Word: cotton
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Hong Kong's textile industry spun a tale of woe when the U.S. and other nations imposed embargoes on its low-cost cotton goods a few years ago. With acrimony and self-pity, it predicted dwindling sales, growing unemployment and financial disaster for the industry, which employs 41% of Hong Kong's work force and manufactures 53% of its exports. Nothing of the sort has happened: Hong Kong has enjoyed boom rather than bankruptcy...
...habit Egyptians cannot kick is the galabiya, the loose, ankle-length cotton garment that looks like a nightshirt and acts as an air conditioner of sorts in Egypt's sweltering heat. Fellah (peasant) and townsman alike have worn the flowing gown since the days of the pharaohs, and no amount of cajoling by Nasser's Ministry of Culture and National Guidance has been able to convince Egyptians that they should switch to that restricting jacket-shirt-and-pants that those strange, perspiring foreigners seem to prefer...
...Nasser is a tenacious leader, and once again his government went on the attack against the galabiya. State-operated cooperative stores put on sale 420,000 officially approved cotton suits consisting of trousers and jacket, retailing from $1.50 to $3, half the price of the average galabiya. To make the new attire more enticing, the suits come in grey or blue, or gaudy, striped red. In support of the anti-galabiya campaign, the state-controlled TV, press and radio have started a Madison Avenue-style campaign, with songs and commercials extolling the virtue of jackets and pants: they...
Harlem's Golden Age began. "Meat was cheap and home brew was strong," wrote Historian Lerone Bennett. "Duke Ellington was at the Cotton Club and Satchmo was at the Sunset, God was in heaven and Father Divine was in Harlem." Those were the days of speakeasies with names like Glory Hole and Basement Brownie's Coal Bed, of stompin' at the Savoy and vaudeville at the Apollo, of "rent parties" where guests paid 50? or $1 to help the host pay his rent and got all the food and drink-and sometimes sex-that they could manage...
That left only one remaining cotton futures exchange-the New York exchange, whose business has dwindled from 33 million bales in 1953 to 928,000 in 1963. Its leaders are negotiating with the Agriculture Department in hopes of finding a way to survive, but prospects are dim. The subsidy system has achieved stability for the nation's No. 1 fiber, but the cost in money and market freedom is high...