Landmark Books in All Fields
ItemID: #108974
Cost: $1,800.00

Spirit of Labor

Hutchins Hapgood

"HERE'S TO MAN'S FREEDOM AND WOMAN'S SLAVERY": FIRST EDITION OF THE SPIRIT OF LABOR, 1907, IN VERY RARE ORIGINAL DUST JACKET

HAPGOOD, Hutchins. The Spirit of Labor. New York: Duffield, 1907. Octavo, original red cloth, original dust jacket, uncut. $1800.

First edition of this biography of a Chicago anarchist union leader, in very rare original dust jacket.

Hapgood was known for assuming a certain stance in "all of his best work—that of a sensitive yet probing investigator of the social, cultural, and moral fabric of his society, writing about varied, interesting, yet neglected people for educated general readers" including in "The Spirit of Labor (1907), which evolved from his effort to understand the radical spirit of the rising labor movement" (ANB). "In 1905, after publishing two books about his Lower East Side rambles… Hapgood found himself at a loss for new material. Always under financial pressure to publish and looking to escape the constraints of the feuilletonist sketch, he set off to Chicago to write a full-length study of an American workingman… The city was, to Hapgood's mind, more sensational than New York, 'the hot-bed of the Middle West, the place where labor is most riotous, most expressive, where the workingman abounds in his own sense and has formed the atmosphere of democracy extending far beyond his own class.' The months he spent with working-class anarchists, as well as labor progressives at Hull House and the University of Chicago, were momentous, he felt, changing him from a genial man-about-town to a seasoned supporter of the labor movement. The sojourn resulted in… The Spirit of Labor (1907) a biography of an anarchist union leader, Anton Johanssen" (Stansell, 281-82). With two pages of publisher's advertisements.

Book very nearly fine, with only light wear to spine printing. Very rare dust jacket very good, with wear to extremities, and some chipping and toning to spine mainly affecting publisher's name. A most desirable copy.

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