Beschreibung:

Oct. 1927 - August 1929 (Vol. I, Nos. 1 - 12 and Vol. II, Nos. 1 - 3). 4to, red (of course) cloth. Ffep has long inscription to Bartha Hapgood and signed by Aldino Felicani (1891-1967). The inscription gives a good idea of The Lantern and its founders: This volume contains the passion, indignation and protest deeply felt by a small group of rebels (amongst them your parents) against all injustices and crimes committed by the present social system. -- This LANTERN conceived by your mother - the fiery, brave, kind mother of yours - and myself, to keep alive the memory of Sacco and Vanzetti, brothers and comrades, put to death by the State of Massachusetts, because they dreamed a New Society free from tyranny and authority of man over man. -- Keep this volume as a souvenir and as a reminder that the fight for freedom needs always good generous and courageous souls. -- and signed Aldino Felicani / Boston, Massachusetts, Christmas 1948. Mary Donovan Hapgood (1890-1973) was the daughter of an Irish immigrant interested in the Fenian movement. After graduating from the University of Michigan, she settled in MA, teaching school for a year, then becoming involved in various labor movements, helping to organize Corset workers, office workers and coal miners among others. In 1927 she served as recording secretary for the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Fund, and was arrested at their bier. About this time she met Powers Hapgood, and they married at the end of the year. In the 1930s the family moved to a farm near Indianapolis, IN. Mary was nominated to run on the Socialist Party ticket for several state offices in both MA and IN. She remained politically active into her 80s, working for the presidential campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. Aldino Felicani fled Italy in 1914, a victim of the war and fascism. Shortly after his arrival, he became friends with Bartolomeo Vanzetti. It would be several more years before the men would meet Nicola Sacco. Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested and eventually executed for the murders of a payroll clerk and a guard at the Slater & Morrill shoe factory in S. Baintree, MA. The nation was terrified of left-wing agitators and anarchists, most associated with Union organizing, through the middle of the century. The Sacco and Vanzetti arrests were even at time clearly political. The two always admitted to being anarchists, but never agitators. Both had fled separately to Mexico (they would not meet until 1920) to avoid the WWI draft - both abhorred violence. They were posthumously pardoned five decades later, in 1977. By the second volume, The Lantern was sporting a stiffer paper cover. The cover of the first two numbers in this volume was designed by Rockwell Kent another champion of social causes. Condition: Light shelfwear, else fine, light toning of leaves.