safety-firsts

Updated: May 8, 2025

If one were to take any ten blocks of Broadway and let all the people walking along stop just where they are and begin talking with the men right next to them about what we ought to do in this war, they will begin thinking they are not Americans, wanting to throw each other off over the edge of the country partitioning each other off into mollycoddles, traitors, pussy-foots, safety-firsts, bullies, braggarts and Bolshevists and pacifists and while they might keep up appearances and try to be polite on the surface with strangers, that whole section of Broadway would be mad all through for ten blocks.

Gerald Stanley Lee - The Ghost in the White House : Some suggestions as to how a hundred million people (who are supposed in a vague, helpless way to haunt the white house) can make themselves felt with a president, how they can back him up, express themselves to him, be expressed by him, and get what they want

It grew, the dam was raised, so the water was maintained within a few inches of the top of the unfinished wall. Occasionally I caught a glimpse of some workers in the deep water or near the shores of the ponds; they were digging safety-firsts, water escapes for emergency use.

Joe Mills - A Mountain Boyhood