Fine Americana Travel & Exploration With Ephemera & Manuscript ...

124. (Financial History) Leffingwell, S[ally] M[aria]. Autograph Letter, signed, relating to the firstAmerican depression. Autograph Letter, signed. 2 pages plus stampless address leaf.New York: Jan. 6, 1908To her son, William C.[oit] Leffingwell, New Haven, then a student at Yale. “…Your Papahas had his mind in a continual state of anxiety for sometime past. He can hardly expect toescape losing money by so many & such large failures as has taken place, but as yet, he has gotalong very well. However, there is no knowing who will go next, nor who is to be taken in, itis a distressing time in NYork. We are much in fear of riots, as any thing at present, for thereis at least ten thousand people who are to be fed by their dayly earnings, they are now entirelyout of employ & the weather is so cold that the Corporation cannot employ them in digging.What their hunger will lead them to do, we have great reason to dread ... “ Written 15 daysafter President Jefferson signed the Embargo Act, intended to punish the warring British andFrench for violating the neutrality of American merchant ships, but, in effect, nearly haltingNew England seaport commerce with Europe and thus triggering the first economic disasterof the new Republic. New York was especially hard hit, with one merchant firm after anotherdriven to bankruptcy, thousands unemployed, and hundreds sent to debtor’s prison. One whoescaped the crash was William Leffingwell, husband of the writer. Grandson of an ex-innkeeperwho had profitably supplied Washington’s Continental Army, Leffingwell expanded his fortuneby shipping provisions to Revolutionary France during the Reign of Terror. When his wife wrotethis letter, fearful of the hungry masses in the first American Depression, he had just sold hisNew York mansion, which was literally on Wall Street, and was moving to New Haven, wherehis son was at college, to become that city’s richest citizen. Creased, light wear; very good.(400/600)125. (Financial History) Ralston, Robert and Henry Pratt. Autograph Document, signed, protestingthe state regulation of business. Autograph Document, signed. 2 pages.Philadelphia: February 5, 1801Robert Ralston served as President of the Common Council and Henry Pratt as President ofthe Select Council. “To the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth ofPennsylvania. The Memorial and Remonstrance of the Select and Common Councils of theCity of Philadelphia”. Expressing “anxiety, surprize and alarm” that the State Legislature wasconsidering measures to take over “superintending authority” of local businesses from citygovernments and the courts; insisting that existing regulation of “Hucksters” and preventionof “frauds equally injurious to the farmer and inhabitant of the city… executed with no lessimpartiality and justice, than vigilance and zeal” were more than adequate”. If, occasionally,municipal judges might act “corruptly and oppressively”, they would be “strictly scrutinized”and “severely punished”. The assumption of this very early document in American economichistory was that businesses were owned by sole proprietors, tradesmen like butchers and bakers.The word “corporation” then referred only to city governments, and the danger, mentionedin the petition, of “forestalling the markets” meant tradesmen who tried to gain a “corner”, amonopoly, on certain products. The era of massive corporate trusts was still a century away.Creased, short splits at folds, small chip at left edge; very good.(200/300)126. Firestone, Harvey S. with Samuel Crowther. Men and Rubber: The Story of a Business. [6],279 pp. Frontispiece portrait. Original gilt-ruled full morocco, spine lettered in gilt. First Edition.Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1926Presentation copy inscribed in the half-title, “To Homer C. Campbell, with highest personalregards, Harvey S. Firestone, Dec. 24th, 1926.” This is undoubtedly to the Homer Campbellwho was administrator (i.e. mayor) of Akron, Ohio, in 1922. The Firestone Tire and RubberCompany, an American tire company founded by Harvey Firestone in 1900 to supplypneumatic tires for wagons, buggies, and other forms of wheeled transportation common inthe era, was originally based in Akron (also the hometown of its archrival, Goodyear Tire andRubber Company). Spine sunned, some scuffing; hinges cracked at endpapers, rear split all theway; very good.(400/600)Page 38