Word: sisal
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...other cordage, the Hemisphere has a wealth of fibers. Chief commercial ones are sisal and henequen, which grow more or less prolifically in Yucatan, Cuba, Haiti, other parts of Latin America. Exotic fibers-caroa, guaxima, papoula de Sao Francisco from Brazil, cabuya from Ecuador, pita and fique from Colombia-might replace jute and hemp if they could be produced and processed in sufficient quantity (which would involve new machinery, labor, transportation...
...freight routed over railroads. Then, under the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, the President could seize or purchase any U.S. ship, set up priorities under which ships now hauling fruit, silk and luxuries would begin moving the 19,000,000 tons of asbestos, bauxite, copper, cork, manganese, rubber, tin, sisal, nitrates, tungsten, vanadium and other strategic materials the U.S. needs for defense production. Thousands of tons of these materials are piled on foreign docks...
...Garfield County, Okla., who migrated to East Africa. He went out in 1910, when he was past 40, and he took with him his wife and as much stuff as he could pack in a bullock cart. He cleared 1,000 acres and planted them to coffee, potatoes and sisal, but most of his time he spent as guide to big-game hunters such as Martin Johnson, the Prince of Wales, Phil Plant and the Aga Khan...
Nature had done nothing dramatic for Mr. Chamberlain. He was tall and stringy, with the distinction of being the only British statesman who could sing Negro spirituals (learned as a young man when he was trying to raise sisal in the Bahamas), and the biggest feet in the Cabinet. He also had gout and bunions. Clement Attlee once said that Chamberlain's smile reminded him of the silver handles of a coffin. A kindlier woman said his eyes were "cold and smiling, like a Scandinavian river...
When Kipling was singing the glories of Empire in India, Neville Chamberlain was painstakingly trying to raise sisal on the thin soil of Andros Island in the Bahamas, to recoup his family's fortunes. When his father, Old Joe Chamberlain, as Colonial Secretary, was working to bring the Boers to terms, Neville was learning the hardware business in Birmingham and interesting himself in health work. The age of Victoria molded him into a typical Englishman of his time-not a Kipling Englishman, but a Galsworthy Soames Forsyte. Neville Chamberlain's mind was once described as "the type which...