Lewis J. Valentine, Dont’s. The Police Department City of New York Needs Your Cooperation…Help the Police Protect You.  Published by the City of New York, and written by the Police Commissioner. 6″x4″, 7pp. Original self wrappers. Very nice copy, though there is a smidge of the right margin rubbed away on teh front corner, affecting no text, and measuring about 15x20mm. I cannot find it in WorldCat/OCLC, under various attempts at different titles.  $35

   Commissioner Valentine offers the reader of this little tract a list of about 105 different DONT’S (“DON’T leave your rings in the wardrobe” and “DON’T leave your handbagin the baby carriage under teh pillow” and other such nuggets from Depression-era NYC.  

To Women Voters. Printed by Sir Joseph Causton (viz Midsomer!) of London for the Lloyd George U.K. Coalition Government, 1918.  8.5” x 5.5”, 4pp (one sheet folded in half.  Provenance: from the collection of Prof. E.D. Adams to Leland Stanford Jr University, and then the Library of Congress. The LC surplus stamp is on back cover, while the small Stanford stamp is at the bottom of page 2.  Good condition, with some bumps and short tears around edges. Printed on very thin paper. $125

The coalition government of Lloyd George lasted until 1922 when it was replaced by that of Bonar Law. 

This pamphlet was a very remedial introduction to women, defining the subjects of “Politics”, “Duties of Citizenship”, and the “Coalition Government”, mostly in the service of having the women who could vote and would do so to vote for the Lloyd George ministry. 

“The Representation of the People Act 1918 widened suffrage by abolishing practically all property qualifications for men and by enfranchising women over 30 who met minimum property qualifications. The enfranchisement of this latter group was accepted as recognition of the contribution made by women defence workers. However, women were still not politically equal to men (who could vote from the age of 21); full electoral equality was achieved in Ireland in 1922, but did not occur in Britain until the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928.”–Wikipedia

(Rev.) E.J. Rollings, The Silent Horror. Defender Publishers, Witchita, Kansas. 1939. 9”x6”, 45pp. Original decorated wrappers. Inexpensive production, printed on not-very-good paper, though still in nice shape, but with browning around the edges of the very green wrappers. $250

Provenance: Library of Congress, with their stamp on the rear cover. Also: there is a carbon copy of the entry for the original LC card catalog card. Quite nice.

• WorldCat locates only ONE copy, oddly enough.

The major chapters deal with the shades of narcotics: Opium, the King of Dope; Crown Prince, Morphine; Cocaine, the Princess of Perdition; Marijuana, the Dutchess of Dispair; the Dope Peddlers; and Addicts.

Other books by Elmer James Rollings: Marijuana, the weed of woe:The peril of the poppy; The world today in the light of Bible prophecy.

The book is very highly inflamatory, and includes stories and languages such as this:

“An eighteen-year-old boy in a Midwestern “city smoked two “reefers” and an hour later choked his sweetheart to death because she refused his shocking, lustful advances, born in a marijuana-crazed brain. He later testified that he loved her and had intended to marry her and when normal would never have dreamed of an improper suggestion, let alone the horrible murder” 

“A sixteen-year-old boy shot his mother and father to death with his father’s shotgun after smoking several “Mary Anns” given to him by a new friend whose acquaintance he made by chance. He could neither explain nor remember the killing when the effects of the drug had worn off and sobbed himself into hysterical grief when told of his crime. And so, on and on, runs the record of thievery, forgery, banditry, kidnapping, brutal murder, degeneracy, and rape, all chargeable to this paralyzer of conscience and inflamer of depravity — Marijuana! “

There are several provocative photos, as well.

(Philip Grosser)  Uncle Sam’s Devil’s Island : experiences of a conscientious objector in America during the World War. Published by “a group of friends”  at the Excelsior Press, Boston, (1933?)  19cm, (8), 26, (2)pp, portrait. Original red marble-like wrappers. Prtovenance: Library of Congress, with their surplus stamp on front inside cover.  Very crisp copy. Just about in FINE condition.  $125

Philip Grosser (1890 in Slavuta – October 3, 1933 in Boston) was an anarchist and anti-militarist hailed by Alexander Berkman as “one of [my] finest comrades”. He was imprisoned at the Federal Military Prison on Alcatraz Island, having refused the draft during the first World War. By the end of 1920, two years after the war ended, he was the only remaining conscientious objector at Alcatraz, and in poor health. Grosser is notable for writing one of the first exposés of Alcatraz Prison, the 32-page pamphlet Uncle Sam’s Devil’s Island, which told of his experience in the prison. He committed suicide in Boston, Massachusetts on October 1933 and was buried on October 20, 1933.”–Wikipedia

Paul Riege, Die preußische Polizei Kurze Darstellung ihrer Entwicklung und heutigen Form. C.W. Weller, Berlin, 1929. First edition. 6.5” x 4.5”, 56pp. Oriignal printed wrappers. Provenance: International Commission on Law, and then the Library of Congress, with the two rubber stamps of those institutions on the front and rear wrappers. VG copy, about. There’s a bit of discoloration on the front wrapper, though overall it is a nice copy. $95

There were five editions of this work printed 1929-1935, though there are only 9 copies of the work located for all editions, and only three of those in the U.S.

Riege was a police major at the time (1929), and rose higher with the Nazis, becoming an SS officer. Questioned several times at Nuremberg I can see no evidence that he was convicted of any crime—at one time he worked in the Generalgouvernement, at Krakow, and then in Prague later in the war. To his credit he refused or escaped taking part in the destruction and mass murder at Lidice.