“When office and wealth become the gods of a people, and the most unworthy and unfit most aspire to the former, and fraud becomes the highway to the latter, the land will reek with falsehood and sweat lies and chicane. When the offices are open to all, merit and stern integrity and the dignity of unsullied honor will attain them only rarely and by accident. To be able to serve the country well, will cease to be a reason why the great and wise and learned should be selected to render service. Other qualifications, less honorable, will be more available.”

Pike, A. (1871). Morals and dogma of the ancient and accepted Scottish rite of Freemasonry. Supreme Council of the Thirty-Third Degree for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States. https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=pike&book=freemasonry&story=master

The "Buffer Belt," featured in a 1925 British Pathé film, was a 1920s novelty invention designed to keep dancing partners physically apart. The belt featured a large, padded attachment meant to maintain distance and enforce social etiquette, addressing, in a comedic way, the increasingly intimate dances in speakeasies