If increasing remuneration, other benefits keeps employees happy and stops and leaving, why is the government so reluctant to pay nurses and the medical profession more?” says David.

A: Because that money is public money and not out of the firm’s pocket. And they’re trying to keep public finances down, and so that’s why they don’t do it. But at the end of the day, it will have to. Well, if we’re talking about Britain, at the end of the day, the National Health Service has to be reformed, root and branch. Hannah says, this is a British argument about the NHS.

“They just pay exorbitant prices for agency nurses. Nothing makes sense and brings in immigrants to work cheaper than English people will or should work,” yeah, blah, blah. Yes, I mean, absolutely right. Our NHS is in severe trouble in Britain because no political party will admit that the structure of it no longer works. We need to copy something like the French system, which actually works. Ours does not work, and throwing money at it is not going to make it work. End of end of sermon, I’ll be quiet. Now I’m outside of my teacher role in the question, so you don’t have to agree at all.

Jack’s written, I want a war, just like the war that made my daddy rich. He sold bazookas.“ What a wonderful comment.

I think people are just saying Happy Christmas to me.

Ah, "Vance Packard wrote ‘The Hidden Persuaders’ about advertising.” Absolutely, that’s the book I had to read. I remember. Yes, gosh it’s… It’s over half a century ago I did it.

Ah, Sheila, “I’m not an expert in British railways, but I know the Great Western Railway was financed by Gladstone’s father with the mother that he was paid after the abolition, with the money that he was paid after the abolition of slavery when slave owners were paid compensation.” Yes, I don’t know about American money. I guess the answer is yes, there was American money, but I don’t know the answer to that specifically.

Oh, Paula I think has given us another answer. “Henry Ford was antisemitic because he bought Hitler’s concept of the master race and Charles Cochran’s rhetoric.” Well, no, he was antisemitic before because Hitler quotes him in Mein Kampf. So I think he was before. I don’t think that’s the answer. And, oh no, no.

People are saying thank, I’m ever so grateful to people who say they’ve enjoyed it because I’ve enjoyed it and I don’t want to do it if people are sitting there thinking, “My God, I hope this bore goes off.”

“William,” says, Louise, “for anyone interested, there’s an archive on labour history at Wayne State University. Some of my father documents, photographs, and newspapers that he edited are there as well.” Yes, and if any of you have important documents, please, please put them in an appropriate place where they can be used as resources.

One of you sent me a lovely personal thing about their, I think, father may have been grandfather, sorry, receiving citizenship here in Britain. But it was interestingly issued in 1911 in the name of the home secretary. The home secretary being none other than Winston Churchill. That is a really important document and should be lodged in, well, I would’ve said in London in the Jewish museum. But if you’ve got important papers, please leave them, please, please leave them to somewhere where they’re safe and are not going to be thrown out and destroyed.

Oh, well, that’s nice. Thank you very much those who’ve enjoyed it. I’ve got to the end of that, and I wish you all also a happy period over the next fortnight or so before we gather again on whatever decade it is. On the, it’ll be, be the 8th of January, I think, won’t it? Because the 1st of January, New Year’s Day. And we meet a week after, I think it’s the 8th of January. But lockdown will tell me and you what we’re doing and when we’re doing it. Thanks. Bye for now.