Shoddy ... so so shoddy. And corrupt! part 2

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Shoddy ... so so shoddy. And corrupt! part 2


From an excellent article by Timothy Koenig about the chicanery going on at the start of the Civil War -


On this terrific website:


https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/civil-war/the-days-of-shoddy-worst-manufacturers-of-the-civil-war/


“For sugar the government often got sand; for coffee, rye; for leather, something no better than brown paper; for sound horses and mules, spavined beasts and dying donkeys; and for serviceable muskets and pistols, the experimental failures of sanguine inventors, or the refuse of shops and foreign armories.” So wrote Harper’s Monthly journalist Robert Tomes in July 1864. 


What Tomes was describing was far from uncommon during the American Civil War, a war that many have put on high moral ground beneath the umbrella of righteousness. But in that war, as with most wars throughout history, thievery and corruption ran rampant. 

This corruption, involving not only suppliers and manufacturers in the North but also high government officials, resulted in the unnecessary loss of life for many Union soldiers and was so costly as to prolong the war many months after it might have come to an end.

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And an excellent excerpt from a book you can read online, complete with vintage cartoons, about the effects of the shoddy goods on the war time economy:


https://books.google.com/books?id=H-zDBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA324&lpg=PA324&dq=shoddy+song&source=bl&ots=ejkkAifgKU&sig=4XABdh-CMpo9D44M0uj1ux7GVwA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwioiYGj5JTdAhVNmeAKHZNqAbA4ChDoATAGegQIABAB#v=onepage&q=shoddy%20song&f=false

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