Word: thumbscrews
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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From long practice Mr. Chamberlain knows, the advantage of cracking an early jest to distract his victims from the impending thumbscrew of his Budget revelations. Last year he said: "Perhaps I may liken this budget to the uncertain glories of an April Day." This year if he had drawn on the calendar for his opening banter he would have had to choose the month of November, so he changed his tack, orated: "It has been suggested that I tax bachelors, bicycles, cats, dogs, debutantes, fiction, loudspeakers and other things. . . . None of these things...
President Hoover's soft-voiced pleas to purge the pension rolls fell on deaf ears at the Capitol. Special Congressional committees investigated only to report disagreement and deadlock. The National Economy League took the field in response to widespread sentiment against nonmilitary disability allowances. But the thumbscrew tactics of the veterans' lobbies blocked all legislative action...
House Cat. The State Department's policy of requesting bankers to submit their proposed foreign loans for diplomatic inspection began in 1922. Its pur pose then was to thumbscrew European nations into funding their War debts to the U. S. by denying them fresh credits until they had done so. When all funding was completed, the State Department continued to act as a fiscal censor with the idea of bridging the abyss between Big Business and U. S. foreign policy. While it contended that it did not pass on the security or merits of foreign loans, its method of reporting...