Word: less
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Ever since the Middle Ages British belfries have pealed messy-sounding medleys of bongs. Less messy than it sounds, this "change-ringing" is done according to strict mathematical schemes, with good old English names like Plain Bob Triples, Grandsire Cinques and Spliced Surprises. A proper piece of change-ringing takes anywhere from six to twelve hours, keeps from five to twelve men busy pulling the bell ropes. Guardians of this little English art are London's Ancient Society of College Youths...
From 1909 to 1931 the common stock of Central Railroad Co. of New Jersey never paid less than $10 annually. Bluest of blue chips, the rich, little (1,155 miles) anthracite road had skipped only eleven dividends since it began operations in 1848. For 25 years (1905-30) the stock seldom sold below 200. In 1912 it hit a peak of 395; in 1928 another of 375. Last week it could be bought for 5. Sic transit...
...business sold 58,000,000 tons for $345,000,000-a record. Six years later only 60% of its business was left and the electric refrigerator had doubled its sales. Then, in 1935, paunchy Robert Carl Suhr, president of 24-State, $44,000,000 City Ice & Fuel Co., was less scared than most icemen. He had jumped the rest of the industry five years, had brought his company out of the drippy-wagon, pickerel-pond stage, had $25,710,324 sales and $2,972,997 net income. By the end of 1935, other icemen put Suhr at the head...
Exulted Edward Bruce at the show's opening: "It is a panorama of America triumphant, clear-eyed and unafraid. It smells as sweet as a new-mown field of clover." Less partial critics still found much to praise, noted a steady improvement from 1934, agreed that even if the SFA has yet to uncover a genius, it has uncovered plenty of talent...
...Broadway tryout in Washington, the German Embassy obligingly gave it free publicity by protesting to Secretary Hull that the play was "derogatory" to the Reich. But, though the Nazi Consul is hardly a Chevalier Bayard, and Hitlerism is scarcely recommended to U. S. audiences, Margin for Error is much less propaganda than entertainment. At its best it is both: somebody asks, "What would Hitler say if he found out that his mother was Jewish?", is answered, "He would say he's Jesus...