[Ads-l] Throwing a Monkey Wrench and Sabotage

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Excellent citations Peter and Bill. Below is a simile based on a
monkey wrench damaging a thresher in March 1891. The verb is "shove"
instead of "throw". As a bonus: a non-metaphorical monkey wrench
damaging a machine in 1897.

Date: November 21, 1891,
Newspaper: Blue-Grass Blade
Newspaper Location: Lexington, Kentucky
Article: (Response by Chas. C. Moore to a letter from a newspaper reader)
Quote Page 4, Column 1 and 2
Database: Chronicling America

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86069867/1891-11-21/ed-1/seq-4/

[Begin excerpt]
I knew a smart woman who read that fool book called "A miracle in
stone," that was written to prove that the pyramid of Cheops or Gizer,
was built by God, and had a cabalistic meaning that prefigured the
Christian religion.

It was an adroit piece of humbuggery, and the fellow shoved it through
that woman's brain, like a monkey-wrench through a thresher; but they
put her in the lunatic asylum alter it went through.
[End excerpt]


Date: March 03, 1897
Newspaper: The Topeka State Journal
Newspaper Location: Topeka, Kansas
Article: Bill Barnacle's Disgust
Quote Page 6
Database: Chronicling America

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82016014/1897-03-03/ed-1/seq-6/

[Begin excerpt]
All this time her vitals is thumping fearful day and night. Nobody can
sleep, and the engineers roasts their blooming ears listening at hot
steam chests and iron bulkheads to locate this here pounding. Just as
she crawls into port the Ranger breaks down. They overhauls the
engines and finds a eight pound monkey wrench in the main cylinder,
left there by the brainy bosses at Mare island. So the government
charters a tug at 1600 per day to tow the Ranger back to them turtles
for more repairs.
[End excerpt]

Garson


On Thu, Apr 6, 2017 at 6:03 PM, Peter Reitan <pjreitan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Nice find. Thank you.
>
> What's interesting here is that this citation also involves the so-called "free silver" debate that Governor Shaw was involved with four years later.  Coincidentally (or not, perhaps), one of the men prominently mentioned in the article is a Congressman from Iowa.  Sadly, however, the writer only says that Bland was "charged" with being  "in the position of a man who threw a monkey wrench into a threshing machine" - but does not tell us who made the charge.
>
>
> In any case, it appears that the metaphor was floating around in political/finance circles for several years before Shaw received so much praise for using it.
>
> ________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY RDECOM AMRDEC (US) <william.d.mullins18.civ at MAIL.MIL>
> Sent: Thursday, April 6, 2017 2:37:06 PM
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> Subject: Re: Throwing a Monkey Wrench and Sabotage
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