In eighteenth-century England merchants had been described as businessmen, but once again, in going across to America, the word took on new meanings, from the princes of finance who set up Wall Street and brunched in the Plaza Hotel to the small businessmen whose salesmen came to epitomise the longing to catch the American dream. Later, the progeny of businessmen was to include “executive,” “well heeled,” “fat cat,” “gogetter,” “yes-man,” “assembly line” and “closed shop.”
