Erving Goffman would say that all these humiliating activities on the first day of basic training in the army (replaced clothes, shaved hair, communal bathroom..) are part of a degradation ceremony. Erving Goffman is the father of Labeling Theory. In his book Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates he looked at how society deals with deviance by codifying and enforcing social roles and identities and how the degradation ceremony serves to lower a person's social status within a group or within society in general.
The Greenback Part recommended "easy" currency as opposed to hard currency, mainly since they thought that it would help facilitate commerce.
Correct, Did that answer your question?
Being pushed together creates a compressional force, like squeezing two things together.