American System

The term American System can mean one of the following:

  • American system of manufacturing, for a system of manufacturing developed in America.
  • American System (economic plan), for the program of Henry Clay and the Whig Party.
  • American School (economics), for the Hamiltonian American School of which the American System (economic plan) is a part.
  • United States customary units, a system of measurement used in the United States

Famous quotes containing the words american and/or system:

    There is not a more disgusting spectacle under the sun than our subserviency to British criticism. It is disgusting, first, because it is truckling, servile, pusillanimous—secondly, because of its gross irrationality. We know the British to bear us little but ill will—we know that, in no case do they utter unbiased opinions of American books ... we know all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the degrading yoke of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland.
    Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)

    We recognize caste in dogs because we rank ourselves by the familiar dog system, a ladderlike social arrangement wherein one individual outranks all others, the next outranks all but the first, and so on down the hierarchy. But the cat system is more like a wheel, with a high-ranking cat at the hub and the others arranged around the rim, all reluctantly acknowledging the superiority of the despot but not necessarily measuring themselves against one another.
    —Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. “Strong and Sensitive Cats,” Atlantic Monthly (July 1994)