Abe at Tiffany's

As a kind of candy store for the very rich, Tiffany & Co. is not exactly opposed to capitalism. Last month Tiffany's ran a Lincoln's Birthday ad in the New York Times quoting ten of Honest Abe's aphorisms about business. Samples: "You cannot help small men by tearing down big men"; "You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich." There was one technicality--Lincoln never wrote or said any of these. Actually the quotes were traced to a leaflet distributed in the 1940s by the Committee For Constitutional Government, a then reactionary Washington lobby. To its credit, Tiffany's discovered its error and apologized in a second ad. In fact, some of the quotes were sensible enough to come from Abe. As the Italians say, "If it's not true, it's well invented."

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