Pick the Next Extra History Series! "Industrialists"

It's time for our Extra History poll! Where you get to vote on what our next Extra History Series is about!

These four topics were selected from our "Industrialists" Patreon Suggestions and are listed in no particular order below.

Walt Disney: A World of Color

Perhaps more than any 20th-century person, Walt Disney was an icon. A man who profoundly shaped American culture, business, and self-image, he brought animation into the realm of feature films and proved it was an art form in itself. But in doing so, he also promoted an image of himself that was as polished, clean and refined as his parks—never letting the public see the industrial backstage of his magic kingdom. This series will treat Walt Disney not as a myth, but a historical figure who shaped and was shaped by American history. Growing up under a stern father who subscribed to socialist newspapers but emphasized hard work, Disney's first experience of the world came as a 16-year-old ambulance driver during WWI—though he arrived after the armistice, and essentially became a tour guide showing generals around Paris. All the time, he was drawing, and in 1923 he would partner with his brother Roy to create Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio. This series will cover Walt Disney's career as an entrepreneur in early animation, covering the establishment of the Walt Disney Company, the loss of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, his creation of Mickey Mouse with Ub Iwerks, and early technical innovations—ending with the tortured production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In doing so, we'll look at the early days of the animated film industry and, just as crucially, get a look at Walter Elias Disney before he became the man simply known as Walt.

Samuel Colt: The Gunpowder Medicine Show

Samuel Colt would create the gun that won the West, a mass-produced, revolving-cylinder pistol with interchangeable parts that would change warfare and define American expansionism. God made man, the saying went, but Samuel Colt made all men equal. Yet designing revolutionary firearms costs money... and as a young man, Colt didn't have any. To raise funds, she started a touring medicine show, falsely claiming to be a medical doctor, and giving lectures on nitrous oxide while dosing audience members with a sample. Yet once he perfected and patented his Colt revolver, the shifty sales tactics learned in the medicine racket never truly left him. Colt's new pistol and rifles were, indeed, extraordinary—highly advanced and built-in interchangeable parts—but he also created new marketing tactics to sell them worldwide. Colt gifted custom revolvers to heads of state and prominent personalities, pioneering the celebrity endorsement, and engaged in visual advertising by commissioning paintings of Colt products being used to fight Native Americans and wild animals. He frequently served as an arms dealer to both sides of Victorian conflicts—including the Civil War—and was not above bribery, exaggeration, and good old-fashioned showmanship. Meanwhile, his flagship product was killing both Americans and native people by the thousands, and creating a romanticized image of firearms as a part of American culture, identity, and even as fashion statements.

Triangle Shirtwaist: Beyond the Fire

Wait, you say—haven't you done this one already? We have. And while we're all proud of the one-off episode, there is so much more to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire than we could fit into a slim ten minutes. At the turn of the century, New York's garment district ran on immigrant labor. Staffed largely by Italian and Jewish refugees, many had come specifically to work in workshops owned by Jewish Americans who'd come over decades before. One of those factories was Triangle Shirtwaist, owned by Jewish immigrants Max Blanck and Isaac Harris. But while Triangle-Shirtwaist would become infamous for its poor safety and disastrous fire, killing 146 workers, it was actually considered a good place to work. Blanck and Harris gave workers more space and better light than most factories and employed several family members (some of whom would die in the fire). This series will look at the fire in the context of American labor history and women's history, including the 1909 Shirtwaist Strike that preceded the fire, as well as the protests, trials, and political maneuvering that brought about legislative reforms surrounding workplace safety and child labor. And we'll talk about the Newark, New Jersey factory fire that killed 25 workers shortly before the Triangle blaze—which should've served as a wake-up call. Along the way we'll meet fascinating characters from labor history like Rose Schneiderman, the labor leader who ensured the deaths at Triangle would lead to change, and socialist firebrand Clara Lemlich, who gave pro-labor speeches even after factory bosses hired gangsters to break her ribs. Labor laws, they say, are written in blood—and this is America's bloodiest chapter.

Henry Ford: Antisemitism and Assembly Lines

When the Ford Motor Company was formed in 1903, Henry Ford was not allowed to helm it—the other investors considered him too volatile. Ford was undoubtedly a genius. He'd invented the Ford Quadricycle while working as an engineer for Thomas Edison, before Edison himself advised him to keep working on vehicles. In the early days of the Detroit auto scene, he built race cars, testing his mettle (and his penchant for corporate feuding) against the Dodge brothers and founders of the Cadillac company. But it was his obsession with perfecting the assembly line process—and producing a high-quality, low-cost car known as the Model-T— that would win him fame and fortune. By 1918, half the cars in the United States would be Ford Model-Ts. Yet cars were not his only venture, for Ford was always reinventing and refining both his factory operations and trying to use his vast corporate power as a force for good. Among these changes were worker salaries twice the industry standard for his workforce, as well as a revolutionary five-day workweek. However, this public mission came with a deep dark side. At times this could be bizarre to the point of comedy (a rubber plantation in the Brazilian rainforest, known as Fordlandia, fell apart almost immediately) while at other times, they highlighted Ford's ugliest instincts. An avowed enemy of unions, his security teams viciously beat striking workers with clubs, and opened fire on a march during the depression, killing sixty workers. But his most famous black mark is his lifelong adherence to antisemitism, which led him to publish revolting conspiracy theories in his personal newspaper, blame both world wars on Jews, and cultivate relationships with prominent Nazis. By 1945, his views helped push him out of the company he'd built.

Current Schedule:

Napoleon in Egypt 3/22 --> The Crimean War: The First Modern Military Mess -->  A History of Buddhism: The Eightfold Path --> Your Vote!

***Friendly reminder: The poll will end at 5:00 PM PT on Friday the 21st. You can vote for as many choices as you want! This style of voting helps us see what people are most interested in without having to make tough decisions between a couple of close favorites. ***