![Voters / You may know a man by the company he keeps. [Handbill]](https://rarebookinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/1549857250.0.l.jpg)
[Women's Movement - Ohio] Ohio Woman Suffrage Association
Voters / You may know a man by the company he keeps. [Handbill]
Warren, 1912
- $375
Warren, 1912. Handbill measuring 10 ¼ x 6 ½ inches. Some tanning and faint crease marks from fold, near fine. The Ohio Woman Suffrage Association, founded in Cincinnati in 1869, was one of the earliest state-level suffrage organizations. It was active for several decades. Like the NAWSA, the group defined itself as moderate, condemning the picketing actions of the National Woman's Party. Offered here is a poster from the campaign in favor of Constitutional Amendment no. 23 in 1912, which would have granted suffrage to women had it passed. The OWSA campaign in favor of the amendment in 1912 was run by Harriet Taylor Upton, who had political experience on the national level. Upton raised $40,000 for the campaign, hiring a crew of fifty workers. This poster was produced as part of the group's efforts. It urges voters to support the amendment, listing the state-wide organizations that have lent their support, the biggest of which is the Ohio Federation of Labor. The handbill states "4,500,000 women will vote for the next president." The amendment may have failed in part because of opposition efforts to link women's suffrage to prohibition, with a series of anonymous handbills making this claim leading up to the election. Amendment 23 was one of many similar efforts spanning several decades that failed in Ohio before the legislature passed a bill granting women suffrage in 1917, which was overturned before 1920. In 1920 the National League of Women Voters subsumed the OWSA and the 19th Amendment finally gained passage. We find no other record of this handbill.
More from Auger Down Books
The American Question in its National Aspect. Being Also An Incidental Reply to H.R. Helper’s “Compendium of The Impending Crisis of the South.
Peissner, Elias New York, 1861 New York: H.H. Lloyd and Co, 1861. 8vo, green cloth, 164 pp. Slight odor else about fine. Elias Peissner was born in Bavaria and exiled from his country for his activism surrounding the war there, and eventually ended up in the United States at Union College where he taught languages and literature. "He also became involved in politics, calling for the North to resist Southern secession his 1861 book, The American Question. When the Civil War broke out that year, Peissner helped organize and train the Union College Zouaves, most of whose members later served as officers in the Union Army. In June 1862, Governor Morgan of New York gave Peissner permission to recruit a regiment and a commission as its colonel. The regiment entered service that September as the 119th New York Infantry. The regiment saw its first action in 1863 as part of XI Corps at the battle of Chancellorsville. The corps' position was turned by Stonewall Jackson's attack, and disaster ensued. Desperately attempting to stem the Confederate tide, Peissner was shot at the head of his men, and died on the field on May 2, 1863. On his death, the faculty at Union College formally expressed their, "respect for his ability and earnestness in his department, both as an Author and an Educator,....regard for his virtues as a man and a friend,....[and] admiration of his heroism in the cause of human liberty and his adopted land." - Union College, Union Notables, (https://digitalcollections.union.edu/s/union-notables/item/1026#?cv=&c=&m=&s=&xywh=-50%2C0%2C399%2C399.).- $600
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Right and Wrong in Massachusetts
Chapman, Maria Weston Boston, 1839 Boston: Dow and Jackson's Antislavery Press, 1839. 12mo, brown cloth, 6 ⅞ x 4 ⅜. A near fine copy, complete with minor normal wear. The first full-length work by the prolific activist, writer and editor Maria Weston Chapman, which argued that the divisions among abolitionists were due in part to their varied views of women, and the exclusion of women from anti-slavery groups. Chapman, along with her sisters Caroline, Deborah and Anne Weston and several other women, had established the Boston Right and Wrong in Boston, the society's annual reports Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Chapman edited the group's annual reports, Right and Wrong in Boston. "Much like the Forten sisters, the Weston sisters, especially the formidable MAria Weston Chapman, who stood up to anti-abolition mobs, were active in the BFASS. Chapman was known for her annual reports... her expert editorship of the BFASS gift book... and her management of its extremely successful antislavery fairs, which inspired similar efforts by other female antislavery societies. As the foreign corresponding secretary, she initiated correspondence with British and French abolitionist women, including Madam de Stael and Duchess De Broglie." - Sinha, p. 272. Sabin 11995.- $600
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Half Plate Daguerreotype of Elihu Burritt and Friends, c. 1850
[Burritt, Elihu] Anonymous Photographer N.p., 1850 N.p., 1850. Half plate daguerreotype in case, image measuring 4 7/8 x 3 1/2 inches. Some difficult-to-see scratches to the plate, the most offensive across the left eye of Burritt, excellent condition overall. Near Fine. A large daguerreotype of Elihu Burritt and a group of friends, taken circa 1850 during the height of his career as a peace advocate. Burritt organized a series of international peace conventions during this period. He would later shift his focus to abolition, supporting Free Labor Produce Associations and founding the National Compensated Emancipation Society. We are not able to identify the other subjects in the photograph.- $3,000
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Cabinet Card Photograph of the Staff of the Surveyor General’s Office in South Dakota
[Surveying Teams - Dakota - 1890s] Newcombe, C.H. Huron, 1891 Huron, 1891. Albumen photograph measuring 5 ½ x 4 inches on larger mount. Some fading, very good overall. A scarce and possibly image from the post-statehood Surveyor-General's office. Surveying in the Dakota Territory and in the early statehood period was quite difficult due to the terrain and the abundance of privately held mining claims. This photograph shows an early South Dakota office led by General B.H. Sullivan. Included in the picture is Miss Eva Jackson, the Assistant Transcribing Clerk.- $425
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Excelsior. Book of Poems
[African-Americana - Literature - Poetry] Pitts, Richard Holly Springs, 1944 Holly Springs, 1944. First Edition. 8vo, wraps, 20 pp. Wraps detached at spine and with some tears, stain to front wrap and some ink residue, good condition. Good. A privately printed collection of poems by Richard Pitts, who at the time was a student at Rust College in Holly Springs. According to his biography, Pitts was "stricken with arthritis and was a shut-in for five years." The poems mostly deal with moral issues, with titles such as "Don't Try to Peep," "Disobedience" and "Do the Best You Can." Pitts also addresses racism directly. The poem on the rear wrap is entitled "When Will the War Close?" and reads, "When man sees man just as a man ; And hot his skin or color; Justice be given to every man / just as you would a brother. / The blood that's spilled on the battlefield / Has just one common color. / This cruel war will surely end / When each man becomes a brother." OCLC locates four copies, at Yale, Howard, University of Mississippi and University of Southern Mississippi.- $450
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Some Photographs Taken at the Inauguration of the Uruapan Packing Plant, 18th January 1908
[Mexico] [Beef Industry] [Industrial Photography] [De Kay, John Wesley, aka the "Sausage King" of Mexico] Mexican National Packing Co., or Popo Mexico, 1908 Mexico: Mexican National Packing Co, 1908. First Edition. Oblong folio, cloth, 12 x 7 inches. With twenty-five silver gelatin photographs affixed to album leaves, each measuring 6 ¾ x 5 inches. John Wesley De Kay was an American businessman, playwright and eccentric socialite who, using funds amassed as a teenage newspaper and cattle owner in South Dakota, moved to Mexico in 1899 and established a high-profile career in meat packing. In his first decade in Mexico, he established the Mexican National Packing Company, also known as Popo. By 1910 De Kay would be dubbed the "Sausage King" of Mexico. De Kay simultaneously enjoyed a vanity career as a playwright and maintained a high-profile in society circles, and caused a minor scandal in theatre circles with an ill-fated play entitled Judas in 1910. The present book of photographs, which is unrecorded, documents the opening of one of De Kay's plants, the Uruapan Packing Plant, in 1908. At this point, De Kay was aligned with the Porfirio Diaz regime, and this plant represented the culmination of De Kay's efforts to provide refrigerated meat to the local and global markets. The photographs in this album show the opening of the plant, with great ceremony, and include photographs of the Vice President Ramón Corral Verdugo and his party, as well as flattering photographs of the plant's architecture, the killing floor, and notably the power turbines that powered the refrigerated plant. The Mexican National Meat Packing Co., or Popo, would employ a widespread advertising campaign aimed at a public averse to chilled meat. Popo was initially successful, until the Mexican Revolution of 1910 brought about events that eventually eliminated foreign ownership of the meat industry. Overall a scarce record of an important episode in Mexican industrial history, and an engaging photographic record in its own right, with the photographs in very good condition with some silvering and the album in very good condition as well, the only flaw being bowing to the heavy cardstock mounts. Unrecorded in OCLC.- $2,750
- $2,750
Extensive Series of Journals Kept by Julianna Geszty, Hungarian Multilingual Author and Traveler, During her Travels Throughout Asia and Africa, 1933-1935
[Women - Travel - Hungary - Asia and Africa - 1930s] [Offered in Partnership with Kate Mitas, Bookseller] V.P., 1943 [Offered in Partnership with Kate Mitas, Bookseller] V.P., 1943. Five holograph diaries, each wrapped in brown paper with the title written on the front wrapper. First two diaries 7 x 5 inches, third diary 8-1/4 x 6-3/4 inches, fourth and fifth diaries 10-1/2 x 8- 1/4 inches. 190pp, 368pp, 233pp, 120pp, 42pp respectively (counting used pages only); approximately 115,000 words. Text primarily in Hungarian with occasional German and English passages and/or words. Chipping, short tears, and tape reinforcement to paper wrappers; tape reinforcement to some hinges; few gutter breaks to first diary, although binding still holding. Overall, very good condition. Also includes a later edition of her book describing these travels, Rejtelmes Kelet: Egy Magyar Leány Utazása Indiában, Sziámban, Jáva Szigetén, Kínában, Japánban, Koreában, Mancsukóban ([Budapest]: Singer és Wolfner, (n. d.), circa 1943); the first edition was issued in 1937. Illustrated paper-covered cloth binding. B&w plates. Tears and wear to paper joints; toning to leaves; few scattered gutter breaks. Good. With approximately 100 medium format negatives and sixty photographs from Ceylon, India, Sudan, Egypt and other locations, and two additional letters, one of ten pages written to her future husband Jack Gardiner. Photographs generally fine. Good. Julianna Geszty was a multilingual author and traveler from Budapest, who embarked on a remarkable series of travels through various countries in Asia in the 1930s, connecting with local politicians and luminaries and observing local culture. She would publish a book on her travels, Rejtelmes Kelet: Egy Magyar Leány Utazása Indiában, Sziámban, Jáva Szigetén, Kínában, Japánban, Koreában, Mancsukóban (roughly translated as Mysterious East: Travels of a Hungarian Girl in India, Siam, Java Island, China, Japan, Korea, Manchukuo), in 1937. The book was well-received, leading to a reprint six years later. Geszty was a trained chemist who had studied at the University of Berlin. Following her travels, she married the American diplomat John Pennington Gardiner, who she met while traveling in China in 1934. The two would marry in Budapest, with Geszty eventually moving with Gardiner back to Massachusetts, where she would lead Hungarian relief efforts in Massachusetts in the 1950s and become president of the Boston Author's Club. She was the first Hungarian woman to travel in Manchukuo, and gained fame throughout Hungary for her prolific travels during the period. Offered here are Geszty's original diaries from these travels, comprising over 950 pages of detailed descriptions, approximately five times as much material as would end up in her book, as well as approximately 180 photographs taken on her travels. Geszty's observations of the cultures of the countries she visited are incisive and at times inflammatory, offering an unfiltered view of the daily lives of women and the local customs. They are valuable as a document of cultural exchange, as a record of a remarkable accomplishment of will and intelligence in an era when few women and perhaps nearly no Hungarian women visited these countries, and for the rich detail provided on each place she visits, in particular the highly detailed accounts of her receptions in the various countries she visits. The broad shape of her travels is as follows: in 1933, she leaves Hungary, traveling through Italy, Greece, Egypt, Palestine and Djibouti to India, where she spends a month, before continuing to Burma, returning to India, and leaving again for Ceylon, Djibouti and Sudan, making her way back to Hungary in May. In 1934, she sets off again, this time for a longer period, the second trip repeating some stops. She begins in Hungary, travels through Serbia and Italy then by boat to Greece, Palestine, Ceylon, Siam, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, The Philippines, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan and Monchukuo, then back to China, where she spends several months before continuing to Singapore, Siam, Cambodia, Ceylon, Sudan, and then on her way home, Egypt and Italy. The second trip lasts over a year, and her extended stay in China may have had to do with her involvement with Gardiner, as the two meet frequently during the trip. As a group, the journals are a valuable primary source for scholars studying the experience of women or foreign travel correspondents in Asia and Africa during the 1930s. Several other interesting themes emerge in Geszty's records of her travels: the meeting of 'east' and 'west' - a theme made more poignant by her education in Germany and eventual marriage to an American, as well as the relationship between Hungary and cultures to the east; for example, she refers to Burma as "the real east" in contrast with India, and often references literary works such as "1001 Nights" with a romantic interest in 'the east." The political infrastructure of the British and Dutch empires in their final decades is on full display in her writings, as she travels with the blessings of the colonial governments. In her first trip to India, Geszty gives detailed accounts of the British colonial apparatus, and as a guest of the British state, she is directed through India by various British colonial officials. She writes: "I arrived in India and stayed at the Taj Mahal hotel from where I went to Mr. Shepeard and Mr. Low editor-in-chief. Mr. Carpenter, director general of Indian railways organized my further journey in India. I had lunch with Mr. Peter Pazze who told me that Miss Row stands by Gandhi's side as a revolutionary. Since I was under English patronage in India I broke off all contact with Miss Row." Perhaps most illuminating, and uncommon considering the difficulties for female journalists traveling in Asia and Africa during this period, is the attention given to the plight of women in the countries she visits. Her status as a female author gives her an uncommon perspective in certain cases where the local cultures prohibit the mixing of genders. In India, she encounters "women behind bars," which prompts her to ask the question, "Where is the modernism of the twentieth century?" In the Philippines in 1934, she observes, "...we went to the homes of the Igrotok. The men were lying close together on benches, one on each floor. ...the women live in the house opposite. They are shy and hid their faces when we arrived. ...there are real test marriages among the Igrotok. If a man is not suitable for a woman, they can divorce without commitment and look for another partner. It's almost 20th-century morality. " Geszty's encounters provide a detailed blueprint of the journalistic, diplomatic and political circles in each country she visits. She also meets several cultural luminaries: In Calcutta, she meets Rabindranath Tagore, "who spoke about the spiritual connection between Hindus and Hungarians... it was a pleasant visit and he was a kind and warm-hearted person." She also meets Abanindranath Tagore on the same visit. There are many observations of the local people and culture that illuminate the lack of familiarity between the cultures at this point. She describes a Chinese jeweler, for example, as, "a person of immense wealth, who lives simply, like a down-to-earth kulli. He's got every penny in his pocket. His wife and children were taken away by bandits, ... released at a price. The jeweler left his family among the bandits for a long time, and only after much deliberation did he pay. His wife has suffered from heart spasms ever since. A typical Chinese character." Although there is much on current events, including several harbingers of events to come - a bombing on a train in China, the announcement of a murder by the Nazis, the "idolization" of Mussolini in Italy, and so on - Geszty doesn't make any overt commentary on fascism and Nazism. Given the events in Hungary at the time, this is a notable omission, and could be for several reasons. It is possible that she was wary of having her diaries confiscated; that she was instructed to be apolitical in her reportage, so as to avoid any trouble for the news outlet that she was working for; or that she was simply apolitical. Her connection and eventual marriage to Gardiner may point to the latter, given the efforts by the United States during the period to remain neutral. So Geszty and Gardiner may have found common ground on that point. When she first meets Gardiner, she writes: "Jack Gardiner is a fine man. He's witty, smart, interesting, and a man of opportunity. He went to Harvard University in Boston. We had a great time. We talked for a long time. Our thoughts were the same. Sometimes life is very good!" Nevertheless, Geszty was almost certainly not a Nazi/fascist sympathizer: if she was, it's much more likely that she would've praised the rise of fascism she saw on her travels, especially because there would have been no repercussions even if her diaries were read. Overall, Geszty's journals provide a richly detailed document of one woman's remarkable experiences as she travels through Asia during the interwar period. We have a full summary of the journals, with additional quotes, available on request.- $22,500
- $22,500
Personal Archive of Emma Helkema, Bassist in Several Women’s Dance Bands in the 1930s Including the Coquettes, and Later Nurse, 1930s-1940s
[Music - Women's Bands - 1930s-1940s] Helkema, Emma V.P., 1940 V.P., 1940. Various pieces of incoming correspondence and ephemera from the Coquettes, with additional photographs including an album documenting her time with the bands. With thirty-three letters pertaining to her music career and thirty or so letters from her family from the 1930. Generally fine condition. Fine. Emma Helkema, originally of Indiana and known to her friends as Helky, played bass fiddle in womens' big bands including Helen Compton's 42nd Street Girls band and the Coquettes in the 1930s before changing careers and becoming a nurse in the early 1940s, possibly in aid of the war effort. Offered here is Helkema's personal archive of incoming correspondence, photographs and band ephemera, giving insight into her life as a female touring musician and eventual nurse in the pre-war and wartime period. The letters from Herkema's career give insight into the network of all-female bands of the period. Three letters pertain to a booking at the State Lake Theatre in Chicago. Various letters from different bandleaders and promoters inquire about her availability, and some letters provide details on the contract arrangements - usually pay was $35-$40 a week with some additional benefits like discounted food depending on the venue. A letter in 1940 foreshadows her departure from the Coquettes, with a letter from a love interest who is married to someone they both know, possibly her sister, in which he offers a loan of $100 for her to leave the band. It appears that some sort of health event - mental or physical or perhaps both - eventually led Helkema to leave the Coquettes, as several letters refer to her health. One letter from Viola Smith written in early 1941 is particularly instructive and gives insight into the intimacy of the touring musicians. Smith writes: "It seems so strange not to have you around. The picture is not complete. I miss you... and not just on the bandstand either, you little devil. I also miss the rubdowns - wish now that I had taken better advantage of the opportunity... At any rate, I feel much better these days. What a relief! Now I'll find time for romance. All I need to do is find a man." Frances Carroll writes a couple months later relating a stint at the Famous Door club and inquiring about Helkeman's health. She asks: "How does it feel to be leading a normal life instead of traveling all over the country." Another letter thanks Helkema for sending some "little pills." The group contains seven promotional photographs of the Coquettes as well as a detached cover of Billboard Magazine with a feature article on Viola Smith. Also included are a photograph album and various loose photographs from later in Herkema's life. Overall an intimate and uncommon collection with research potential regarding the female touring bands of the era, and of women and music more generally.- $3,250
- $3,250