Men and Steel [Inscribed and Signed to Chase S. Osborn]

New York: Boni and Liveright, [1920]. First Edition. Wrapper issue. Octavo; publisher's white pictorial card wrappers; vi,[9]-185pp. Wrappers rather spotted, crude spine tape repair, textblock a bit toned, else Good to Very Good, internally sound. Inscribed and signed by the author in pencil on front free endpaper to former Governor of Michigan Chase S. Osborn with his ex libris inside upper cover and three extensive initialed pencil annotations to early leaves of text. Contemporary account of the American steel strike, organized by the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers in September, 1919, in the wake of the end of World War I in an effort to reorganize the industry, though the strike ended unsuccessfully in January, 1920. This a significant association copy of the former Republican governor of Michigan (1911-1913), who noted in pencil on p. 17, in response to the massive U.S. Steel Corporation's surplus at the end of 1919: "Thou must not tread on the sensitive toes of dollars; rather on the hearts of men," adding on the following page, "rather on the bleeding hearts of mankind." Previous to his political activities, Osborn travelled widely, discovering iron mines in both Canada and Madagascar; for this, one of his memoirs was titled "The Iron-Hunter." Mary Heaton Vorse was herself a radical novelist, journalist, and editor of "The Masses," and while her relationship with Osborn is unclear, we find reference to a few pieces of correspondence, dated between 1913 and 1920, in the Mary Heaton Vorse Papers at Wayne University.