"Dear Mom..." A Remarkable Story...of property destruction, violence, the near murder of a child at Princeton, Indiana, as told to her Mother by Mrs. Edward W. Greenfield – Minister's wife – intelligent observer – in unforgettable letters
Chicago: M.A. Pennington, 1957. Quarto (28cm). Pictorial paper self-wraps; [13p]; illus. Negligible external wear; a Near Fine copy.
A slickly-produced, highly effective – if mostly fabricated – anti-union propaganda leaflet, issued to promote passage of Indiana's "Right-To-Work" law of 1957 – a type of legislation which Indiana was the first state in the U.S. to enact. The pamphlet tells the story, in letters supposedly written by a real-life resident of Princeton, Indiana – one Winifred Greenfield, wife of a prominent local minister – of the violent wildcat strike called by members of the Machinists' Union at the factory of Potter and Brumfeld, an electrical parts manufacturer, in the fall of 1956. While some of the events described did in fact take place, the letters are clearly fabricated, written by a publicist in order to cast the strikers (and the Labor Movement in general) in the worst possible light. The pamphlet would inspire a 1962 film, "And Women Must Weep," which was widely circulated on factory floors during the National Right To Work Committee's anti-union campaigns of the Sixties. As scurrilous a piece of anti-labor hack-work as we have encountered. Rare, with only a single copy noted in OCLC (NYPL).
Price: $150.00