[Ads-l] Throwing a Monkey Wrench and Sabotage

[MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY RDECOM AMRDEC (US)]

_San Francisco Chronicle_ 6 Jul 1892 p 3 col 4

"He is charged with occupying the position of the man who threw a monkey-wrench into a threshing machine because he was not allowed to feed it."


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> I just put up a first draft of a post about the origin of "throwing a monkey wrench" in the works/machine - and Sabotage.  Comments
> appreciated.
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> 
> http://esnpc.blogspot.com/2017/04/iowa-farmers-wooden-shoes-and-french.html
> 
> 
> Highlights (if you can call them that) include:
> 
> The idiom "throw a monkey wrench in the machine" can be traced to Leslie M. Shaw who was elected the Governor of Iowa in 1897.  The
> earliest example of the idiom I can find appeared shortly after his election, and praises his turn of phrase as being "worthy of Lincoln."
> 
> 
> 
> "Hon. L. M. Shaw, the Vermont boy who has just been elected governor of Iowa, used an illustration worthy of Lincoln in addressing the
> voters.  He asked them if they meant to go to the polls and deliberately drop a monkey wrench into the threshing machine just as we are
> starting at a new setting.  They could see the point easily enough."
> 
> Herald and News (West Randolph, Vermont), November 18, 1897, page 2.
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> 
> All of the several earliest examples of the expression are from Iowa - or expressly credit Shaw.
> 
> 
> In 1902, when Shaw became Secretary of the Treasury, The Saturday Review published an article about Shaw, and included a lengthy
> description of his Lincoln-like speech that included the "monkey wrench in the threshing machine" metaphor.  The expression became more
> widespread and increasingly common after the Saturday Review article.
> 
> 
> As for sabotage, its etymology is fairly well known, but I did find two entries in Larousse's Grand Dictionnaire Universel, volume 14, that
> appear to be precursors to the word, that I have not seen mentioned anywhere else.
> 
> 
> The verb, saboter, could mean making wooden shoes, or making wooden railroad ties (wooden shoes for train tracks), but it could also
> mean playing hooky from school or working "fast and badly".
> 
> 
> Jouer au sabot: Un enfant qui SABOTER au lieu d'aller a l'ecole.
> Faire vite et mal: Saboter de l'ouvrage.
> 
> 
> I believe that the 17 volume Larousse was completed by 1895, which places it before "sabotage" became an official word related to labor
> direct-action.  The dictionary is undated, but I've seen advertisements for the complete set from 1895.  Can anyone provide better date on
> it? Am I missing anything?
> 
> 
> I also put in some historical details about French shoe makers, a silk weavers strike and presidential assassination that relate to the probably
> false etymology of sabotage involving the throwing of wooden shoes into the machinery.
> 
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org