The Industrial Revolution let to many great innovations, but one important overlooked creation, which scholars believe rival that of Ford's assembly line, was the mechanical creation of paint. No longer were we confined to mashing minerals by hand and spralling them on cave ceilings. Paint could now be bought anywhere and applied everywhere: your car, your house, on trees, on people, the family dog. Even Mom's bland leftovers could be born again with a little extra coloring. With a little bit of spark, anybody could be a Cezanne. The possibilities were endless.

Museums began cropping up around the nation to showcase the wild creativity and ingenious applications of paint. Shades of Grasshopper Green and Marvelious Mauve stretched as far as the eye could see.

Still, there was a dark side to this seemingly grand and pure business. The displaced and all but forgotten fine artist no longer had a job or a future. Artists turned to the only avenue they had going for them: organized crime. Before the Beer Barons there were the Brush Bandits, who terrorized neighboorhoods and victimized innnocent victims. When crime had reached a pinnacle, the President himself, Chester A. Arthur, agreed to regulate the mass production of paint and replace the contents of those little tubes with toothpaste in order to curb America's addiction to paint, and all had returned to normalcy by the turn of the century. <<<<<