Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
Mr. B. Promoted to Lieutenant Blockhead, George Cruikshank: 1820
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Three Gentlemen Greeting Each Other, by Richard Dighton
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The British government came upon a great discovery (Chinese preceeded the
British). The idea has two components: How to prevent revolutions and how
to obtain financial support from the wealthy (gentry, slave owners, new
industrialists)? Promote the not too wealthy new men (appeal to their
vanity). These new men paid enormously to buy uniforms, guns, and other
equipment. They were left with gigantic debts. Such soldiers were not the
ones to take part in revolutions: their debts would ruin their families.
However, buying clothes would support the textile and dye industries, the
industries that made iron and steel (coal mines and iron mines), chemical
industries, banking industries, insurance industries, leather industries
(shoes and boots), shipping industries, wharehouses, etc. Who cares if
wars were lost: political, financial, and industrial stabiliy and growth
was the result, either way!
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