Word: middlemen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Veneto to see the movie stars at play. There they sit at the dime-size sidewalk tables at Doney's and Rosati's and the Strega, or slouch along the bar at the Excelsior Hotel. There, like swarms of gnats, come the hundreds of little middlemen, promoters, rumor touts and inside-kiters who do the dizzy business of making Italian movies. And in the oleander evenings, while the Roman sky turns blue and gold, the "wasps" (motor scooters) snarl through the Via Veneto, and oldtimers sip their Camparis and indolently speculate on the future...
...Bird Dogs. Florida's agriculture has kept pace with its industry. In the center of the state, citrus groves were heavy last week with the biggest crop in history (an estimated 130 million boxes). The "bird dogs," i.e., the middlemen in the industry, sent radio-directed trucks speeding from grove to grove, lining up likely buys. Not long ago, such a huge crop would have meant vast surpluses, and the dumping of millions of bushels of fruit into Florida's lakes and rivers. But "this year, almost every orange and grapefruit will be sold at good prices...
Against his lack of program and lack of action, the Communists seemed more and more the one group that knew what it wanted to do. Palmiro Togliatti's Communists are rich (among other funds, the party gets millions a year from their commercial monopoly as middlemen for all Italian trade with Eastern Europe); they are minutely organized and cleverly led, even able to turn to advantage such anti-Communist events as financial aid from the U.S. Example: a U.S. contract recently allowed a closed-down factory in Milan to reopen; because they had been shouting for its reopening...
Stripes & Tops. In those days, everyone wanted striped bathing suits. Jantzen helped to develop a machine that cut the cost of knitting stripes from 60? to a penny a suit. To cut distribution costs, the company used no middlemen. And to conform with local mores, Jantzen's men's suits always came with detachable tops. President Zehntbauer established mills and licensed plants around the world to make his suits, smartly got his swim suits promoted far & wide by celebrities and in aquatic shows...
...answer often suggested is to eliminate the middlemen between factory and consumer, thus save the profits that wholesalers and jobbers exact along the route. Many makers of industrial goods have already done this: more than 75% of the goods industry itself buys (e.g., machine tools) goes direct from factory to user. In some lines, however, the trend is in the other direction. Makers of business machines, who used to sell direct, are now selling part of their line across retail counters...