7/8: 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents by David Pietrusza (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 22 February 2024
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
https://www.amazon.com/1920-Year-Presidents-David-Pietrusza/dp/0786721022
The presidential election of 1920 was one of the most dramatic ever. For the only time in the nation's history, six once-and-future presidents hoped to end up in the White House: Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, and Theodore Roosevelt. It was an election that saw unprecedented levels of publicity -- the Republicans outspent the Democrats by 4 to 1 -- and it was the first to garner extensive newspaper and newsreel coverage. It was also the first election in which women could vote. Meanwhile, the 1920 census showed that America had become an urban nation -- automobiles, mass production, chain stores, and easy credit were transforming the economy and America was limbering up for the most spectacular decade of its history, the roaring '20s. Award-winning historian David Pietrusza's riveting new work presents a dazzling panorama of presidential personalities, ambitions, plots, and counterplots -- a picture of modern America at the crossroads.
1920 FDR
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Baster with David Petruia. His book is 1920 the year of the six presidents. |
| 0:10.0 | Teddy Roosevelt, Ujo Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert |
| 0:18.0 | Hoover are the six presidents. |
| 0:20.1 | One man who will not become a president, he is, however, a candidate again on the Socialist |
| 0:26.2 | Party ticket. |
| 0:27.9 | He is a state senator from Indiana. |
| 0:29.7 | His name is Eugene Debs. |
| 0:31.6 | He wins less than a million votes in the 1920 election. This is the year after |
| 0:37.4 | a strikes across the country frightening the nation, frightening both parties. |
| 0:44.4 | It becomes a quest to destroy the radicals associated with the Bolsheviks of Russia. |
| 0:51.7 | America's reading the headlines from Europe that is Europe that is |
| 0:55.5 | torn apart in Bolshevik revolution or a socialist revolution or communist |
| 1:00.2 | revolution. Germany is torn apart and creates the conditions that we know will be the tragedies of |
| 1:06.2 | the 1930s. |
| 1:08.3 | Where is Eugene Debbs running for President David? |
| 1:12.0 | He's in the pen. He's in Atlanta Penitentiary and the reason is because |
| 1:18.8 | he had spoken out against the war. The mob of the Socialist Party during World War I was anti-war. |
| 1:27.0 | He had spoken out against the draft and I think they got him on the Sedition Act, |
| 1:32.0 | prosecuted him. |
| 1:35.1 | Wilson was, as I said earlier, |
| 1:38.2 | not used to brooking opposition. |
| 1:41.0 | And he was determined that as long as he was president |
... |
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