Skip to content

1460 Apr 17

Click here to download .webm audio recording! :) Recording 20230417171527.webm

  • Distrust with doctors
    • Many didn’t trust doctors unless they knew them for a long time
    • Lodennun - common opiate in 90s
    • Usually liquid, can be in syrup
      • Uses:
        • for sicknesses
        • makes constipation to fight diarrhea
        • sleeping agent
        • pain reliever
      • Mary todd lincoln was lodennun addict
      • Working class drug instead of alcohol
        • Alcohol could be expensive
      • Babies born from women addicting to some drug
        • Can ease through withdrawals of other drug
        • Infants soothing syrup
  • Snake oil
    • Chinese Water Snake;
      • Only snake that has those properties
    • Rub into joints to fight arthritis and pain
    • Miners were interested
      • Liked how it worked; tried to make their own
      • Their snake oil doesn’t work
  • Clark stanley snake oil
    • Possesses no snake oil; but actually did work to reduce inflammation
    • ingredients
      • Mineral oil
      • 1% beef fat
      • Canfer, turpentine
      • Red pepper; capsicum
  • Huckster traveling wagon
    • Often in carts pulled by horses
    • Graphic on wagon, mobile billboard
    • Also home for salesman
  • Patent medicine
    • Advertisements
      • Used narratives; often telling stories / perspectives and sell remedies
    • Baldwin’s herbal medicines
      • Active ingredient cocaine
      • Narrative advertisement says treats
        • Nervousness
        • Debility
        • Consumption
        • Insomnia
        • Lowness of spirits
    • Vin Mariani popular french tonic wine
      • Used pope
    • Capitol white lead company
    • Asthma curing cigarettes
      • Espic’s cigarettes promptly cures
      • Also cures
        • Hay fever
        • Catarrh
        • Oppression
        • Suffogation
        • Neuralgia
  • Railroads
    • Transcontinental line links
      • Everything in business explodes
      • Big business regionally
        • New York, Boston, Philadelphia
      • Middle of country becomes important
        • New major cities arise
    • Chicago
      • Center of American railroad ; center of second industrial revolution
        • All railroads lead to chicago
      • Designed to be center hub
      • Fastest trains run in Chicago
    • Cattle drives
      • Route to get to a rail hub
      • Then loaded on trains and transported to chicago
      • Chicago had slaughter houses
  • Montgomery Ward
    • Had a department store that would bankrupt in 80s
    • Salesman that often transported to rural communities
      • Realized a lot of them suspect of products from cities
      • Some products break very quickly,
      • When trying to get money back, told all sales final
      • Would feel they would be ripped off from city people
      • Ward would research goods that people in countryside would want
    • Would put out mail order catalog with refund satisfaction guaranteed policy
      • Earns honest reputation; good success rate
      • His market would earn leverage against Suppliers
    • Catalog would grow to 240 pages
  • 1890s - Richard Warren Sears
    • Would challenge Ward’s dominance in catalog business
    • Would often travel due to his career as railroad agent
    • Found a jewelry store with very low prices on expensive pieces
      • Sears would buy all six pieces
      • Would eventually sell them in different locations and double
      • Would buy 20 pieces at the original 6 piece price
      • Would double and sell all 20 in one trip
    • Would look at Ward’s catalog; copies money back guarantee
  • Alba Roebuck
    • Logistics
    • Sears would meet Roebuck
    • Starts Sears Roebuck company
  • Sears Roebuck
    • Also gained trust in rural communities
    • Within year 322 pages
    • Following 522 pages
    • By 1970s catalog would be only available at store
    • Model T would eventually be on catalog
  • 11 years for montgomery to go from 13 pages to 240
  • Catalog businesses would help other business in rural areas
  • Significance of Catalog
    • Gave rural communities access to same things as big cities
      • They feel like they are viewed as “hicks”
    • Learning how to sell
      • Sell a concept; what product will do for you

  • Big leap forward in technology

    • Thomas Alba Edison

      • Reasoning for inventions: become Robber Baron
      • Invented
        • first practically manufactured lightbulb
        • Motion picture camera / projector; modern movies
        • Screen
        • Music industry
          • Invented first real phonograph
          • Put music onto hard medium to listen again and again
          • Cylinders > records
        • Electricity plugs
        • Modern research and development
          • Edison had armies of people contributing “his” invention
          • Had mass manufacturing process for his inventions
            • People in different assembly lines trying different methods to make product better
      • Wanted to put power grid in New York
        • Light bulb key in selling the need for power grid
      • Had huge house w/ George Westinghouse
        • Edison argued for DC (Direct Currents)
        • Said AC was dangerous; too easy to be electrocuted
        • Edison had reputation for having bad relationships
        • Use camera and projector to make movie showing why DC power should be used
          • Bought an old elephant;
          • Would run AC power to show how dangerous
        • England would use DC power
      • Edison got patent
        • New York would use electric chair
        • Would create invention of electric chair
      • X Ray machines

    • Nikola Tesla

      • Rivaled Edison in terms of inventions
      • Reasons for inventions: In it for science
      • Advocated for AC (Alternating Currents)
      • AC would be used because it was easier to distribute
    • Cars
    • No breaks in horseless carriages
    • Able to put in 100 cars per day
    • Original cars where only $600
    • Model N car
      • Problems become evident very quickly;
        • Model T car
      • Would have 10,000 orders
    • Ford looking for ways to reduce costs of cars to increase accessibility
    • Should be credited for mobile assembly line
      • Labor expenses biggest cost
      • Limited workers movements
    • Sold 9 million by 1920
    • 490 by 1914; after 5 years of production
    • No electric starter;
    • No doors open air cabin
    • Painted all cars black because dries the fastest
    • Hardwood seats
    • General motors
    • Would rival ford
    • Realize that ford products had to be bought in cash
    • General motors acceptance corporation
      • Finance line their own vehicles
      • Trade in value
        • Get credit toward new car; make it part of down payment
      • Create new used car market
      • Hydraulic brakes
      • Makes closed cabin cars
    • Realize people would buy cars at different levels
    • Cars are status symbols
      • Creation of different lines; Pontiac etc.
    • Marketing
      • Every year model is little different
      • Focusing on psychology
        • Subtle eye catching persuasion
    • By 1926; Ford would have to shut down and create new car
    • 1919 only 10% of cars worldwide
    • 1927 - 83% of cars have cabins

Rough Transcript

Because it's not legit okay but back then they just said well I'm sick I need medicine and so they had to stock medicine in their house and these guys would sell people out in the boonies all the medicine that they could want medicine for this medicine for that but the medicines did not always have a legitimate effect sometimes they were completely worthless they were benign others could actually have a legitimate effect and we're a little bit more reliable because the thing actually did do something and yet others were even dangerous okay so there's a wide range of patent medicines that you could find the most common one in fact it becomes synonymous with pet medicine and the darker sides the fact that it's oftentimes a con in order to get you to buy something worthless is snake oil have you ever heard of somebody being referred to as a snake oil salesman well that phrase basically comes from somebody trying to sell you a product that doesn't work there are Karma however let's talk about the stage that this is being sent in first of all before 1906 there was no medical or drug regulation in the United States in other words you can sell what you want stick a label on it call it whatever you want and if somebody drank it and got sick or died everywhere that's on them you're not at all that's how they kind of looked at things and as a result of this the medical field had sort of a untrustworthy reputation now today do you have a problem going to the hospital when you get sick no reason being after 1906 everything starts getting regulated first they start with Food and Drugs and then they will start in on the medical industry saying we need to be able to trust our doctors so they have medical schools established they have people who have to go through a specific line of training they agree with the curriculum should be at these medical schools and they hold the people accountable to them they have doctors exams they have licensing that they have to go through so you know whether you're going to a legitimate doctor or a quest somebody who's got no training at all they say they're a doctor but they're not so people in this period trust these doctors and Drug salesman or not bottom line most of the time they don't trust doctors unless that doctor is somebody they've known their whole life like a country dot they may have been the doctor who delivered them into this world and every time they get sick that doctor is the one who comes over and Deals one hey fine you can trust them you know them but in a random City a random doctor you don't know if you're getting legitimate health care or if it's just somebody who's stuck doctor on the wall and they're winging that's kind of a little dangerous patent medicines emerged in the same period of time when Medical the medical industry was a little bit Shady a little bit more unreliable so let's take a look at patent medicines one common ingredient in a lot of patent medicines that are affected with something called latinum does anybody heard of London what is an opium alkalate now what is opium you guys know any opiates there's a couple heroin morphine Vicodin codeine yeah all of those are opiates and there's plenty more okay Lawton is in that same family it is a type of opiate that is fairly Weak by comparison to something like Morphine Morphine is pretty strong so it's more in the line of maybe codeine or maybe around the Vicodin level somewhere in that that range as far as its strength but London is typically liquid so it's good to use in a lot of syrups that people would drink when they're sick so what was it used for a so perfect that is a sleeping agent if you are having insomnia problems and you need to get to sleep they will give you a sleeping thing with loud in a minute and say this will knock you out and that one actually works if you get some kind of a sleeping medication that has a lot in a minute yeah it works just be careful not to have it all the time otherwise what's the downside of opiates you can get addicted exactly so sleep inducers often times they are in cold medications if you want some kind of a cough syrup or something they will often put lot in that to help somebody not only cut down on the aches and pains that come with a cold you know how you get all achy and you feel like crap well this will kind of settled some of those aches and pains and help you get some sleep when you're all stuffed up and it's hard to fall asleep like that we've all been there Magnum actually helps with that meningitis which is very uncomfortable so it's used as a pain reliever menstrual cramps they didn't have Midol back then so this is a way to treat female menstrual cramps and another big one there's another side effect to opiates anybody who's ever used them you get constipated so it's a good remedy if you have diarrhea help sperm things up a bit but the downside is it is addictive as a matter of fact one of the first ladies of the United States wife of a president was an addict to learn them Mary Todd Lincoln Abraham Lincoln's wife is also used in a less medical way for a working class drug instead of alcohol because alcohol could be expensive for people who were looking for a regular pick me up or let down at the end of the day or whatever and Lawton was cheaper it was easier to afford if you were working class is London still used in the medical community today rarely but yes for severe diarrhea problems they might prescribe blood in them as an anti-diarial but the big thing that they tend to use it for is for babies who are born to women who are addicted to some drug or another maybe a woman's addicted to heroin or crack cocaine this was big in the 90s a lot of crack babies were being born and they would use the ladenum to help the baby ease through the withdrawals of The Other Drug so essentially they used one drug to give them a way to get off the other one and then before they get addicted to the law in them they face it all out so it takes place over usually about a week period but it's a way to gradually reduce that addictive level for babies so you can tell that it's barely it's safe to a point it's fairly mild it is able to be used judiciously but you have to be careful with it where it becomes dangerous is when it's included in something called infants soothing syrup if you have a infant who is acting up and colicky and just not want to sleep you give him some of the infant soothing suit yeah good moms do not feed their kids opium just saying okay so snake one where did that come from well first off in the gold rush and all those people from China who are coming over often brought their home remedies with them and one of those home remedies was the oil of a specific type of snake in China that when you use it and rubbed it into your joints it helped remove help reduce inflammation and soreness so if you had a problem with arthritis this was actually a really great treatment it worked and when the miners see these Chinese rubbing this stuff in they go what is that stuff that you're using they go it's snake oil they don't know the name for the snake they just know it's a snake so they go snake oil snake oil does that actually work and they say here try it and the miners rub it in oh yeah that feels great hey that's that's really good get some even more profit and so they start rendering down the snake oil only to find that their snake oil doesn't work yeah it's the Chinese water snake it's a specific type of snake that has specific types of characteristics very high acidity value to it and when it goes in the acid attacks the inflammation and causes it to go down but it's not typical for most snakes it's just that one type of thing the snake oil is actually legitimate but any other kind of snake it's not in fact some people will start making snake oil that has no snake oil in it they'll use things like beef fat camper turpentine things like that to mimic it and add some extra stuff in it but some of it will have absolutely no snake oil in it at all okay here's an interesting one Clark Stanley snake oil but the strange thing is it actually did work to help reduce inflammation first of all it had mineral oil not snake oil 1% beef fat so there was a little beef that put in there camper turpentine these were common for snake oil ingredients but here's the winner red pepper red pepper has capsicum and capsicum is an anti-inflammatory that's why a lot of people say well if you have arthritis having a lot of Mexican food that's really really super spicy can actually help reduce your aches if you ever heard that probably not well skip it just get some muscle relaxers and call it good okay so let's take a look at some of these snake oils and see what's the hooksters that would travel from town to town would often be in carts pulled by horses that are like this notice it's very graphic really jumps out at you well this thing is not just a wagon it's also a mobile billboard everywhere they're going they're advertising their product people know when they're coming to town oh look you there I wonder what they've got so it catches your attention it catches your eye but also this isn't just a wagon it's so much more first of all inside there's plenty of storage for the extra product but there's also a bed where the salesman can sleep at night so it's kind of like having a mobile hotel room wherever they go place to sleep so all their personal stuff is in there they're products are up here but this big piece here on the side that's a single piece of wood then swings up and is put on poles and then it serves as an overhang here for what is underneath so as you swing the thing up underneath our rows and rows and rows of their product so this is a built-in storefront all they have to do is just pop it up and they're ready to go selling they give their Spiel people by the stuff they pack it all up and they're gone easy quick release they can be out of town in 5 to 10 minutes now here's a more reputable patent medicine in that they're not claiming any specific extra medical things but that it's a natural herb remedy based on normal foods and herbs and spices and stuff that that you can get but it's done in such a way that increases the metabolism the pick me up the girls need and it's targeting girls so let's see what this says here she looks despondent worn out and depressed young girls butting into Womanhood often get quiet and wistful hormone last attitude overtakes them they should be watched what if they figured out how to use what are they selling what are they selling your girl needs what are they really selling they're making you afraid of something or something fear is one of the most powerful sales motives out there you make somebody afraid of something and then you're selling a solution you want to sell a product that's a good way to do it here oh you should be very afraid of your daughter when she starts acting like that we've all been through puberty people we know what happens we know what happens to our kids when they start going through it kids get moody during this period of time but here they want to make me feel afraid of it and then sell them a remedy Lydia Pickens she looks very respectable doesn't she somehow I think it's probably not a company run by an older woman just saying I love this one I'm going to go through this and then I'm going to tell you that this one actually has an effective active ingredient Baldwin's pet medicine the medicine of nature a life invigorating remedy for nervousness debility that's like where you feel a little weak consumption tuberculosis insomnia and lonus of spirits now I'm going to tell you the active ingredient and then we'll go through this list again active ingredient cocaine okay a life invigorating remedy oh yeah you'll feel great for nervousness do you really want to give somebody who's got nervousness problems Coke only if you want to go out of their skull it'll be a basket case after that so no one here debility you feel weak will Coke make you feel stronger oh yeah you'll feel like King Kong for a while consumption interestingly enough this one actually works because when you take cocaine it causes a lot of stuff in your body to tighten up the blood vessels shrink a little bit and the problem with tuberculosis is your lungs fill up with fluid and the the cocaine actually tightens that up so your lungs aren't filling up with fluid white so fast speaking of sleep do you really want to give cocaine to somebody with insomnia you guys know that if you have cocaine you're going to be up for the next two days right okay yeah this one is not a case that you want to use for insomnia Lotus of spirits oh yeah you want to pick me up OK Google here's a great one then Mariani popular French tonic wine it's a nice healthy life invigorating wine that has good health benefits actually medically speaking red wine does have certain health benefits taken in moderation cardiac benefits and whatnot but here the key is what do they do celebrity endorsement they got the pope to endorse it probably with a very nice large donation to the Catholic Church his Holiness Awards gold medal in recognition of benefits received from Ben Mariani Mariani wine tonic supposedly he was sick had some of this and it made him feel better but now we enter the world of celebrity endorsement that's what this is the pope is endorsing it this might as well be Nike hiring Michael Michael Jordan to be the face of their new brand Air Jordans wow that there's a good movie about that yeah I haven't seen it yet myself but I want to it's got like a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes which is just unheard of them anyway here's one of the more Dangerous Ones Capital white lead company now this company made things of various types including lead and Color Works you guys have heard of lead-based paint right white LED treatment for arthritis rubbing this stuff into your joints now how many of you have seen the Alice in Wonderland Alice in Wonderland have you seen that yeah okay you know the Mad Hatter you know why he's insane it's from licking the needles that he uses to show up the hats and it has lead and mercury in it and it unbalances his mind okay that's why he's the Mad Hatter in other words getting lead into your system is not a good thing so avoid it oh this is my all-time favorite cigarettes or powder probably cures asthma do you want to give an asthmatic cigarettes now you can tell that this is made by a consummate con artist what else does it address hey fever what it takes care of your allergies too kind of a brain fog thing and then I love this one oppression not depression which is like I feel so bad I want to get up no oppression from third world dictators Suffocation somebody's holding a pillow over your face boy this will fix that you can tell that this was not made by somebody who is educated they were just throwing things in there hey they'll buy it anyway no problem we can sell whatever we want they're just ordinary cigarettes but they sell them as health benefits yeah so you had to really be careful when you deal with the world of patent medicines okay so let's come back to the railroads railroads change everything when the Transcontinental line links up everything about business in America changes now up to this point the big business does anybody know where big business was really centered take a stab if you were to think about a big business City up to the Civil War what was the big city it was known for Commerce New York maybe Boston maybe Philadelphia yeah they're on one side of the country well for you one side of the country what about the other side if you're doing business out of New York can you effectively do business in California with that company not really ideal for that and that's when the middle of the country becomes far more important with the rise of the Transcontinental Railroad comes the rise of a new major city that becomes the focal point of business in this Second Industrial Revolution period Chicago Chicago will become the center of the American railroad World you've heard the phrase all roads lead to Rome because the Roman Empire they were these big roadbuilders and all of them would eventually find their way to Rome well all roads lead to Rome all railroads lead to Chicago same basic principle Chicago was designed to be the center Hub and as a result they have the fastest trains running out of Chicago if you have an older slower train you don't put it on a Chicago route you put it out in the boonies Chicago wants speed they want efficiency the best trains the most trains the fastest trains are running out of Chicago so if you want something delivered fast you have a Chicago room if you want something delivered in massive quantities you have in Chicago room if you have a perishable item something that's going to spoil if too much time goes by Chicago is your choice Chicago becomes the place where speed is key if you have speed issues Chicago is the best place also another thing about Chicago because there's so much traffic out of there and all the roots are super fast now how many of you have seen an old western where they're on a cow Drive you see those cowboys taking the cattle over long distances did you ever ask why are they moving why are they moving them why move them hundreds of miles like that in cattle drive well what are they doing they're taking their cattle along some kind of a roof that's pre-established that will lead right to a rail hub Abilene Kansas Dodge City or Abilene Texas Dodge City Kansas these are rail hubs where people can take their cattle and load them on trains so that they could be transported to Chicago Chicago is where the slaughterhouse is worth why me spoils and they can get it out of Chicago to the marketplace anywhere in the country before that happens the only place in the country where that's really possible okay so Chicago becomes the center of this new second industrialization world of the United States but then a couple of other people really key into these changes in what they mean one of the first guys who really effectively capitalizes on it is a man named Montgomery Ward Montgomery Ward has anybody heard of Montgomery Ward used to be the name of a major retail store it went bankrupt in the '80s but it was his business that he started up way back when and it became like a department store yeah anyway it's a little before your time but still I thought maybe somebody would have heard of it at some point Montgomery Ward was a Salesman who frequently traveled out into the boonies and realize that when he got into rural communities a lot of them were very very suspicious of the products that are being sold by companies in the cities namely because every time they buy a product from some big company in the city they get it and either it doesn't work straight out it comes in completely worthless or it will break very quickly and become worthless and when they try to get their money back for it because it was junk you're told sorry all sales are final and so they feel like they're getting screwed by people in the cities that they're victimized because of that and what they really want is just access to the same kind of goods that people in the city have just because they're in the countryside doesn't mean that they don't want products too yeah they might be Farmers but they want some of those conveniences they just don't like being cheated in the processary I am going to start researching all these different types of goods that people in the countryside want and I'm going to test them all out one by one and I'm going to make sure that I only put the good tested products in my catalog then he starts putting out a mail order catalog but what makes it unique is he guarantees that if you are not satisfied send it back and he will refund your money what's more that satisfaction guaranteed money money back that they can get from it it's something that he actually follows through with so if something does break right away or it's not working right they'll send it back to him and he will give them their money back so he gets a reputation for being honest and respectable doing legitimate business and of course a lot of the products work as advertised so his products have good success rate and if they break he backs it what's more is if it starts breaking regularly and he gets a whole bunch back he goes back to the manufacturer and he says I have a lot of demand for these but I'm not going to keep them in my catalog unless you fix it and at that point they have to go he's telling us how to do our business but he is ordering a lot maybe we ought to see what we can do to fix that whereas if it was anybody else I'd say hi you know buyer beware and they wouldn't even respond to it but with enough volume of purchasing somebody can go in and stay hey you have to start making your products better quality otherwise I won't carry it and so he actually gets those big businesses to respond in a positive way love his catalog it started out as only 13 pages long in 1872 10 years later the catalog is 240 pages and he has tested out every product in there it will continue to grow over time and his dominance in the mail order business will last all the way into the 1890s before it is effectively challenged the man who challenges Montgomery Ward and ultimately surpasses it if someone named Richard Warren Sears Richard Warren Sears was a railroad agent he worked for the railroad and he frequently went up and down the railroad lines to different towns and so he was always traveling on business and one thing that he liked to do since his operation was out of Chicago The Hub he would go looking around town for all sorts of really great stuff that people down the line might be interested in and see if he could get it from a bargain one day he got into this jewelry shop and this Jeweler had six absolutely gorgeous pocket watches that he had made they were beautiful and he was selling them for a steal and Sears said how come these are so low I mean I've seen stuff like this a whole lot more expensive than he says yeah but they're just not selling people aren't buying them right now I don't know what to do and so Richard Warren Sears takes a look at that and he says you know what I'll take all six ers then take these on down the line and sells them one at a time in various locations for more than double what he paid for I can do my job as a railroad agent and make some extra money on the side I'm doing really great he gets back to Chicago talks of that jewelry he says I'll make a deal if you're willing to sell them to me for that same price you just sold them to me I will pay for 20 up front Jeweler says done he comes back a couple weeks later the watches are all made he takes those sells them on down the line for more than double for all of them it only takes one trip and he's sold all 20 of them at that point Richard Warren Sears says okay railroads are the key to this business but rather than selling things one at a time it'd be a whole lot better people came to me now of course he knows about Montgomery Ward he says you know that catalog is really successful because of that satisfaction guaranteed money or your money back that he puts on there money back guarantee that's what people want to see now he does not want to go through the process of Montgomery Ward did testing every single product so he'll put stuff in his magazine sight unseen but if they start coming back as junk and he has to keep refunding money he will go to them saying fix this or I'm never doing business with you again and even more than Montgomery Ward Sears is pushing so much they can't afford to ignore Sears did something very significant as well a lot of times people at this period of time who were Jewish were very discriminated against but he found a man named Alva Roebuck who was there's no other word for a genius he was a logistical genius he knew how to organize everything the whole process of ordering to filling to delivery he had it all down he was brilliant and so Richard Lawrence Sears goes into business with this guy named alvaroba started the Sears robot company Sears did the sales he did the marketing Roebuck took care of the logistics people order we fill it we send it and railroads were the key for shipping their stuff out they could get anything to any place in the country and under two weeks that's incredible for that period of time anywhere even out in the boonies they could get to you in less than 2 weeks people wanted City Goods so they they stood up to that but they also held the businesses accountable when the businesses are cutting corners and their products are bad Sears comes in and says you fix this right stop doing business with me they fix it they wouldn't listen to the little guy but they will listen to him both of them will send you their mail order businesses in Chicago they have the fastest most economic roots in the country so both of them you Chicago is that hub to give you an idea of how fast Sears group it took 11 years before Montgomery Ward had a 240 page cattle it started at 13th within a year Sears catalog was at 322 pages the following year it was $532 pages yikes he is just play the 1970s the Sears catalog is this thick they won't even send it to you you actually had to go to a Sears store to look through it because they don't carry all the products in the store if you don't see it in the store they'll order it for you out of the catalog so you can go down to the catalog department and order out of their massive catalog of course they don't do that anymore you want to order something from them you do it online a lot easier but it kind of gives you an idea of how significant their mail order business really was they will even start carrying model T's at one point yeah you can buy a car through his catalog he will sell you a Model T and transport it to you yeah kind of interesting now when the catalogs initially come into the countryside the people who run the local country stores are very unfriendly about that they see these as a threat but then their opinion changes over time they can't stock everything and when people come in looking for something they say we just don't carry it don't get enough demand for it now they can say I don't care but hey I've got this catalog let's look through it and see what we can find and we'll get it ordered for you and people think hey this store guys really great he's got that catalog I know anytime I need something that he doesn't have he can order it for me that pulls people into his store hey do you have this and he can say yes and they'll buy it or hey you have this and so it actually helps their business it doesn't hurt it that was something that the store owners in the remote areas start coming to realize what is the significance of Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck first of all it brought the same level of consumerism that people in the cities enjoy out to people in the countryside a lot of people in rural communities felt like that the city dwellers urbanites are always looking down their nose with them are they right yeah they see him as picks out in the sticks hey hey see been looking at the back end of that sheep too long yeah they really go after him and so the people in the city do tend to have an attitude well part of that is earn there is more Creature Comforts in the cities than in the countryside there's more products there's a lot of things that cities have that Countryside doesn't consumerism is now available in the countryside and that means at least as a consuming country and remember America is a place that was established as a consumer Haven people want their stuff ever since the colonial period it's been that way well this makes it possible for them to have access to more and better stuff and to do so in a very reasonable way in ways that it was still very much divided after the Civil War also they learn how to sell if you don't sell a product if you're trying to sell a product you don't sell the product you sell a concept you sell what that product will do for you you don't sell the product itself you can say well it does this this this and this by it today and there's still people who try that and it kind of works if that's what you're looking for but if you're trying to persuade someone to buy you have to use persuasion the right way you sell them a concept comfort quality of life convenience help fear and a solution for them vanity looking your very best sex appeal you want to be attracted to the opposite sex or whoever you're being attracted to hey fun this is a big thing with cars they still do this there was a car commercial out a few years back it was a Cadillac dad I don't know if any of you remember it where a woman sits inside this car and the announcer says when you turn on your car does it return Yes what features do they have in that car that I haven't heard about anyway sex is a big seller if you can equate sex appeal with a product sells very well so these are just a number of the concepts that can be sold but there's a lot more think about all the different things that people feel inadequate about or they really wish they had a better way of doing things for or you know something needs to be addressed they have character flaws that make them self-conscious about certain things product to address that so you heighten their self-consciousness and then you sell in the solution that's Modern Advertising right there people sure yep exactly yeah good case she was saying didn't they sell milk this way when they started cutting the milk down to like 2% and then they started selling skim milk as a way for women to watch their figures hey remove the fat it's a whole lot healthier for you you're not drinking all that fat on your hips time there's a big leap forward in technology as well and one of the people most responsible for that big Leap Forward was a man named Thomas Alva Edison now when you think of Thomas Edison what comes to mind usually anybody know what he's really famous for the light bulb yes he's famous for making he didn't invent the light bulb he invented the first practically manufacturable rifle which is really even more important because we now sit in a sea of Edison in so many things in this room Edison is responsible for them the motion picture camera and the motion picture projector modern movies this screen ultimately you go far enough back he inspires this music the entire music industry he started it what music onto a hard medium so that you can listen to it again and again now eventually they will go from cylinders to records and you can still get records today although most people are under either CDs or MP3s or whatever else but he set up modern media everything that we have how many have you watch the movie this week how many of you have listened to music at one point this week he's responsible for that so he's responsible for so many things but he's also responsible for why we have electricity coming out of our walls plug all over the place and his rival was a man named Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla was in it for the science Edison was in it for the money Edison was a greedy bastard he wanted to get rich he wanted to be a Robert Barron and in fact he became one let me give you an example of that how many of you have an electric bill okay who do you pay your bill to what's the company's name Southern California Edison yeah he's been dead a century and you're still paying yikes talk about rich kind of blows your mind to think about that doesn't yeah they're really big rubber bands you're still paying money to anybody ever buy their gas from Chevron you're still paying Rockefeller Chevron so Robert barons in a lot of ways they're still alive and well today okay so Thomas Edison was wanting to build up the power grid he controlled power distribution for the City of New York which was a great place to start that's where the real rich and the real famous all live but in order to sell electricity you needed stuff that ran on electricity so he had to come up with new inventions he had to show that hey here's a product that runs on electricity that you can't benefit from without it and the light bulb was a key everybody loves light bulbs imagine what your life is like today if somebody shuts your power off after a day it becomes really inconvenient after 3 days your food is spoiled in the refrigerator and your emptying out your freezer because it all melted everything's starting to get nasty after a week of being out of power things are really getting ugly aren't they imagine what it's like being in the middle of that all of a sudden shut off the power of your back in the 1800s that's where you're at you want to cook and fire up the grill in the backyard you're cooking over fire you want water you have to bring the water from outside well actually it's not electric so I suppose maybe the water pump still work but basically think about big natural disasters and what people go through that is basically reverting you all the way back to the 1800s Edison is largely responsible for bringing us into what we have today the modern convenience is we get used to and he created over 2,000 inventions that he has patents for now did he invent those himself he had armies of people inventing stuff but where he makes his real contribution is this he invented a method of assembly line invention using the industrial factory system to create new products this is where his contribution is why you ever hear of a company called Intel they use the same exact process that Edison pioneer to modify and make their chips better whole teams of people in an assembly line processor trying different things what about bees how often do they come out with the new phone every 6 months they're about certainly once a year at least okay that's because Samsung Apple LG Google Microsoft and whoever else is putting out phones all are trying to do the next best thing they want to improve their phone and so they've got armies of people working on every little feature hey we found a way to make the computer chip faster oh great hey we found a way to make the screen sharper hey we found a way to get better definition out of the camera and they incorporate those in the next edition of their phone modern research and development that's what he created this is the way our technology companies operate today they get more and more efficient and far better at it over time he's the one who showed everybody how to do it now he had an ongoing dispute with a man named George Westinghouse and Westinghouse is the guy who financially back Tesla now this led to a battle over the format Edison wanted to put out DC power whereas Tesla was advocating for alternating current health which one do we have in our walls you know what kind of power is coming out of that plug AC so Tesla won this one well part of the reason is because people don't really like Edison they admire him and all of his accomplishments but the truth is Edison was a jerk he was not a nice person and he rubbed a lot of people the wrong way whereas Tesla wasn't really offensive but Edison still went after him with a vengeance now one thing I want to show you here is what Edison will do to try to show the dangers of AC power he is going after Westinghouse he's going after Tesla saying AC power should not be used because it's dangerous DC power doesn't have nearly the amount of danger that AC power does it's too easy to get electrocuted and so to that end he uses a big popular invention that he came up with the motion picture camera the motion picture projector to make a movie showing exactly why they should go with DC power and not AC power he bought an elephant called topsy from the Coney Island Zoo shown here now was older she was an old elephant and Edison says I'm going to hook up a whole bunch of electrodes to toss Topsy and run AC power through them and I'm going to show you exactly how dangerous this is now if this happened today pedo would be all over him here it is this is the movie he made notice he's running electricity through it now there goes topsy there's Edison okay now this Movie lasted a little longer than that it was about 30 seconds or so long so you get to see the whole jolt and then the smoke starts to rise and rise and rise and then boom you see the the part where the elephant died all right despite that very graphic demonstration people still agree to go with ACS and the reason is because AC is a lot more flexible and it's easy to use it's easy to distribute over longer distances Within the local sphere in order to do it with DC power into homes you have to do what are called loops which is a little bit more cost of cost expending but very efficient use of DC power can make this a good choice so Edison wasn't entirely wrong as a matter of fact if you want to go to England and use your stuff on it you can you need what's called a Transformer power transformer you probably heard a power Transformers right oh the Transformer probably blue well what is the Transformer do it changes AC to DC or DC to AC that's the job of it that's what it's designed to do and Edison actually got a patent off of this turns out the state of New York was so impressed with his demonstration that they decided to use it in capital punishment this was the invention of the electric chair when he and when he electrocuted Topsy and put her to death using electricity they said hey that looks like a pretty efficient way to kill people too so New York starts using the electric chair and others will adopt it as well okay another invention that he is credited with inventing was something called the fluoroscope you would better know it today as an x-ray machine using x-rays one thing around the turn of the 20th century that 1880 to 1920 period saw a big rise in experimentation with radioactivity this is the same time that Madame Curie Mary Curie is doing all the scientific experiments to use radium to treat cancer she makes a lot of leaps forward in that but she ultimately gets cancer from the radiation and dies but she won two Nobel prizes along the way how many people can say that one too much much less one yeah pretty significant but he saw that radioactivity as a possible application that he could use so he gets hold of X-ray material and uses it and says okay I'm going to take a picture of the human body would it work well he gets a subject one of his employees lays down on the table takes the picture of him the guy dies two days later from radiation exposure Edison would not go near that thing again he says that thing is just too dangerous I'm not touching it again somebody else will come along later and say no no Edison's machine actually works all you got to do is turn it down he had it set 200 times higher than it needed to be that's why the guy died he died of radiation overdose but if you turn it way down all of a sudden it becomes a whole lot safer now how many of you have not had an x-ray in your life even teeth you don't have your teeth x-rayed teeth is one people forget about oh yeah that's right everybody's had them we've all had one Edison invented the technology for that too so he had a big big impact in how a lot of those things were established there was another big technology that Rose in the consumer culture of America as well that changed it forever something that affects all of us cars automobiles now before they were Horseless carriages which basically had an on-off switch it was either moving or it wasn't there was no real speed control also they didn't have brakes you were accelerating or you were just coasting and you would roll to a stop does that sound like a good way to drive no brakes on your car yeah not very safe and Ford starts experimenting with different features of Horseless carriages to make them more usable more controllable eventually he comes out with a product that he says okay this one's ready to mark and so in 1906 he puts out his very first model car the model n and he sells it for $600 his car company is capable of putting out 100 cars per day at this point and he is getting so many orders in he can't keep up it wasn't long before the glaring limitations of the model and become apparent and Henry Ford is absolutely committed to improving on that design and it was then that he will release will be released in what during 1908 and it would be coming out in 1909 so the model and had only been on the market for about 2 years now the things with the model n first there was no roof also it only set two people and for families that doesn't do anybody any good and so he promises this new car will have some kind of head Shield they will have that capability it would seat enough people to where you can put a family in there reasonably so long as it wasn't too big and so in 1809 he starts getting ready for the release and he opens up orders and before he's ever even made one car he already has 10,000 orders lined up for 825 each now keep in mind the time back then that was a lot of money still Within Reach of people in the middle class but below that not so much Ford was looking for ways to reduce the cost of this car he wants to make it affordable for people he doesn't want to cut the people in the middle and and down below out of being able to use them he wants this to be accessible so the biggest advance that he is known for is not the assembly line everybody says well what did he come up with the assembly line other companies were using assembly lines already what he came up with was something called the mobile assembly line and this is what he was known for the mobile assembly line doesn't just manufacture the products and then assemble them all at the end that's the way most factories do it he assembled the products but then assembled the big product along the way as those parts were put on it so the part itself moved along a conveyor to each stop where people would do something to it it would move to the next spot where they would do something to it move to the next spot Etc they had short repeatable tasks and then it went on to somebody else who had a short repeatable task and that was far more effective and putting this thing together consistently with quality and with speed he's able to greatly cut down on the speed it takes also he finds other ways to innovate he says okay if somebody is standing here if you bring a party in on the floor they have to bend down to pick it up before they can put it on the car so that's inefficient it costs 5 to 10 seconds every time somebody picks up a part after you repeat that 100 times that's a lot of time time he's paying for that isn't being spent wisely so instead he says let's deliver on waste value oh waste level excuse me so all you have to do is just bend it here pick up the part put it on and he says don't have people moving anymore than this or this 30° either way 30° up and down this is your operating Zone if you can do that now there's some where you have caps that you just can't do that with but you still limit the range of motion the more you can limit the range of motion the cheaper it is to produce labor expenses are the biggest manufacturing costs but it's not the only thing he's targeting he also says you can have a Model T any color you want so long as that color is black one color one type of paint and why black is the cheapest paint to produce and how many of you've done those experiments in high school science class where you compare the heat absorption between black and other colors and you realize that black absorbs heat a lot faster than everything else that makes the process faster speed is profit the faster you get these things out the less money it costs you Along Came people who said you know he's saving money in a lot of different ways but does that really mean that this is a great car it's reliable they're still model teas that run today they use them in parades mainly or car shows but they're still running they're still operational it was a fantastic car he sold over 9 million by 1920 so basically in a decade that's huge for the amount of people that were around the world at that point that's a lot of people down to 490 he's finding ways to make it cheaper one way he doesn't put an electric starter on it to start the engine you get out front and you crank it until it catches but do you really want to be out in the freezing cold rain up to your ankles and mud turning that thing over hoping your car start that sound like fun to you also there's no doors it's an open-air cabin okay so if it's 10° outside you're getting a windshield that's cool if it's 20 below you're not using the thing you're staying inside and people are saying man close cabins would be great he says well it costs money to buy doors cost money to buy Windows the seats are hard wooden benches no upholstery and if you don't have upholstery he says no big deal if people want to sit on cushions they can provide their own but I'm keeping the cost of the car down to where people can afford to buy it but they bought cars differently than we did at least in most cases how many people go into a car dealership and put cash down for the entire car are there some who do what is that normal today most people Finance their cars and that's where General Motors comes in General Motors goes after Ford in big way they realize that the big problem with Ford is that people have to Shell out all of that money all at once up front to buy their car and so they team up with their big chemical and paint supply and together they come up with a joint venture to create the General Motors Acceptance Corporation they're Finance line they finance their own vehicles and because they can charge interest they make money on that financing trade-ins become popular as well when people say well I just bought a Ford 3 years ago and I love your car but I can't afford to just up and buy another one they say you don't have to pay the whole price will take your car in as a trade in and give you credit toward your new car make it part of your down payment you can Finance the rest okay that's starting to make sense so what did GM create they created the new used car market that will emerge where all of a sudden the cars that are coming in as trade-ins sell down here but then they finance those and now they can reach the working class so they're making the cars more accessible to everyone and the quality of cars and all the stuff that they get the whistles and bells upholstery hydraulic brakes instead of mechanical brakes Ford says mechanical brakes won't fail takes a lot of leg strength to hold those you still got 3 minutes okay and a lot of people who don't have that leg strength they're saying man I'd like those I'd like an easier breaking system hydraulic brakes what do we use today do you have to really stomp on your brakes to get your car to stop Hydraulics you have hydraulic brakes today so that is now the norm General Motors makes closed cabin cars in 1919 only 10% of cars manufactured worldwide had closed cabin by 1927 83% were closed cabin cars only 17% were remaining Ford will see his sales dwindled down to where he's only selling his cars for $310 and people stop buying them by 1926 he has to shut down his plant re-engineer a new car that's when the bottle a comes out it's closed cabin it has an electric starter it has Windows that go up and down it has doors everything enclosed has nice comfortable seats like GM put out GM also figured out that people will buy cars at different level the car isn't just a car it says something about the driver and so they use the status symbols why buy a car here for everybody when the wealthy can afford a car here that's super nice and says look at me I'm important one here and so they come up with different branding and different levels Chevrolet Oldsmobile then up here you looking Cadillac eventually they'll see a gap between Oldsmobile and Chevrolet where they missed a bit and they put a new brand in there and they're able to use a lot of interchangeable parts from different models that are common but they get the nicer cars all the way up so that becomes an important status symbol but the marketing is where they really end up going after things remember how we talked about in the consumer Revolution how they had changes in fashion that made people buy new stuff constantly well this is what GM will Pioneer every year they're model is a little different which encourages people to trade in their old one and buy a new one and of course they make money on every single term so this becomes a status symbol but how they sell is also revolutionary they focus on something modern in this time Psychology was the big name and psychology is what they will capitalize subtle but I catching persuasion little ways to equate a car with other things freedom Independence sex appeal power importance social status all of these different things are things that they will sell do car companies still do this absolutely when you turn on your card is it return the favor sexy yeah okay that's a good place to break so I will see you all Wednesday have a good one