Word: abracadabra
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Like railroads and coal mining, the telephone industry is so essential to the nation's economy that the prospect of a lengthy strike has induced serious gastric disturbances in both Washington and Wall Street. Congressional searching for the legislative abracadabra that will keep telephone workers on the job is proceeding with the same infuriated righteousness that quashed last year's railroad strike. The pressure that the government exerted on the Railroad Brotherhoods was justified as a temporary measure. But the time for temporary measures has passed...
...Farmers & Labor. To farmers, the "cessation of hostilities" meant the end, on Dec. 31, 1948, of certain farm subsidies. These subsidies, designed to protect farmers who expanded during the war from a postwar collapse, are based on the abracadabra of "parity." They have already cost the Government $80 million for potatoes, which were luxuriantly overproduced in the past year. A few more such bumper harvests in protected commodities might cost the Government $1.5 to $2 billion a year...
...Pressure groups are on the march.. . . The gold dust thrown in all our eyes, by political abracadabra, only confuses, with gain to no one except temporary power to the economic magicians. We must mix brains with our brawn if we would keep our world leadership. We must steady ourselves in these emotional sweeps and keep our heads or the ship of democracy will wallow in this sea of confusion, spring a leak and disintegrate. . . . The whole world is watching us, amazed at the exhibition of a giant who cannot pull himself together even to take care...
...Stomach Abracadabra. The doctor who hung his shingle in the village or rode circuit through the forest was, often as not, a quack. Charms were popular: for convulsions, pour baptismal water over the peony bush; for bedwetting, fried-mouse pie; for a cold, crawl through a double-rooted briar toward the east; for a fever, write "Abracadabra" on a piece of paper and wear it over the stomach. Manufactured charms included "Perkins Patent Tractors" (metal rods to draw out disease) and "Dr. Christie's Galvanic Belt . . . for all nervous diseases...
...servants in Thurber's world are never servants one can deal with reasonably. They are agents of the devil, users of abracadabra, alarming in their slightest gesture. "They are here with the reeves," said Delia, his colored maid. "The lawn is full of fletchers," she announced on another occasion. Barney Haller, the Thurber handy man, had "thunder following him like a dog." His language, like Delia's, was from the nether world. "Dis morning bime by I go hunt grotches in de voods...