Take 2: Project Gateway

Unfortunately, Plumb Lines was on a bit of a sabbatical when Governor Christie made the controversial decision to back out of the ARC. While three months is an eternity in the blogging world, I seem to recall that much of the criticism of the governor’s decision around these parts was based on three things: First, disagreements with certain evaluations and prudential determinations in the decision itself; second, disagreements with other New Jersey transportation policies that did not directly bear on the ARC Project; and third, an impatience with Right’s gut reaction to public transit.

Well, as the WSJ recently reported, Amtrak has taken the lead by proposing “Project Gateway”, new tunnel plan:

The project, dubbed Gateway, is a concept Amtrak has been studying for few years, according to a person familiar with the plans. But it would cost billions, and it isn’t clear where the money would come from. Backers hope it would fit in with President Barack Obama’s push for high-speed rail.

Announced on Monday, WSJ reported on Tuesday that the plan has already seen some support from various actors. Even Governor Christie offered some careful words of encouragement for the project after a healthy “I told you so” moment.

Obviously, Gateway is something that will be followed with interest here. Bradford, Schaengold, Schmitz, any initial thoughts?

- P. Langdale Hough

Morning Frost: Trees

Zaccheus he

Did climb a tree

Our Lord to see.

Title?

“Sycamore”.

- P. Langdale Hough

Greenback Remix

Some time ago Schaengold decried the slow Europeanization of U.S. currency, while offering mature praise previous designs:

Not too long ago, American paper money was something to be proud of. The presidential portraits were grave and formal, but not too classical. The seals were judiciously placed. The borders had an understated beaux-arts appeal.

Today, Kevin Kelleher over on Slate takes a look at Richard Smith’s Dollar Redesign Project, a leader of a “grassroots campaign” to redesign the  greenback.

Look above.

Things don’t look so good.

Now granted, some of the ideas submitted to the site should make those of us of a more traditional bent warm and fuzzy all over. For example, the winner of the online contest revealed $10s and $20 with the profiles of Plato, Locke, Smith and their ilk in some familiar verdant hues, as well as a certain graphical awareness of our habit of folding our cash in half. With a little work I think that even Schaengold could come to enjoy handing a couple of these over to the barrista at Small World.

- P. Langdale Hough

Culture Warrior no more?

In light of recent chats with Romney and his aids, Ramesh discusses some of the advantages and challenges of the Romney campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. Romney strategists have worked hard on downplaying his social conservative talking points, among other things,  in an effort to battle problems with an “inauthentic” image:

These Romneyites do not believe that the governor should abandon his conservative positions on the social issues. Most of them share those positions, and also know that flip-flopping again would render Romney ridiculous. They just want him to avoid emphasizing the social issues. It is advice he appears to be taking to heart. Economics and foreign policy, in that order, have been the focus of his public comments. His critique of Obama has been that the president is endangering our currency by spending so much on domestic programs, threatening our security by cutting defense spending, and reducing our credibility with allies by drawing closer to our enemies. Romney has not complained about Obama’s social liberalism. At one point, Romney was fighting against liberal policies on stem cells more actively than any other governor in the country. When I asked him about Obama’s record on the subject, he began his answer by noting that he had not been following it much over the last year.

Ramesh’s further observations seem right on to me. If Romney ignores Iowa, stays out of the who-can-be-more-conservative game, and focuses on bringing good ideas (rather than describing them as conservative ones, even if they are), his image will be much more genuine. He will be more likely to survive the rise of evangelical and strong movement candidates, who will certainly split the GOP nomination in early states, and will have a better chance of pulling through with strong independent support as a reasonable GOP option. Again, Romney does not have to seek out liberal solutions to the issues facing the nation (some would argue he has enough of those in Massachusetts), but he does not have to paint himself as a traditional candidate from the right. Go over to NRO and read it for yourself.

- P. Langdale Hough

“The Great Books are dead.”

Long live middlebrow culture!

- P. Langdale Hough

The End of Malls?

Cheryl Miller over at the American Conservative offers some thoughts on the New Urbanist take on the decline and redesign of malls, highlighting the inclination toward the centralization of design that I believe will consistently undermine the goals of New Urbanism:

Malls, like town centers [as envisioned by Thomas D’Alesandro IV], are not just random agglomerations of stores like the old downtown or Main Street. They’ve been planned. Like the mall builders of yesterday, the New Urbanists tout the enlightened planner’s ability to forestall bad outcomes, like city blight or suburban sprawl. Yet the degree of control such planning entails also creates an atmosphere that feels contrived—one lacking the messy but redeeming randomness of Main Street. Centralization leads to standardization, with the result that many town centers seem stamped out of the same mold in some far-off corporate headquarters.

- P. Langdale Hough

The Decline of Acorn

During this time of the year my walk to the office is littered with bushel upon bushel of acorns, thrown about by the strengthening autumn  winds. They come primarily from the black and white oaks that line the lawns and sidewalks of this town and gown, at times in such quantities that they must be swept off the walkways. Along with leaves, maple seeds, and twigs, they are considered landscaping refuse, and will be entirely gone in a month or two.

In the early Middle Ages through the decline of the great medieval forests the fall season was the time for foraging; not for human beings, but for livestock, especially the semi-feral swine that normally fed on the daily household scraps during the winter and summer months. They would be driven out into the woods where they would feast for a few brief weeks on the one of the few harvests that required no labour, acorns, and would then be driven back into town to be butchered. While in general it would be a small disaster  to encourage local farmers to bring their pigs to town for the day, there was a time when the grazing of livestock was an important part of small town life. Schmitz’s noted the (now) unusual privilege of Professor Harvey Cox, Hollis Professor Emeritus of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School, whose endowed chair granted him the right to pasture his cows on the Harvard Yard. Such a practice was common in colonial New England, where town greens functioned as common grazing land as much as areas for the training of militias and outdoor children’s games, three activities that have all but disappeared.

I believe an important part of integral human development is the daily presence of the various people, places, and things that are deeply involved in one’s own physical, psychological, social and spiritual flourishing. As we think about how to strengthen local community life, including local economies, we would do well to consider the absence of livestock  in our larger community and the wasted harvests under our feet, and reflect on why they will remain absent and wasted.

- P. Langdale Hough

McDaniel on Small Communities

As I mentioned last week, there has been an interesting back and forth between Sam Gregg (Acton Institute) and Stefan McDaniel (First Things Magazine) on free trade. I was curious about Stefan’s response to Gregg’s criticisms of small communities, but concluded that without further details about the types of small or large communities they were both considering, further discussion would be less fruitful. However, lest the discussion here at Plumb Lines falter, my friend Stefan was kind enough to offer some additional thoughtful reflections on small communities:

The modern situation generally presents us with a choices not between perfection and imperfection but between human problems and inhuman problems. The characteristic problems of small and medium-sized communities, such as narrowness, xenophobia, and insufficient regard for the particular interests of individual persons are immemorial. But so is the standing risk of spousal and child abuse wherever families have significant autonomy and privacy. Yet most of those with a robust understanding of human flourishing would not only reject the argument that the family should therefore be dismantled, we would not even judge this fact a good reason to be neutral or lukewarm toward the family. The integrity and strength of the domestic realm is so basic a condition for the proper formation of persons and for social health in any conceivable situation that we must support it energetically. It is fundamental, and I don’t see how anything fundamental could fail to represent a net gain in any case whatever. I am prepared to argue vigorously that small and medium-sized communities are similarly fundamental. The relatively new state of perpetual social and economic turbulence that we call the global society (with its global market) can make no such claim–unless Gregg believes there was practically no human flourishing anywhere in the world until the mid eighteenth century. I have known representatives of the worst in small/medium communities and of the worst in the new global commercial society. I have known bigots and narrow-minded fools and I have known cosmopolitan nihilists. I have no doubt about which distortion of the human personality is more radical. The former type is aggravating, a loudmouth, perhaps dull and feckless and probably very dangerous as a member of a mob. He wants some experience of the wider world or perhaps a deepened religious understanding, but is still very recognizably human in most values, motives, and understandings. But the latter seems to need an exorcism. Of course, he feels no particular hostility towards dark-skinned people, women, or Jews and he is very hygenic, well educated, polite, hard-working, creative, law-abiding; he has travelled widely and speaks German and French. To judge by the values most characteristic of capitalist societies (I refer of course to real, existing societies rather than the hypothetical one that would have the common decency to obey Adam Smith) he is a jewel of our civilization. But his lack of interior principle, guiding purpose, or commitment (thinly veiled by a bubbly surface of urbane glibness) chills the spine. He is capable of anything because he cares for and feels in principle bound by, nothing in particular. He is nothing but a consumer and cynical producer/prostitute; he is a bad parent and a bad citizen. He is more to be feared, and more to be pitied, than any bumpkin.

There has clearly been, as Wendell Berry would observe, a gain associated with globalization, but it is very, very unclear how much of that gain has been net. Wherever the global society makes a claim against the national and (especially!) regional and local, the burden of proof is emphatically on the global society.

While I revel in Stefan’s argument (indeed, I detect the indelible mark of the Dialogues in these two “forms”, or perhaps the stock personae of Plautus or Terence), his opening observations are most important. It is certainly the case that every community offers its share of virtues and vices, and so I (and Stefan) find Gregg’s critique falling a bit flat. Gregg should make the more pointed argument that the globalised society is in fact the better, the more natural, social situation for true human flourishing, and the virtues and vices faced is such a society are of a different  degree and “lesser” type than those found in other, more provincial societies. I know too many political philosophers who are fruitlessly struggling to brush aside the significance of the polis not to recognize how  very challenging it is to make this argument, but it needs to be made if we are going to understand some of the intense challenges facing the individual, the family, the corporation, and university, and the state in this era.

- P. Langdale Hough

Rights of Corporations and the NYT

Volokh notes an internal inconsistency in the NYTimes editorial on corporate rights. My hunch is that one would simply argue that the press is a corporation specially defined by its exemption to rule.

- P. Langdale Hough

Gregg on Free Trade and Utility

As I mentioned, Sam Gregg’s response to Stefan McDaniel was posted today, and on the whole he makes some legitimate critiques. This exchange cannot advance much further without some detailed discussion of how intimate Stefan’s local communities are and how extensive Gregg’s globalization is.  Without it, we have paragraphs such as this:

Here it is worth adding that many small and medium-sized communities actually impede human flourishing. Some such societies often embody characteristics such as provincialism, irrational hostility towards outsiders and foreigners, ignorance of the wider world, and customs that unjustly restrict opportunities for integral development by some individuals and groups belonging to these communities. Some of globalization’s positive effects are to broaden horizons, diminish prejudices, and provide opportunities to pursue integral human flourishing in ways that often cannot be accommodated in relatively isolated groups.

While I do not think that Gregg ever argued for the worst of homeless, drifting metropolitan life,  I know that Stefan did not propose Brigadoon. Right, Stefan?

- P. Langdale Hough

Thoughts on Notre Dame Task Force

Rick has some thoughts up over on MoJ on Fr. Jenkin’s new Notre Dame initiative outlined in a letter to the university community. An excerpt from the letter:

As our nation continues to struggle with the morality and legality of abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and related issues, we must seek steps to witness to the sanctity of life. I write to you today about some initiatives that we are undertaking.

Each year on January 22, the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, the March for Life is held in Washington D.C. to call on the nation to defend the right to life. I plan to participate in that march. I invite other members of the Notre Dame Family to join me and I hope we can gather for a Mass for Life at that event. We will announce details as that date approaches.

On campus, I have recently formed the Task Force on Supporting the Choice for Life. It will be co-chaired by Professor Margaret Brinig, the Fritz Duda Family Chair in Law and Associate Dean for the Law School, and by Professor John Cavadini, the Chair of the Department of Theology and the McGrath-Cavadini Director of the Institute for Church Life. My charge to the Task Force is to consider and recommend to me ways in which the University, informed by Catholic teaching, can support the sanctity of life. Possibilities the Task Force has begun to discuss include fostering serious and specific discussion about a reasonable conscience clause; the most effective ways to support pregnant women, especially the most vulnerable; and the best policies for facilitating adoptions. Such initiatives are in addition to the dedication, hard work and leadership shown by so many in the Notre Dame Family, both on the campus and beyond, and the Task Force may also be able to recommend ways we can support some of this work. [italics mine]

Let’s be clear: “fostering serious and specific discussion about a reasonable conscience clause” is extremely important. Likewise, finding “the most effective ways to support pregnant women” is extremely important. Finally, discussing “the best policies for facilitating adoptions is, (that’s right!) extremely important.

But consider this:

Imagine if someone told you in 19th century America that he was not interested in giving slaves full citizenship, but merely reducing the number of people brought to this country to be slaves. But suppose another person told you that he too wanted to reduce the number of slaves, but proposed to do it by granting them the full citizenship to which they are entitled as a matter of natural justice. Which of the two is really “against slavery” in a full-orbed principled sense? The first wants to reduce the number of slaves, but only while retaining a regime of law that treats an entire class of human beings as subhuman property. The second believes that the juridical infrastructure should reflect the moral truth about enslaved people, namely, that they are in fact human beings made in the image of their Maker who by being held in bondage are denied their fundamental rights.

At any other time, I sincerely believe that this task force would be wholeheartedly welcomed as a serious initiative that provides the comprehensive pro-life argument that is needed to turn the tide. This is what Rick would have us do:

Yes, Notre Dame needs to do more. The Administration and University leaders need to embrace and celebrate — publicly and enthusiastically — the work and witness of pro-life students and faculty, of programs like the Center for Ethics & Culture, of pro-life policies and proposals. It should never be possible for a reasonable observer to think that Notre Dame cares passionately about energy conservation but reservedly or half-heartedly about the need — the moral imperative — to use the law (and other policy tools) to protect unborn children. All that said, this is a good thing. I’d like to see Notre Dame’s pro-life critics — that is, those of her critics who recognize her importance and who want her to be what she is called to be — give Fr. Jenkins and this task force…the benefit of assuming good faith, welcome and engage their work, and — as needed — charitably call on them to do more.

I agree with Rick. But when such a program is assembled by those who, from all outward and public signs, believe it is unnecessary (or inopportune) to protect the fundamental rights of all human persons in the law, and would rather simply make sure that citizens don’t really have an excuse for violating the fundamental rights of other, it is difficult not to think that we have a severe case of naivety or disingenuousness. Charitably calling on Notre Dame to “do more”, to protect human life, will be a great challenge, as charity always is.

- P. Langdale Hough

Integral Human Development and Utility

A provocative exchange is going on between Sam Gregg and Stefan McDaniel on the free market (see Sam’s first article and Stefan’s thoughtful response, Gregg will reply later this Friday). McDaniel makes many admirable points, such as the following:

It is a judgment that may be risible or even unintelligible to those with very different political imaginations from mine, but it is important to propose it. Public authorities and legislators should promote integral human development. That is to say, development involving all the many, complex aspects of existence that make for a full human life. Deciding to seek integral human development does not lead automatically to any specific policies but (what is more radical still) changes the very language and patterns of reasoning followed in discussing policy options. If decision-makers chose to be explicitly responsive to all the various values in play when organizing the lives of their communities, political discourse would change almost beyond recognition.

Now, when it comes to making decisions about economics, a crucial value is generally overlooked: human beings are happiest when they belong to several concentric or overlapping communities, each with a distinctive way of life (enduring, usually, across many generations) and each enjoying a degree of organic wholeness; that is, the sense of being a demarcated ‘little world’ adequate (at least potentially) to provide the elements of a good, distinctly human life. Economies are deeply intertwined with concrete ways of life, and are crucial to establishing organic wholeness—they are not merely patterns of production to be judged only by their productivity and efficiency. Communities without somewhat circumscribed, partly independent economies of their own tend to have increasingly abstract and finally unreal existences.

I believe Stefan is getting to the heart of a question that is just beginning to be discussed in certain circles of philosophical economics: what has natural law to contribute to our understanding of economics? The minute we seriously consider ideas such as “integral human development” as a basis for our understanding of human flourishing, and recognize the powerful role markets play in “establishing organic wholeness”, we are forced to reconsider the usefulness of the current economic definition of “utility” in forming concrete economic policies. I look forward to Gregg’s response.

- P. Langdale Hough

Re: Where Have All the Women Gone?

How one can discuss the disappearance of women throughout the world, both physically and demographically, without mentioning abortion, is beyond me.

- P. Langdale Hough

De natura Legonis

Matt’s response to my post on the differences and similarities between Lego and Playmobil bring to light some helpful observations in light of his own fantastically creative Lego experience:

My brother is an electrical engineer at Caltech. I gained a rather less useful degree in English from Princeton. In the physical medium that Legos provided, our two styles of play became one. We constructed beautiful and complicated things  and, at the same time, made those creations come alive with human stories. It hardly matters whether or not playing with Legos somehow helped us go on to gain our elite degrees; they were the perfect means for two boys to be brothers.

As we got older, our creations became more and more complicated. We had a Lego history and a Lego genealogy, wherein certain Lego men were the patriarchs from whom every other Lego man was in some way descended. We constructed an economic system complete with currency and private enterprises, but we weren’t mere carpet capitalists. Cities of two or three plastic men made alliances with each other and went to war. We devised a non-arbitrary way of resolving battles and made a plan for a monumental capital city (the only part ever completed was a perfect, 10 inch-wide rotunda dome).

In general, I think that Matt and I would agree with my observation that “Lego and Playmobil provide two entirely different systems of creative play.” But he further asserts that “if they’re [children] going to own toys, they ought to be Legos.” This is the equivalent of my Playmobil pirate corsair sending heated shot across the bow of my Royal  Navy heavy frigate. While I am willing to admit that it would have been almost impossible for me to create  my own microeconomies and patriarchal societies with Playmobil, it should be clear that Lego does not provide the necessary figures, equipment, and structures to fully re-enact Devil’s Den and Little Round Top, the Hanseastic League, Great Gatsby parties, or Roman occupied Egypt. One offers creative play with the ability to strike out into entirely new and uncharted worlds, while the other offers re-creative play, a chance to re-enact (and reexamine) human experiences, both contemporary and historical.

I whole-heartedly agree with Matt’s opening statement: “Children should play with sticks and mud.” The words of Burbank come to mind:

Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water-bugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud-turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb, brooks to wade in, water-lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hay-fields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of his education.

- P. Langdale Hough

Lego vs. Playmobil

Kottke highlights the recent piece in the Times on the changing face of Lego:

In the United States, Lego’s biggest market and the biggest toy market in the world, games with themes like “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” were among the reasons Lego sales jumped 32 percent last year, well above the global pace. But experts like Dr. Jonathan Sinowitz, a New York psychologist who also runs a psychological services company, Diagnostics, wonders at what price these sales come.

“What Lego loses is what makes it so special,” he says. “When you have a less structured, less themed set, kids have the ability to start from scratch. When you have kids playing out Indiana Jones, they’re playing out Hollywood’s imagination, not their own.”

On one hand, I agree with the point here: what makes Lego unique is/was the structural creativity found in each one of its sets or collections.  The secondary problems with their venture into thematic sets, specifically those centered on “Hollywood’s imagination”, are the actual themes themselves: they are narrow, incidental, and unable to transcend personality and special effect (yes, even Star Wars). Such is not case with the product lines of a toy that is made for children of the same age, Playmobil. Themes such as Egyptians, Romans,  Civil War, Knights, Pirates, Life in the City, Safari, Leisure, Airport, Police, Farm, Hospital, and Animal Clinic are sufficiently broad enough for children to develop their own narratives within the themes, such as  the Norman Conquest, the Royal Ascot, Caesar’s Gallic Wars, an agrarian/localist development, transportation lines, any 18th century nautical conflict involving pirates, the Royal navy, and European tyrants, and even zoos (or exotic animal hunts, for that matter). Fundamentally, Lego and Playmobil provide two entirely different systems of creative play. But if Lego is going to continue in its tradition of infinite creativity, it will have to change the way it approaches its product themes.

- P. Langdale Hough

On your radar…

The Public Interest comes back to bite. Check it out.

- P. Langdale Hough

Occidental Stupidity

Via Southern Appeal:

HuffPo managed to find a spectacular piece of postmodern asininity at Obama’s alma mater, Occidental College.  From the course descriptions of the Critical Theory and Social Justice program:

180. STUPIDITY.

Stupidity is neither ignorance nor organicity, but rather, a corollary of knowing and an element of normalcy, the double of intelligence rather than its opposite. It is an artifact of our nature as finite beings and one of the most powerful determinants of human destiny. Stupidity is always the name of the Other, and it is the sign of the feminine. This course in Critical Psychology follows the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, and most recently, Avital Ronell, in a philosophical examination of those operations and technologies that we conduct in order to render ourselves uncomprehending. Stupidity, which has been evicted from the philosophical premises and dumbed down by psychometric psychology, has returned in the postmodern discourse against Nation, Self, and Truth and makes itself felt in political life ranging from the presidency to Beavis and Butthead. This course examines stupidity.

CORE REQUIREMENT MET: UNITED STATES

- P. Langdale Hough

Arctic Jellies

Chrysaora melanaster

If you get a chance, take a look at the slide show on the BBC of deep Arctic jellies taken during some recent submersible dives. Their astounding intensity of color and variety of shape are only matched by the extraordinary depths at which they are found, at times up to 2,600 meters. Some of them remain unnamed and unclassified. Knowing absolutely nothing about the phylum Cnidaria, I will let readers simply admire these gelatinous zooplanktoi.

- P. Langdale Hough

A Paper, a Church, An Avenue

Hillhouse Avenue

That’s right, trouble with those Papists up in New Haven…in 1879. Recently I dug up this New York Times column on my old home parish, the Church of St. Mary in New Haven,  begun in 1870 and (controversially) located on the Hillhouse Avenue. Once regarded as the most lovely street in all of America, Hillhouse was originally a lengthy thoroughfare  running from the New Haven green up to the residence of James Hillhouse  know as Highwood. It became the home to New Haven’s high society, including the president of Yale College, distinguished faculty of the college, and leading members of the  community. All of these roles were embodied in the original designer of the street, Yale mathematics professor Jeremiah Day, who laid out the new plan for the exceptionally spacious avenue in 1792. Hillhouse himself was responsible for planting the seeds of New Haven’s now irrelevant epithet,  “The Elm City”, those towering trees of the city’s main streets (including Hillhouse) that disappeared with the devastating Dutch Elm disease. As the decades drifted by, the avenue witnessed the the construction of some of the most elegant estates designed by Henry Austin, Alexander Jackson Davis, Russell Sturgis, and J. Cleaveland Cady, many of which are still standing today.

Church of St. Mary

The interaction of Gothic elms, broad slate sidewalks, great flat lawns, and majestic estates quickly made Hillhouse a distinctive, cathedral-like thoroughfare that invited its inhabitants to process down its center aisle and file into their private chapels. Given the size of New Haven in the early nineteen hundreds and the city’s tightly designed plan, Hillhouse could be consider an suburban prototype, containing many of the features dear to 19th century admirers of country-style urban estates: easy access to the heart of the city, spacious yards,  economically homogeneous neighbors, and until 1870, no Irish Catholics. The public, indeed national, dismay when in 1870 the Irish immigrant community turned to James Murphy to build the new St. Mary’s Church on a lot located at 5 Hillhouse was substantial, even making it to the pages of the New York Times. The Gothic revival style church was consecrated on 1874 where it initially struggled on the meager contributions of the poor factory-working congregation, as the article reports.

The architectural residue of New Haven’s one-time aristocracy is all that is left in the remaining two blocks of avenue between Silliman College and Science Hill, now almost entirely owned by Yale University due to its ruthless expansion into the heart of New Haven’s residential communities. The parish of St. Mary’s remains.

UPDATE: Here is an excellent history of Hillhouse from 1809 – 1900 available online.

- P. Langdale Hough

Loaferin’ around…

Another delightful post from Ivy Style. From G. Bruce Boyer’s 1982 article on the Bass Weejun:

The loafer didn’t become popular until the 1930s when, as everyone knows, it arrived here from Norway.

Oh, you didn’t know that? Well, yes, truth is that the loafer (even though the word “moccasin,” of Indian origin, is equally used to name this shoe) is really a model of a Norwegian peasant shoe: a laceless leather shoe of soft construction, in which the vamp (top front part) is sewn to the sides in a single piece, and with a strap over the instep. First worn by Norwegian fishermen, who made it for themselves during their off-season winter months, this casual shoe became popular with Englishmen and Americans traveling in Scandinavia after World War I.

Boyer later comments on the persistent encroachment of the relaxed, comfortable attire from a man’s college days on his later business dress as the young man made the transition from “penny loafers, tweed jacket, and khakis” to the three-piece, button-on-center natural shoulder suit of the office. Such an observation should make well-dressed men across the country weep bitterly for their sons and grandsons.

- P. Langdale Hough