Word: acumen
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Most Edmonton people cheerfully credit the construction of the new city hall to the financial acumen and persuasiveness of Mayor Hawrelak. Inheriting a $1,500,000 building fund when he took office five years ago, he fattened it from such civic windfalls as the $647,000 plum gained from a favorable turn of the exchange rate on borrowed U.S. dollars. By the time Hawrelak persuaded his fellow citizens to forgo other desperately needed civic improvements to start the city hall, he had the cash in sight...
...believed, American-style, in small profits and big turnovers. Said he: "I prefer to make one lira cutting costs rather than five by raising prices." But where Donegani's business acumen triumphed, his political instincts failed. A Fascist member of Parliament as early as 1921 and onetime president of the National Fascist Federation of Industries, Donegani was arrested by the Allies in 1945. He died two years later, a broken...
Less than half the offices were carpeted. In 58%, "unattractive exposed elements" (meaning heating fixtures) are visible. In 72% of the offices, sniffs the report, cramped interiors do not even suggest the "acumen" or "importance" of the executive. Probable reason: in two-thirds of the offices, the decor (or lack of it) was perpetrated by secretaries, wives, friends and "other well-meaning nonprofessionals...
...laced his arms around the waists of a couple of "farmerette" Stevenson supporters, joshed away as photographers popped their bulbs ("These aren't cowgirls. These are my girls . . . I think we ought to practice coming in here every night"). He showed perhaps a more profitable political acumen in Harrisburg when he dispatched Running Mate Estes Kefauver to a hotel to cheer up 650 Ladies of the G.A.R., who waxed fuming because they had not been able to get an audience with President Eisenhower in Gettysburg...
...India's states along linguistic lines. Many thought the worst was over three weeks ago, when India's Parliament passed a bill to create a huge new bilingual State of Bombay, to include both the Gujaratis and the Marathas. The Marathas envy and resent the Gujaratis' acumen and prosperity. As for the Gujaratis, they would be heavily outnumbered by people they consider inferior. Rioting broke out in Ahmedabad...