Merchant Quotes
Ford was a notorious anti-Semite. He was also an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler and the German Nazi’s. He considered a run for the Presidency and published a highly political company newspaper, and thus was much more of a public figure than most industrialists. Later, he issued an apology and claimed that he never really was anti-Semitic. See {586941}.
There was, well before the American Revolution, a restriction on the importation of British goods into the American colonies. Partially this was to pressure Parliament to stop some of its most repressive lawmaking. But it also supported what had become a very lucrative protectionist monopoly of large American merchants. See {636861}.
This propaganda piece turned truth on its head. They claimed the Germans who banned and burned books were lovers and preservers of culture and Jews who, since they were historically banned from certain occupations, tended to concentrate in others including writing, science, painting, and music. This official pamphlet was used in German schools starting in 1934. This propaganda was so effective that by the time the Nazis started the military aggression setting off WWII, the Germans already despised the French, Poles, Russians and other Europeans and were highly anti-Semitic. Americans and others in the world knew about the Catechism but did not believe that such nonsense would be believed by anyone. We have the same reaction today to the propaganda that the Palestinians and some Islamic nations use in their schools teaching hate for America, the Christian West and the Israeli and other Jews.
The metaphor of the “ship of state” was very common for governments of the era when basic nautical concepts were known to most educated people.
