“A narrative of the experiences of a family of British emigrants to the United States in cotton mill, iron foundry, coal mine, and other fields of labor.” The author, whose work as a newspaper man has brought him in contact with the phases of life treated in this story, tells of the abuses at the immigrant office, and scores the protectionists, the settlement workers, the Pittsburg militia, and the Pennsylvania railroad. The many hardships suffered by all of their class are vividly detailed as the history of the Clarke family progresses.
“The ferocity of the painted picture is such that nobody is likely to take it as a literal transcription of conditions—but nobody who knows the city or human nature will doubt the existence of a substantial basis for some of the author’s fury. To be sure he is a partisan, and as is the way of partisans, his eye is single and fixed. Well-informed and well-balanced people may read it with profit. It might be less good for incipient anarchists.”
(Outline of plan).
| + — | N. Y. Times. 10: 52. Ja. 28, ‘05. 1180w. |
“As a novel the work calls for no consideration, but it is deserving of attention as an obviously sincere attempt to present the grievances and sufferings of the poor in a manner that will quicken sympathy to action. Unfortunately, ... the writer, through ignoring the reverse side of the shield and through undoubted exaggeration, tends to repel rather than attract the thoughtful reader, and to inflame rather than broaden the thoughtless.”
| + — | Outlook. 79: 651. Mr. 11, ‘05. 90w. |
Mann, Hugh. Bound and Free: two dramas. [*]50c. Badger, R: G.
An argument for sex-emancipation, for doing away with marriage, the family, the home as they exist to-day. The author calls the dramas which illustrate his point Bound, and Free, he makes the chief characters in each declare that they can love many men, or women, as the case may be, at the same time and in the same way, but can love but one supremely, their soulmate. Most conventional people will consider this book immoral.
[*] Mannix, Mary Ella. Children of Cupa. 45c. Benziger.
A pathetic story of the eviction of the Cupa Indians from their home in California on the Warner ranch, told in connection with the experiences of a family of campers who spent six weeks of the last summer the Indians remained on their ancestral lands at the Hot Springs on the old reservation, and learned to know the people and to sympathize with them, and to understand their life and the part the missions played in it.