Playlist: Rebecca McInroy's Portfolio
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Imagining A Safety Net
From Rebecca McInroy | Part of the American Compassion series | 58:00
In this first episode of American Compassion, we explore what life was like in America without a safety net. Join executive producer Rebecca McInroy, historian H.W. Brands, historian, and journalist Marvin Olasky, and farmer, journalist, and agricultural writer Tom Philpott as we begin the story of the American Safety Net.
- Playing
- Imagining A Safety Net
- From
- Rebecca McInroy
In 1929, the booming prosperity of the flapper era vanished in the wake of a catastrophic stock market crash. Banks failed, and millions of people lost their life’s savings. Poverty rates soared, and a ten-year depression crippled towns across the globe, setting the stage for the second world war.
But what if poverty wasn’t just a result of sudden economic upheaval? Before the Great Depression, many Americans, including children, labored under grueling conditions for 12-15 hours a day. Work came with risks—threatening workers’ safety, and even their lives. At a time when debt could lead to a prison sentence, most people had little choice but to work to survive.
What if the tale of poverty devouring Americans’ wealth overnight is a myth—or only half the story? In the first episode of the American Compassion podcast, we uncover the lives of the many Americans who never lived in avant-garde mansions or purchased opulent yachts. Most Americans didn’t lose the American dream in the Depression era, since it had always failed to catch them when they fell deeper into poverty.
Our story begins with Erine Gray’s inspiration to rebuild the American Safety Net. We’ll start in the early 2000s, before turning back the clock to the early 20th-century to explore how profound changes in technology, communication, farming, and industrialization reshaped the ways that people thought about wealth, poverty, and how to catch Americans in freefall.
Brief Backstory
Americans born in the 1840s and 1850s would experience rapid changes in the course of their lives. During their lifetime, kerosene lamps replaced candles; and electric light bulbs replaced kerosene. Steam-powered locomotives, electric trolleys, and gasoline-powered automobiles replaced horsepower. And the Wright Brothers were hard at work on a flying machine.
By 1900 cities became lit up with bright lights, films, and radio. Even time itself was changing. Americans were disengaging from seasonal work rhythms, exchanging nature’s cycles for factory schedules. As the Industrial Revolution grew, the telephone and telegraph revolutionized communication, and high-speed transit revolutionized Americans’ sense of geography. Both required a reevaluation of time in order to synchronize an increasingly connected world of industrial trade and transportation. In 1865, the US train system had 75 different time zones; by 1918, the government reduced American mainland time zones to four.
All along, the rich were getting a lot richer. John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust dominated the world's petroleum markets and soon controlled more than 90 percent of the nation's refinery capacity. And Andrew Carnegie’s steel mills earned him millions.
But desperation belied the affluence of the Gilded Age. While Rockefeller and Carnegie’s fortunes grew, a new definition of poverty was emerging. Workers were tied to their labor, including children as young as 8 years old. For some of the 15 million people who immigrated to America between 1910-1915, coming to the United States meant being able to determine their own destiny. Yet for others, like many who were born in America, it meant being shackled to life-threatening labor.
Join executive producer Rebecca McInroy, historian H.W. Brands, historian, and journalist Marvin Olasky, and farmer, journalist, and agricultural writer Tom Philpott as we begin the story of the American Safety Net.
Resources
T. R.: The Last Romantic by H.W. Brands
Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H.W. Brands
Perilous Bounty: The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It by Tom Philpott
The Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky
The Global Transformation of Time: 1870–1950 by Vanessa Ogle
The Woman Behind The New Deal
From Rebecca McInroy | Part of the American Compassion series | 57:00
In the second episode of American Compassion, we turn to the story of how the core elements of our safety net began to come together in the lives and minds of Theodore Roosevelt and - especially - in the transformational and criminally-overlooked work of Frances Perkins.
- Playing
- The Woman Behind The New Deal
- From
- Rebecca McInroy
With historian H.W. Brands, author Kirstin Downey, and Erine Gray as our guides - and with Archival Audio of Frances Perkins herself - we go back to the fateful day in March 1911 when thirty-one-year-old Frances Perkins happened to witness the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Just as Erine Gray’s conversion experience in Manhattan on September 11, 2001, inspired him to focus on public policy, Frances Perkins’s experience on that day inspired her to work toward prototypical safety net elements like workplace safety codes and fire regulations.
From there, considering the complex context of life in America in the early 20th Century, we follow Frances Perkins’ life and work all the way through her transformational success in building compassionate structures into the American system. To name a few things for which we have Frances Perkins to thank, consider Social Security, unemployment insurance, the 40-hour workweek, the minimum wage, overtime pay, Federal Housing assistance which helps people buy houses with low down payments, the National Labor Relations Act which gave workers the right to organize, oh and also public works projects like the Lincoln Tunnel, the highway through the Florida Keys, and the Blue Ridge Parkway.
FDR and The New Deal
From Rebecca McInroy | Part of the American Compassion series | 59:00
The third episode of American Compassion dives into the story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, exploring who he was and focusing on how FDR, born to wealth and privilege, arrived at the empathetic outlook that guided and in many ways defined his presidency.
- Playing
- FDR and The New Deal
- From
- Rebecca McInroy
The third episode of American Compassion dives into the story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, exploring who he was and focusing on how FDR, born to wealth and privilege, arrived at the empathetic outlook that guided and in many ways defined his presidency.
We investigate how small events allowed FDR to avoid dictatorship at a time when dictatorship was seen as a viable, even desirable response to the economic crises. And we tell the story of how by chance, by character, and by will, FDR and his administration, in their response to The Great Depression, also saved Democracy itself. Through the incredible story of FDR’s first 100 days in office, we show how the ideas of the New Deal and how the ideals of a collective social democracy were laced throughout all the New Deal programs, creating a new vision of America and its compassionate structures.
To tell these stories, we are joined by: Erine Gray, CEO of Findhelp.org; Jonathan Alter, author of, "The Defining Moment FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope;" historian and biographer H.W. Brands, author of "American Colossus: the triumph of capitalism;" scholar Dana Cloud, author of "Reality Bites: Rhetoric and the Circulation of Truth Claims in U.S. Political Culture ;" and historical geographer and author Gray Brechin, founder project scholar of The Living New Deal at UC Berkeley.
Compromise and Concessions
From Rebecca McInroy | Part of the American Compassion series | 58:38
Explore the complicated and rich history behind the compromises made in order to get the New Deal through, and what lasting consequences they have had on the American people.
- Playing
- Compromise and Concessions
- From
- Rebecca McInroy
Compromise is at the heart of almost every aspect of life. From what our family wants for dinner, to what subjects are taught in our schools, to what is included in, and left out of, congressional legislation. Yet, sometimes it seems like a “winner takes all” mentality is taking over. Many social media feeds, television shows, and podcasts glorify the winners and prompt accomplishment over compromise, and overwhelmingly our legislative process reflects this as well. In this atmosphere, it’s hard to make progress toward a more comprehensive and effective safety net.
So far in our series on the American Safety Net, we’ve examined wealth and poverty at the turn of the last century. We talked about what it meant to be poor without a safety net, and where those in need found housing, food, work, and a sense of safety and well-being. We talked about the role of government, philanthropy, and charity and we met Frances Perkins, and Franklin Roosevelt, two people who were integral in the shaping of the first American safety net--The New Deal.
In our final episode of season 1, we explore what compromises were made in order to get the New Deal through. We talk about how a grand vision for universal healthcare was scrapped, how cradle-to-grave social security was whittled down, and how bending on certain elements of the safety net created generational loss that is felt to this day.
Yet, we also discuss how monumental the New Deal was to America. It stabilized an American economic system that was in freefall during the Great Depression; it put people back to work; it instilled faith in the American government, and it restored hope in a people who had been crushed by poor working conditions, poverty, starvation, and insecurity. And still, Frances Perkins glumly appraised the accomplishments as but a few, “practical, flat-footed first steps.”
Join hosts Rebecca McInroy and Michael Zapruder and guests, Erine Gray, H.W. Brands, Robin D.G. Kelley, Tom Philpott, Mike Konzcle, Willow Lung-Amam, Marshall Auerbach, Penny Coleman, and David Kennedy, as we explore this complicated and rich history and what it can teach us today.