Khadi is a hand-spun and hand-woven natural fibre cloth, usually cotton, though silk or wool can be used too. Mahatma Gandhi promoted it as swadeshi, or self-reliance, during India's independence movement, asking people to spin their own yarn on a charkha spinning wheel. The first piece of hand-woven cloth was made at his Sabarmati Ashram in 1917–18, and the coarse texture gave the fabric its name. Khadi is still valued for staying cool in summer and warm in winter.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.