The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 516 - Brooks Brothers

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine the Brooks Brothers clothing company.  Sources Tour Dates Redbubble Merch

You're listening to the dollop on the All Things Comedy Network. This is an American History Podcaster. Each week, I, Dave Anthony, read a story from American history to Mia Migo. And Gareth Reynolds, who has no idea what the topic is going to be about. How is your winter day going? Shut up. What are you talking about? I just asked you, like... I don't want to... What are you even talking about? What a weird...

I just asked... Way to just... No. Top of the... Don't even stop. Top of the show. Just getting... No. Like, just how's the vibe? How's my winter day going?

How is your winter day going, friend? What are you like? It sounds... It's honestly how, like, and when I used to study French, the people would talk to themselves in the book, but it's like you've been translated. It's just not how a person would talk to another person. That's how this person just talked to you, person. Why do you sound like you're reading lines? I'm not reading lines, sir. I'm just... I'm having a conversation with my friend. Is it like... It's almost like how Vincent D'Onofrio and Men in Black would try to communicate.

You know, I... Like, you kind of know what language is and how to talk, but you're just... It's not time to try. There's... Take a few more months and just figure out how we talk. Way too much coming out of you for what is just a very simple question. Just a very open conversation. It was my winter day. Yeah.

It's just weird. It's a weird... It's a winter day out. It's raining a little bit. It's cloudy. Ugh. I'm just asking my friend. Someone might listen to this. No, I don't... It's good. It's fine. It's great. Thank you. I hope your winter day is good. Thank you. We should probably... I hope you're having a good winter day.

Permission to treat the co-host as hostile. Permission... Granted! Granting your own goddamn permission. Doesn't make any sense. It's like, you know how it's... And called it, quote, his jam-packed. Jam-packed?

I'm the fucking hippo guy. Steve, okay. My name's Gary. My name's Gary. Wait. Is it for fun? And this is not going to come to Tick-a-Lay Clip. Okay.

This is like anarchy. And a five-part coefficient. My room's a place. Now hit him with a puppy. You both present sick arguments. No sleep, no hip-hop. That's like no hip-hop. Action, partner.

Hi, Gary. No. Has he done, my friend? No. No. Roder. Roder in the car. Okay.

Gonna take a look at it. I do not know if it was a doctor from Connecticut. And of course as we know back then, a doctor meant anything. You just said you wanted to be a doctor. Yeah. You can just go, like, I have some... I work with brains. Which are in the foot.

I have some Beatles. I could be a doctor. What this man needs is a bite taken out of his heart like an apple. So I'm going to put this worm in your eye. It's a regular. Someone puking this open body. We need to save him. comfortable, due to his Dr. Father, who obviously was, you know, doing well.

And at a young age, Henry developed an interest in... I have to say, you playing with your sweatshirt string now makes it look like you almost have a rat tail, which I am going to now tell you is something I think you should do. You should certainly invest your time in growing a rat tail. Continue. Sorry. That's fair. I think if a rat tail on a guy my age is...

It's the perfect... If I may give you a little more advice, get divorced and grow one. We. Yes. So, at a very young age, Henry developed an interest in commerce, particularly, as a lot of us do, groceries. So he's a young kid. At a young age, he was like, I want to make money off of food.

Yeah. At a young age, he's like, what am I? I can sell pickles and lettuce. Like he just... He was a normal kid. I was like, I want to be a hockey player. He was like, I want lettuce, I want, fuck you, lettuce money. I want to sell canned olives.

Just... Cornmeal on shelves, here I come. I think the rows should be organized with little signs that let you know what lies ahead. Hey, Jimmy, I'm going to beat the shit out of you. Well, that must have been a revelatory, I mean that must have been quite a revelation in the grocery industry when they were like, why don't we put signs with like, what's in the eye? And people are like, holy fuck, I was in it out in ten minutes.

There actually is. That might be a dollop someday, but there is a whole this guy invented grocery store moment in America. Oh, just the idea of like, I need to go get mustard and being like, well, there's a lot of stuff in here. It's basically like grocery shopping used to be like going to a raw stress for less. Yeah. And just be like, it's just a lot of aisles and it's going to be in here somewhere.

It's just piles of stuff. For sure. Where's mustard? For sure. At first it was just piles. They just didn't know what to do. Just a pile. Just a pile.

We're not even like organized. Like there's a, I know we have some more oatmeal somewhere. Just start digging. I promise you, you will find what you're after. I would dig under the bread and carrots over there. I dug under the bread and carrots. It's sort of just a weird arrangement. I remember when I got up, I got a box of oatmeal and then like we usually do, I just open the

box and then I just threw it all. I threw it into the, I'll just get some croutons cause they're closed. Yeah. Okay. So those, I'll just, I'll just wet the croutons. I think those are over. I've been here, I've been here, I've been here for over five hours. Yeah.

I mean that's, so it's a short trip for you. So I, I, it's not fast. I would check over by the windows cause that's usually where I throw the croutons. I just am unable to, I can't start to walk around here. Yeah. Piles. Yeah. I just wish there was a better way to do it, but this is groceries.

I know. No, no, no. Yeah. There's no system that would make this quicker. No. It doesn't seem like it. It's just. Anyway.

God no. All right. Well, I'm just going to get out of here. I got my gum croutons. Yeah. Yeah. You get what you can find. I am.

Yeah. Almost broke. All right. Well, that's a nightmare. Losing money. Take care. Okay. Bye.

Come back to the pile store next week. Well, it's the best. It's the best. This is unbelievably good. Yeah. Thank you. There's a man bear. He's buried under these pepperoncini.

Oh my God. That's the body. All right. Take care. Jesus. I wonder what happened to him. He went under there for some tomatoes. Yeah.

Well, again, it's just the absolute nightmare in here. Take care. This is as good as it gets. Okay. Bye. Bye. Piles. Bye.

So for groceries in New York City was the Oasis like just tons of groceries going on there. Sure. This is like, we're talking about this before grocery chains, so specialty markets, like you would just go to one place for one thing, like meats and another store, we just have mustard, I guess. And then whatever. That's, that guy's like, this is not a good business model. So it was like meat, seafood, booze.

This is like the most common things. So Henry opens up a grocery store. Right. Okay. And little boys dream. Yep. Live in your dream. You marry a woman.

You married, married a Lavinia lion. They have six kids. They're going to just start cranking them out. They love the fucking, they're totally into that. Uh, Henry, Henry starts to enjoy the store successful. He starts traveling to Europe. He enjoys going to Europe. And this is where he falls in love with clothes.

He's like, look at these fancy clothes. I love to dress styling. He's a styling. He's a dandy at the time. He's a dandy. It says, it says a lot about the American face. So we didn't have the eye for fashion here, what we were, I mean, no, I think we were surprised.

I think we were more like, how do I survive? And you know what I mean? This was more. And even when there were like bubble ups, we would be like, I'm sorry, a woman wearing pants. What, how do we drown her? That's right. Did you say bubble ups instead of pop ups?

I'm not willing to talk any further about what I've said on this show. That's fair. Before I'm willing to move forward. That's fair. And if you're good with that, that's good. If not, I will leave the meeting because I don't got it. So do you, a pop up is more like a fizzy, like a, like a, I'm not going to keep re-legislating the past with you, a bubble, a bubble store where the, I'm done talking.

I will literally leave the meeting. It's unique. And the, and the products come to the top. Yeah. You're having a good little time. A little bit, a little bit. Good little time. Make a mistake.

Looking at the door. That's what my friends are like. My friend, if I like fuck up a word, my friends, it's like the three stooges entering a room. They can't wait to drop elbows. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I was going up the shares stairs, like the shares, you want up the shares? How'd you go up the shares?

Dumbass. I'm like, all right. Sorry. I think there's something going on here. You guys were all on drugs. Take it easy. We all took the same drugs. So he's go, he starts going to Europe all the time, buying clothes.

The latest, that's where the latest styles are all born, right? You know, Paris and, and so you don't need to tell me, and at this time close, they're becoming more of like individual expression as opposed to just like a status uniform or like just these are what is needed, right? So lace, periwigs, all, you know, all kinds of shit. They're becoming a thing of the past. What's a periwig? Is that one of those?

That's, that's like the fucking, the thing you see on judges in, yeah, right, right, periwigs. So everybody wore a big pair. I think we did an episode on periwigs, didn't we? Yeah, we did. Yeah, we did. Yeah. But you don't remember it.

So, but it's a, it's a, it's very exciting because after this, we're doing one of those quizzes. Yeah. Patreon. So it feels like I'm going to do pretty well. No, you can tell. Just based on that sort of. Yeah.

You can tell already. Yes. So it's getting more high, higher cut coats and full, full skirts, jackets for women, trousers, like all kinds of stuff is going on. So. Okay. Now Henry is also like, he doesn't also want to travel all the way to Europe to do the kind of shopping he wanted to do, right?

So he sees an opportunity and grocery stores for pants, pants, groceries, yeah, every. So what I'm doing is welcome to grocery pants. You take the, there's a pair of pants over there at the bottoms of soda. You grab them. You just put all the food you want in there and that's instead of, instead of just carrying them in your hands. Different than what I'd envisioned, but I love it too. Thank you.

That's great. So it's like the pants are a bag for shopping. That's right. There's no, I don't know what else to do with the pants, but that's what we're doing. It's a crazy idea. Well, I go to Europe a lot. Yeah. Okay.

Great. You know what I'm talking about. So it makes sense. So he's 45 in 1818, he buys a building at the corner of Cherry and Catherine Street in Manhattan, which is a sweet location. And he opens up the H and D H Brooks and company and he made suits and fashions he saw in London. He sells them to the upper class, upper middle class, right? Okay.

In New York City. So it takes off quickly. Just that's it. It was a great idea. It takes off. He brings in his brother John. It brings in a couple of his sons, Henry and Daniel. So it's, you know, enough for four guys to live off of.

They're making money. The name of the place is crazy too. H and D H Brooks, well, H for him and D H for Daniel and Henry, John obviously got the share. Oh, his kids? Yeah. John would get moved out of the picture pretty quick. Like he's like, I don't like working with you.

In an ad he wrote, said, quote, to have on hand a very large stock of ready made clothing just manufactured with a due regard to fashion and embracing all the various styles of the day. So he's bringing that European fashion mentality to the state. So it's a key location, like I said, right in the middle of a busy commercial district near the Catherine slip, which is on the river and allows for loading on loading cargo, right? So it's a good, it's a good spot. And that means he can also ship stuff around the country too really easily.

Okay. So by 1825, his store is making 50,000 a year fucking back then he's killing it. Eight billion now. It's $950 billion if we're just making up things. It's a lot of scratch. He opens up a second store, right? Now obviously in America at this time, slavery, still a thing. Dave, we were having fun and then you always have to bring it back to the fact that this

country has thought owning people was acceptable since its inception. I just... Look, I know as America, we have made up for that. It's nice to ignore the things. Yep, I agree. Keep telling you that's the angle I'd love to take. So the American South has a dominant cotton industry that relied on slave labor. We all know this is like the only thing we're taught.

New York category... That's true. That is like the only thing that they're like, that will let in. The rest is bullshit. They're like, then there were slaves, then someone made the gin mill. Probably because they're like, and a white man invented a way to get the seeds out. That's probably the only reason why. And then there was the cotton mill.

It's just because it's part of Eli Whitney's origin story. So New York obviously has a more complicated relationship than most northern states because of all the fashion, the industry, you know. And so there they drag on the abolition of slavery for a while, a longer time. Like in 1799, New York passed the Gradual Emancipation Act. Oh my God. Yep. Just...

Yep. Got to do it. Let's take it slow. Can't let people be free. So it grants freedom to people born after July 4th, 1799. Oh my God. Hey, let's... Let's combine birthdays.

It's like how they're outlawing cigarettes in New Zealand. But I also did on July 4th. Okay. I just love that like, let's have... Well, the slaves can have a big happy day on July 4th too. But here's the thing. It was only when women reached the age of 25 and men 28. So they're not freed immediately.

So if they're born after, but then they still aren't free until they're in their 20s. Right. So it's great. Wow. It's a... What a great compromise. It's... It really is just classic government like, all right, we understand that that's morally

reprehensible and disgusting. Here's what we'll do. We'll put a little water in the pot. Does that help? Does that make everyone feel good? So this is what people call pragmatic. This is what they say when they say, you know... No, this is...

Don't rush into it. No. You're crazy leftism. They want to do everything too fast. Yeah. Well, when you want $15 an hour, it's like, wait until that means 10. Wait until that money actually, actually, is like $10 in the new economy. So no one's freed immediately and they're not, they're not technically like slaves,

but they have to provide free services to their mother's masters. So it's... It's words. The person's still a fucking slave. Right. So this is it, gradually emancipating slaves and without causing slave owners to get mad. That's basically what they're doing. Right?

So... Okay. In... In 1817, right? 18 years later, a law was passed that freed all slaves born before 1799, because there's still some that are in that little area, right? There's still the 20... Right.

20, you know, whatever. Right. But, yes, there's another but, but... So it's called the gradual emancipation law instead of the previous one. The name is as honest as it gets. Yeah. I mean, it could be more honest, but it is like... Yeah.

The slow rollout. Yeah. So this one's the gradual emancipation law of 1817. The previous one was the gradual emancipation act. So this one rolled out over 10 years. They actually wouldn't be free until 1827. Oh, but there were still some loopholes. In 1830, there were still 75 slaves somehow with all this shit that they worked in.

And it wasn't until 1848 that there were no slaves in New York. So basically they just fucking slow jammed the whole thing. Yeah. So, yeah, this is what they call a pragmatic approach to slavery. Well, it also shows you that like, at the time, obviously like, the people were probably, you know, they do it because they're like, people are gonna freak out if we, but again, when you look back, you're just like, what the fuck are you doing? Because they, because all these guys are like, well, that's my property.

And we're like, right, that's why we're, that's why we're getting rid of it. Yeah. But I bought it. Right. But that's why we're getting rid of it. That's what I own. I own the person. Wow.

Yeah. That's why we're getting rid of it. You kind of expect, you expect, you expect like, I don't know, whatever. Yeah. No, no. It's dumb and horrible. And that's who we are. So, so all this is to say that H and a D. H. Brooks store came into their own while

slavers the thing, which meant, well, that's a market meant that it's a market. There's a, there's a, there's a market there to be had slaves. The slaves were closed. Market. Oh, okay. That's what I thought you meant. It just seems very crazy. Okay.

So it's very, it's very common for slaves to own bad conditioned clothes, right? Hammy downs and they made them themselves and, you know, whatever else, but they also would occasionally have slaves that dress really nice. For instance, like if you're a chauffeur, a chauffeur slave, you, you would be dressed better, right? So there's, you know, more when they're out and being presented as things like that. So they're, okay. I got you.

Right. It's because it's an extension of the, the, like white purse, essentially the white person is sort of going like showing, I don't even want to say, you know, it's sort of being like, I'm affluent, like, look at how presentation, I can be presentation, but with anything. Yeah. Look, I dress up my slaves. That's a fucking awesome. I look.

Oh my God. So it was also not uncommon for slaves to try to buy clothes with what little money they gathered because they would also like to, because they're people, they would also like to look fucking nice. Yeah. Right. They're like, how about if I go on, I meet this, I'm, I'm interested in this lady. I dress a little well today.

Like, right? So. Right. And look, there's fucking millions of slaves. So that means if Brooks is going to go after a millions of customers and they do. I like that idea that he's like in his office one day and he's just like, you know, I just had an amazing revelation about slavery. You mean that it's a board?

We should stop it? No. Sorry. Look at my eyes. They're dollars. We could market clothes today. So there was a really big customer of Brooks, Dr. William Mercer, and he owned four, four plantations in Adams County, Mississippi, owned more in Illinois and New Orleans, Illinois,

Mississippi and New Orleans. He had hundreds of slaves and he thought they should have a pleasant appearance like his other things, like his car, other things that he owned. Nice. Nice order. And he liked things that he owned to be engraved with M's. So he had. So what is that called?

Monogram? Yeah. It's monogram. So he had, you know, his trays, his dishware, they all had M's. It's like what P Diddy does that. He has a P and a D on everything. Okay. Okay.

Totally normal stuff. I knew I. Absolutely. There's a great story of he had a, someone to come in, an interior decorator and to do his house and they quit because he wanted P and D on everything. Well, it also makes sense why he went from Puff Daddy to P Diddy. So I was like, you can just change your whole name. He's like, it has to start with P and D.

That's 100% true. It has to. I'm, I'm pot committed. I'm fully pot committed and he's P and D on everything. That's true. You know what? Call me Peter Dinklage. That's my new name.

It says anything that's a P and a D. The only. Works for me. It's funny. Peter Dinklage moved into his house after he left. Wow. That'd be amazing. That'd be amazing.

So he's an ambitious buyer. He's ready to sell. He loves the market. He wants to sell. The only condition is he's really looking for a person with a P and a D as their initials to move in. Because the gates, the whole angle is not going to make sense. Oh my God.

You're not going to want to get into the spa because it's just the bottom, the pool. Our target demo for this house is honestly Peter Dinklage. Yeah. That's it. Because we're really, we're looking to sell it at Peter Dinklage. Yeah. Because you've seen the curtains. The curtains are.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It has to be that. Yeah. I guess it could also go maybe to Paula Deen. That's a switch. Yeah.

It's just about to say might not be, I wonder why her name came to mind in this episode. So yeah. So he's got the monogrammed stuff as you would. And he had his slaves wear suit jackets with an M on them. Now if you're, if you are a slave, I mean, it seems like that's going to be like warmer. I don't know. I mean, I guess it would. I mean, I'm sure it's a nice coat, but again, it's still, it's still like, I don't know.

It's, it's. I mean, obviously it's fucked up because it's like I own this person is to wear this jacket, but it's. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure it's a nicer suit jacket than you would get otherwise. I don't know. It's all that, you know, you're, you're right. It probably looked better, but also it's fucking owning people.

So it's fucking terrible. Right. Yeah. Yes. Right. And they mass produced them, they're sold at a slightly cheaper price than typical suit jacket and it's a steady stream of business. So he is tapping into the slave owner market.

So it's Mercer demo, bro. And all these other dudes and they're all fucking buying jackets that are ready to fit. They, um, so that, and they don't just shop for themselves. They're coming into the store. They're like, I want a hundred jackets for my slaves and then gay cab up me. Can you do me up? So it's like a highbrow place for, it's hard to just, it's, so what I'm saying is it, it's rich guys go there to dress themselves, but then also, oh, do you want these for your

slaves? It's like a crazy combo thing that breaks your brain a little bit. It is breaking my brain a little bit. That's fair. Um, and so these guys would spend a lot because he's buying hundreds of things, one thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, like I said, Mercer is definitely not the only one, but he's just the one we

know about the most because he's the most documented. Um, Aaron Greenwald, curator of, for the historic New Orleans collection quote, Brooks was top of the line slave clothing. Slave traders would issue new clothes for people they had to sell, but they were usually cheaper. Sorry. Say that one more time. Slave traders would, they would get.

So if a slave trader is selling a slave, he would look, he would try to dress them up a little bit nicer for the, and there you go to Brooks, right? Throw some, uh, of course. So as, as slavery is peaking in America, Brooks is the go to top notch place for slave clothes. And slave owners, uh, they're rich. So why would they settle for anything less than top of the line? Like you're like, I want to dress my slaves nice. I'm going to go to the best slave owner dresser guy.

Take this money and probably do something better for them with it would be my thought. But okay. Sure. I'll bite. So they're making fucking bank, uh, off slavery and, uh, and they're in New York City. But in 1930, sorry, in 1833, Henry Sands Brooks dies and his son Henry Jr. takes over. Now slaves, because they're far away, right? They're mostly in the South.

They don't come to the store to be fitted for the jackets, which makes it a little bit of a problem. At this time, sure, that's the only way you're making a suit and on the, yeah, you, you size it up. I mean, I guess he's a little bigger than me. Yeah. That's, I mean, honestly, you know what I mean, like, I get, I think he, his arm might be longer.

I think he has a smaller butt. I don't know. I just basic. It's like me, but like maybe 15 extra pounds ish and two inches taller. Try that. So they would, they would go to New York to get their own clothing and then they would buy a bunch of clothes on site and then hand them out to the slaves. So they had to come up with a one size fits all kind of jacket cut suit.

Yeah. It's like a, they probably had like a medium and a large, like a small and a large, like they had a one size sort of deal. Okay. So they were, so the slaves are, so they made like small, medium, large suits. Yeah, basically. And so the slaves are picking the cotton and then it's going up to New York and then they're turning into clothes and selling it to the slave owners.

It's good. Oh my God. It's not, it's not a fucked up thing at all. So based on this idea in 1849 H and DH book Brooks came up with a new type of suit. I, I did, I am not, I'm, I don't even want to know, honestly. I don't think I want to know a suit of a certain cut already finished and ready to go. So no tailoring is necessary. You're walking in a store and you're buying a suit.

This has never happened up until then you're getting fitted. You're a suit, a suit that they are saying is going to fit you perfectly. Yeah. You're walking in and just buying it. It's, it's ready, ready, ready made. So now they know. Now here's the thing. They know latex suits marketing wise.

They can't come out and go, Hey, we have this new idea based on clothes we've been selling to slaves for years because it's a bunch, they're trying to sell to a bunch of white guys. Right. So, right. So they came up with a different hook now a year before, a year before gold had been discovered in California, which led to the gold rush in 1849. So where are we?

Is this as rumple still skin about to make an appearance in this story? So it's the exact same time they come up with the ready made suit idea and tons of people heading out west to California to get their fortunes. And if you're rushing out, if you're just fucking, we got to go right now. You don't have time to go get a suit tailored and go through the whole process. So we've all been there. You need a suit. You're in a rush and you don't have time for the.

That's right. So you need a ready made suit and ready made basically meant. Is this the story of Joseph a bank? Well, this is, this is the story that Brooks tells, right? So now you need ready made clothes that you can just grab now. You go into a story buying you where I'm out basically. So before then they were called slop clothes. They had to be made for each person.

People wore the clothes for years. They would be hand me downs like clothes were just different. And then the ready made suit is what they came up with. And it's still celebrated. This company is credited to the day. And of course the company is called Brooks Brothers. Oh my God. Oh my God, Dave.

Oh my God. After I made a Joseph a bank. What? So why? Why? Why don't we know these things? This is a one. Why are they not?

Why don't we know course light is Nazi water? Why are these things not just like, if I was in competition with Brooks Brothers, I would be like, hey, here's the one thing we can promise. Our inception isn't based in slavery. Come on down to the men's warehouse. You got to like the way you look. I guarantee it. So we're not founded through slavery.

So the gold rush is what the brook. We should probably explain to any international listener that I mean, is Brooks Brothers not known internationally? I don't, I don't know. But I would. No, I don't think so because they had ready made in Europe at this point, I think. But it's just the same thing as Volkswagen or BMW, right? Yes, they used the labor of people who are about to be fucking killed to build their empire.

And stand the test of time. And they still somehow are like, hey, we don't bring that up. So that was a long time ago. So quote, this is what the Brooks Brothers said, quote, pioneers of the gold rush unable to wait on the whims of a tailor flocked to Brooks Brothers to pick up ready made clothing and innovation of Brooks introduced to aid the fortune seekers in their quest. And this, this explanation is still on the Brooks Brothers website to this day, even though it's a lie.

It's a lie made to hide the fact that they were making ready made suits. So they say that they are the goal, that they're the gold rush suit people and ignore that where the real we do the real money was ignore the real. Yeah. Wow. Because how, because how many guys were actually grabbing a suit on their way to dig a fucking hole? Yeah, we got it.

We got to look nice when we go for it and shift it for gold going out to I want to have a we didn't go to look so I'm going out to pass reveal I'm gonna dig a hole in the ground. Nice suit. I'm worried that I'm not going to be dressed for the occasion to dig a dirt. Well, you know how gold rushes look beautiful. Now people went, they all went for it because people also probably knew, but they were like that. This is this sounds better.

Like, you know what I mean? In the gold rush time. Yes. Everyone bought into it. Everyone just in that time, would people give a shit if it really would they give a shit? Would they give a shit? I think it was.

If it was founded in the way that it was, with some obviously not, but I think there are a lot of abolitionists for sure that could actually a nice refreshing. It's nice to hear they had to lie. What a nice thing. So following the Brooks Brothers lead, the New York City became the largest producer of ready to wear clothing in the US. For men, women's ready made dresses were a far, far thing in the future. But for men, it's, it's cranking out close.

Well, they weren't a lot of them panning for gold either. I need a ballgown for the river. In 1850, what kind of cocktail dress are you going to wear to the mountains? In 1850, Henry, Henry, Jr. dies and the younger brothers take over the company. Daniel, John, Alicia and Edward. And they have this is when they officially changed the name of the company to Brooks Brothers. So this is when it officially becomes a brick boat.

And they introduced the emblem of the Golden Fleece, which is their little fancy thing. According to them, quote, the Golden Fleece symbol is adopted as the company's trademark. The logo, a sheep suspended in a ribbon, has served as a symbol of fine wool since Philip the Good chose the emblem for his order of the Golden Fleece. The symbol was across Europe as a sign of quality. It was a way of announcing the quality of their clothes were on par with the best of European fashion. And by the way, right.

So, so that's when it started. Brooks Brothers, X-Nay on the Avery Slay, Brooks Brothers, quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet. So they're going all in just trying to be like, we're for the fancy people to hide. They're really going all in. Right. Protests too much. Right. And this is when the store starts to move ahead of the pack of all the other stores.

In 1853, the Brooks Brothers acknowledged, possibly for the first time, taking part in the slave economy. Okay. Now, why would they do this? After what they've done, you would ask. Yeah. Well, because they wanted to get paid. The Brooks Brothers were...

If you're about to tell me that fucking Brooks Brothers wants reparations before black people want reparations, I'm going to jump through a wall. Okay. Well, get that wall ready. Got your fucking face. The Brooks Brothers were among a group of businesses who published the Taylor's Appeal, which was an appeal from a bunch of clothing companies, complaining they were not being compensated properly and wanting payments from their, quote, Southern work employers.

Uh-huh. So Southern work employers mean slave owners. So they're saying we're not getting paid by the slave owners for the clothes we're making them, for their slaves, and we want payment. So they're asking the government to crack down on the slave owners to pay them the money for making this... I mean, you imagine, you need to come down hard on the slate. We agree it was a terrible time in the country.

It's not because of that. They had paid us for the suit. Okay, so this is, this is, this is, I'm just going to, this is a long quote, but we're going to have to stop after the first sentence because brains are going to break. Quote, gentlemen, whereas a number of the Southern work employers refused to give us a fair renumeration for our labor. Oh my, Dave, I, even with that setup, even with your setup. I mean, there was nobody who was like, hey, can I flag something quickly?

Just about our statement, it's, you wouldn't understand how difficult it was to work for so little. Hi, we're Brooks Brothers. We put knitting needles through our ears. Here at Brooks Brothers, tone deafness can suck our dicks. It's just... Wow. It's just...

What? How are they still here? Yeah. A number of Southern work employers refused to give us a fair renumeration for our labor and as it is utterly possible for us, working for them, to earn bread for ourselves and our families. And we... Bread.

I mean... Yeah. Bread. They're millionaires. You ain't eating bread. They're millionaires. And we wish you to fully understand who are the friends of the working men. We...

Dave. How did this happen? Was this a joke? Were they like pranking people? We're kidding. We get it. We're kidding you guys. Jesus Christ.

Have a laugh. We subjoined a list of employers who have signed a bill of prices and earnestly call upon you to patronize only those employers who have acted so honorably. So they're asking for a boycott of people who are slave owners because they haven't been paid for their labor of making jackets for... So they're not asking for a boycott of the not paying the labor slave people. They're asking for a boycott. They hit the destination but in the worst route possible, right?

Yeah. It's just next level bananas. It's just... If you were to... If I was to make a book called Banana, Things That Are Bananas, this would be the first thing that we would put. I can't believe... It is shocking.

It's just... Yeah. I just... I mean, I'm trying to not even... It's not funny. It's absurd. Yeah. It's just I have absolutely no conscience.

I just am a psychopath. We all know the victims of slavery were Brooks Brothers. Nobody's debating there. Where's my money? Nobody had it harder than the Brooks Brothers. So it's basically just a crybaby festival for tailors who didn't get paid, right? That's by Southern Merchants. So okay, so I can't believe Southern Merchants would not be on the up and up.

They seem like such really good guys. That's crazy. Yeah. I can't believe I... No, I definitely get into business. Definitely the right people to get into business with for sure. Nothing shady there. Yeah, no, they're all very moral.

So I don't know why they would not do pay people for their... Principal people. Could you imagine that, though, a company in the South who uses slaves not paying someone for their work? I can't wrap my head around it. It's just, I mean, again, it's hard to even come up with a comparison. Yeah, it really is. I just don't know if there's ever...

It's just the boldness of it. It's the crazy... It's like it would be like Nazis suing someone because they used a star that looked like they're... you just be like, stop, don't, I couldn't find any information on what happened with that. I'm assuming nothing happened with it. I'm assuming that a lot of people are like, hey, you should probably retract that pretty quick.

Delete tweet. In 1861, the civil war began and New York fucking cashed in. And just one week in November 1861, New York businesses made $3 million from military contracts. And thus started our obsession with freedom. And of course, our friends, the Brook Brothers, got in on part of the action as the Union Army contracted that week that we're talking about, contracted them to make 12,000 uniforms. So they shifted from making money off slavery to making money off the army fighting slavery. Sliding, right, okay.

But... Purely and obviously that's a moral decision. Yeah, for sure. For sure. But the uniforms had to be purchased directly by the soldiers out of their clothing allowance. But there's a war money? There's an outfit stipend? Yeah, I guess that's what it is, an outfit stipend.

But there's a problem, if you can imagine. There's a problem. There's a lot of problems. There's a war on it, so there's a wool shortage, right? The materials needed to make clothing. Not a lot of people in the civil war was actually known as World War III. Let's say it again. World War I.

No, no, wait, sorry. It was known as the Great Wool War. There it is. Yeah, so there's not a lot of wool around. So the Brooks Brothers don't want to turn down such a lucrative contract, right? They can make a lot of fucking money here. So they... What do they do?

Drop grenades on sheep? They got a bunch of material, right? Shitty, bragged, decaying material, and they glued it together and would press them until it looked like cloth. What? They, like, make ribbed outfits? Yes, they make ribbed clothing. That is exactly what they did.

They make ribbed clothes. There we go. Tastes just like pants. So it looks like cloth, but again, it's a bunch of shit, it's a bunch of shit pressed together. It's like imitation crab meat. Right, so they took this clothing, whatever you want to call it, and they sewed it together into uniforms.

Now they don't fit well. Okay. They don't fit well at all. Oh, that's good. They look terrible. They look awful. That's good at least. Okay.

That's good at least. History.net, quote. Turned out, in only a few weeks, the uniforms were so ill-fitting, many lacking buttons and buttonholes that the New York volunteers who wore them were taunted by other soldiers. Wow. Okay, so you're getting outfit shamed during a war? Yeah, all the other soldiers are making fun of the New York soldiers. Now is that, does that mean it's like, is the Confederate army mocking the Union soldiers

or Union soldiers are mocking fellow Union soldiers? Yeah, because the Union's, the soldiers are all broken down by state, like in that's the other group together. So you'd be from Maine and you'd be like, look at these fucking idiots, like you, yeah. Right. Yeah, I'd be like, don't, what, it just sounds lazy to not have like buttonholes even if you've made your, you know, whatever. I mean, they're not, they make, they make, they make ready-wear clothes, but I'm sure

they had problems where they're like, well, this is some crazy McRib thing and they try to put a button and it doesn't go in and they're like, ah. Well, yeah, they're trying to put buttons on like flubber. It was like, man, it's popping off. It broke a window. It doesn't work. Jesus Christ. So you have the, so they, I just can't imagine being like, what is it, it probably looks

like an Incredibles outfit. It's like a union army outfit where you're just like, yeah, look, it's, it's like, have you ever wondered what would happen if you melted rubber and wool together? That's what we would, even that would, even that would be better if you melted rubber and wool. Really? Okay. It's, so, so the uniforms were also not good clothes for war.

They fell apart the first time it rained. So it's just a bunch of naked like, oh, side of you, we can't tell, we're union, sorry. We're union. Okay. Our clothes just exploded off of our bodies. Okay. So here's the deal. Uh, we're the blues and then, and then they're the greys and skins.

Okay. So we're, guys, the way we're doing the war now is shirts versus skins. Unfortunately, we have no other alternative, uh, because half of the union armies clothes have just fallen off of them during that rainstorm. They, they ran off them. It's not clothes as much as it is paint. Yes. Can I go home?

This is really fucking weird and I feel like, no, we will be, we will be fighting naked for the last time we are fighting nude. This is an important war for too long. Is it? We have taken advantage of the war that important to fight. No. Look, yes. It is.

Look, I agree. It's not ideal. There is a wool shortage. So what we've done is we've basically McRibb'd you guys an army outfit and when it rains or gets humid or when you run in it or when someone pushes you or stabs you or when you fire your musket or when you sleep, apparently these clothes just kind of melt and fall off and just different, you know, swatches basically. Um, so there's not every, a lot of times people when they wake up, it feels like they turned

into the incredible Hulk and then just went back to their normal size. These are not clothes we're dealing with. This is not, it's not a good situation. I agree, but we have to beat the Confederate army whether we have an outfit on or if we're doing it bare ass naked. I don't, if you, if I don't, if my clothes fall off, you don't know I'm in the army anymore. I could just be a naked guy who's walking around.

So that's why I said we're all going to wear this, this you necklace we made. So we know we're union, okay, and we'll fight it naked if we will fight it naked if we have to. We still have shoes, don't we? We still have boots. We have guns. I, I fear questions about the outfits. I kind of, what?

Yes. So are we going to have like a grooming like order where everybody has to groom in a certain no, because there's some stuff, there's some stuff going on back here that I feel like guys. I've, I've seen. I've seen a few of you bed, I've seen, excuse me, I'm from Ohio where we groom pretty tight, but then the main guys over here freaking me out. Like that's like a, I've seen a few of the main guys bend over and I'm not going to lie.

It looks like someone, you know, spilled chocolate on a sweater. We all agree that it's not a good look. It's like a mid, mid-range bear. Like I, some, it looks like some of the main guys have tails. Let's just get it out there in the open. That's just what some of the main, but we are fighting a war. Okay. That it will decide the future of this country.

What kind of country do you want to live in? Do you want to live in a country of freedom as this country was founded on? Or do you want to live in one where a man can own another man? This is so important. And I wish we had the outfits to show. We were promised outfits, but they made some weird gel costume that is not good and again comes off in rain or when jogging. But what does it say that we're fighting against men that can own other men, but we're so fucking

cheap that our clothes fall off. Like is that a good... Well, they went to a better company. They went to a company that had a bunch of wool apparently. We went to Brooks Brothers. It sounds like that side's really bad, but we're also, we're also bad. I'm naked right now. We're bad.

I don't want to be naked. We're all, a lot of us are naked. Look, I'll take my, these pants come right off. If I just pour my tea on here, look at that. They just, they evaporate. So there we are. I'm naked on horseback. This horse has more clothing on than I do.

I just... Okay. So you shouldn't have poured the tea on there. Well, look, look at, look at it, look at it, look at it. We're all going to see each other's penises when we're fighting this war, guys. If you're one of these guys who's not willing to fight with your penis out, then you may as well leave, but this war is too goddamn important. It's what?

Hey, can we change our names to Dicks Out, the Dicks Out Brigade? I don't love it, but if it keeps most of us here, sure. We are... I'll stay. We are the, we are the Dicks Out Union. Okay, I'll stay. I'll come in. I'll stay.

All right. Let's go. All right. Great. All right. Here we go. That's what I'm talking about. Now, let's all wash our butts and fight the war.

Goodbye. So it didn't matter. They, they kept filling or the army kept buying clothes from them. They kept filling orders. What? They, they made over, after the first 12,000 that fell apart, they continued. They filled over 36,000 uniform orders. What an amazing business model to have clothes that vanish and don't work.

So you need to order more from the same company. So eventually people are really catching on to this situation. That their outfits are horrible? Well, everything. So it turns out the Brook Brothers aren't the only war profiteers who are cranking out shitty third-rate products for the military. There's no quality control. There's nothing happening.

No standard. Quality-wise. Okay. Sounds, sounds like a good model. We should get back to it. I think we have. Go ahead. And people are churning out so much half-rate crap for the troops that it led to a new word

being created to describe this half-rate crap, shoddy. Wow. SHO. DDY. Shoddy. DDY. Yeah. Shoddy.

Well, the United States reported states troops were, quote, half-naked and that it is by such contracts as these that the lifeblood is being sucked out of the nation by the vampires. So they're calling out these, these military contractors, right? They're calling out people like the Brooks Brothers. The people who are profiting without provides. Yes. Harper's Weekly defined shoddy, quote, a villainous compound, the refuse stuff and sweepings of the shop, pounded, rolled, glued, and smoothed to the external form and gloss of cloth.

I mean, it's amazing that that, I, will you just please indulge me and tell me one more time what they describe the process of making the clothes. The refuse stuff and the sweepings of the shop, pounded. No, they're basically like trash. Yes, it's trash. Okay. Grounded. Trash.

Sorry. Pounded, rolled, glued, and smothered to the external form. Like pizza. Yes. Like dough. They're just, it's like a particle board of clothing. It's McRib is the perfect, it's the perfect example. It's a McRib.

Oh my God. A New York Herald, quote, a counterfeit cloth made of pulverized old rags. The New York Tribune, quote, poor sleazy stuff, woven open enough for sieves, and then filled with shearman's dust, shearman's dust, just like the crap on that. So soldiers on the first day's march or in the earliest storm found their clothes overcoats and blankets scattered to the wind in rags or dissolving into their primitive elements of dust under the pelting rain. So it really was.

You were wearing like a shitty technicolor dreamcoat. Like it was just like a quilt with a bunch of little patches and then when it would breeze it would be like, where's my outfit? Yeah. It'd be like, hey, it blew off. It's not, remember, we're not dealing with fabric here. A lot of this material needs to be imagined. And now imagine like, you know, you're, you're fighting in like, so Gettysburg situations

hundreds, hundreds of thousands of dudes die in a fucking day and you're out there like closed, sometimes hand-to-hand fucking combat and you're fighting a dude and it starts raining and all of a sudden you're naked. Like it's just- Have you ever like, you ever like, when you're like doing laundry and you're like walking and your pants start to fall down and you're like, oh shit, like, and you're like, this is so complicated. That with knives.

Yeah. Like where you'd be, your pants would be, so you'd be like, nah, it just, it feels like I should pull my pants up, but I'll die if I do. Yeah. I guess I'll just kind of porky pig fight. Kind of walk around bottom, like just a bunch of dudes without bottoms and jackets on. All right, boys, huddle up. Time to strategize.

Those of you who have pants get in the front here, those of you whose pants fell off because of the rain. It's just- Wow. One asked why, so obviously they start, you know, they're digging into it, so Brooks Brothers are the most prominent culprits of New York City's company who sold clothing and uniforms to the army. It's a good company.

The profit margins are obscene. They're just shamelessly- Oh, that's what matters. Yeah. That's what matters, baby. You know, it's not just clothing, it's also, this is happening with transportation, it's happening with food, really anything that you could sell to the military, people are producing the worst version of.

Can you imagine a business model where it's that your product doesn't matter and it doesn't matter the damage that it does to the individual or to society as a whole, but all you care about is your bottom line? No. It's just like- I'm glad that's in the past. I'm glad that's over. Soldiers are literally being given rancid meat.

Wear this. Put this on your back. That'll cover you. Put it here. Come on, guys. We're going to dress like Lady Gaga at the Grammys. These are bacon coats. Put on your prosciutto pants.

We're going to sneak attack. So the- Okay, so they'll be giving terrible food, terrible clothes. And everyone knows about another- And then if you questioned it, were you chastised for not supporting the truth? No, it wasn't that bad. It was just like, what the fuck are we doing? All the papers are covering it, right?

So a cartoon on the front of Vanity Fair showed a group of soldiers being told to close up ranks because two women were coming and all the holes in the uniforms made their appearance vulgar. So everybody- I mean, it's the front page of Vanity Fair. Everyone fucking knows what's going on. So your pants are just kind of glory-holing their sides? Yeah.

You just- Your junk's out, right? So- Right. The New York Assembly calls for an investigation into the state military board and, quote, shoddy contracts with Brooks Brothers. They called it the shoddy committee. Other states followed suit-

Philadelphia had a big maker there that was doing the same thing. So other states followed suit. And then this moves on to the House of Representatives. Follow suit. It's such a big story that full questioning of the people involved are just being printed in newspapers. So the whole witness questioning is all word for word printed. It's revealed that the New York State Treasurer received free clothing from the Brooks Brothers

like silk dresses and gloves. And then in turn- Oh, my God. He gave the Brooks Brothers contracts. Although the Brooks Brothers said he owed them $300, but he was like, no. So, yeah, they fucking gave him free clothes and he gave them the contracts. It is- It is, I mean, obviously such a microcosm of-

I mean, you really, right there, it condenses down our political corporate takeover system to a T. Totally. The New York Herald said the Treasurer, quote, testified he knew no more about cloth than he did how Herman the magician performed his tricks. And we all know Herman is tight lipped, Herman the magician. Hello. I made this soldier's pants disappear.

All I had to do was put him on him. So using crappy material instead of cloth had been written as a provision into the contract. Wow. So, in their case- So it is just- In the Brooks Brothers case, shoddy is legal. Right. But for sure, they talked about it and the Brooks Brothers said, we don't have enough

wool to do that. And they were like, can you do anything else? And they came up with this and then had to put in the contract. When the answer is no, I can't make uniforms. What did they think was going to happen? I mean, yeah. I mean, honestly, yeah, it's like, well, we could have him wear vinyl. That'll work.

That sounds good. During questioning, Elisha Brooks was asked how much money Brooks Brothers made by using cheaper materials and he said, quote, I think that I cannot ascertain the difference without spending more time than I can now devote to that purpose. That is exactly any time there's like a congressional panel, just like, I don't actually remember that. We're not sure about that. I wouldn't be able to tell you.

He's literally saying- The void and some- Yeah, I just- There's too much time. I don't have time. I don't have time to do it. I'm busy. They can close the camp anymore.

Can you back off? In the end, Brooks Brothers agreed to replace 2,350 uniforms at a cost of $45,000. Most of the other shoddy profiteers also got away with it. So the year before the war, there was just a few dozen millionaires in New York City. After the war, there were hundreds of millionaires who were called the shoddy aristocracy. The Herald wrote that once vacant brownstones were now filled with rich war profiteers, their homes were full of shoddy carpets, shoddy pianos, they said all case no music, shoddy portraits, all paint no likeness, shoddy toys, dead pink-eyed rabbits.

These people, they said, would go to the opera and applaud at the wrong time. They wore too much makeup- Well done! Well done! They wore too much makeup and look through the wrong end of their makeup glasses. Sorry, opera glasses. So they're kind of basically saying, oh, by the way, I would totally do that. I mean, I went to the opera once and I really was like Julia Robertson pretty once.

So they're basically saying that essentially they illegally profited, but they're new money and they're kind of the way that they're indulging is embarrassing as well. So you're kind of rich-shaming in an odd way. Yeah, it's 100% rich-shaming. Right. Okay. So going deeper into the nouveau rich understanding sort of stereotype thing we're talking about here.

Harper's Weekly wrote up a fake couple named Mr. and Mrs. Shoddy. It's Shoddy, the Shoddy wife wore, quote, a huge cornet of pink and purple artificial flowers. She said, ain't. Used figure instead of finger, parlor for parlor and a regular instead of regular. They fill their homes with quote, abominable, slowly framed paintings. There's a Beverly Hill billies. Yes.

Yes. Abominable frame paintings by a cheap Western artist. In the end, the media did its job and most believe the war profiteers were Shoddy is exactly as described vulgar reputation cemented, but they're still rich. They still get away with it. But the rich have separated themselves from the war profiteer rich. So they use their media to say, we're different than these. We have made our money respectively when they, you know, most rich people don't.

So yeah, they separated themselves from the. Well, and the desire to acquire a level of wealth where, you know, you're talking about money that is, I mean, money that you cannot spend in your lifetime or your children's lifetime, you know, is like a mental problem that we reward and that we allow to be fulfilled. But so it is, it's amazing that they're even in the affluence, they're like, there's still a classist. Yeah. Yeah.

We're the good rich. They're the. It's really, it's really crazy like they're, and then it works, right? It's propaganda. It, it, I mean, these people are bad, but it, they did separate themselves from them. No, they, it's, it's, I mean, obviously it still is the, it's one hand washes another in a way where it always seems like you're kind of in the midst of some sort of progress. But meanwhile, everything's just stalled and nothing is changing.

It's only getting worse. And it's very much like the pandemic where the, who got, who made money during the pandemic? Well, not most of us. I mean, most of us lost fucking money. Most of us lost jobs or like, you know, or whatever had to shudder your business, whatever it is, except the super rich got fucking super, super, super rich. And that's what happens during disasters, which is exactly sort of what we're talking about a war is a disaster, a man made disaster, but it's a disaster.

And they, these people know how to profit. They just do. So now all male citizens between the age of 20 and 35 and unmarried men, 35 to 45 had to register for the draft for the union army. And in 1863, the chitching in 1863, the constriction, the conscription act was passed. It allowed the rich to avoid military service. They could pay three to dollars or buy a substitute. Oh my God, you could buy a substitute?

Yeah. Hello, I'm here, sir. So you just, you paid for a man to be you. Like someone standing in line. Yeah. You legally could buy, pay a guy to fight for you. And that person would be paid or you would pay that person. Wow.

And then he would die. And I don't know who got the money at that point. So great. Great plan. In the summer of 1863, a song of the conscripts went around New York and other cities. Uh, one section, I'll just read one section of the lyrics. We're coming. Can you just sing it?

Oh no. We're coming, Father Abraham, 300,000 more. We leave our homes and firesides with bleeding hearts and sore. Since poverty has been our crime, we bow to thy degree. We are poor and have no wealth to purchase liberty. Wow. It's just the, like, it's amazing that patriotism got co-opted by business. And how it still kind of works.

So riots break out in the North, in cities, including New York City, which had the largest and most violent of the riots from July 13th to 16. The reason, and I'll never cover these riots on the dollop because it's fucking brutal race murder. The reasons for these riots are pretty varied. The main cause is in response to the draft itself. People didn't want to go to war, the buying of the, you know, being able to buy your way out of it.

But there's a lot more going on, right? They're, the riots are anti-rich, they're anti-black, they're anti-Republican. Many in New York City didn't want to lose the South as a trading partner and didn't want slavery to end, right? So that's still there. So the riots started with people attacking the draft headquarters. And then it swelled. It got big, and then they said, let's go attack the wealthy homes.

So then they went and attacked the wealthy people, the shoddy people also. And then they moved from that to killing them. Wait, I ain't got nothing you can take, we're sorry. We're shot. We thought this harp was something you cut cheese through. And then after they attacked the wealthy, then they started attacking black people. So the death toll is 119 officially, but estimates are as high as 1200. So during the riots, the Brooks Brothers storefront was sacked, it was attacked.

On the Brooks Brothers website, they hinted, this is because everyone knew that they produced uniforms for the union army. And there's a couple of newspaper illustrations from that time of the sacking. And one shows a small white crowd and another shows a huge crowd with some black people putting on clothes. So who knows what was involved there. I'm sure there were a lot of black people in New York City who did not look favorably upon Brooks Brothers.

And I'm sure there are a lot of other people who not just providing it, not just providing uniforms for the union army, but they are the face of shoddy. So I don't think you can just write it off as, oh, they provide uniforms. But that's what the Brooks Brothers would like you to believe. That's their sanitizing. The night after the attack on the Brooks Brothers store, a 12-year-old boy named Francis G. Lloyd decided to guard the store. So there's always this fucking idiot.

So now we got a written house. So anyway, that was a big story. 40 years later, Francis Lloyd became the first person to lead the Brooks Brothers firm who was outside the Brooks family. Oh, for God's sake. Right? It's just all so fucking dumb. It's a financial choice, yeah.

So the Brooks Brothers... It's a business move. The Brooks Brothers profited immensely from slavery and the slave economy. Then they shamelessly profited off of the Civil War and providing fucking shit clothing for their forced customers. They were never anything but wildly successful after doing these things. In November 2000, as Republicans blatantly stole the election between Bush and Gore, which Democrats to this day blame on a third-party candidate, instead of the actual people who

stole the election, including one named Dick Cheney, who they just warmly received in Congress on the day that they discussed a recent president trying to steal or overthrow an election. Not that it's weird to show adoration for a man who successfully overturned an election or anything as you are upset about someone trying to overturn an election. So anyway, back in November 2020, on the 22nd, as the fights over Hanging Chads and other bullshit are going on, Republican staffers dressed up in corporate attire flew down South Florida to protest the recounts, they were referred to as the Brooks Brothers Brigade. The well-gest right-wingers tried to push the doors of the Miami-Dade supervisor of

elections in, they tried to break in. Several people are kicked and punched. It's a legitimate fight going on. Two hours later, the canvassing board shut down the count. Several of them were identified as Republican congressional staffers and would later get jobs in the Bush administration. This has stolen an election, it would be upheld, and everyone would blame Ralph Nader, later a consortium of news outlets counted the ballots, and Gore had won.

And two weeks ago, the Democrats warmly embraced Dick Cheney in Congress. Jesus, I was already depressed. Pressure recently built on the Brooks Brother to respond to their questionable past, and eventually they were forced to respond, and they put up a statement on their website on June 19th, 2020, the day known as Juneteenth. Oh my God. I mean, that they had to have known, right? Or are they so bubbled out that they're like, whatever, oh, whoops.

I don't know. Well, on Juneteenth, they decide, what did they say? We realize that our company's 200-year history is intertwined with that of the United States. While we have yet to uncover confirming documentation of the company's role, we continuously examine our extensive archives and consult with historians on the subject. You know what's good for going through history? Even newspapers from the time, congressional records from the time, actual contracts with the New York state from the time, less than, well, they're, they're, they're unable to

figure that out though, Dave, it's hard. Less than a month later on July 8th, 2020, Brooks Brothers filed for bankruptcy. Oh, wow. But I think it's, you know, it's kind of bankruptcy where they get to keep going. So there's still selling shit. Although I was just, I was, you know, Googling Brooks Brothers and someone came up on, like, it was like a Reddit thread and they were like, I ordered from Brooks Brothers and there's no one responding.

And like, so it sounds like they're just shambles of a company at this point. They just sent me a bunch of cotton swatches. Yeah. So that's, that's Brooks Brothers. Man, I'm pissed that they're gone because it would be great to like a boycott the shit out of them. It's just, you know, this is a, there's no justice. But this is a really good example of why the libertarian thing of like, well, if you don't

have a good business, then it will go out of business. Absolutely not. Yeah. Both shit. Absolutely not. The people in this country will, will buy something from someone who stabs an old lady in the fucking eye if they like it. Like, it's just not a fucking thing.

You don't get to say, well, bad businesses go away. That's not a fucking thing. And so, but, but also it's not like we are privy to all the information by design that of how these companies actually work, what they're actually doing. Like we know, but a lot of it is just covered up and hidden. There's no, I mean, you know, like, it never, it doesn't matter. Even when the behavior is abhorrent, it doesn't matter. It doesn't.

There's no bankers were prosecuted for 2008. It's like there's no, there is no consequence. If you're rich, you have a set of rules. And if you, if you aid in getting other people who, you know, are public servants, air quoting, and the government, then it doesn't matter. All that matters is that these people get rich. That's why I cannot fucking understand for the life of me why it's, it's just so like, it's not hard to be in government.

You do popular shit. It's a popularity contest. It's like when I ran for student government and I was like, we're going to put a vending machine in the fucking... It's all, it's always a vending machine in the cafeteria. And that's all I want Biden to do is give us a vending machine in the cafeteria. But it is, it's not fucking brain surgery. If you want to get reelected, do popular shit.

And that's, they say popular shit to get elected. They just don't do it. And we, our attention spans are short enough where we go, well, I mean, he's better than the other guy. Well, not anymore. But now everyone hates every single thing about this. There's a few Democrats and a few Republicans, but everyone's done. Everyone's done.

Yeah. Everyone's finished. Oh yeah. Nope. It's, it, it, it, it's, and it's also what they, what they say in their statement that is actually accurate is their history, much like the history of this country, because it's intertwined with the country's history, which we've never reconciled. And that is true.

That part is totally true. If we are unable to actually go back and just fucking look it in the mirror and say, this is what's happened, this is, we need to acknowledge truths, terrible truths, and we need to deal with them, and we need to, and we need to completely re-envision the way that, I mean, again, even as I'm saying, it's like, who the fuck's gonna say this? You need to completely re-envision how society is constructed so that it is no longer the way that it was founded. When we have no interest in changing things or fixing things, while we actually never

are able to, to deal with the, you know, the worst part of this country's history. You know, we just start, we don't teach it. We don't want to teach it. People want to ignore it willingly. You know, the idea when you see, when you see Junkin in Virginia being like, you know, it's just like, look, nobody's saying, attack white people, but people are saying, teach reality, deal with it. That's the only way that you can not repeat the shit.

But it's very hard when you have kids that are like, you know, young teens, and you've spent your whole life using the n-word around the house, then if they go to school and learn the actual history of that, then they realize their parents are fucking horrible people. Well, yeah, in my pitch, we're, you know, again, there's going to be some speed bumps for sure. We're not talking about an easy transition. But no, it's true. I mean, how, you know, when you're allowed to, you know, when you're allowed to hang

a Confederate flag with, you know, and that's just part of it, that's part, I mean, you know, that is right there. I mean, that's a pretty easy one to just. The Germans outlawed all the Nazi stuff, right? You don't get to, you don't get to do any of the Nazi shit, you don't get to have Nazi flags. That's what should have happened. Yeah.

And should still be happening. Yeah. And even though they're, you know, it's always good to take down, you know, a statue of a fucking dickhead, but it's, it is, it's crumbs. And if, and if you, if you don't think that what I'm saying is true, the Confederates were pretty much fucking Nazis. So that's why it's the same fucking thing. Yeah.

Yeah. It is, it's, it just continues to be this, until that thread gets pulled and resolved, what, I mean, how do you build, how do you, how do you build on a shit foundation over and over again? It just unravels. And the, and the fucking, the Constitution, the, it's all just shitty. It's the, the, it's, everything needs to be redone. There's still an amendment that allows slavery to, we still have slaves in America, everybody,

the 13th amendment. Go fucking read it. Yeah. You can have slaves as long as they're prisoners, which means you put people in a prison so they're slaves. There you go. This isn't fucking rocket science. Yeah.

No, you can't crack the door. You cannot leave the door cracked and, and it is true. It's a, yeah, I don't need to, I don't need to keep reciting killer Mike lyrics, but, you know. Yep. All right. Yeah. Fucking A, man.

That's nuts. It's Brooks Brothers. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I don't want any fucking tweets about like, how did you not see that one coming of like Colonel Sanders or some shit? I was disguising it pretty well with the H and the HD and yeah, yeah. And I called them Henry and then slowly called them Brooks.

I did. I, I worked that out pretty well. It was, uh. All right. I just got a lot of shit when we're at live shows and people are like, what's your favorite dumb Gareth moment? Hey, I'm actually sitting next to Dave. So it's a tough to hear. It's much different, uh, to be able, it's a much different job to just sit and listen

to the podcast than it is to listen and, and have to think up funny stuff and jokes and all that other stuff. It's not the same thing. Thank you. So that's why I went. That's why you're my buddy. That's why people say that. It's like, you're not listening the same way Gareth is.

You're just not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know what to tell you. That's right. Yeah. Um, wow, man.

Jesus Christ. I'm excited to see what people think about this shit. Fuck. We sign. All right. We sign clothes. Oh, yeah. And then they fall apart in our hands as we're doing it.

We should sell, uh, dollup shirts that fall apart in the rain. Well, we should just, well, that's what we should do. We should, when people order it, we should just start selling merch and just send empty boxes with just like two, like some shred, like a little bit of a shredded fabric. Like, sorry, sorry, your McRib shirt didn't work out. All right. Carry on. Uh, this, uh, was researched by Ron Placone and, uh, sources.

The name's familiar by Laura Lee, defining duty in the civil war, personal choice, popular culture, and the union home front by Matthew Gailman, a history of war profits in America. Oh, sorry. Warhawks, a history of war profits in America by Stuart Brandy's. Hmm. H.J. Griggs by virtue of reason and nature, then a bunch of different websites, Vesto J. Brooks Brothers, of course, history net, history, calm, CNBC history.

Yeah, I'm already into histories, uh, New York, Daily Herald, Harper's a weekly New York history.org. Yeah. And then there's a few more. So, uh, some governments, government sites, uh, so you can go see this on our sources page.