Those who say punctuation is everything really mean context is everything. For example, “Woman, without her man, is nothing.” Or is it “Woman: Without her, man is nothing.” Hmmm.
This game has been played for centuries. Josiah Wedgwood once wrote in a letter to his partner Thomas Bentley “we can sell nothing too good to America.”
The American market had grown exponentially since independence. English pottery firms amassed huge fortunes from the insatiable American cash cow. And Wedgwood, with his “almost American love for the extension of business” was one of the first to the trough.
Of course when he made that comment he meant the American market was so huge, so demanding, that his firm had to aspire to the heights of quality to stand out from the crowd. Wedgwood learned how to create a buzz through years of marketing experience at home. He pandered to American nouveau riche with high-end goods which the middle classes could only drool at. Furthermore, there was enough money in America to sustain even these inflated price points. How else could he survive in such a competitive market…
Of course when he made that comment he meant the American market was so huge, so profitable, that his firm could get away with selling anything scraped off the shop floor. Wedgwood pioneered the concept of unloading merchandise whose sole virtue was a rock bottom price tag (“seconds”) to America. Even these showed a tidy profit. So why bother with sending anything better…
Of course.
Readings:
If These Pots Could Talk. Ivor Noël Hume. University Press of New England/Hanover, NH. 2001.
The Rise of the Staffordshire Potteries. John Thomas. Augustus Kelly Publishers/New York. 1971.
Staffordshire Pottery and Its History. Josiah Wedgwood. McBride Nast & Co./New York & London. 1913.
This Day in Pottery History 