Better Dead than Homeless: Founded on Fact

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First Edition. An anti-free trade romance, written by an Iowa-born Republican newspaperman and attorney, later appointed Chief Clerk of the Department of State under McKinley. The second half of the novel is set in California, and ends with a deadly conflagration in a San Francisco woolen mill which is described in rather grisly detail. According to the author's self-penned biography in The History and Functions of the Department of State (1901), this novel was written to “…simplify the tariff question and make it attractive to persons unwilling to read speeches and pamphlets on that subject.” According to the same source, the book was “largely circulated in cloth and paper cover in the campaign of 1888, and a second edition of nearly a million copies was circulated by the National [Republican] Committee in 1892.”

William Henry Michael, (1845-1916).
Better Dead than Homeless: Founded on Fact.
Washington, D.C.: Brodix Publishing Co., 1888.

Lehigh University Catalog Record: https://asa.lib.lehigh.edu/Record/10994147

A version of this text has been digitized and is available through Hathitrust.

Digitized Version