Word: fetish
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Ever since the disastrous period of 1920-21, merchants and manufacturers alike have endeavored to secure the highest possible profits with the smallest possible inventories. Such a policy, to be profitable, requires very rapid "turnover of stock", and just this phrase has become a fetish throughout U. S. business...
...Anthracite," said Mr. Hammond, "has always been a fetish in New England until the last year or two." "Too long," said Governor Fuller, "our section of the country has stuck to anthracite while other sections never use it." "Anthracite" said Mr. Hammond, "is a luxury and not to be indulged in at too great a cost. We have plenty of substitutes" ?meaning bituminous (soft) coal, coke, fuel-oil. That was the lesson Governor Fuller desired to have expounded...
...another worshipper of this ancient and honorable custom is gained. Intellectual weaklings grow hirsute and become mental Sampsons! If anyone still doubts the effectiveness of this superstition and fetish worship, let him read Professor Tozzer's new book. Let him test it as other religions are often tested: by popularity, and by pragmatism. Professor Tozzer's interesting chapter shows that the whole college world practices it today and that its adherents are satisfied of its effectiveness...
...Nation sees in the worthy president a trembling hypocrite, who dusts off his fetish of personal liberty to aid him in regaining the right to drink, although this same idol lay untended and forgotten in the days of war when all men's minds must belong, willy-nilly, to their country. The New Republic, equally impious, destroys his hypothesis that high taxes restrict individual beneficence toward education. On all sides Doctor Butler's pet theories are bombarded with havoc. But evidently he has found a bomb-proof shelter, from which he mocks his adversaries. From the solid materials of scholarship...
Corliss Lamont is the most conspicuous of many prominent undergraduates in many colleges who are in revolt against what they call the "stupidity" of preceding undergraduate generations. They have a genial contempt for the traditional extra-curriculum fetish of the campus-the emphasis on athletics, college papers, clubs, "honors." Their informal program is to go into their extra-curriculum activities, beat the campus boys at their own game, and then, with the prestige so acquired, to sound the praises of more excellent things, such as the pursuit of truth...