Books offered by JF Ptak Science Books LLC

"Mike Quinn".  The Yanks are Not Coming. 1940. Published by Keep America out of War Committee, 1940. 15pp.  Printed wrappers.  Rare.  Only a few copies located in OCLC/WolrdCat.  $125

This pamphlet is a reminder that it wasn't simply right-wing groups (like the Lindbergh-sponsored "America First") that sought to keep the United States out of the war in Europe in 1940.  It was a "European War" to these groups at this point--it was of course a World War, World War II, but it just didn't involve the United States, yet.  The "Keep America Out of War Committee" produced this vicious pamphlet, equating the war with the sole pursuits of "big business", connecting the "filthy mess" of fighting to connected interest of Parliament and the Reichstag in producing a money-making scenario for the controllers of industry. 

Now there are plenty of ugly wartime relationships during WWII--and not just those that existed through December 1941, but were in place for the duration of the war.  But the arguments made in this pamphlet seemingly in support of the average working man protecting them from the multinational corporations who were conducting the war for the sake of profits takes the argument into an entirely different and bad place.  ("The best way we can help the people of Europe is to keep Wall Street out of it" claims the pseudonymous author, Mike Quinn.  Besides, as he continues in the section called "We're Too Busy": "We've got a first class job on our hands straightening out this civilization we have right here".  Too busy for war.

 

Collection of Police-Sponsored Anti-Crime, Bunko-Squad Pamphlets, published by the Boston Better Business Bureau.  All in the same format, printed via offset on 8.5x11 inch sheets.  [Title in pencil: "Pamphlets on Fraudulent Business Methods and Schemes".]  1936.  There are  34  in all, stapled sheets at left-top, each about 10pp  long (making for about 350 leaves), with each having an example of a conversation between the consumer and the grifter.  These are ex-library with the occasional stamp from the Library of Congress ("Pamphlet Collection"), via the U.S. Copyright Office.  Good condition, if a bit dusty.  $350   (If you were writing period crime novels of the 1930's, this would be prime resource material fo rcrimes of confience.)

They include:  Bait Advertising (Window); Free Permanent Wave Scheme, Smuggled Goods Scheme, Bait Advertising Scheme, Business Opportunity Scheme, the Re-load Scheme, A Switch and Sell Scheme, Bucket Shop Scheme, Tipster Sheet Scheme, Sewing Machine Scheme, Memorial Park Cemetery Scheme, Heir Scheme, Bait Advertising Scheme, Song Writing Scheme, Is It Bait?, Action Sale Scheme, Stuffed Plate Scheme, Stuffed Flats (Furs), Buy Wholesale Scheme, Insurance Association Scheme, Partner Wanted Scheme, Long Distance Tailoring Scheme, Bait Advertising (T.C. System), Free Lot Scheme, Home Work Scheme, Furniture Club Lottery Scheme, Charity Merchandise Scheme, Suit Club Scheme, Picture Enlargement Scheme, Puff Sheet Scheme, Territorial Rights Scheme, Obesity Cure Scheme, Territorial Rights Scheme, Cash Bond Scheme, Unordered Merchandise Scheme.

These do describe crimes and there were victims involved, but the description of it all is quite delightful.

The Great Passaic Textile Strike of 1926--H.L. Mencken's copy

[Item:  Passaic Strike relief broadside.  13x8.5 inches.  Ca. early 1926.  H.L. Mencken's copy, with his stamp of gift on the reverse.  Very good condition.  $250.]

This broadside was an appeal to like-minded people to contribute to a fund to help relieve thew dire conditions of textile worker strikers in Passaic, New Jersey, in 1926.  There were more than 16,000 people involved in this sometimes-brutal strike, people who were trying to stay even in their lives, looking for a little more money and a little better working conditions than what they had.  The Passiac (a working city just south of Patterson in an industrial triangle section of the state) strikers were moving against a number of textile (wool and silk) mills there, trying to force management to pay them something closer to the $1400 annual income for a family of four to survive. 

Most workers there were making $1,000-$1,200 a year ($800-$1,000 if the worker was a woman, and about half of them were) for 50+ hours of labor per week.  The result was that the workers could not afford good housing and food, and those disadvantages paid off in high rates of tuberculosis, very high incidence of child mortality, and a low average life expectancy.  The strike began slowly in January 1926, with the mills responding with vicious attacks by paid thugs and by police.  IT was a long and involved process for the strikers, with the strike lasting its way for another 14 months, finally getting choked out in March 1927.  It looks like there were some victories, but those seem mainly pyrrhic to me--at the end of the process many of the strikers were hired back but soon terminated, replaced by other workers who agreed to work for less.

There's quite  a bit written on this strike, and most seem to say that it was an important event in the history of "labor relations", and that it was the first time that a Communist-led strike succeeded in the United States, (There is a complex legacy as to who the leadership was for this strike, but the end result is that, at the end, the Communists were in charge.)

But what I wanted to say here about this broadside was the communal effort involved with keeping the strikers (and the strike) going.  The strikers needed money to live, as there was certainly no money coming in, and since there was obviously no union, there was no general fund from which any of these families could draw food money from). they needed money just to buy food and pay for housing.  SO the call for "Give all you can!" and "Give right away!" were as desperate as they sounded.  My guess is that there would be a representative of the International Workers Aid society national office going from factory to factory, or door-to-door, soliciting for money for the Passaic workers' relief.  The strike was no doubt a very nasty business, with a victory only a victory once there was more food on the table, less illness, and far fewer babies dying from preventable causes. Probably this looked like a victory to others so far as the future of fair labor/pay was concerned, but not so much for the strikers who brought this about. 

It is also interesting to note that this copy was given at some point to H.L. Mencken, who gave it right away to the Library of Congress, where it wound up in a forgotten "Pamphlet Collection", and then sold to me (years afterwards).

 

 

NAACP, L:ynching & Society.

ITEM 1.   An Appeal to the Conscience of the Civilized Wo rld.  (This is H.L. Mencken's copy, with his stamp on the back of the title page, a gift at one time to the U.S. Library of Cong ress).

National Association for the Advancement of Colored  People. 
1920 English  Book 15 p. : ill. ; 31 cm. New York City : National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.  Fair condition.  $1450  Rare.  Only four copies located in OCLC. 

ITEM 2.  The Crime of Being a Negro.

[No real title on title page] “Some of the 51 Lynchings [dropped title] which have occurred during the last Six Months—and there are others”NAACP, NYC (20 Vesey Street) ca. 1912.

4pp folded 7 ½ x 10 inch sheet. 2 photos.

The interior unfolds to a broadside-like display, the title running across the two pages being “The Crime of Being a Negro”. 

Lists about a dozen different incidents which provoked lynchings. 

This is a very graphic, chilling item.

No listings in WorldCat/OCLC.    $1250

 

 

ITEM 3.  Single sheet, broadside, 1911/1912.  10 x 7 inches.  Depicting a postcard received by an anti-lynching speaker from the NAACP.

This item was meant to illustrate the mentality of the lynching population in the South.

The text of the postcard reads:  “This is the way we do them down here.  The last lynching has not been put on the card yet.  Will put you on the mailing list.  Expect one a month on the average.”   The letter is of course unsigned.

Rare.  No listings found in the WorldCat/OCLC.    $500

Original Dustjacket Artwork.

ITEM 4.  Merton Witten (Artist and designer)  Illustrated scene of a lynching, being the original dustjacket art for the novel "The Curse at the Door", by Clara Morris Diggs. 15 ½ x 10 inch image on 18 ½ x 12 inch board.

There are printing directions at bottom of the image in the margins.
The board has several defects., some of which extend into the image itself-none are fatal.

There is scant info regarding Ms. Diggs, though there are at least two references regarding this work as a novel involving African Americans. Rare. $1750.
The address for Merton Whitten on the back of the board lists 35 Mt. Vernon St-this is Beacon Hill, and is in the same block (today) as the Colonial Society of Massachusetts (a very considerable old structure). Julia Ward Howe lived next door once upon a time. Whitten is listed as a "Commercial Artist" in the 1923 Boston Directory with a business address of 118-A Bowdoin.    Provenance: none; from an estate in Maine. 

The Fight for the Never-Passed

ITEM 5.  Taylor, Robert Gray. Supreme Court Proposal and the Wagner Van Nuys Anti-Lynching Bill. Mimeographed letter to Senator A.H. Vandenberg, Robert F. Wagner and four others. 11x8", from typed originals. 4pp.  3rd August, 1937. $500

"It scarcely takes a statesman to se that the murder of any citizen by a gang.is not justified on any grounds whatsoever.If any single congressman dissents from the point of view here taken, I should appreciate his advising on what legal or moral grounds it is done."
Gray was a very prominent Philadelphia Quaker and Scion of a business begun in that city in 1683. He was on numerous committees for racial fairness and equality including the Whittier Center Housing Corporation-here he extracted a promise from the Secretary of Commerce that the Public Works Administration would not build new apartment complexes ruled by discrimination or racial unfairness.

Gray writes about the difficulty of establishing the Wagner Van Nuys Anti-Lynching Bill coming to loggerheads with FDR's plan to pack the Supreme Court. (Evidently the President's need for Southern support for his court plans would have to be purchased with the defeat of this Bill. Versions of this 1937 Bill (strongly written by the NAACP) had failed to pass the House and Senate in 1934 and 1935. The general way of defeat for these bills had been Southern Filibuster.

From TIME Magazine, 28 January 1938:

"The actual contents of the Wagner-Van Nuys Bill, as simple as they were familiar, would scarcely keep the U. S. Senate busy for that period. Like its predecessors, it provided for Federal prosecution, and a $5,000 fine or up to five years' imprisonment, or both, for sheriffs & peace officers who did not afford criminals and suspected criminals reasonable protection from mobs (any gatherings of more than three persons)."

(The principle Southern anti-anti-lynching bill proponents were) " Tom Connally's loyal little band-Georgia's Russell, North Carolina's Bailey, South Carolina's James Byrnes, Tennessee's Kenneth McKellar, Louisiana's Ellender, and Pat Harrison."

"But if the practice has been general, the opposition to laws intended to suppress it has centred in the South. For two generations Southern Representatives and Senators have greeted every lynching bill that came up for debate with a reaction as sharp and unfailing as would be produced by a polecat. Snorted Georgia's Richard Russell last week of the latest and one of the most threatening Federal attempts to prosecute and punish lynchers: "Skunk meat."

"Whenever the Republican Party, the Democratic Party or the New Deal Party or any other party," rumbled North Carolina's Josiah Bailey, "caters to the Negro vote, it is going to elect to office common fellows of the baser sort." But when Kenneth McKellar began scornfully quoting from the bill in an effort to establish its unconstitutionality, Senator Wagner pointed out that the passage in question was a quotation from the Fourteenth Amendment. "Yes," stammered Senator McKellar, "it is."

End TIME Magazine quotes.

History of Normalcy Series: Warehousing "Defective" Epileptics, 1912

ITEM:  Dr. William T. Shanahan, Colonies for Epileptics, 1912. 9x6, 7pp.  Original printed wrappers.  Good copy.  $95

Ref:  JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1450

This series is meant to illustrate the very transitory, shadowy and basically non-existent nature of "normal".

"It is thus with regard to the disease called Sacred: it appears to me to be nowise more divine nor more sacred than other diseases, but has a natural cause like other affections. . ."--Hippocrates on epilepsy and recognizing it as just another brain disorder devoid of mysticism, about 2400 years ago.

One stop in the history of normalcy is the perception of brain disorders, which is a long and complex history--very long in the case of epilepsy, its epidemiology stretching back thousands of years before Hippocrates.  It particular normalcy for the vast majority of that time was that people who exhibited the results of the disorder were cursed, or touched by the gods as holders of some possible divine inspiration, or touched by the gods as accursed and punished people, or bewitched (I wonder about the number of epileptics put to the flame during the Witch Hunt crazes), and so on.  The first pharmaceutical treatments for the disorder really didn't come about until Emil Fischer and Bayer introduced phenobarbitol in 1902/04, which was able to calm the seizures of some people with epilepsy.  Until that point, most treatments were generally topical, plus the quack ingestives and various sorts of incantations, spells and prayers. 

In Dr. William T. Shanahan's Colonies for Epiletpics, written in 1912, the treatment of epileptics was seculsion, warehousing them in state asylums in the countryside.  Shananhan felt that the epileptic needed "its" own environment, "apart from the the defectives"--and by that he meant apart from the wide classification of people who did not fit the scheme of 1912 normalcy, like "morons, imbeciles, the insane, the sexual addict, the recurring syphlitic [and] the criminally insane...".  Actually this as a good move in some cases--apart from the vocabulary--as epileptics were stored away in almshouses and prisons along with the criminal element and the hopelessly insane, and at least removed the epileptic from a different sort of horror and disgrace. 

Dr. Shanahan's aim was to remove the epileptic from society because they "couldn't adjust to a life in the ordered community" and that holding a job for them was "impossible"--that plus what he saw as the need to protect society from the epileptic's "progressive mental deterioration".   He felt that "the great majority should be committed[to the epileptic colonies] as are the insane", and also to remove them to these places "from a young age", to an "institution for defectives", there separated according to "sex and mental grade". 

Overall, though, it was Shanahan's other aim to provide as "normal" a life for epileptics as could be arrived at, and outside of his trying to save society from them--at a time when the eugenics people were out castrating epileptics--, he was arguing that this method was the best of all possible worlds for people with this disorder.  He does however seem to be totally ignorant of any medical approach to dealing with epilepsy.

By the way, there's a very curious imprint on the back cover of this pamphlet showing who printed it and where.  I cannot recll ever having seen such a small thign, placed so centrally, in such an obvious place. Its obvious and present, yet tiny.  Here it is, before magnification:

And here is what the slug says:

Its just a very curious thing.

 

An Unusual RAND (CIA) Document on the Cuban Revolution of 1961

“The American people are entitled to know whether we are intervening in Cuba or intend to do so in the future…The answer to that question is no. What happens in Cuba is for the Cuban people to decide.”--Secretary of State Dean Rusk, April 17, 1961, 2 days in to the CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba. 

James Farmer.  Notes on the 1961 Cuban Revolution.  US Air Force Project Rand Report, May 1, 1961.  Internal Rand Document published (with fittingly bad timing) May Day 1961 on the failures of the “Cuban revolution”—the same day as Castro’s May Day speech proclaiming his overwhelming victory. 

Farmer states in his opening line:  “If tacticians and political scientists can learn from errors, the first 1961 Cuban Revolution should be invaluable”. 

Farmer evidently was sending a message in this medium as he refers again and again to the “first 1961” Cuban Revolution”.    $300

Very Early Paper on the Iconoscope--a TV Incunable, 1933

Zworykin,Vladimir. "Description of an Experimental Television System and the Kinescope."  In:  Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, vol 21 no. 12, December 1933.  (Note:  the article notes that this original manuscript was received by the IRE in July, 1933.)  Article occupies pp 1654-1673 of the December journal which covers pp 1621-1762, plus an index (of approximately 30 pp).  Bound in the original wrappers.  Very nice copy.  $450

This issue includes four other contributions on television, including: Engstrom.  A Study of Television Characteristics.  Pp 1631-1651; Engstrom\,  An Experimental Television System.  Pp 1652-165; Kell,  Description of Experimental Television Transmitting Apparatus.  Pp 1674-1691; and Beers, Description of Experimental Television Receivers.  Pp 1692-1706.

The Zworykin paper in December 1933 seems perhaps the earliest of the full technical treatment of the iconoscope, more so than the papers he published earlier in the summer and fall.²

Notes:

Zworykin, V. K. (filed 1931, patented 1935). "Method of and Apparatus for Producing Images of Objects". Patent No. 2,021,907. United States Patent Office.   Zworykin, Vladimir K. (filed 1923, issued 1935). "Television System". Patent No. 2,022,450. United States Patent Office.   Zworykin, V. K. (filed 1925, patented 1928). "Television System". Patent No. 1,691,324. United States Patent Office.

2.  Zworykin, V. K. (September 1933). The Iconoscope, America's latest television favourite. Wireless World, number 33. p. 197; and Zworykin, V. K. (October 1933). Television with cathode ray tubes. Journal of the IEE, number 73. pp. 437–451.

Bad Ideas Department: Restructuring the City and the "Terminal Box", Neopolis, 1938

ITEM: The New City, an American Plan of Social and Economic Reorganization (1938).  7x5 inches, 29pp.  Very good condition.  No copies located in the OCLC/WorldCat.  $100

ref:  JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1421

The unnamed author of The New City, an American Plan of Social and Economic Reorganization (1938), makes a hard-edged plea for the formation of a new American society—and by “new” the author really means it, advocating a different economics, social structure and even the physical development of new cities and abandonment of the old physical and philosophical structures. 

Sprinkled among the Swiftian notions of rightness, quixotic lancings of social ills and a general bombardment of the structure of society are some interesting and isolated points: 
“America is the supreme user of the machine…ravishing the irreplaceable wealth of one of the earth’s richest continents, tearing down forests, looting the treasures of coal and draining the reservoirs of oil and natural gas, by methods scandalously wasteful.” 

This leads the author to the Depression, “a decade of demonstration of the profit system’s inability to deliver to the people the needs of life, a painful heartbreaking demonstration”. 

It is the profit-deliverers, not the machines or people, who are to blame.  One way of addressing the distribution system, was, unfortunately, Russia—“a form if society set up to overcome this impasse of the capitalistic system of production and distribution”.  Of course the Russians--the Soviets--were just in the middle of their enforced starvation/gulag/brutalization period under Josef Stalin, the gigantic negative parts of which were still in general not known to the great unwashed. 

The unnamed author dips lightly into Socialism, and then into Fascism and Nazism, though the only thing he/she really has to say about the later two is that “their answer [to economic woe] was in the seizure or control of the means of production by the state”, their own brutal means skipping off unnoticed into a pinkish glow, though the loss of personal freedom is “disdained”. 

The New City is actually a new world order, a new governmental form to take advantage of technological advancements leading to “nationalized urbanization” The first city in this new order is Neopolis, and this pamphlet was a call to those who would stand as its citizens.  (There’s actually a sort of application form, though all it really is a bill-of-sale for ordering more copies of the New City pamphlet.)

Even though the pamphlet is easily obtained, membership, the possibility of being a Neopolitan, is something entirely different.  The difference is actually exceptional, perhaps the most extraordinary thing about this whole misguided idea.  “Membership is to be carefully controlled at all times” we read. . “It is not desired to build up a huge and unwieldy membership of poorly-assimilated elements….interesting educational instruction…with tests to determine the fitness of the member for loyal, cooperative activity, leading, necessarily, to the elimination of those who may be found undesirable”. 
That’s some pretty muscular, steroidal stuff, particularly after such a glancing blow against the Soviets and Nazis. 

Since this is just an “abridgment” of a soon-to-be-written 250-page explanation of the concept, the complex and concentric organization of society is left mainly to the drawing of its plan, the physical layout of the city based upon this ideal. 

The Seattle-based author never did quite make it past page 29, never did name themselves, and never provided a concrete place where all of this heady stuff was being think out.  It is a sort of pretty design in a creepy/queasy way, there on the front cover, but that’s about as far as it goes.  If anyone actually did send any money to this quack thinker, it wound up in a nicely metaphorical place:  at “Terminal Box 3463”. 

This may be the very best idea to come out of touching this pamphlet—a place where people can send correspondence regarding Bad and/or Dead or Dying Ideas: “Terminal Box ______”.  I guess that box number would be pretty high by now. 

(Uncle Joe, before he killed the children, and dozens of millions of others.)

The Problematic and Unspeakably Brief Beauty of Linoleum: Italy, 1935

ITEM:  Il Linoleum Nelle Costruzioni Scolastiche, printed in Milano by the Society for Linoleum, 1933.  Spiral bound, printed wrappers, 11x8 inches with about 150 pages,  with illustrations throughout.  Very nice condition.  There is no record of this publication whatsoever in WorldCat.  $225

ref:  JF  Ptak Science Books   Post 1418

In my imaginary History of Lines there is a chapter or two for humans-in-line(s).  In the history of the world, the fourth and fifth decades of the twentieth century—the 1930’s and ‘40’s—were big ones for human lines.   Big does not imply good, because as we all know lots of humans lined up for all manner of unspeakable nastiness during this time and well more than 100 million didn’t make it out alive (considering all of the wars, purges, revolutions and stupidity).

The lines here are a little more benign, though with shriveled overtones of corrected respect.

 Oppressive obedience in a well-designed environment is still like dressing your ear-infected 14-year-old St. Bernard/Jack Russell (?!) mixed breed in baby booties—its just not right, and these images attest to this simpy comparison. All of these photographs come from a delightful manufacturer’s catalog for linoleum products (Il Linoleim nelle Costruzioni Scolastiche), which was printed in Umbria in 1935. 

I’ll undoubtedly write a post on this stylistic beauty later on, but suffice to say for right now that it really is a lovely thing.  If only we could forget the Mussolini part.  Now I’m no fan, necessarily, of linoleum, but if I had to live on a linoleum island far removed from civilization and I had to choose a design for my world, I would choose the designs from this catalog, without hesitation. They’re spare, well-proportioned, beautifully design utilitarian designs; they are also very shiny and cold with a dispirited order, but so it goes.  The catalog seems to speak for its times, the inspired design bowing to the weighty needs of the flatulent state.

 Even though the people (mainly child people) are in very structured environments, they still look as though they really don’t believe in whatever it was was happening--of course they were at school, or in an academic environment, or hospital, or something (as the titlf of the work states). There is something just wrong in the child-straight lines and seemless expanse of linoleum, something that looks as though details have been left out, that there is a ground-in sameness to everything, that the indifference to difference is so to make the children of a sort of sameness.  Ihope that they did okay--most would be around 80 or 85 by now, if they survived.

 

Found: Children's Advice for Life, 1825

ITEM:  manuscript workbook, ca. 1811-1836.  20 leaves.  9x6 inches.  Decent condition.  All manuscript entries.  $125

ref: JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1383

I have a small collection of 18th and 19th century notebooks--ciphering books, tally books, keepsakes--kept by children and young adults.  These books are remarkable for their contents, empty scratchbooks filled with whatever was necessary, whatever was important, whatever was trivial.  There are notes about who-owes-what, provisions purchased, goods borrowed; mathematics problems, poesie, miniature observations, memorized bits.  Signatures made over and over again, looking exactly like what children do nowadays, practicing writing their names, perfecting a signature, identifying themselves to themselves in private.  These notebooks are far less formal say than a diary--they caught all sorts of ephemera of the day, stray information, and all manner of stray bits.

In this notebook, used between 1811 and 1836, there are also repeated personal lessons and life's aphorisms, generally one page each, written over and over,  practicing penmanship by repeating the advice, 

"Youth is the season  for acquiring knowledge" and "Temperance is the last guardian of health":

I find it remarkable that this small item--about 8x5 inches, and having no more than 30 pages--survived in somewhat haphazard and occasionally directed use for more than 25 years.  Then again, paper wasn't all that terribly common among the working poor in the United States at this time, so it is very understandable that this notebook would've been kept, and carefully so, as an important household object--and possibly a significant family-history document.  For those of us today this looks like disposable information, ephemeral knowledge--evidence would say that this was definitely not the case when this book was still being used. 

"Vanity is a Disgrace to shining Qualities":

"Wit is most agreeable when set off by beauty":

And the cover:, which is a curious thing, as someone kept track of "days" on a number of occasions here, not the least of which ran across the top of the book:

The record of items purchased, of money charged for labor, allows us a peep into the daily working life during the first part of the 19th century:

Purchases made included 2 pounds of butter (15 cents), six pounds and a half of veal ($2.00), a gallon of molasses (30 cents), "half a berril of flower" (3 dollars), a pound of wool (12 cents), plus pork, potatoes, tea, salt, corn, rye

The labor is also of interest:  renting the services of two yoke of oxen for one day seems to have cost one dollar, "tapping in a pair of boots" (30 cents), "one day's work on shaving hoops" (50 cents), and then many entries for "one days work a planting" and "a mowing" which seems to have been 50 cents; "hauling wood one day" was also 50 cents.  It seems as though you could exchange a day's labor for two pounds of butter, a pound of wool, and two pounds of potatoes--at hose rates, I suspect that these people would've considered the veal to be a luxury meal.