JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
The cover for this 1939 pamphlet I just found is pretty remarkable--very striking, strong, and capable of some sort of message which could've been helped along by another identifying agent. Thomas Nast it isn't, because it really doesn't send the intended message by just visual means--you have to read the pamphlet to find out its meaning.
And as it turns out the octopus represents mail order companies. Located in cities far-ish removed from small communities, the author (F.A. Kremer?, the man who at least copyrighted the thing) maintains in his morality tale that by ordering from far-away places a person causes the failure of local business.
He's not far from the truth, especially if you update the language a bit and label the octopus "Amazon" or some such thing--even a megastore like "WalMart" would do. Or any large chain that has spelled the doom of a smaller/local business.
In any event I like the graphic, and I sincerely doubt that it has been published before, as there are no copies discernible on WorldCat/OCLC, and my copy (from the Library of Congress Pamphlet Collection) is also a copyright deposit copy. So I suspect that Kremer's effort didn't make it out too far into the world.
Comments