Editing Carpetbagger (section)

==Etymology and definition==
The term carpetbagger, used exclusively as a pejorative term, originated from the [[carpet bag]], a form of cheap luggage, made from carpet fabric, which many of the newcomers carried. The term came to be associated with opportunism and exploitation by outsiders. It is now used in the United States to refer to a [[parachute candidate]], that is, an outsider who runs for public office in an area without having lived there for more than a short time, or without having other significant community ties.{{Citation needed|date=December 2020}}

According to a 1912 book by Oliver Temple Perry,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Temple |first=Oliver Perry |title=Notable Men of Tennessee, from 1833 to 1875, Their Times and Their Contemporaries |year=1912}}</ref> [[Tennessee Secretary of State]] and [[Radical Republican]] Andrew J. Fletcher "was one of the first, if not the very first, in the State to denounce the hordes of greedy office-seekers who came from the North in the rear of the army in the closing days of the [U.S. Civil] War", in the June 1867 [[stump speech]] that he delivered across Tennessee in support of the re-election of the disabled Tennessee Governor [[William G. Brownlow]]:

{{blockquote|No one more gladly welcomes the Northern man who comes in all sincerity to make a home here, and to become one of our people, than I, but for the adventurer and the office-seeker who comes among us with one dirty shirt and a pair of dirty socks, in an old rusty carpet bag, and before his washing is done becomes a candidate for office, I have no welcome.}}

That was the origin of the term "carpet bag", and out of it grew the well known term "carpet-bag government".<ref>https://archive.org/details/notablemenoftenn00temp_0/page/126/mode/1up?q=Mason&view=theater "Notable men of Tennessee, from 1833 to 1875, Their Times and Their Contemporaries"</ref>

In the United Kingdom at the end of the 20th century, carpetbagger developed another meaning, referring to people who joined a [[mutual organization]], such as a [[building society]], in order to force it to [[Demutualization|demutualize]], that is, to convert into a [[joint stock company]], seeking personal financial gain by that means.<ref>{{cite news |title=Business: Your Money Is carpetbagging dead? |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/259819.stm|access-date=February 15, 2017 |publisher=BBC |date=January 22, 1999}}</ref>