Word: customs
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...sheets of currency, a large proportion of which was in the form of one-dollar bills. It is the one-dollar bill that has been the great staple of U. S. currency. Even the most modestly salaried individual can "flash a roll" of ones. Homely, democratic, sanctified by custom, the one-dollar bill has been taken to the U. S. bosom, lovingly christened "bean," "buck," "berry," "simoleon," "iron man," "smacker," "plunk," "rock," "kelp" (always in the plural which employs no "s"; e. g. "14 kelp."). Meanwhile the Treasury Department has found itself faced with a printing bill of millions...
...passing it on to you for verification - with the thought in mind that, if true, it might be equally interesting to you. The story goes around through our northern Scandinavian country that the real name of our great bandmaster, John Philip Sousa, is Swen Olsen. It was his custom, in traveling about the world, to mark his luggage with his initials, S. O. followed on the same line with U. S. A., for United States of America. From this evolved his name Sousa, which no doubt to his mind was a grander name for a world famed bandmaster...
...yellow chalk for the blackboards so plain that the students at the back of the room can see it; steel furniture for an anti-toxin laboratory; beakers, flasks, and evaporating dishes; 25 cases of books for the Sanskrit Department, printed in London and to be passed through the Custom House as nearly free of duty as possible. Are there blue books enough for the final examinations? Is there anything in that last glue we brought which will injure valuable prints that are to be mounted with it? "The last mimeograph paper dries fast enough, but we can't write...
...south and west its government was, and very properly, largely in the hands of New England alumni. Close association with the center of activity was considered a necessity for election to the Board of Overseers: and since comparatively few candidates lived in places far from Cambridge there arose a custom which has been followed with more or less regularity of selecting prominent graduates in either Boston or New York for the offices. Recent elections have shown that this tradition is still an active factor now, probably as much habitual as intentional, in forming the Board...
Likewise, on the other hand, it is true that prohibition has saddled the political parties with a burden under which they are cringing even more than is their usual custom. There is no way however, to remove this problem from their attention now: all agitation brings it closer under their scrutiny. It is not entirely a false notion that the administration of the Treasury Department has been in part corrupted and much confused by the exigencies of enforcement. Yet the government does not do well to confess impotency too readily however impracticable a project it has undertaken...