FB 103: AC/DC: How Air Conditioning Changed the Landscape of American Politics

Cooler homes transformed Americans’ lives — and eventually their government as well.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
We all need a break from the constant cycle to
learn something new, to gain new perspectives. The Great Courses
Plus streaming service is an excellent resource to expand our
knowledge on a variety of subjects or pick up a
new hobby. I've been enjoying the Great Courses Plus while
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of Baseball is America's pastime, History of the Supreme Court,

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and Battlefield Europe have helped me connect the dots on
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Com slash o z y the Great Courses Plus dot
Com slash as. Before we start today's episode, please be
sure to support Flashback by rating and leaving a review
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you think you're getting the hang of history's unintended consequences? And,
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(01:08):
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(01:30):
In nineteen o two, a young engineer named Willis Carrier
encountered a situation that many of us are all too
familiar with, the printer problem. Carrier had been hired by
a printing company in Brooklyn. Summer humidity was causing their
paper to swell, to jam in the presses to print incorrectly,

(01:52):
so rather than a crisp image, they were getting a blur,
they were wasting tons of paper, missing deadlines. Uh, this
was a huge problem. Carrier was the son of a
farmer and something of an eccentric genius, the kind of
head in the clouds guy who would occasionally pack a
suitcase with just a handkerchief inside, or order a three
course meal and not take a bite. Carrier had just

(02:14):
graduated from Cornell when he was asked to find some
way to fix the company's printers. He molled over the
issue for weeks. Then one day, as he was standing
on a foggy railroad platform, contemplating the mist around him,
an idea struck him. Carrier solution not only solved the
printer problem, it changed the world, and his invention continues

(02:37):
to have ripple effects today that impact everything from the
comfort of your living room to the size of your government,
to even possibly the outcome of the US elections this fall.
Welcome to Flashback, the podcast from AZZI about Unintended consequences.

(02:57):
I'm your host in history instructor Sean Braswell. Up until
about a hundred years ago, a climate controlled environment was
a fantasy, the stuff of science fiction novels. Mark Twain
once said that everyone talks about the weather, but no
one does anything about it. Well, in nineteen o two,
Willis Carrier finally did something about it. Today's episode is

(03:19):
about something most of us take for granted, air conditioning,
but it's really about the power of comfort. Comfort can
move mountains, and more importantly, it can move people. Every summer,
millions of tourists and school children descend on Washington, d C.
To take in the sights and sounds of the nation's capital,

(03:40):
and every summer millions wish they had decided to visit
during a different time of year. Hundreds of thousands of
people celebrating Independence Day in the nation's capital will face
dangerous heat. Temperatures in Washington monuments and the lofty words
inscribed upon them just don't seem to matter as much
when you're baking in a pool of your own sweat hot.

(04:00):
It's really gross, silly hot. It's pretty warm today these days,
at least you have the option of going to a
museum or some other air conditioned area. But let's go
back in time for a moment, back to a simpler time,
a far less comfortable time. It can be hard for
us today to imagine Washington, d C. Or many places

(04:22):
in America before climate controlled buildings. In the days before
air conditioning, American life during dangerously hot weather wasn't all
that different from American life during beautiful cool weather. Salvador
Basil is a social historian an author of Cool How
air conditioning changed everything, and this was because people in

(04:43):
those days were operating under a Victorian standard. They did
their best to act as if they didn't notice the heat.
They were trained this way from birth. But a stiff
upper lip didn't prevent one from feeling the heat or
being affected by it. So every newspaper in America during
the summer months had it's daily column of heat prostrations
and heat strokes and heat fatalities. It was an unusual

(05:06):
for thousands of people to die during a major heatwave.
No one thought much of this. The upper floors of
office buildings, including Manhattan's dazzling new skyscrapers, were like ovens.
Most theaters lacked ventilation or windows, and audience members baked
in the scemmer months. But it went beyond that. Getting
a night's sleep was usually impossible. Some people went so

(05:29):
far as to climb to their rooftops for a breath
of air, where a few of them fell asleep and
rolled off to their deaths. To cope with the heat
during the day, people would congregate outdoors in the shade
or at a swimming pool. They drink ice drinks on porches,
take a quick dip in public fountains, take naps under
trees and parks. And the nation's capital was especially hot.

(05:55):
As soon as the plaster was dry, everyone in the
federal government realized that Washington was one of the worst
places to locate the nation's capital, and it didn't take
long for America's leaders to avoid the capital. Many presidents
used to skip town during the summer months. Teddy Roosevelt
like to go bear hunting in Colorado. Calvin Coolidge once

(06:15):
took his entire family, five canaries, two dogs in a
pet raccoon to the Black Hills of South Dakota. Members
of Congress also stayed clear of d C in the
middle of the summer, but working there was still a
miserable experience. A member of Congress would collapse and then
possibly die, and other wall makers simply assumed that he

(06:36):
had been done in by the temperature. Members of Congress
did their best to cope with the heat. Lawmakers would
adjourn for the day if the temperature got too uncomfortable.
They all adopted white linen suits. One congressman became famous
for the fact that at a certain point in the
calendar he would remove his two pay and spend the

(06:59):
rest of the time bold uh. They drank a great
deal of lemonade made for them in the cloak room,
along with other beverages, and if things got really tough,
they would sneak down to the Capital basement, where there
was a room of bathtubs, and they would take a
quick plunge to restore themselves. Sometimes even that was not enough,
but a number of those men dropped dead anyway, And

(07:20):
the buildings didn't help. There were rooms without air, there
were rooms without windows. One congressional chamber was so notorious
for heat that everyone called it the oven. The result
was absolutely unbearable, and it would be unbearable for the
next seventy years. As they kept trying to tinker with
the system, nothing helped, at least until Willis Carrier. Let's

(07:45):
go back to that foggy railroad platform in two. Now,
fog is really nothing more than water droplets that have
condensed out of the air, and as you may know,
cool air cannot carry as much water as warm air can.
So Carrier realized that if you could pass warm air
across a refrigerated object, then you could cool that air down,

(08:07):
reducing its humidity level, which in turn would cool the
surrounding air as well. Carrier built what he called the
Apparatus for treating air. It worked wonders for the Brooklyn
company that hired him, and this did indeed lower the
humidity and the printing plant. Interestingly, at the same time
the temperature came down, employees wanted suddenly to eat their

(08:30):
lunch in the workroom, and Carrier realized that he was
onto something. Of course, Carrier's invention not only removed the
humidity from the printing room, it also chilled the air.
But still this was considered something for business purposes, not
for the average person. But then Hollywood came calling. Up

(08:51):
until that point, moving pictures had always taken a huge
loss during the summer. No one wanted to spend the
hot months in a theater with no ventilation. By the
late nineteen twenties, the idea of summer movies was firmly established.
Hollywood was rolling in money, and an amazing thing happened.

(09:12):
For the first time in human history, people anywhere knew
that they had a place to go to escape from
the heat, and that costs nothing more than the price
of a movie ticket. This was momentous. Movie theaters advertised
their a c with marquees frosted over with fake snow
penguins and polar bears, signs with hanging icicles. Sometimes they

(09:35):
just propped the lobby doors open wide and let the
gush of cold air sweep over passers by. Remember, you
could enjoy great motion picture entertainment all summer long. In
cool comfort at this dinner. For decades, most Americans experienced
air conditioning only in large commercial spaces like movie theaters,

(09:58):
department stores, and hotels. Finally, in the early nineteen fifties,
it made its way into the home. R C A,
America's finest air conditioner, goes quietly about its business of
keeping you comfortable. Air Conditioning in the nineteen fifties was
not only a comfort item, but it was a real
homeowners status symbol. Whether it was a central system or

(10:21):
a window unit, everyone knew that you had it, and
everyone was impressed. Within five years, Americans were installing more
than a million units a year. For many, the home
a C unit was a revelation. At the age of six,
an aunt of mine bought two air conditioners, which was
a scandal in the family because air conditioners were only

(10:41):
for rich people. But I also noticed that at the
next family party, everyone flocked to her living room and
stayed there. So I sneaked over to the machine and
put my hand out to the grill, and there was
cool air, and I was hooked. Ever after, America's new
addictions set off an extraordinary chain of events. Places in

(11:03):
the country that had seemed uninhabitable during summer, now had
millions of new residents places like Washington, d C. Now
most objects tend to expand when they are heated up. Next, though,
we find out how the US federal government did not
start to truly expand until it was cooled down. Do

(11:33):
you have an interesting tale about unintended consequences from history
or your own life. Please share it with us by
emailing flashback at AUSI dot com. That's flashback at o
z y dot com. On the western slope of the

(11:57):
grounds that surround the U. S. Capitol Building, Washington, there
stand two unmarked stone towers. They are surrounded by large shrubs,
and most tourists on the mall walk by them without
even noticing them. These towers are the in caps for
two enormous air ducks leading four hundred feet up into
the heart of the Capitol Building. The air duck state.

(12:19):
When Congress voted for air conditioning to be installed in
both the House and Senate chambers, Willis Carrier himself was
hired to oversee the job. Next, A C came to
the White House, and then the Great Depression that gripped
America during the nineteen thirties required the federal government to
step up and assume new responsibilities for managing the country.

(12:40):
A series of federal programs, public work projects, and regulations
known as the New Deal were implemented under President Franklin Roosevelt.
Roosevelt presided over a massive expansion of the federal government
under the New Deal, and he also kick started a
new era of air conditioned government. Eight new cabinet to
partments and dozens of sub cabinet agencies have been created

(13:03):
since a C came to d C. They're about six
times as many staff members and aids for members of Congress,
who of course now work almost all year round. This
is Stan Cox, author of Losing Our Cool, a History
of air conditioning. During the twentieth century, the federal government
grew in size and probably could not have become the

(13:31):
big force that it is in our lives now if
people have not been able to work year round, whatever
the weather. In Washington today, the federal government directly employees
nearly four hundred thousand people in the DC area, and
the national bureaucracy that emanates from d C employees more

(13:51):
than nine million more and creates contract work for millions more.
Your life would be very different without that big government,
the one that cuts social secure city checks, administers medicaid,
delivers your mail, protects the quality of your air and water,
and provides for the national defense. Obviously, air conditioning is
not the only factor behind these trends. You can also

(14:12):
think war depression, population growth, and air travel for a
large federal government. Still, it's hard to imagine Washington as
it is today without Willis Carrier's invention. Think about it.
Carrier tries to improve the performance of an industrial printing process.
He winds up turning government into one of the biggest
industries in the country. So air conditioning helped usher in

(14:33):
a new era of cooler, bigger government in d C.
But it was not just a bigger government that air
conditioning helped create. The advent of a C also changed
the electoral map of America in profound ways. If you

(14:54):
cool it, they will come. Phoenix, Arizona, is a relatively
recent development. At the start of the twentieth century, Phoenix
was a town of five thousand people Salador Basil Again.
By nineteen fifty it had struggled up to a hundred
and six thousand people, But during only the next decade,
when air conditioning swept the country is population more than quadrupled,

(15:19):
and today Phoenix has over a million and a half
residence that is due to a c air Conditioning makes
a huge difference in Arizona. This is Nathan Sproul, a
political strategist in the managing director of the Lincoln Strategy Group,
a political consulting company based in Arizona. Before their stories
of folks who lived in Arizon in the nineteen twenties

(15:40):
and thirties that in the summertime, they would they would
literally sleep on their porch and they would make their
blanket wet, put a wet blanket on them and hope
that the wind blowing through the porch a screen would
keep them cool throughout the night. That's how That's about
the only way that you could survive in Phoenix prior
to air conditioning. Today, Phoenix is a sprawling metropolis, one
where summer temperatures routinely top one hundred and ten degrees.

(16:01):
Unrelenting heat bears down on Phoenix. As the temperature shoots
towards a record breaking one, fire crews are rushing to
handle a surge in heat emergencies. Without air conditioning, Phoenix
would not be possible The same can be said for
other large population centers that stretch across the so called
sun Belt, from southern California across the southwest to the

(16:22):
Gulf Coast and the southeast cities like Miami, Atlanta, Dallas.
We're not the metropolis is that we see today, stan Cox. Again,
it's no coincidence that that's the time when air conditioning
was becoming more common. During the nineteen sixties and seventies,

(16:43):
air conditioning spread quickly across the South. The combined population
of Gulf cities like Houston, New Orleans and Tampa went
from less than half a million before nineteen fifty to
more than twenty million today, and that mass migration of
people to the Sun Belt has had some major political
concert Pquinces Salvador Basil. There was a population shift that

(17:04):
completely redrew the political map of the nation, almost flipped
it entirely. So far, we've seen how air conditioning helped
grow the federal government in Washington. Up next, we learn
how states across the southern US managed to convert electric
power to electoral power in the late twentieth century. We

(17:37):
all need a break from the constant cycle to learn
something new, to gain new perspectives. The Great Courses Plus
streaming service is an excellent resource to expand our knowledge
on a variety of subjects or pick up a new hobby.
I've been enjoying the Great Courses Plus while researching this
season of flashback lectures like Playball, The rise of Baseball

(17:57):
is America's pastime. History of This Supreme Court and Battlefield
Europe have helped me connect the dots on several stories
from history. Right now, they're giving our listeners a special
limited time offer a free month of unlimited access to
their entire library. Sign up now through our special U
r L go to the Great Courses Plus dot Com

(18:18):
slash AUSSI that's the Great Courses Plus dot Com slash
o z y the Great Courses Plus dot Com slash Assy.
During that time from nineteen sixty to say two thousand,
stan Cox again, all of the major cities in New

(18:40):
England and the rust Belt, except for New York City,
lost population, whereas all of the major cities in the
South gained population very rapidly. That movement of people meant
that the apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives
needed adjusting. Cities in New England and the Rust Belt

(19:01):
lost House of Representative seats and they were picked up
by by states in the Sun Belt. In fact, there
were eight six um seats in Congress that went from
the northern region to the South. Now, one reason you
commonly hear for why the South switched from being Democrat

(19:22):
to Republican in the nineteen sixties was the exodus of
Southern voters from the Democratic Party after the passage of
the Civil Rights Laws, and that did play a part,
But the South was becoming more Republican before that, and
it was a trend powered not by ideology but by
temperature control. For nearly a century after the U s
Civil War, only a handful of the South's approximately one

(19:45):
House members were Republicans, just the ones representing some of
the mid Atlantic mountain districts and states like North Carolina.
The first district to break that trend and go Republican St. Petersburg, Florida,
in nineteen fifty four, three years after a c first
hit American homes wife Florida. And why St. Petersburg, Well,

(20:07):
what happens is that large numbers of wealthy northern Republicans,
ones who traditionally kept winter homes in places like Florida
start to move south and to stay there year round.
So the South gets a massive influx of older conservative voters,
voters who would remake the political landscape over the next
two decades, culminating with a landmark presidential election in nineteen

(20:29):
eight President Carter, told by his poster Pat Cadell that
it is all over, reportedly is preparing to concede defeat
to Ronald Reagan in the nineteen eighty presidential election. When
Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected president in nineteen seventy six,
he swept the southeastern United States, including Texas and Florida.
Four years later, against Ronald Reagan, Carter won only his

(20:51):
home state of Georgia and lost several other states like Mississippi, Alabama,
and South Carolina by extremely narrow margins. It's quite possible
that the growing power of Reagan and the Republicans in
the eighties was um fostered by this movement of people

(21:13):
from the North to the south. Air Conditioning may also
have had a hand in another important election, the one
in two thousand between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat
Al Gore. If all the states had gone red or
blue the way they actually did in two thousand. But
if they had had the distribution of electoral votes that

(21:33):
we had had back in nineteen sixty before the migration,
then Gore would have won the electoral vote and therefore
the presidency. Forget the death of John F. Kennedy or
even the Iran hostage crisis that crippled President Carter. You
could argue that air conditioning was the worst thing to
happen politically to the Democratic Party in the twentieth century.

(21:55):
But a c is not done shifting the American political landscape.
There's a new type of Southern migration underway in the
United States, one that should put fear into the hearts
of Republicans. Ever since air condition helped grow cities like
Phoenix during the nineteen fifties and sixties, Arizona has been

(22:18):
a reliably Republican state. But that is changing. Nathan Sprul again, Yeah,
the Democrats definitely performed better in twenty than most uh
political observers in Arizona thought possible. Sprul knows what he's
talking about. For years, he was the executive director of
the state's Republican Party. For a long time, many in
Arizona assumed that the state's growing number of Democrats was

(22:40):
driven by its growing Hispanic population. But what we realized
about midway through this decade was an Arizona was beginning
to pivot a little bit. But it wasn't because of
the Hispanic growth. It was because Arizona was developing, especially
American County of the Phoenix area, m such a successful economy.
For years, Arizona's Republican leaders had worked to diversify the

(23:00):
state's economy and make it more welcoming to companies from
out of state, and it worked, perhaps too well. The
unintended consequence of that, though, is that you bring in
a lot of workers from California, a lot of workers
from Colorado, a lot of workers from the East Coast
that have more Democrats leaning tendencies politically, and may come
to occupy the job because their company just moved to Phoenix,

(23:20):
Arizona to make set up its corporate headquarters. And so
Arizona is an unintended consequence of its business diversification has
also had a political diversification. As a result, Arizona today
has a lot more young, urban and suburban white voters
who tend to lean Democratic, especially on social issues. Arizona
is likely to become UH for the next work from

(23:41):
the foreseeable future, a state that when it comes to
the U. S. Sen and the presidential campaign, is going
to be a battleground state for both parties. Both parties
are going to assume that they have a legitimate chance
to win it UH, and that wasn't the case seven
eight years ago. Arizona's trajectory is indicative of a wider trend,

(24:04):
a trend still powered by air conditioning. Last year, We'll
go down in History, is the second hottest year on
record in the United States, and yet people continue to
migrate south to warmer climates in the American Sun Belt,
to places like Arizona and, perhaps even more importantly for
the political map, Texas. As of July one last year,
more than three and a half million people had packed

(24:26):
their magazine headed to the lone Star state since two
thousand ten. That's the most growth over any other state.
Florida and California follow behind, and that movement continues to
have political consequences. Isn't just a presidential election year, It's
also a census year, and this is what is going
to determine how many electoral votes each state gets and

(24:47):
we already have a pretty good sense of where things
are headed. Census may have been delayed by the coronavirus,
but early forecasts from the Census Bureau suggests that several
Sun Belt states like California, Arizona, Florida, and Texas will
gain House seats in electoral votes, with Texas likely to
be the biggest winner with a net gain of three.

(25:08):
Texas maybe a red Republican leaning state right now. But
here's the interesting thing. The current Sun Belt migration, as
Nathan Sprule points out in Arizona, is much different than
the one that took place half a century ago. Today's
migrants are not older conservatives. They are young liberal millennials
in their twenties and thirties who are fleeing northern cities
for southern metro areas like Dallas, Phoenix, and Atlanta. Many

(25:32):
demographers predict that we should expect states like Arizona and
Texas to get increasingly purple and eventually blue. As a result.
That could be a game changer for Democrats. If Texas
isn't play, it would mean not only a new political map,
but the whole political mound. So what did we learned today?

(25:59):
Number one? A quick list of things that would not
be possible without air conditioning, skyscrapers Phoenix, a large federal
bureaucracy in d C and southern Swing states. Two, we
should really have at least one monument in d C
devoted to Willis Carrier, the inventor of a C. And finally,
members of Congress routinely wilted from the heat of the

(26:22):
oven that was once the US Capitol Building. Maybe things
will get better for all of us if we turned
off the A C in the building for a while
and let them stew a bit. Flashback is written and
hosted by me Sean Braswell, senior writer and executive producer

(26:45):
at Azzi. He was produced by Robert Coulos, Tracy barram
Orio Digiza, and Shannon Williamson. Chris Hoff engineered our show
special thanks to the crew at I Heart Radio podcast Networks,
especially Sophie Lichtman and Jack O'Brien. Make sure to subscribe
to Flashback on the I Heart Radio app or listen
wherever you get your podcasts. Flashback is the latest podcast

(27:07):
from Azzi, a modern media company producing original TV series, festivals,
news and podcasts for curious people. Auzy's unique storytelling focuses
on the new and the next, whether that's forward looking
news and features, bold new perspectives on TV, or brand
new ways of looking at history. The Obama administration worked
out a brand new air conditioning system for the West Wing.

(27:29):
And it was so good before they did the system.
Now that they did the system, it's freezing or hot
in hair. And speaking of presidents and air conditioning, Donald
Trump has not been the only president to suffer from
the effects of Washington's climate. Zachary Taylor died as a
result of it. On the fourth of July in the
year eighteen fifty. Taylor attended a ceremony to commemorate the

(27:53):
newly begun Washington Monument. The president sat in full sunlight
for two hours in a black suit. He became so
overheated that he drank a whole picture of ice milk
to try to stay cool. A few days later, he
died from a resulting digestive ailment. To dive deeper, head

(28:17):
to Aussie dot com slash flashback. That's o z Y
dot com slash flashback. There you can find more of
my lecture notes from today's episode, featuring extended interviews links
to further reading and more information on the unintended consequences
of air conditioning, as well as links to other stories
from history uncovered by me and other reporters at Aussie.

(28:45):
Please be sure to support Flashback by rating and leaving
a review for us right here in your podcast app,
and remember to answer this question about next week's episode
for a chance to win a shout out. What event
helped lead to billions and extra revenue for the nba
A Take your best guests and leave it as a
comment in your podcast app along with your five star review.

(29:05):
Thanks for listening. We all need a break from the
constant cycle to learn something new, to gain new perspectives.
The Great Courses Plus streaming service is an excellent resource
to expand our knowledge on a variety of subjects or
pick up a new hobby. I've been enjoying the Great
Courses Plus while researching this season of Flashback. Lectures like Playball,

(29:28):
the Rise of Baseball is America's Pastime, History of the
Supreme Court, and Battlefield Europe have helped me connect the
dots on several stories from history. Right now, they're giving
our listeners a special limited time offer, a free month
of unlimited access to their entire library. Sign up now
through our special U r L. Go to the Great

(29:48):
Courses plus dot Com slash AUSI. That's the Great Courses
plus dot Com slash o z y the Great Courses
plus dot Com slash ASI eight