DARWIN, LeonardABAA
DARWIN, M FBiblio.com
One Moral Standard For All.
1915réf. 167211New York: Caulon Press 1915. First edition first printing of this biographical pamphlet celebrating the lives of the first women stockbrokers. Woodhull 1838-1927 and Claflin 1846-1923 were key figures in American first-wave feminism as advocates for women's education employment and free love. "Their history is really the history of women in America during the last half century" Introduction. After making a living as clairvoyants and spiritual healers in the Midwest the sisters moved to New York during the late 1860s. They opened their Wall Street brokerage firm Woodhull Claflin & Co. on 19 January 1870 to prove that "woman no less than man can qualify herself for the more onerous occupations of life" Robb p. 114. With some initial support from Claflin's lover Cornelius Vanderbilt 1794-1877 and the extensive publicity generated by a press fascinated with the "Queens of Finance" their firm was relatively profitable at first. They cornered a source of investment capital - the fortunes and business interests of women - which other brokerages had either deliberately or otherwise failed to tap. However the sisters' energies soon drifted to other causes and helped by the Panic of 1873 the brokerage house closed its doors the same year. "However brief perfunctory and ultimately unsuccessful Woodhull and Claflin's brokerage career proved to be it remains an important watershed in women's history" ibid. p. 121. Undeterred Claflin and Woodhull continued to break down barriers while advocating for women's rights and labour reforms. They were among the first women to found a newspaper in America: Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly provided extensive coverage of economic issues and prided itself on exposing fraudulent dealings and corporate corruption and it was also the first American periodical to print The Communist Manifesto. In addition both sisters ran for office Claflin running for Congress in 1871 and Woodhull becoming the first woman to run for President of the United States in 1872. There is little information available about the author M. F. Darwin. He states in the introduction that he came across Woodhull and Claflin's story "when perusing old files of American newspaper" and was "so deeply touched by the work and terrible experiences of the sisters that I at once made up my mind to write their lives". He also writes that the pamphlet was intended to precede a forthcoming larger work on Woodhull and Claflin but we have been unable to trace evidence that this ever appeared. This work is relatively uncommon institutionally. WorldCat locates 11 copies all of which are in the US: New York State Library American Antiquarian Society Library Massachusetts Historical Society Library and the university libraries of Michigan Texas Yale Cornell Kansas Hamilton College Johns Hopkins and Princeton. We can trace no copies in auction records. Small octavo. With 15 full-page illustrations. Original printed wrappers wire-stitched. Nicks to extremities slight soiling to wrappers centrally creased contents clean: a very good copy. George Robb Ladies of the Ticker: Women and Wall Street from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression 2017. unknown
Peter Harrington · Royaume-Uni575,00 £GB≈ 684,30 €
