[Rarebooks] fs: Red Socialist / American Patriot...

[Joslin Hall Rare Books, ABAA]

Spargo, John.  ANTHONY HASWELL. PRINTER - PATRIOT - BALLADER. A 
Biographical Study with a selection of his ballads and an annotated 
bibliographical list of his imprints.

Rutland; The Tuttle Company: 1925.
Edition limited to 300 signed copies.

The story of one of Vermont's most colorful patriots and printers.

Frankly, taking account of the tale of woe Spargo recites in his Foreword, 
it is a blessing we know anything about Haswell at all, as at various times 
his carefully assembled papers were lost, dispersed, burnt and otherwise 
destroyed.

Born in Portsmouth, England in 1756, Haswell came to America as a boy and 
at the age of twelve was apprenticed in the soon-to-be-radical town of 
Boston, Massachusetts, where he promptly fell in with the wrong crowd and 
found himself a "Son of Liberty" at age fourteen, and in 1773, as a lad of 
seventeen, he helped throw the tea into Boston harbor at the "Boston Tea 
Party".

He served with Washington's army during the Revolution, and then moved to 
Bennington, Vermont, where he established the Vermont Gazette in 
1783.  Soldier, newspaperman, writer, balladeer... Haswell also had a 
talent for making trouble, and in 1800 he was tried under the Sedition Act 
for passages which he had printed in his paper. A hostile judge more or 
less told the jury to convict him, and Haswell was found guilty and 
imprisoned for two months. During his stay in stir he issued frequent 
letters, which were used against the Federalists in the campaign of 
1800.  Finding himself treated as a hero upon his release, he celebrated by 
composing a few new ballads.  Ah well...

This study began as a simple bibliography of his works, which it remains, 
but expanded to include much more biographical and bibliographical material.

THE AUTHOR-

If you were a Progressive labor reformer and union organizer, author of an 
influential and muckraking study on the scandal of child labor in mines, 
but for medical reasons you had to move from New York to Vermont and find a 
more genteel activity for a time, what would you do? Well, if you were John 
Spargo [1876-1966] you'd start collecting Bennington Pottery and write a 
definitive study of the two 19th century Bennington potteries and their wares.

Born in Cornwall, England, Spargo earned his early living cutting granite 
while he took extension course at Oxford and Cambridge. He became a union 
organizer, and when he moved to New York in 1901, he became a leader of the 
American Socialist Party. He resigned from the Party during the First World 
War because of its antiwar policy, and then formed the American Alliance 
for Labor and Democracy with Samuel Gompers. A prolific writer, his most 
influential book was "The Bitter Cry of the Children", a 1906 expose of the 
scandalous use of child labor in coal mining. After World War I Spargo's 
politics continued to evolve, and he later became an advocate of 
free-market capitalism.

He moved to Vermont for health reasons in 1909, and he naturally became 
interested in early Vermont history and industry. This led to a study of 
the history and wares of the Bennington potteries. In 1926 he wrote his 
magnum opus on the Bennington potteries, "The Potters and Potteries of 
Bennington". He relates in the preface that "many of my personal friends 
have been surprised to find me interested in 'old cracked teapots and 
dishes", but that he had always been intrigued by antique china, and that 
the hobby of china collecting has a long and storied history, having been 
practiced by George Washington, Samuel Johnson, and Horace Walpole. 
Further, as an adopted Vermonter who quickly grew to love the state and its 
heritage, his "interest in the history of the pottery industry at 
Bennington was part and parcel of my interest in the history of the 
foundation of the Commonwealth itself".

Well, there you are. No further explanations needed.

Spargo would become the Director-Curator of the Bennington Historical 
Museum and write several other books on ceramics, including "Early American 
Pottery and China", and "The A.B.C. of Bennington Pottery Wares", as well 
as books on Vermont's covered bridges, the Bennington Battle Monument, and 
this biography of Anthony Hasswell, Revolutionary printer and balladeer.

Hardcover.  10"x13", xv + 293 pages, plus 35 b/w plates. Rebound in new 
cloth with new endpapers; covers fine, contents near fine. [03585] $100.00



JOSLIN HALL RARE BOOKS, ABAA
Fine books of the 16th-20th centuries
on the decorative and fine arts & design

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