(upbeat classical music begins) - [Announcer] Tonight on Rhode Island PBS Weekly... - What can you tell me about this bracelet?

- Oh my God!

You have two colors of gold and I guarantee you, it was made in Providence.

- Peter DiCristofaro is an encyclopedia of jewelry stories so he founded The Providence Jewelry Museum.

Now DiCristofaro wants to return to Providence its golden legacy in the heart of the once flourishing jewelry district.

(patriotic music begins) - [News Anchor] Governor Quinn orders the closing of Rhode Island's famous Narragansett Racetrack.

Marshall Law is declared and National Guardsman take over to prevent the track's opening.

Meanwhile, opposing legislators threatened to impeach the governor for using troops.

- Five years ago, we might have looked at this story and said, "That is just crazy!

It's insane.

That could never happen now."

Really?

- I look at this country and it's sad to me that so many of us are really taking the gun to the other side of the equation because we disagree.

(upbeat classical music continues) - Good evening.

Welcome to Rhode Island PBS Weekly.

I'm Pamela Watts.

- And I'm Michelle San Miguel.

It was Shakespeare who coined the phrase, "All that glitters is not gold".

Here in Providence, it was gold plating that helped crown the city, "The jewelry capital of the world."

- But it goes back much further than the fancy broaches and necklaces turned out by hundreds of factories here during the mid-century.

We recently met one local man who is determined to preserve the city's glittering past for people of all ages who are discovering, 'what's old is new again.'

(street noise) - [Pamela] In an old industrial building in Cranston, nondescript outside, (door latch closing) the charm of bangles and bobbles gleams inside.

- Well, if you look at this really amazing pin from the 30s.

- [Pamela] Peter DiCristofaro has a master collection spanning two centuries.

It captures the innovation, creativity, and culture of craftsmanship that molded the capital city.

- This is the holy grail for us where we have the original sketch.

We have the original bronze molds that this piece of costume jewelry was made in and then we find a piece on the market that came from it.

We have all three, and for us, this can't speak any louder for what went on in the city of Providence.

- [Pamela] Providence, the gem of the jewelry industry and kings of costume jewelry.

- The processes were brilliant, the pieces were beautiful.

Who cared that they made a thousand of them?

(machine stamping metal) - [Pamela] And the locally engineered machinery that cranked out affordable fashion accessories.

- And they came up with these magnificent American built machines, whereas now, instead of making an inch a minute of chain, they were making 12 inches a minute.

I'm the archeologist.

I dug the hole and found it.

I didn't go to archeology school.

- [Pamela] In fact, DiCristofaro went to pharmacy school, but turns out he had real chemistry with another element... Gold.

How did you become bedazzled by the jewelry industry?

- My summer jobs were in a family jewelry factory.

Every summer I'd go to pharmacy school, learn chemistry.

I'd go to work in the summer and learn how to make jewelry.

And by the time I was done with pharmacy school, I was interested in the jewelry.

I wasn't interested in pharmacy.

Then we cookie cut out the excess silver.

- [Pamela] DiCristofaro spent many hours in his uncle's factory like so many Rhode Islanders.

- And what you're left with is the stamping all trimmed out.

When you think of 30 or 40,000 people making their living in one little industry, in one little city.

- In one little state.

- In one little state, it's pretty profound.

- [Pamela] It was DiCristofaro's uncle who urged him to salvage the remains of the industry as jewelry manufacturing migrated overseas in the late 1970s.

So he founded the Providence Jewelry Museum.

- I personally bought over 150 jewelry companies and then I attended the liquidation of the end to another hundred.

When they were closing the factories, we would buy them.

And then we would always take something for the jewelry museum.

- [Pamela] His museum chronicles the origins of the industry starting in the 1700s with silver spoons made by Seril Dodge who worked and lived in the brick building that is now the Providence Art Club.

Dodge's company then designed something that radically transformed jewelry making.

- In Providence, we took a piece of gold, we put it on a piece of metal of lower value, made a sandwich, and made that cladding of gold.

It all happened here.

It was the first merchandising of gold in American history.

(machine stamping metal) And with the cladding of metals, they could take orders from around the world.

- [Pamela] That cladding or gold covering of non precious metal, rolled gold, gold filled, and ultimately electroplating and stamping brass made Providence shine.

In the late 1800s, many immigrants brought old world artistry to the factories.

Companies tinkered with technology, developing cutting edge tool and dye equipment.

A real boom started in the 1930s and peaked in the 70s.

- My grandmother came from Italy.

She didn't have the money to have a broach like Queen Elizabeth, which was worth $10 million.

But she had $10 to go to Woolworths and buy an imitation of it.

- [Pamela] DiCristofaro is an encyclopedia of jewelry stories.

He says, one Providence company, Otsby and Barton, produced the molds known as, "Hubs," for Tiffany's iconic diamond solitaire engagement ring.

- It became the rage and the volume.

And where did they come to have this ring made?

They came to Providence, Rhode Island.

And there's the original hubs that made the ring.

- [Pamela] In 1912, Tiffany's relationship with 64 year old Engelhart Cornelius OØstby, the company's co-owner, came to a tragic end.

- Mr. OØstby put his daughter on the lifeboat and he went down with the Titanic.

- [Pamela] Decades later, OØstby and Barton's connection with Tiffany's came full circle when DiCristofaro enticed Tiffany & Company to establish a manufacturing plant in Cumberland.

- In 2001, those two hubs went back to Tiffany, their new factory in Rhode Island and they copied them.

And today they make that engagement ring in the Tiffany Rhode Island factory from those two originals.

- [Pamela] Today, they also make their popular heart tags here along with coveted items like the Vince Lombardi Super Bowl trophy.

What can you tell me about this bracelet?

- Oh my God.

- [Pamela] I asked him about my grandmother's bracelet.

- [Peter] You have two colors of gold or gold clad.

You have rose and you have green.

It was made like a fine piece of jewelry, even though it's clad metal.

And I guarantee you it was made in Providence.

- [Pamela] Now DiCristofaro wants to return to Providence its golden legacy, moving his museum to Chestnut Street downtown, the heart of the once flourishing jewelry district.

He's renting and renovating the 1826 Palmer House, where at one time gold rings were made.

- A jewelry factory on every corner and every inch, names that the whole world recognizes like Coro, Trifari, Monet and Hedison.

- These little fine necklaces are very hot with young people.

These happen to be made by Hedy, which is Hedison, made in Rhode Island.

- [Pamela] Christine Francis owns Carmen & Ginger, a retro jewelry store.

(cardboard boxes opening) Originally located in Providence's Arcade, she's setting up a new larger shop in Warren.

Francis says, "Vintage is in vogue, especially among millennials and Gen Xers."

Is it because of the sustainability?

- I think that's part of it, yeah, they're very mindful of not being wasteful and using things, you know, for years.

I think it's the uniqueness.

I think we have a generation that doesn't really wanna look like everybody else.

The nice thing about costume jewelry is, you walk into a store and generally it's one of a kind.

You're gonna see one thing.

They can come into a secondhand store, a thrift store, a vintage store, an antique store and find something that's much better made than what's at the mall, and way more interesting than what's at the mall.

- What's most popular among the things that you have?

- This organic trend of birds and flowers and butterflies.

In the seventies, they were popular and they're popular again now.

- Well, this Johnson & Wales building, most people don't know, was the largest jewelry factory in the world in the 1800s.

They made rings and pins.

They even made thimbles for women to sew with.

- [Pamela] College students have now transformed the old jewelry district into the knowledge district with Johnson & Wales and Brown Medical School, among others taking up residency.

Back at the Palmer House... - And it's in that piece of steel that we press the silver or gold to make the piece of jewelry.

- [Pamela] DiCristofaro is planning education workshops at the Providence Jewelry Museum to offer a chance for the next generation to touch the richness of Providence's gilded past.

- They don't have to know everything I know.

They don't have to learn to be jewelers, but if they come and experience what we do in our workshops at the museum, they're gonna take a bite of what I call, "The tactile qualities of man."

You're looking at something, it gets bent, it gets turned and before you know it, it's on your finger as a ring.

It's brilliant.

Most people think this stuff came down from heaven.

They've never seen it made.

(Pamela chuckling) (violins begin playing) (violins continue playing) - Up next, 85 years ago, a political fight broke out between the governor of Rhode Island and the owner of the Narragansett Racetrack.

It became known as, "The racetrack war," but the bitterness reached well beyond the track changing the political landscape to this very day.

Richard Ring of the Rhode Island Historical Society has the story.

(patriotic music begins) - [News Anchor] Governor Quinn orders the closing of Rhode Island's famous Narragansett Racetrack and officially charges that it is a harbor for acts of violence.

Marshall Law is declared and National Guardsman take over to prevent the track's opening.

Meanwhile, opposing legislators threatened to impeach the governor for using troops.

- So the racetrack war happens in 1937, but the track itself, the Narragansett Racetrack, had been open since 1934.

And the reason that the track had opened in 1934 was really the depression.

States are looking for revenue.

And so it was a man named Walter O'Hara, who was from Fall River.

He had owned textile mills there.

He saw an opportunity, and once Governor Theodore Francis Green makes it legal to basically have parimutuel betting in Rhode Island, there's a referendum, the people vote for it, and within days, the Narragansett Racing Association is chartered, and within another few days, construction starts on the track.

And so it only takes Walter O'Hara from June to August, 1934 and $1.2 million to build an entire racetrack and the races start.

(racing bugles calling) (audience cheering) (bell ringing) That racing season lasts 59 days and $23 million is bet in that season.

The state takes $800,000 of that money and it becomes about 10% of the state's revenue.

One of the reasons that the racetrack war happens is that it's a chip, if you will, in the game, the political game that was going on at the time between the Democrats and the Republicans.

The Republicans had basically controlled the government since the Civil War.

All of that changes January 1, 1935 after Theodore Francis Green (ragtime music begins) and a group of other democratic bosses put aside their differences and essentially clean house.

All the Supreme Court justices are let go and their own people are put into place, and the power shifts completely from the Republicans to the Democrats in a matter of a week.

And then that you would think would settle the battle.

Unfortunately, the Democrats then start infighting.

The racetrack is owned by Walter O'Hara.

He allies himself with Thomas P. McCoy, who is the mayor of Pawtucket at the time.

But McCoy has his own political machine and there are maybe three other Democratic political machines at odds with each other in the state.

So the governor at the time is Robert E. Quinn, who became governor when Theodore Francis Green gets elected to the Senate.

And so Quinn is allied with the Providence Journal.

He and Sevellon Brown, the editor of the journal, are allies and McCoy and O'Hara start trying to push against Quinn and Brown, the power structure that is in the government and the friction starts.

Part of the problem is that O'Hara, as the head of the track, doesn't want to pay as many state taxes as Quinn wants, so there's a revenue issue.

And then there's always an influence issue.

O'Hara owns the Providence Star-Tribune, and he runs a particular issue with a massive headline that says, "Governor Quinn will land in Butler's," O'Hara says.

But when you folded the paper to deliver it, it just read, "Governor Quinn in Butler's."

And that was a great example of the kind of chicanery that O'Hara would pull to sort of suggest that Quinn was nuts.

Because at this point, everybody actually thinks O'Hara is kinda crazy.

Of course, he hears that and he responds in kind.

And so it's that kind of rhetorical fight that really just escalates everything.

O'Hara doesn't let Quinn's investigators come and look at the books.

Quinn sends journal reporters to the track to kind of run surveillance on O'Hara and one journal reporter gets assaulted and beaten.

There's the sense from Quinn that the track attracts elements, criminal elements.

Quinn had to remove O'Hara.

He was a loose cannon.

He was too powerful and too vocal.

So he decides that the track is now a site of insurrection.

It's a site that needs to be handled physically.

He declares martial law, sends 300 troops with machine guns and the state police and closes the track before the fall races, and is closed for about a month.

It gets national news.

Everybody is basically saying, "What in the world is happening in Rhode Island?"

It's a national embarrassment.

People are claiming that we have a little dictator overstepping his powers and basically skipping over due process.

It becomes this really contentious time.

So it ends up with O'Hara being removed.

And one of the other racing association officials, James Dooley, who is a judge, becomes the president of the Racing Association from 1938 until 1960.

So it basically gets into much saner hands.

The racetrack war wasn't a win for anyone.

It was awful sort of eruption and failure of Rhode Island politics, and it really exposed a lot of the corruption in the system.

I think that in in some ways, studying these events, especially with recent knowledge, gives us a better sense what we're dealing with today.

Five years ago, we might have looked at this story and said, "That is just crazy.

It's insane.

That could never happen now."

Really?

(violins begin playing) (violins continue playing) - We now turn to our continuing My Take series.

Tonight, we hear from someone who knows a thing or two about Rhode Island's political ups and downs.

She is a former nun and the first female elected attorney general in the United States.

Arlene Violet tells us about an issue that's front and center in her mind, the increased polarization of the United States and the fracturing of America.

- Regrettably, I don't think we are the United States of America anymore.

We are fractured America.

We don't even speak to one another.

Citizens vilify other citizens.

We don't even talk at dinner tables anymore because we're afraid that that dinner is going to end up in a toxic environment and spoil the entire occasion that brought us together.

Hello, I'm Arlene Violet, (clapping hands once) and this is 'My Take' on the fracturing of America.

I'm a black person.

I'm white.

I'm Native American.

I'm Italian, French, Irish, Jewish, German.

I'm heterosexual, I'm gay, I'm transgender, I'm binary.

I'm not sure, but I'm all those things for certain because I'm a citizen of the United States of America and that is the country that has promised me that I have inalienable rights.

Margaret Thatcher once said, "This country of America is different from us.

Europe was founded on history.

They are the people that are founded on a philosophy."

I look at this country and it's sad to me that so many of us are really taking the gun to the other side of the equation because we disagree.

Citizens hate other citizens for no other reason that they don't think like they do.

They fight about politics, but it's not just a great argument where sides present sides and then they walk away as friends.

It actually has turned into alienation.

We are tearing down also the bedrock of principles in here, this fabulous country of ours, or what should be a fabulous country.

The Bill of Rights is under attack.

Take the First Amendment...

Journalists are vilified.

They're trying to ban books now in libraries.

Schools are subjected to a curriculum which really is whitewashed.

The truthfulness or the complete truthfulness of our history is not in fact taught anymore from the perspectives of the people who are sometimes victimized by American history.

So as I look at the United States today, regrettably, it's a really poor picture.

And we're also bad toward immigrants.

Back in 1886 when we got the Statue of Liberty from France, they gave it to us because they really believed that we would welcome those huddled masses, those poor, those tired people who are looking for a break in life.

But yet today, we vilify immigrants.

That's not the America that we're supposed to live in.

I hope that America can be turned around.

We need to go back to our basic founding principles.

We've got to stop fighting angrily with each other and get talking again.

We need to do less arguing and more listening.

Let's go back to the basics, can't we?

If we really want to make America great again in that full sense of the term, it's time for us to start speaking with each other and stop hating each other.

I'm Arlene Violet, (clapping hands once) and that's 'My Take' on the fracturing of America.

- Finally, a sneak peak.

Nearly 29 million Americans will have an eating disorder in their lifetime.

In its severest form, it's one of the deadliest types of mental illnesses.

Next week, we take a look at the connection between trauma and eating disorders.

- [Michelle] Dr. Amy Egbert is a clinical psychologist.

She mostly works with children who have eating disorders.

Egbert says, people who are exposed to trauma are more likely to develop an eating disorder.

- Getting help can be the difference between really living with these devastating disorders and being able to have a fulfilling life.

And it's okay if it feels hard to take that first step.

What we know about eating disorders is that they tell you, "No, you're doing just fine.

No, you're more in control now."

But that eating disorder voice doesn't have to be as strong as it might be now.

- And that's our broadcast this evening.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Michelle San Miguel.

- And I'm Pamela Watts.

We'll be back next week with another edition of Rhode Island PBS Weekly.

Until then, follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and visit us online to see all of our stories and past episodes at ripbs.org/weekly.

Or please listen to our podcast on your favorite streaming platform.

Thank you and goodnight.

(gentle music begins) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues)