Manic Monday--Barbed Wire makes Good Neighbors!

Hey, let's begin Monday with a comic that actually educates us about something!

Yup, an actual industry-produced comic (published by Harvey!) extolling the advantages of barbed wire.

See, in ye olden days, Americans had lots of material from which to build fences...

But as the U.S. expanded west, well, apparently there weren't enough of those to build fences out there!!

Well, it was a vexing problem...

Why the hell isn't "dassn't" still in our everyday vocabulary?

Not only farmers were puzzled...

And the social media of the day:

I defy anyone to come up with an actual newspaper with that headline...

Even Congress ponitificated (but did nothing) on the issue:

Well, I could show you many (many, many) more pages about the almost simultaneous invention of barbed wire by two different people, and the complex series of legal patent battles and corporate mergers. Because ZZZzzzzzzzzzz...

Instead, let's go to a quicker summation from our cartoon mascot!!

Interesting that the settlers had enough wood for their buildings (and signs, and stools) but not for fencing.

Anyway, you're probably been underestimating the value of barbed wire to civilization:

That's right--law and order (and towns and churches, apparently built of non-existent wood ahem)--were all made possible by barbed wire!!

But wait--we're not done with the industry propaganda:

Barbed wire defended democracy!! (Left unsaid, of course, is that non-democratic regimes--including the nations we fought "in the last war"--ALSO used barbed wire. Shhh....)

All of this was brought to you by...

New Fontiers was published in 1958. Just be glad I left out the pages about the virtues of the woven wire fence.