All peoples throughout all of human history have faced the uncertainties brought on by unemployment, illness, disability, death and old age.  In the realm of economics, these inevitable facets of life are said to be threats to one's economic security.  For the ancient Greeks economic security took the form of amphorae of olive oil.  Olive oil was very nutritious and could be stored for relatively long periods.  To provide for themselves in times of need the Greeks stockpiled olive oil and this was their form of economic security.  In medieval Europe, the feudal system was the basis of economic security, with the feudal lord responsible for the economic survival of the serfs working on the estate.  The feudal lord had economic security as long as there was a steady supply of serfs to work the estate, and the serfs had economic security only so long as they were fit enough to provide their labor.  During the Middle Ages the idea of charity as a formal economic arrangement also appeared for the first time.  As societies grew in economic and social complexity, and as isolated farms gave way to cities and villages, Europe witnessed the development of formal organizations of various types that sought to protect the economic security of their members.  Probably the earliest of these organizations were guilds formed during the Middle Ages by merchants or craftsmen.  Individuals who had a common trade or business banded together into mutual aid societies, or guilds.  These guilds regulated production and employment and they also provided a range of benefits to their members including financial help in times of poverty or illness and contributions to help defray the expenses when a member died.  Out of the tradition of the guilds emerged the friendly societies.  These organizations began appearing in England in the 16th century.  Again organized around a common trade or business, the friendly societies would evolve into what we now call fraternal organizations and were the forerunners of modern trade unions.  When the English-speaking colonists arrived in the New World they brought with them the ideas and customs they knew in England, including the "Poor Laws."  The first colonial poor laws were fashioned after those of the Poor Law of 1601.  They featured local taxation to support the destitute; they discriminated between the "worthy" and the "unworthy" poor; and all relief was a local responsibility.  No public institutions for the poor or standardized eligibility criteria would exist for nearly a century.  It was up to local town elders to decide who was worthy of support and how that support would be provided.  As colonial America grew more complex, diverse and mobile, the localized systems of poor relief were strained.  The result was some limited movement to state financing and the creation of almshouses and poorhouses to "contain" the problem.  For much of the 18th and 19th centuries most poverty relief was provided in the almshouses and poorhouses.  Relief was made as unpleasant as possible in order to "discourage" dependency. T ose receiving relief could lose their personal property, the right to vote, the right to move, and in some cases were required to wear a large "P" on their clothing to announce their status.  Although Social Security did not really arrive in America until 1935, there was one important precursor, that offered something we could recognize as a social security program, to one special segment of the American population.  Following the Civil War, there were hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans, and hundreds of thousands of disabled veterans.  In fact, immediately following the Civil War a much higher proportion of the population was disabled or survivors of deceased breadwinners than at any time in America's history.  This led to the development of a generous pension program, with interesting similarities to later developments in Social Security.  (The first national pension program for soldiers was actually passed in early 1776, prior even to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Throughout America's ante-bellum period pensions of limited types were paid to veterans of America's various wars.  But it was with the creation of Civil War pensions that a full-fledged pension system developed in America for the first time.)  The Civil War Pension program began shortly after the start of the War, with the first legislation in 1862 providing for benefits linked to disabilities "incurred as a direct consequence of . . . military duty."  Widows and orphans could receive pensions equal in amount to that which would have been payable to their deceased solider if he had been disabled.  In 1890 the link with service-connected disability was broken, and any disabled Civil War veteran qualified for benefits.  The Great Depression of the 1930s was not the only one in America's history.  In fact, it was the third depression of the modern era, following previous economic collapses in the 1840s and again in the 1890s. During the depression of the 1890s unemployment was widespread and many Americans came to the realization that in an industrialized society the threat to economic security represented by unemployment could strike anyone--even those able and willing to work.  Protest movements arose--the most quixotic and notable being that of "Coxey's Army."  Jacob Coxey was an unsuccessful Ohio politician and industrialist who, in 1894, called on the unemployed from all over the country to join him in an "army" marching on Washington.  Ten of thousands of unemployed workers started marches, but by the time Coxey and his group finally made it to Washington only about 500 hard-core believers remained.  Coxey himself was promptly arrested for walking on the grass of the Capitol Building and the protest fizzled out.  https://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html

The history of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) dates back to the Civil War era.  The SCRA is a federal law protecting active-duty personnel from the distraction and inconvenience of collections actions back home.  After the Civil War, a moratorium was passed to suspend certain actions against Union soldiers and sailors.  This included contract enforcement, bankruptcy, foreclosure and divorce proceedings.  These prohibitions were formally codified in the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Act of 1918.  That act expired after World War I, but it came back as the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Act of 1940.  In this version of the act, which had no expiration date, Congress again maintained its strong support for protections to personnel on active military duty.  Congress revisited the act repeatedly to enact 11 amendments to keep up with the changing dynamics of American life and the lives and financial affairs of military personnel.   https://www.servicememberscivilreliefact.com/blog/what-is-history-of-servicemembers-civil-relief-act/    

“Friendship with oneself is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.”   Eleanor Roosevelt  https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21421-friendship-with-oneself-is-all-important-because-without-it-one   

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.  Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.   Carl Jung   https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/carl_jung_146686    

Adsorption and absorption mean quite different things.  Absorption is where a liquid is soaked up into something like a sponge, cloth or filter paper.  The liquid is completely absorbed into the absorbent material.  Adsorption refers to individual molecules, atoms or ions gathering on surfaces.  https://chembam.com/definitions/adsorption-vs-absorption/#:~:text=Adsorption%20and%20absorption%20mean%20quite,or%20ions%20gathering%20on%20surfaces.    

The suffix -ment changes a verb into a noun.  For example, enjoyment is the result of enjoying something, placement is the result of placing something in a specific position, and development is the result of developing.  

Adjectives ending in -ant   Nouns ending in -ant   Adjectives ending in -ent  Nouns ending in -ent   https://www.spellzone.com/word_lists/list-395.htm    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  April 24, 2025