Two words on the first page of this chapter jump out: wealth and power.
Bottom of page 829:
“a widespread and almost obsessive belief that things could be endlessly
improved.” I can say with
confidence that this thinking still applies today. Just look at Apple; they are constantly upgrading and
improving their products, and people are like sheep lining up at the crack of
dawn to get the next best toy.
OK, I am dating myself by saying this, but when I was a kid,
we had a white rotary dial phone attached to the kitchen wall, and I still
remember that phone number: 57980.
That was it! Later, more
numbers got attached to the front:
335-7980. Then 412-335-7980. Now 412 is 724 because there are too
many people, and new numbers had to be created.
Historians can spin the words all they want about spreading
the credit for innovation from Britain alone to other parts of the world, but
the bottom line is that the Industrial Revolution was spawned in Europe, with
Britain at the helm. To say
otherwise is like saying that the Cardinals don’t have the runaway best record
in baseball right now. The writing
is on the wall.
Page 833:
“Asia, home to the world’s richest and most sophisticated societies . .
.” Says who? Is this what everyone thought of Asia?
Seems to me that Britain, if compared to a phenomenal
baseball team, had all the star players, resources, and backing to create a
team of ultra studs! Let’s give
credit where credit is due.
This is awesome:
Samuel Smiles’ famous book outlining the core values of middle-class
culture: Self-Help (p. 837). What a great title! Now I know where my family’s values
derived. I will sleep much better
tonight.
OH MY WORD! So
the Industrial Revolution spawned the world’s shopping addiction! I wonder if the topic of shoes and
shopping will surface at some point, because shoes are my personal addiction.
My father worked at PPG factory where I grew up in the
suburbs of Pittsburgh. Once, as a
young adult, I took a job in a uniform factory, which I found to be akin to
entering and exiting a prison on a daily basis. That job lasted one week – I never even gave them a notice –
just walked out of there. Got sick
of having my lunch stolen every day, punching a clock for every movement, and
getting barked at for not folding the uniforms with the right creases. Factories are really prisons in
disguise.
Little did Henry Ford realize what a monster he created with
the advent of the car. Virtually
every other commercial on the boob tube is one promoting a car. Our society relies so heavily on
automobiles that there is no turning back.
I am dating myself again, but this paragraph on Sears and
Monkey Ward’s (p. 848) prompted me to think of my first pair of skates obtained
with books of green stamps. They
were the metal skates that clamped onto the bottom of your sneakers and the
parts were adjustable with a skate key.
I still remember going to the Green Stamps store to get them, and I
loved them so until I got my first pair of shoe skates!
Yes, Pittsburgh is a steel town through and through. That is why the Steelers are called the
Steelers. There are still communal
living areas that exist around my hometown, projects that were built to
accommodate the families of the factory workers. Basically, they are tenement slums.
OK, I get the need for tin, rubber, sugar, bananas, cacao,
etc., but bird droppings for fertilizer?!
Ugh!
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