WEBVTT 00:00:04.737 --> 00:00:06.306 (off screen voice) I am the Edison Phonograph. 00:00:06.306 --> 00:00:09.303 (newscaster) the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor by air. 00:00:09.303 --> 00:00:10.977 [crowd chanting in German] 00:00:10.977 --> 00:00:14.116 (President Kennedy) Ask not what your country can do for you... 00:00:14.116 --> 00:00:15.715 (newscaster) President Kennedy has been shot. 00:00:15.715 --> 00:00:17.655 (Neil Armstrong) One small step for man... 00:00:17.655 --> 00:00:22.625 (Martin Luther King Jr.) These truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. 00:00:22.625 --> 00:00:25.523 [cheering] 00:00:25.523 --> 00:00:29.329 (off screen voice) Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! 00:00:43.495 --> 00:00:51.543 [drumming] 00:00:51.543 --> 00:00:55.647 (off screen voice) Left, left. Left, right, left. 00:01:00.954 --> 00:01:07.529 [band music] NOTE Paragraph 00:01:07.529 --> 00:01:10.346 (narrator) The transforming events of the 20th century touched 00:01:10.346 --> 00:01:13.599 every city and small town in America. 00:01:22.260 --> 00:01:23.084 Annual celebrations, 00:01:23.084 --> 00:01:26.215 which children thrill to but can never fully understand, 00:01:26.215 --> 00:01:30.310 mark for another generation the historical reminders. 00:01:31.370 --> 00:01:33.393 How the town survived the depression. 00:01:36.746 --> 00:01:38.855 How older people who walk among us unnoticed every 00:01:38.855 --> 00:01:41.877 day saved democracy in the world. 00:01:41.877 --> 00:02:00.028 [soft music] 00:02:00.028 --> 00:02:02.353 In every town there are buildings which stand like 00:02:02.353 --> 00:02:05.144 silent witnesses to the enormous changes over 00:02:05.144 --> 00:02:06.781 these hundred years. 00:02:11.364 --> 00:02:14.450 A garage, which started the century as a stable. 00:02:16.137 --> 00:02:19.222 (William Goehner) When the Model Ts became available, 00:02:19.222 --> 00:02:22.509 we could scratch together a hundred bucks and 00:02:22.509 --> 00:02:25.379 get a second-hand Model T. 00:02:26.179 --> 00:02:27.180 (narrator) Schools, 00:02:27.180 --> 00:02:29.983 which today teach computer skills to every student, 00:02:29.983 --> 00:02:34.380 used to teach shop to the boys and typing to the girls. 00:02:36.164 --> 00:02:38.625 (Lillian Hall) Your schoolteacher said just learn all you can 00:02:38.625 --> 00:02:40.531 about secretarial work. 00:02:40.531 --> 00:02:43.796 We can't expect women to get ahead in business. 00:02:45.932 --> 00:02:49.569 (narrator) In some places, hometown coffee shops for more than half 00:02:49.569 --> 00:02:52.605 the century served whites only. 00:02:52.605 --> 00:02:56.303 (Don Newcombe) People's attitudes had to be changed. 00:02:56.303 --> 00:02:58.167 All it was was the color of your skin, 00:02:58.167 --> 00:02:58.683 for Christ's sakes. 00:02:58.683 --> 00:03:02.781 It was the color of your skin that made the difference. 00:03:05.888 --> 00:03:09.155 (narrator) Memorials along American main streets commemorate 00:03:09.155 --> 00:03:13.206 those who died on the European battlefields of World War I. 00:03:16.205 --> 00:03:19.361 (Henry Villard) Such terrible scenes. 00:03:19.361 --> 00:03:26.490 You grew up very quickly in surroundings like that. 00:03:26.490 --> 00:03:30.577 It is no longer freshman studies. 00:03:30.577 --> 00:03:33.415 It was the real world. 00:03:35.615 --> 00:03:38.117 (narrator) From almost every hometown train station, 00:03:38.117 --> 00:03:41.220 men left for World War II. 00:03:42.004 --> 00:03:44.490 (Julia Glut) When your husband becomes an officer, 00:03:44.490 --> 00:03:46.326 you're an officer's wife. 00:03:46.326 --> 00:03:49.495 You do not show any emotions when they go overseas. 00:03:49.495 --> 00:03:51.631 You hold it back, no matter what. 00:03:51.631 --> 00:03:53.566 No crying. 00:03:53.566 --> 00:03:55.203 And we did that. 00:03:56.235 --> 00:03:58.446 It was tough, but we did it. 00:03:59.939 --> 00:04:03.076 (narrator) Korea and Vietnam veterans returned to towns 00:04:03.076 --> 00:04:04.644 which looked the same, 00:04:04.644 --> 00:04:07.947 but they came back to a country which had changed. 00:04:07.947 --> 00:04:08.763 (Bob Jones) When I left, 00:04:08.763 --> 00:04:11.517 the only people that had long hair lived in San Francisco, 00:04:11.517 --> 00:04:13.553 you know, and when I came home, 00:04:13.553 --> 00:04:14.754 my banker had long hair. 00:04:18.788 --> 00:04:23.367 (narrator) When one New Jersey town held an old class reunion in 1997, 00:04:23.367 --> 00:04:26.933 you could see in the attendees the sweep of the entire century. 00:04:30.562 --> 00:04:32.585 There were those who remember when the electric light 00:04:32.585 --> 00:04:37.863 was new and those who were born after man walked on the moon. 00:04:48.876 --> 00:04:51.827 Old and young, they had been together on a journey through 00:04:51.827 --> 00:04:55.161 the most common and yet mysterious of passageways 00:04:58.053 --> 00:04:58.737 - time. 00:05:34.518 --> 00:05:36.969 Unlike previous centuries where leadership was defined 00:05:36.969 --> 00:05:39.372 by royalty and other rulers, 00:05:39.372 --> 00:05:41.050 the 20th century, more than any other, 00:05:41.050 --> 00:05:44.444 was shaped by the will and the actions of the common man. 00:05:44.444 --> 00:05:45.912 In the episodes of this series, 00:05:45.912 --> 00:05:49.182 we'll examine some of the defining events in 00:05:49.182 --> 00:05:51.951 each of 15 different periods. 00:05:51.951 --> 00:05:54.654 Our aim is to experience what it was like for the 00:05:54.654 --> 00:05:57.390 common man to be alive then. 00:05:57.390 --> 00:06:00.827 Politics and technology made this the killing century, 00:06:00.827 --> 00:06:04.630 but they also provided extended life and hope. 00:06:04.630 --> 00:06:07.867 In this first episode we'll see that as the century began, 00:06:07.867 --> 00:06:11.637 there was no place on earth where hope flourished more 00:06:11.637 --> 00:06:14.373 than in the United States of America. 00:06:22.315 --> 00:06:25.818 (narrator) In 1900 in the countries of central and southern Europe, 00:06:25.818 --> 00:06:30.351 tens of millions of people were trapped in miserable lives. 00:06:31.290 --> 00:06:34.845 (Andrew Jakomas) They were starving, and things were real tough, 00:06:34.845 --> 00:06:40.666 because when my father was a young boy of 12 or 13 years old, 00:06:42.486 --> 00:06:48.130 he was sent to a family in Cairo, Egypt 00:06:48.130 --> 00:06:49.500 to become a vassel. 00:06:49.500 --> 00:06:50.780 That's what they did with their sons. 00:06:54.228 --> 00:06:55.214 (Mary Gale) Peasants. 00:06:55.214 --> 00:06:57.283 They never got paid. 00:06:57.283 --> 00:06:58.684 They never made a living. 00:06:58.684 --> 00:07:00.846 They lived in huts. 00:07:02.355 --> 00:07:05.391 The Jewish people certainly were poverty stricken. 00:07:05.391 --> 00:07:06.908 They didn't have a job. 00:07:10.877 --> 00:07:13.677 (Martin Scorsese) My people came from peasants. 00:07:13.677 --> 00:07:17.119 My grandparents on both sides of the family came from Sicily. 00:07:17.804 --> 00:07:19.333 My mother's side of the family came from 00:07:19.333 --> 00:07:20.958 a town called Chianina. 00:07:24.296 --> 00:07:26.258 In the small villages, what was there? 00:07:27.858 --> 00:07:30.240 Oppression and no food. 00:07:31.117 --> 00:07:34.053 (narrator) One place held the promise of a better future. 00:07:36.452 --> 00:07:40.326 (Clara Hancox) My mother and father - they heard about America from others, 00:07:40.326 --> 00:07:43.652 and they knew that America was heaven. 00:07:44.730 --> 00:07:46.065 It was... 00:07:46.065 --> 00:07:48.968 Once in America, all problems would be solved. 00:07:50.059 --> 00:07:51.273 There would be food. 00:07:51.858 --> 00:07:53.506 There would be freedom. 00:07:53.506 --> 00:07:55.372 There would be no persecution. 00:07:55.741 --> 00:07:56.466 Freedom! 00:07:56.803 --> 00:07:57.682 Freedom! 00:07:58.067 --> 00:08:00.546 An incredible word for those people. 00:08:05.790 --> 00:08:09.761 (Pres. William McKinley) This country is in a state of unexampled prosperity. 00:08:10.961 --> 00:08:13.620 We are furnishing profitable employment 00:08:13.620 --> 00:08:18.038 to the millions of working men throughout the United States. 00:08:18.713 --> 00:08:23.369 (John Milton Cooper) By 1900, the United States leads in every 00:08:23.369 --> 00:08:25.371 major industrial product. 00:08:25.371 --> 00:08:27.373 I mean we're producing more steel. 00:08:27.373 --> 00:08:30.826 We're producing more machined goods, textiles. 00:08:30.826 --> 00:08:34.233 The United States has one third of all the 00:08:34.233 --> 00:08:36.215 railroad trackage in the world. 00:08:36.215 --> 00:08:38.131 For the first time in human history, 00:08:38.131 --> 00:08:41.836 people can move over land swiftly, easily, reliably. 00:08:43.481 --> 00:08:45.825 (narrator) The average American lived longer, 00:08:45.825 --> 00:08:49.128 was better fed and better paid and had greater access to 00:08:49.128 --> 00:08:52.865 education than the average citizen anywhere else on earth. 00:08:54.172 --> 00:08:56.335 (John Milton Cooper) This is the great land of opportunity. 00:08:57.842 --> 00:09:00.273 No matter how low you may be born, 00:09:00.273 --> 00:09:05.188 no matter how humble you may be, you can rise to the top. 00:09:05.188 --> 00:09:06.827 The sky is the limit. 00:09:10.811 --> 00:09:12.451 (narrator) On the eve of the new century, 00:09:12.451 --> 00:09:15.354 the sense of boundless possibilities also ignited 00:09:15.354 --> 00:09:18.691 an explosion of technological innovations that would 00:09:18.691 --> 00:09:21.360 have profound impact on 20th century life. 00:09:21.360 --> 00:09:25.151 Thomas Edison's electric light bulb and phonograph, 00:09:25.151 --> 00:09:27.839 Alexander Graham Bell's telephone. 00:09:28.915 --> 00:09:32.071 Tens of thousands of tinkerers across America were trying 00:09:32.071 --> 00:09:33.906 to invent the future. 00:09:33.906 --> 00:09:38.044 Among them were two bicycle mechanics in Dayton, Ohio. 00:09:38.044 --> 00:09:39.445 (Mabel Griep) Orville and Wilbur, 00:09:39.445 --> 00:09:43.249 they as young boys were interested in flying. 00:09:43.249 --> 00:09:45.584 They would sit on a porch and watch the birds. 00:09:46.491 --> 00:09:49.608 And the neighbors all around us say, 00:09:49.608 --> 00:09:51.764 "Well, I don't know they think they're going to do. 00:09:51.764 --> 00:09:54.863 "Why they will never make an airplane." 00:09:55.939 --> 00:09:58.602 Mabel Griep and her sister Lorene lived next door 00:09:58.602 --> 00:10:00.833 to the Wright brothers. 00:10:00.833 --> 00:10:03.869 (Lorine Hyer) Well, my father found out some way that they were 00:10:03.869 --> 00:10:07.440 going to try to have a trial flight. 00:10:07.440 --> 00:10:09.342 So we got in the surrey, 00:10:09.342 --> 00:10:12.111 and we drove out to Huffman Prairie. 00:10:13.587 --> 00:10:16.743 (Mabel Griep) I can hear dad turn more than once and say, 00:10:16.743 --> 00:10:19.385 "Look, are you all paying attention to this? 00:10:19.385 --> 00:10:20.455 "Now listen to me. 00:10:20.455 --> 00:10:24.056 "You're going to remember this 'til your last day." 00:10:29.208 --> 00:10:31.901 When that plane took off the ground, 00:10:33.377 --> 00:10:35.304 people were speechless. 00:10:40.026 --> 00:10:42.165 It was spectacular. 00:10:42.165 --> 00:10:43.589 It was unbelievable. 00:10:45.281 --> 00:10:49.248 (narrator) One of the oldest dreams in human imagination had come true. 00:10:49.248 --> 00:10:52.518 Sustained flight in a powered airplane. 00:10:53.964 --> 00:10:57.356 (Thomas P. Hughes) The United States was without any question the most 00:10:57.356 --> 00:11:01.365 inventive nation in the world in that period. 00:11:02.857 --> 00:11:05.777 It is comparable in its creativity to the 00:11:05.777 --> 00:11:08.801 Renaissance in Italy, for example, 00:11:08.801 --> 00:11:11.504 to the period of Elizabeth in English history, 00:11:11.504 --> 00:11:13.439 the Shakespearian period. 00:11:14.377 --> 00:11:17.436 Americans appreciated the new. 00:11:17.436 --> 00:11:23.529 They assumed that change was the natural course of history. 00:11:26.359 --> 00:11:29.368 (narrator) And on America's roads the European novelty was 00:11:29.368 --> 00:11:31.218 about to be reinvented. 00:11:34.248 --> 00:11:37.955 (Eileen Burns) The first time we saw a car when I was a kid - 00:11:38.164 --> 00:11:41.979 well, they have this for people out of this world. 00:11:46.087 --> 00:11:49.782 (narrator) In 1900 there was only 8,000 cars and less than ten miles 00:11:49.782 --> 00:11:52.063 of concrete road in the entire country. 00:11:54.339 --> 00:11:57.139 The car was fast seducing Americans. 00:11:59.892 --> 00:12:03.774 (Thomas P. Hughes) The automobile gave people a sense of 00:12:03.774 --> 00:12:06.738 the control of their own destiny. 00:12:07.568 --> 00:12:09.337 That is, the behind the wheel, 00:12:09.337 --> 00:12:10.634 out on the road, 00:12:10.634 --> 00:12:12.106 you decided where you were going, 00:12:12.106 --> 00:12:13.668 what you were doing. 00:12:13.668 --> 00:12:15.865 You had a machine at your control. 00:12:17.687 --> 00:12:20.506 But early cars were fantastically expensive. 00:12:22.213 --> 00:12:23.285 The Artzberger, 00:12:23.285 --> 00:12:26.115 made in Pittsburgh and the Pierce-Arrow were really toys 00:12:26.115 --> 00:12:30.561 for the rich people until one manufacturer 00:12:30.561 --> 00:12:32.986 in Detroit saw it differently - 00:12:34.386 --> 00:12:35.521 Henry Ford. 00:12:35.521 --> 00:12:42.328 He saw the automobile as a way to alieve one of the burden 00:12:42.328 --> 00:12:46.031 of working in nature at the sweat of one's brow. 00:12:46.031 --> 00:12:51.804 He was motivated by the desire to put the automobile into the hands, 00:12:51.804 --> 00:12:53.128 first farmers, 00:12:54.451 --> 00:12:56.342 and then generally into the hands of 00:12:56.342 --> 00:12:59.452 the ordinary people in the population. 00:12:59.452 --> 00:13:05.519 He wanted to produce many, many, many automobiles in a short, short time. 00:13:07.691 --> 00:13:13.592 Ford has this vision of smooth flow using an assembly line. 00:13:13.592 --> 00:13:16.081 These components were coming from up here. 00:13:16.774 --> 00:13:19.665 These components were on an endless lift. 00:13:19.665 --> 00:13:22.501 These components were coming on a belt, 00:13:22.501 --> 00:13:27.973 and everything is in motion, and I think the image of 00:13:27.973 --> 00:13:31.885 a number of streams flowing into a river captures 00:13:31.885 --> 00:13:34.313 the assembly line concept. 00:13:34.313 --> 00:13:37.850 (narrator) Henry Ford's model T was introduced in 1908 00:13:37.850 --> 00:13:41.137 at the price of $825. 00:13:41.921 --> 00:13:44.456 (Thomas P. Hughes) I think it would have been considered un-American in 00:13:44.456 --> 00:13:48.104 his eyes to produce an automobile for rich people. 00:13:48.104 --> 00:13:49.757 That's what foreigners do. 00:13:49.757 --> 00:13:52.088 Americans generally were committed to the 00:13:52.088 --> 00:13:56.017 proposition that every man and every woman should 00:13:56.017 --> 00:13:58.467 enjoy material abundance. 00:13:59.528 --> 00:14:00.940 That was the American spirit. 00:14:00.940 --> 00:14:02.222 That's America. 00:14:10.127 --> 00:14:12.585 (narrator) It was the promise of material abundance and 00:14:12.585 --> 00:14:14.887 freedom which drew more than 13 million 00:14:14.887 --> 00:14:20.013 impoverished Europeans to America between 1900 and 1914. 00:14:21.060 --> 00:14:23.162 They came from the Austro-Hungarian empire, 00:14:23.162 --> 00:14:25.397 from Russia, and from Italy. 00:14:25.397 --> 00:14:30.369 It was the greatest free migration in all of human history. 00:14:32.260 --> 00:14:33.880 My mother's mother Dominica, 00:14:33.880 --> 00:14:35.511 who's afraid to travel on boat, 00:14:35.511 --> 00:14:39.011 and the only way they got her on a boat was her brother tricked her. 00:14:39.011 --> 00:14:41.013 He went on the boat with her and said he was going with her, 00:14:41.013 --> 00:14:42.830 and at the last minute she turned away, 00:14:42.830 --> 00:14:44.165 and he left. 00:14:45.150 --> 00:14:47.820 (Clara Hancox) My mother came by herself through Siberia. 00:14:48.973 --> 00:14:51.968 She got to the coast and got on a boat. 00:14:59.011 --> 00:15:01.781 They were just sitting on the deck. 00:15:01.781 --> 00:15:05.366 Hoards of people huddled over their possessions, 00:15:05.366 --> 00:15:09.808 which consisted of old pillows with feathers and 00:15:09.808 --> 00:15:13.078 a few pieces of silverware tucked in there and stuff like that, 00:15:13.078 --> 00:15:14.280 like candlesticks, 00:15:14.280 --> 00:15:18.341 and sleeping on the deck with one another, 00:15:18.341 --> 00:15:20.930 next to one another to keep oneself warm. 00:15:20.930 --> 00:15:22.724 It took weeks and weeks and weeks. 00:15:22.724 --> 00:15:24.150 It took ages. 00:15:26.673 --> 00:15:28.967 (Alfred Levitt) When I crossed the ocean, 00:15:28.967 --> 00:15:31.666 I never saw such waves in my life. 00:15:31.666 --> 00:15:34.428 I never knew an ocean existed. 00:15:41.257 --> 00:15:44.513 Approaching the New York harbor, 00:15:44.513 --> 00:15:49.100 the Statue of Liberty was there, and it gave me a free feeling, 00:15:51.861 --> 00:15:55.243 a feeling of liberty, a feeling of a new nation, 00:15:55.243 --> 00:15:59.427 a feeling of a new hope for a beautiful life. 00:16:17.656 --> 00:16:19.827 (Clara Hancox) There's something wonderful about being an immigrant. 00:16:19.827 --> 00:16:24.778 There's something so deliciously naïve and happy about 00:16:24.778 --> 00:16:27.631 being an immigrant who has escaped from something. 00:16:29.214 --> 00:16:30.927 My father would say from time to time, 00:16:30.927 --> 00:16:34.519 no matter how bad things were, at least we're free. 00:16:51.502 --> 00:16:53.746 (narrator) In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania it was said 00:16:53.746 --> 00:16:56.215 prosperity was measured by the thickness of 00:16:56.215 --> 00:16:58.174 the soot in the air. 00:17:03.095 --> 00:17:04.048 (Stanley Brozek) Oh, man. 00:17:04.048 --> 00:17:05.515 One of them furnaces let loose, 00:17:05.515 --> 00:17:09.882 the whole sky was full of red dust. 00:17:09.882 --> 00:17:11.183 Full of red dust. 00:17:11.183 --> 00:17:14.199 If you had your wash out, you had your laundry out, 00:17:14.199 --> 00:17:15.200 it was too bad. 00:17:15.200 --> 00:17:17.638 You had to run outside and pull that laundry in. 00:17:17.638 --> 00:17:20.010 It would be covered in red dust. 00:17:20.855 --> 00:17:23.075 You would see them coal mines lit up from Greensburg 00:17:23.075 --> 00:17:24.242 all the way to Uniontown. 00:17:24.242 --> 00:17:26.811 It was wonderful to see it. 00:17:27.595 --> 00:17:30.134 (narrator) Relentless production in Pittsburgh steel mills, 00:17:30.134 --> 00:17:33.474 foundries, and coal mines attracted an enormous 00:17:33.489 --> 00:17:36.988 number of immigrants and poor whites and blacks 00:17:36.988 --> 00:17:38.397 from the rural south. 00:17:38.397 --> 00:17:42.961 It was their labor which fed the furnace of industrial America. 00:17:42.961 --> 00:17:44.530 (Andy Jakomas) You had to pick everything up. 00:17:44.530 --> 00:17:46.698 You had to move everything by hand. 00:17:46.698 --> 00:17:48.901 No lunch breaks of any kind. 00:17:48.901 --> 00:17:50.903 You worked, and you had a sandwich in your hand. 00:17:50.903 --> 00:17:52.428 If you had to go to the restroom, 00:17:52.428 --> 00:17:53.906 boom, back right away. 00:17:53.906 --> 00:17:54.959 The timed you. 00:17:56.175 --> 00:17:58.243 When you get home at night, you couldn't lift your arms up. 00:17:58.243 --> 00:17:59.344 I remember this. 00:17:59.344 --> 00:18:00.512 Oh, I remember this distinctly. 00:18:00.512 --> 00:18:04.082 My father would come home, and he's say to my mother, 00:18:04.082 --> 00:18:07.953 "Rub my arms a little bit" because they were picking up... 00:18:07.953 --> 00:18:09.092 There was no... 00:18:09.675 --> 00:18:12.491 Huh, it was all mule work. 00:18:16.798 --> 00:18:18.998 (Frank Bolden) I had two uncles that worked in the mill. 00:18:20.332 --> 00:18:21.333 It was dangerous. 00:18:21.333 --> 00:18:23.642 No safety precautions were in the mills. 00:18:25.349 --> 00:18:28.210 You could walk in the mill and see people with one arm, 00:18:28.210 --> 00:18:30.008 one leg. 00:18:30.008 --> 00:18:33.645 You had an accident in the mills almost every two days, 00:18:33.645 --> 00:18:35.614 but nobody did anything about it. 00:18:37.398 --> 00:18:38.740 (narrator) There was no compensation 00:18:38.740 --> 00:18:40.554 for the injuries and death on the job, 00:18:40.554 --> 00:18:43.689 and it was almost impossible for workers in the early 00:18:43.689 --> 00:18:45.691 part of the century to organize. 00:18:46.798 --> 00:18:48.760 They'd try to start a union, and, of course, 00:18:48.760 --> 00:18:50.762 they had the coal and iron police they 00:18:50.762 --> 00:18:52.331 were called in those days. 00:18:52.331 --> 00:18:55.234 And they would bust a lot of heads and a lot of murders 00:18:55.234 --> 00:18:57.236 were committed, and a lot of, oh, 00:18:57.236 --> 00:19:00.706 a lot of things that you dare didn't say too much. 00:19:00.706 --> 00:19:02.107 If you worked in a mill, 00:19:02.107 --> 00:19:04.309 if your boss said something to you, 00:19:04.309 --> 00:19:05.862 that was it. That was the law. 00:19:07.647 --> 00:19:09.962 (narrator) Industrial work involves six days a week, 00:19:09.962 --> 00:19:12.150 12-16 hours a day. 00:19:12.150 --> 00:19:14.987 The daily wage - barely two dollars. 00:19:14.987 --> 00:19:17.422 Children, too, were made to work, 00:19:17.422 --> 00:19:19.858 two million of them across America, 00:19:19.858 --> 00:19:21.894 some as young as four. 00:19:22.801 --> 00:19:25.531 (E.L. Doctorow) "They did not complain as adults tended to do. 00:19:25.531 --> 00:19:29.201 "Employers liked to think of them as happy ills." 00:19:29.771 --> 00:19:33.605 (narrator) E. L. Doctorow wrote about child labor in his novel of life 00:19:33.605 --> 00:19:35.374 in the early century, Ragtime. 00:19:36.266 --> 00:19:37.776 "There were more agile than adults, 00:19:37.776 --> 00:19:40.232 "but they tended in the latter hours of the day 00:19:40.232 --> 00:19:42.160 "to lose a degree of efficiency. 00:19:42.160 --> 00:19:44.878 "In the canneries and the mills - these were the hours they 00:19:44.878 --> 00:19:48.713 "were most likely to lose their fingers or have their 00:19:48.713 --> 00:19:51.119 "hands mangled or their legs crushed. 00:19:53.659 --> 00:19:56.061 "In the mines, they worked as sorters of coal and 00:19:56.061 --> 00:19:58.740 sometimes were smothered in the coal chutes." 00:20:01.233 --> 00:20:04.069 (narrator) As a child in the early part of the century, 00:20:04.069 --> 00:20:08.006 Polly Newman worked 13-hour days in a New York garment sweatshop, 00:20:08.006 --> 00:20:11.240 the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. 00:20:11.810 --> 00:20:15.113 (off screen voice) We had a corner on the floor that resembled a kindergarten. 00:20:15.113 --> 00:20:16.882 You were not allowed to sing. 00:20:16.882 --> 00:20:19.618 We weren't allowed to talk to each other. 00:20:19.618 --> 00:20:21.929 The door was locked to keep us in. 00:20:23.422 --> 00:20:26.458 (narrator) The locked doors would prove to be fatal. 00:20:26.458 --> 00:20:29.728 On March 25, 1911, fire broke out in the factory. 00:20:29.728 --> 00:20:33.031 With an exit door locked on the ninth floor, 00:20:33.031 --> 00:20:35.033 many workers jumped to their death. 00:20:40.062 --> 00:20:40.944 (Mary Gale) I was 11, 00:20:42.143 --> 00:20:46.108 and I remember all of a sudden all of this New York 00:20:46.108 --> 00:20:49.481 went crazy because the kids were running around with 00:20:49.481 --> 00:20:52.551 the newspapers, hollering extra, 00:20:52.551 --> 00:20:55.253 that all these people had died in that fire. 00:21:00.681 --> 00:21:02.224 (narrator) 146 workers died. 00:21:06.131 --> 00:21:08.143 There were no sprinklers inside the factory then. 00:21:08.143 --> 00:21:11.269 There had never been a fire drill. 00:21:11.269 --> 00:21:14.873 The tragedy outraged a public that had become 00:21:14.873 --> 00:21:18.176 increasingly aware of both the underside of a 00:21:18.176 --> 00:21:21.613 prosperous nation and the need for reform. 00:21:22.643 --> 00:21:25.751 (John Milton Cooper) The great reform movement of this period was 00:21:25.751 --> 00:21:27.954 called progressivism. 00:21:28.584 --> 00:21:30.181 It's a belief in progress. 00:21:30.181 --> 00:21:34.868 It's a belief that we can make things better, 00:21:34.868 --> 00:21:39.131 that you can have a more just, more democratic society. 00:21:40.961 --> 00:21:43.769 (narrator) At the vanguard of social reform in this particular 00:21:43.769 --> 00:21:46.514 period were progressive women concerned about 00:21:46.514 --> 00:21:48.907 their own inferior status. 00:21:50.183 --> 00:21:51.810 (Lucy Haessler) When I was a girl, 00:21:51.810 --> 00:21:55.447 a woman didn't have rights to custody of their children. 00:21:55.447 --> 00:21:58.417 They didn't have the right to own property. 00:21:58.417 --> 00:22:01.920 A woman teacher didn't have the right to marry. 00:22:01.920 --> 00:22:04.022 She didn't have the right to live alone. 00:22:04.022 --> 00:22:06.858 She had to board with a family. 00:22:06.858 --> 00:22:10.196 And if she started dating or she went out at night, 00:22:10.257 --> 00:22:12.197 she was fired. 00:22:12.197 --> 00:22:15.600 (narrator) For progressives such as Frances Garrison Villard, 00:22:15.600 --> 00:22:17.936 suffrage, the vote for women, 00:22:17.936 --> 00:22:20.038 was the key to emancipation. 00:22:20.038 --> 00:22:24.109 (Henry Villard) Grandmother was a very strong militant suffragette. 00:22:26.411 --> 00:22:32.476 As a boy, I was more inclined to laugh at them and dismiss them. 00:22:33.485 --> 00:22:37.289 I didn't see any reason why they should have a vote. 00:22:37.289 --> 00:22:41.126 I would say I believe it's still a man's world. 00:22:41.126 --> 00:22:44.247 I would continue so for some time to come. 00:22:46.264 --> 00:22:49.067 (narrator) Some suffragettes were mounting a violent campaign. 00:22:49.067 --> 00:22:53.045 In Britain, one of them was willing to die for the cause. 00:22:54.429 --> 00:22:55.607 In June of 1913, 00:22:55.607 --> 00:22:59.410 Emily Davison threw herself in front of the king's horse 00:22:59.410 --> 00:23:00.917 at the popular Epsom Derby. 00:23:06.976 --> 00:23:08.386 She died with the inscription, 00:23:08.386 --> 00:23:11.280 "Votes for Women" sewn into her coat. 00:23:13.387 --> 00:23:16.428 That kind of sacrifice inspired American suffragettes 00:23:16.428 --> 00:23:18.430 to intensify their campaign. 00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:24.002 The right to vote would also prove elusive for 00:23:24.002 --> 00:23:26.138 America's nine million blacks. 00:23:26.138 --> 00:23:29.074 Black men could vote in theory, 00:23:29.074 --> 00:23:31.943 but in fact most were barred by white intimidation, 00:23:31.943 --> 00:23:34.946 poll taxes, and literacy tests. 00:23:38.284 --> 00:23:41.067 85% of black Americans lived in poverty in 00:23:41.067 --> 00:23:42.988 the southern United States, 00:23:42.988 --> 00:23:46.758 segregated from whites by so-called Jim Crow laws, 00:23:46.758 --> 00:23:50.228 laws upheld by the Supreme Court that all but 00:23:50.228 --> 00:23:52.764 wiped out the freedom and equality 00:23:52.764 --> 00:23:55.000 once promised by emancipation. 00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.130 (John Milton Cooper) It is the complete denial of the American dream. 00:24:00.438 --> 00:24:03.175 They cannot go to the same schools with whites. 00:24:03.175 --> 00:24:05.811 They can't drink from the same drinking fountains. 00:24:05.811 --> 00:24:08.246 They cannot sit in the same part of a street car 00:24:08.246 --> 00:24:12.450 or in the same cars on a railroad. 00:24:12.450 --> 00:24:13.785 It's a horrible time. 00:24:13.785 --> 00:24:15.854 White politicians compete with each other in the 00:24:15.854 --> 00:24:18.824 south for being more, at least verbally, 00:24:18.824 --> 00:24:23.895 violent toward African-Americans and in many cases are 00:24:23.895 --> 00:24:26.743 encouraging or at least abetting actual violence. 00:24:34.506 --> 00:24:35.607 (George Kimbley) They were lynching blacks. 00:24:35.607 --> 00:24:38.776 There was hardly a week that two or three blacks didn't get lynched 00:24:40.750 --> 00:24:42.519 or burned at the stake. 00:24:43.381 --> 00:24:45.383 I don't know whether you heard that or not. 00:24:45.383 --> 00:24:48.384 You ever hear of any black people getting burned at the stake. 00:24:49.154 --> 00:24:50.290 Well, that's what happened. 00:24:50.290 --> 00:24:52.424 I lived in those days. 00:24:55.727 --> 00:24:58.196 (narrator) The most prominent black leader with the turn of the century, 00:24:58.196 --> 00:24:59.998 Booker T. Washington, 00:24:59.998 --> 00:25:02.868 accepted the notion of separateness. 00:25:02.868 --> 00:25:05.070 He asked blacks to better themselves through work 00:25:05.070 --> 00:25:07.038 and vocational training. 00:25:07.038 --> 00:25:11.233 From whites he asked for help, not equality. 00:25:11.233 --> 00:25:13.778 (John Milton Cooper) Booker T. Washington was born a slave. 00:25:13.778 --> 00:25:16.948 Called his autobiography, "Up from Slavery." 00:25:16.948 --> 00:25:19.980 This is a man who has pulled himself up 00:25:20.887 --> 00:25:22.754 by his own bootstraps. 00:25:22.754 --> 00:25:27.726 And he takes the perspective that it would be foolish 00:25:27.726 --> 00:25:34.361 to challenge what's being done to them too soon and too openly. 00:25:35.066 --> 00:25:37.602 (narrator) But there would be a challenge. 00:25:37.602 --> 00:25:39.871 In 1905, the black intellectual, 00:25:39.871 --> 00:25:43.675 W. E. B. Du Bois urged a new struggle for full political 00:25:43.675 --> 00:25:45.677 and social equality. 00:25:48.613 --> 00:25:52.550 Entrenched resistance to such change would make civil rights, 00:25:52.550 --> 00:25:53.985 as Du Bois predicted, 00:25:53.985 --> 00:25:57.522 the major social issue in American life for 00:25:57.522 --> 00:25:59.456 the rest of the century. 00:26:06.209 --> 00:26:07.280 At the turn of the century, 00:26:07.280 --> 00:26:10.101 there were 76 million people in America. 00:26:10.101 --> 00:26:14.205 The majority of them lived on farms or in small towns 00:26:14.205 --> 00:26:17.075 where they relied on gaslight and horsepower. 00:26:18.967 --> 00:26:21.400 (Lorine Hyer) Every morning, the milkman came, 00:26:21.400 --> 00:26:23.459 and the cream at the top would rise, 00:26:23.459 --> 00:26:25.895 and if you got there early, 00:26:25.895 --> 00:26:28.954 you could take a lick of the cream before your mother 00:26:28.954 --> 00:26:31.289 found out what you were doing. 00:26:31.919 --> 00:26:37.028 (Frank Truxall) It was a great period of the front porch. 00:26:37.028 --> 00:26:39.698 In the evenings after dinner, 00:26:39.698 --> 00:26:46.263 the family would assemble on the front streets. 00:26:47.324 --> 00:26:51.843 Some of the times the neighbors would pass, 00:26:51.843 --> 00:26:54.596 and we exchanged bows. 00:26:56.333 --> 00:26:57.590 We played games: 00:26:57.590 --> 00:27:05.894 I Spy and Run Sheep Run and Lemonade What Was Your Trade. 00:27:08.693 --> 00:27:12.274 (E.L. Doctorow) "Tennis rackets were hefty and the racket face elliptical. 00:27:13.766 --> 00:27:15.934 "Women were stouter then. 00:27:17.318 --> 00:27:20.605 "They visited the fleet carrying white parasols. 00:27:20.605 --> 00:27:22.890 "Everyone wore white in summer. 00:27:22.890 --> 00:27:24.042 "That was the style. 00:27:24.042 --> 00:27:26.074 That was the way people lived." 00:27:28.413 --> 00:27:30.615 (narrator) But the rhythm of American life was quickening in the 00:27:30.615 --> 00:27:32.851 early years of the century as more and more people 00:27:32.851 --> 00:27:35.412 headed for the cities with the bright lights 00:27:35.412 --> 00:27:37.953 and the myriad of opportunities. NOTE Paragraph 00:27:38.923 --> 00:27:43.175 (Albert Glotzer) I was four years old when I came to Chicago. 00:27:44.005 --> 00:27:49.808 It was a real magical thing to see the streetcars 00:27:49.808 --> 00:27:51.937 moving up and down 00:27:51.937 --> 00:27:55.608 and the street filled with people all the time, 00:27:55.608 --> 00:27:59.072 and great activities going on. 00:27:59.072 --> 00:28:02.184 I recall looking at it with wonder. 00:28:03.815 --> 00:28:06.284 (narrator) The cities, New York City more than most, 00:28:06.284 --> 00:28:08.286 were centers for the latest engineering 00:28:08.286 --> 00:28:10.158 and technological marvels. 00:28:13.082 --> 00:28:15.741 (David McCullough) The skyscraper is born in that time, 00:28:15.741 --> 00:28:21.066 completely new building form and completely new idea that 00:28:21.066 --> 00:28:23.068 a city could grow up instead of out. 00:28:24.668 --> 00:28:26.771 (Alfred Levitt) It's an amazing sight to me. 00:28:26.771 --> 00:28:29.002 I saw the Flat Iron Building. 00:28:29.740 --> 00:28:31.958 I saw the Woolworth Tower. 00:28:32.420 --> 00:28:39.900 It is a very stunning view how a building can pierce the sky. 00:28:41.886 --> 00:28:44.255 (narrator) And underground there was a new way to travel. 00:28:44.255 --> 00:28:45.256 In New York City, 00:28:45.256 --> 00:28:48.015 the subway was inaugurated in 1904. 00:28:51.963 --> 00:28:54.667 One could ride the subway to the outskirts of the city 00:28:54.667 --> 00:28:57.402 where the power of science and technology was 00:28:57.402 --> 00:29:00.134 harnessed for pursuit of a good time. 00:29:02.458 --> 00:29:06.186 Tens of thousands of New Yorkers went every day and night 00:29:06.698 --> 00:29:08.071 to Coney Island. 00:29:16.748 --> 00:29:17.524 When I came there, 00:29:17.524 --> 00:29:22.227 my brothers immediately treated me to a hot dog. 00:29:22.227 --> 00:29:23.228 Nathan's. 00:29:26.320 --> 00:29:28.532 I done run into the water. 00:29:29.499 --> 00:29:32.537 I tasted all over me the salt of the sea. 00:29:33.108 --> 00:29:35.713 I was baptized by nature. 00:29:37.696 --> 00:29:42.772 There was a kind of freedom that I never dreamt. 00:29:42.772 --> 00:29:45.356 That I could have. 00:29:47.156 --> 00:29:49.187 (narrator) That sense of freedom was also spread by the 00:29:49.187 --> 00:29:51.356 availability of ideas. 00:29:51.356 --> 00:29:53.358 In the early part of the century, 00:29:53.358 --> 00:29:56.427 some 9,000 public libraries in the country dispensed 00:29:56.427 --> 00:29:59.464 information freely and democratically. 00:29:59.464 --> 00:30:03.868 One man said to me, "Alfred, do you know that 00:30:03.868 --> 00:30:07.372 there's a library on 42nd Street?" 00:30:07.372 --> 00:30:10.576 I says, "I do, but I know was never there." 00:30:10.576 --> 00:30:13.745 He says, "That's where you belong. 00:30:13.745 --> 00:30:15.880 You'll get all the literature in the world," 00:30:15.880 --> 00:30:18.139 and it doesn't cost you a dime." 00:30:19.031 --> 00:30:22.253 I read an immense number of books, 00:30:22.253 --> 00:30:27.258 because I wanted to understand the American people's minds. 00:30:27.258 --> 00:30:33.064 I wanted to be completely American and forget all of my past. 00:30:38.245 --> 00:30:40.846 Immigrants themselves bringing new languages and 00:30:40.846 --> 00:30:43.185 customs were making the culture of the city just 00:30:43.185 --> 00:30:45.038 that much more diverse. 00:30:45.038 --> 00:30:50.200 The immigrant nourishment this nation has always had, 00:30:50.200 --> 00:30:54.845 the incoming people has been an extremely important 00:30:54.845 --> 00:30:58.483 part of our vitality, our ingenuity. 00:30:59.144 --> 00:31:04.329 It's like aerating the stream of life here. 00:31:04.329 --> 00:31:07.098 (narrator) Early in this century, one in three residents of 00:31:07.098 --> 00:31:10.401 major American cites had been born somewhere else. 00:31:10.401 --> 00:31:12.704 New York had twice as many Irish as Dublin, 00:31:12.704 --> 00:31:15.773 and Chicago had more Poles than Warsaw. 00:31:16.880 --> 00:31:18.697 We had Polish people. 00:31:18.697 --> 00:31:20.850 We had Irish people. 00:31:20.850 --> 00:31:24.321 We had Jewish people, and we had Italian people. 00:31:24.321 --> 00:31:27.846 And they were all friendly, 00:31:27.846 --> 00:31:30.412 and we were all in the same boat. 00:31:30.412 --> 00:31:32.756 None of us had any money. 00:31:34.109 --> 00:31:36.665 (Martin Scorsese) My grandparents - the only place they could get rooms 00:31:37.003 --> 00:31:38.575 literally was on Elizabeth Street, 00:31:38.575 --> 00:31:40.846 which is where my mother was born. 00:31:40.846 --> 00:31:42.944 The apartment was two-and-a-half room, 00:31:42.944 --> 00:31:45.970 three rooms, and maybe 14 people were living in it. 00:31:45.970 --> 00:31:48.139 And at night it'd look like, you know, 00:31:48.139 --> 00:31:50.560 a hospital ward with all these beds and all these 00:31:50.560 --> 00:31:52.323 people sleeping in these different beds. 00:31:55.030 --> 00:31:56.342 (Clara Hancox) There were no bathrooms. 00:31:56.342 --> 00:31:57.658 There were toilets. 00:31:57.674 --> 00:32:00.118 They were in the hallway. 00:32:00.118 --> 00:32:04.389 But my mother and father thought that this was wonderful 00:32:04.389 --> 00:32:08.593 because in the old country the toilets were in the backyard, 00:32:08.593 --> 00:32:13.631 and the fact that in the kitchen we had not only running water 00:32:13.631 --> 00:32:17.107 so that you didn't have to go to the well for water 00:32:17.107 --> 00:32:19.976 but we had hot water... 00:32:19.976 --> 00:32:22.578 My mother, every week that she did the wash, 00:32:22.578 --> 00:32:25.636 she said how wonderful, how wonderful, 00:32:25.636 --> 00:32:27.645 we have hot water. 00:32:29.060 --> 00:32:31.963 (narrator) Steadily rising income and declining work hours meant 00:32:31.963 --> 00:32:34.252 that for the first time, even working class people 00:32:34.252 --> 00:32:36.521 could go out in search of entertainment. 00:32:39.782 --> 00:32:41.526 Five cents bought a ticket to the 00:32:41.526 --> 00:32:45.096 newest entertainment phenomenon, moving pictures. 00:32:51.249 --> 00:32:54.294 (off screen voice) We were so taken with the nickel shows. 00:32:54.294 --> 00:33:00.309 Two of us would beg to be admitted by sitting on one seat. 00:33:00.309 --> 00:33:03.348 (narrator) The earliest movies introduced simultaneously in France 00:33:03.348 --> 00:33:06.584 and the United States in the 1890s were simple tableau 00:33:06.584 --> 00:33:08.252 of anything that moved, 00:33:08.252 --> 00:33:11.957 either make believe or what was called actuality. 00:33:14.157 --> 00:33:17.941 In 1903 came the first American film that actually told a story, 00:33:17.956 --> 00:33:22.367 "The Great Train Robbery", a western filmed in New Jersey. 00:33:22.367 --> 00:33:25.650 Its huge success made it clear that fiction was 00:33:25.650 --> 00:33:27.063 what the audience wanted most. 00:33:29.139 --> 00:33:31.275 There was comedy, 00:33:32.751 --> 00:33:35.480 and then there was the Perils of Pauline, 00:33:35.480 --> 00:33:38.883 which was a serial that went on 00:33:38.883 --> 00:33:42.304 every Saturday afternoon. 00:33:42.934 --> 00:33:46.661 Every week she was in a situation.. 00:33:46.661 --> 00:33:48.593 A lot of kids. 00:33:48.593 --> 00:33:53.064 It wasn't the movie to them. 00:33:53.064 --> 00:33:54.732 It was actuality. 00:33:58.792 --> 00:34:01.434 (narrator) Beginning in 1910, Americans were also seeing 00:34:01.434 --> 00:34:03.195 newsreels from around the world. 00:34:05.733 --> 00:34:09.562 It's coming as a great force for mass entertainment 00:34:09.562 --> 00:34:11.278 and for mass culture. 00:34:11.278 --> 00:34:13.533 There is this sense of possibility, 00:34:13.533 --> 00:34:14.472 the sense of openness, 00:34:14.472 --> 00:34:16.442 the sense of widening the horizons. 00:34:17.718 --> 00:34:20.860 What it does is it opens the world. 00:34:36.514 --> 00:34:39.930 (narrator) In Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, 00:34:39.930 --> 00:34:42.880 a mysterious explosion sank an American cruiser, 00:34:42.880 --> 00:34:44.948 the USS Maine. 00:34:44.948 --> 00:34:47.752 266 officers and sailors were killed. 00:34:50.054 --> 00:34:53.491 Cuba was a Spanish colony 90 miles from Florida. 00:34:53.491 --> 00:34:56.581 Although there was no evidence of Spanish involvement, 00:34:56.581 --> 00:35:01.313 cries of revenge against Spain swept across America. 00:35:02.667 --> 00:35:04.135 But President William McKinley, 00:35:04.135 --> 00:35:06.337 who would lead American into the 20th century, 00:35:06.337 --> 00:35:08.406 was reluctant to go to war. 00:35:09.283 --> 00:35:12.537 (Stanley Karnow) President McKinley is a silver-tongued orator, 00:35:13.537 --> 00:35:14.735 a very popular, 00:35:14.735 --> 00:35:18.349 sweet man but a very indecisive man. 00:35:18.349 --> 00:35:21.586 They used to say that McKinley's mind is like an unmade bed. 00:35:21.586 --> 00:35:24.388 You have to make it up for him before he can use it. 00:35:24.388 --> 00:35:27.592 (narrator) Much more eager for war and foreign adventure in 00:35:27.592 --> 00:35:31.329 general was McKinley's young Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 00:35:31.329 --> 00:35:32.930 Theodore Roosevelt. 00:35:32.930 --> 00:35:35.700 (Stanley Karnow) Theodore Roosevelt was a great believer in outdoorism, 00:35:35.700 --> 00:35:37.702 a great believer in activity. 00:35:37.702 --> 00:35:39.403 He was vigorous, you know. 00:35:39.403 --> 00:35:42.573 You could imagine him sort of taking cold showers all the time. 00:35:43.896 --> 00:35:48.079 He carried all of this in character into his politics. 00:35:49.524 --> 00:35:54.260 He was a great believer in American power, 00:35:54.260 --> 00:35:57.544 in American imperialism, a great believer in war. 00:35:58.435 --> 00:36:02.463 War is one of the highest forms of human endeavor, he wrote. 00:36:03.294 --> 00:36:06.297 (narrator) With Roosevelt and others lobbying intensely for it, 00:36:06.297 --> 00:36:10.988 Congress declared war on Spain in April of 1898. 00:36:11.541 --> 00:36:14.472 Roosevelt left his job in Washington to 00:36:14.472 --> 00:36:17.141 join the campaign in Cuba. 00:36:17.141 --> 00:36:20.311 Theodore Roosevelt organizes his own cowboy buddies from 00:36:20.311 --> 00:36:25.116 the west into the Rough Riders and goes to Brooks Brothers 00:36:25.116 --> 00:36:29.887 and gets a uniform made and gets out a big saber and 00:36:29.887 --> 00:36:33.090 goes down there and storms San Juan Hill. 00:36:34.459 --> 00:36:37.316 (narrator) It took the United States less than three months to defeat 00:36:37.316 --> 00:36:40.644 Spain in what one American official called 00:36:40.644 --> 00:36:42.521 a splendid little war. 00:36:44.736 --> 00:36:47.104 The spoils of war for the United States were the 00:36:47.104 --> 00:36:51.261 Spanish colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, 00:36:51.261 --> 00:36:53.227 and the Philippines. 00:36:53.227 --> 00:36:55.313 The United States was now an empire. 00:36:59.865 --> 00:37:02.360 At the Pan-American exposition in Buffalo, 00:37:02.360 --> 00:37:04.938 New York in September 1901, President McKinley was 00:37:04.938 --> 00:37:08.893 killed by an assassin with no particular cause beyond 00:37:08.893 --> 00:37:10.328 his own dissatisfaction. 00:37:13.804 --> 00:37:16.701 Theodore Roosevelt, by then Vice President, 00:37:16.701 --> 00:37:18.884 became America's leader. 00:37:20.606 --> 00:37:25.401 He's really the first President who sees the United States as a global power. 00:37:25.401 --> 00:37:30.147 America's century begins really with Roosevelt. 00:37:31.393 --> 00:37:34.956 Theodore Roosevelt was an imperialist. 00:37:34.956 --> 00:37:38.122 He actually gloried in the term, 00:37:38.122 --> 00:37:42.994 and he wanted the United States to be a real empire, 00:37:42.994 --> 00:37:46.468 exercising great power in the same ways that 00:37:46.468 --> 00:37:49.239 the great European empires did. 00:37:50.901 --> 00:37:53.604 (narrator) Roosevelt's design included linking the Pacific and 00:37:53.604 --> 00:37:56.674 Atlantic Oceans by building a canal through the Isthmus 00:37:56.674 --> 00:37:59.552 of Panama in northern Colombia. 00:37:59.552 --> 00:38:02.246 Such a canal would greatly facilitate shipping and 00:38:02.246 --> 00:38:05.616 ensure America's strategic hold on the region. 00:38:05.616 --> 00:38:08.386 But when the Colombians refused to cooperate, 00:38:08.386 --> 00:38:11.088 Roosevelt encouraged the Panamanians to revolt 00:38:11.088 --> 00:38:13.090 against their Colombian rulers. 00:38:14.305 --> 00:38:17.362 Within a couple of days, we recognized the new 00:38:17.362 --> 00:38:21.765 independent Republic of Panama, and within another few days, 00:38:21.765 --> 00:38:23.630 we had concluded a treaty with them. 00:38:23.630 --> 00:38:27.178 Roosevelt said when other people dithered and 00:38:27.178 --> 00:38:30.724 when other people debated, I acted. 00:38:30.724 --> 00:38:31.928 I took action. 00:38:35.173 --> 00:38:37.114 (narrator) Construction of the era's engineering 00:38:37.114 --> 00:38:39.417 wonder began in 1904. 00:38:39.417 --> 00:38:43.954 Alfred Bingham visited the canal site as a child. 00:38:43.954 --> 00:38:47.925 I can remember riding along in this car on 00:38:47.925 --> 00:38:50.428 the bottom of the canal. 00:38:50.428 --> 00:38:57.034 A lot of big machinery and a lot of trains going up and down, 00:38:57.034 --> 00:38:59.270 taking the diggings out. 00:38:59.270 --> 00:39:02.606 And there were marvelous bit structures 00:39:02.606 --> 00:39:07.044 such as that were to be the locks. 00:39:09.012 --> 00:39:11.248 The building of the canal itself was the greatest 00:39:11.248 --> 00:39:15.319 engineering feat that had ever been done up to that time, 00:39:15.319 --> 00:39:19.190 and it's all of the great power and technology and 00:39:19.190 --> 00:39:21.192 energy of this age harnessed there. 00:39:23.376 --> 00:39:26.163 There's a wonderful photo of Theodore Roosevelt at one 00:39:26.163 --> 00:39:28.966 of the controls of one of these gigantic steam shovels 00:39:28.966 --> 00:39:31.902 that they used to dig out the ditch. 00:39:31.902 --> 00:39:36.821 The Panama Canal is a wonderful expression not only of him 00:39:36.821 --> 00:39:39.157 but in many ways of America of that time. 00:39:44.954 --> 00:39:48.200 (narrator) In mid-August of 1914, Americans celebrated the 00:39:48.200 --> 00:39:50.256 opening of the Panama Canal, 00:39:50.256 --> 00:39:55.000 a triumph of both technology and man's will over nature. 00:39:57.369 --> 00:39:59.830 An engineering feat as impressive as the pyramids, 00:39:59.830 --> 00:40:03.134 the canal would also become the symbol of America's entrance 00:40:03.134 --> 00:40:07.204 into the international arena at a time when 00:40:07.204 --> 00:40:10.355 the world was becoming more dangerous. 00:40:11.509 --> 00:40:12.510 That same week, 00:40:12.510 --> 00:40:15.613 the great powers of Europe were headed for a violent encounter 00:40:15.613 --> 00:40:18.582 that none of them could even imagine, 00:40:18.582 --> 00:40:21.285 promoted by German ambition. 00:40:21.285 --> 00:40:22.353 Early in the century, 00:40:22.353 --> 00:40:25.689 Germany had emerged as the industrial power in Europe, 00:40:25.689 --> 00:40:28.359 rivaling Britain and already mightier than France, 00:40:28.359 --> 00:40:31.562 the Austro-Hungarian empire and Russia. 00:40:31.562 --> 00:40:33.564 But as Europe's youngest empire, 00:40:33.564 --> 00:40:36.000 Germany wielded little political 00:40:36.000 --> 00:40:42.608 (Joachin Von Elbe) Germany is really a great power and a leader of nations and 00:40:42.608 --> 00:40:46.938 wanted at least to be equal to others, 00:40:46.938 --> 00:40:49.896 not to be considered less important than 00:40:49.896 --> 00:40:52.123 other powers like England. 00:40:53.615 --> 00:40:56.799 (narrator) Under Kaiser Wilhelm, Germany was training the 00:40:56.799 --> 00:40:59.658 best land army in the world, five million men, 00:40:59.658 --> 00:41:02.526 and had begun building a powerful navy. 00:41:06.309 --> 00:41:09.679 (Jay Winter) To build that navy required nerve because 00:41:09.679 --> 00:41:11.692 it was a direct challenge to Britain, 00:41:11.692 --> 00:41:14.985 and that conflict between Britain and Germany is 00:41:14.985 --> 00:41:18.709 at the heart of international affairs before 1914. 00:41:20.616 --> 00:41:22.513 (narrator) Britain responded by launching the most 00:41:22.513 --> 00:41:25.753 powerful warship on earth, the Dreadnought. 00:41:27.399 --> 00:41:31.021 It was a revolution in naval warfare. 00:41:31.021 --> 00:41:36.245 It was an all-big gunship, big 12-inch guns. 00:41:38.337 --> 00:41:41.626 Also, the Dreadnought had the latest 00:41:41.626 --> 00:41:43.900 technological equipment on it. 00:41:43.900 --> 00:41:45.703 It had electrical equipment, for example. 00:41:45.703 --> 00:41:48.272 Once the British had a Dreadnought, 00:41:48.272 --> 00:41:51.432 the Germans had to have a Dreadnought, etc., etc. 00:41:52.109 --> 00:41:55.179 (narrator) The tensions fed by an arms race and rivalry among 00:41:55.179 --> 00:41:57.689 the major European powers finally came to a head 00:41:57.689 --> 00:42:01.585 in June of 1914 when Archduke Franz Ferdinand, 00:42:01.585 --> 00:42:04.421 the heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, 00:42:04.421 --> 00:42:09.419 was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo. 00:42:10.361 --> 00:42:13.392 There was no reason why the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, 00:42:13.392 --> 00:42:17.334 who signaled the collision of fundamental interests. 00:42:17.334 --> 00:42:20.437 It was a matter of choice. 00:42:20.437 --> 00:42:24.975 And that choice was made in Vienna and in Berlin to 00:42:24.975 --> 00:42:28.212 make it more than an assassination. 00:42:28.212 --> 00:42:30.347 (narrator) In late July with German's support, 00:42:30.347 --> 00:42:33.384 the Austro-Hungarian empire declared war on Serbia, 00:42:33.384 --> 00:42:37.254 and within days all the great powers of Europe bound 00:42:37.254 --> 00:42:40.357 by their various alliances were at war with each other. 00:42:43.433 --> 00:42:44.644 (Henry Villard) I was at a camp, 00:42:44.644 --> 00:42:48.832 a boys camp in New Hampshire in 1914 when war was declared, 00:42:48.832 --> 00:42:53.804 and it was a shock to a very peaceful world. 00:42:53.804 --> 00:42:56.941 But nobody took it too seriously. 00:42:56.941 --> 00:42:59.209 War was bad, of course, 00:42:59.209 --> 00:43:03.681 but it was also something that would be temporary and 00:43:03.681 --> 00:43:05.683 would not have a far-reaching effect. 00:43:12.189 --> 00:43:14.925 (narrator) But this war would be more catastrophic than any 00:43:14.925 --> 00:43:17.695 which had gone before, one in which technology, 00:43:17.695 --> 00:43:19.029 engine of progress, 00:43:19.029 --> 00:43:22.633 would be used in the slaughter of millions, 00:43:22.633 --> 00:43:25.536 a war that would sow greater hatred and 00:43:25.536 --> 00:43:28.485 result in far greater consequences than anyone 00:43:28.485 --> 00:43:32.781 could imagine in that summer of 1914. 00:43:35.012 --> 00:43:38.916 What was optimistically called the war to end all wars 00:43:38.916 --> 00:43:41.885 would draw America into an increasingly complex 00:43:41.885 --> 00:43:43.654 and dangerous world. 00:43:43.654 --> 00:43:46.023 That's on the next episode of The Century, 00:43:46.023 --> 00:43:48.425 America's Time. 00:43:48.425 --> 00:43:49.994 I'm Peter Jennings. 00:43:49.994 --> 00:43:50.995 Thank you for joining us.