Word: feudality
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Ridden by heavy taxes and a feudal system of landlordism, pinched by the British corn laws (which put a high tariff on imported grain, in favor of England's home-grown wheat), the Irish had been reduced to practical subsistence on the potato, and when that crop failed whole counties were left literally foodless. Governmental remedial machinery was slow, graft-ridden, stupidly conceived. While the famine lasted. 21,770 people died of starvation, the total Irish mortality for the five years that ended in 1851 was close upon a million. The two most important results were: a desperate stiffening...
Successor to Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick as overlord of the feudal financial system of the unique U. S. city of Pittsburgh, Andrew Mellon was an officer or director of 160 corporations and worth no one knew how much more than $500,000,000 in 1921 when Harry M. Daugherty is said to have suggested to Warren Gamaliel Harding that he would make a good Secretary of the Treasury. President-elect Harding answered: "I never heard of him," and in so doing expressed not only his own ignorance but that of the U. S. public...
Just as nature abhors a vacuum so the law abhors a vacant ownership of anything. In the U. S. the States are the original and ultimate proprietors of all lands within their jurisdictions. And the ancient feudal doctrine of Escheat or accidental reverting of lands to the original lord has been applied in modern law not only to lands but to personal property, unclaimed savings deposits, dividends, and securities. Most laymen and many lawyers think of escheat only when persons die without wills and heirs. Last week smart lawyers all over the U. S. eyed with admiration a lawsuit filed...
Japan's present system of peerage, of which the new Premier is a top-ranking member, numbers about 1,000, was established in 1884 as a subtle method of breaking the power of the feudal Samurai. Titles are ki (prince), ko (marquis), haku (count), shi (viscount), dan (baron). All are hereditary titles, all except the first can be conferred on commoners. There is also the equivalent of British knighthood in the Ikai or Kurai. Only in classical poetry or Gilbert & Sullivan is the Emperor called Mikado, is generally called Tenshi (Son of Heaven) or Tenno (Heavenly King...
...conversation in a hotel two years ago, during a U. M. W. drive to organize Harlan County's miners. That drive failed, as union attempts to get a foothold in "Bloody Harlan" have always failed. But last week there was a new tide in Harlan history, and the feudal sway of Capital over one of the world's richest bituminous coal fields seemed about to end. U. M. W. had put 20 organizers in the field on the heels of the Supreme Court's validation of the Wagner Act. And for the first time full light...