Chance Has a Whip

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Very Good. 1935. 1st Edition (A). Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [good sound copy, fading and rubbing to spine cloth (gilt lettering still readable, but barely), dust-soiling to top of text block, tiny white spot on rear cover]. A labor-vs.-capital novel, set in Buffalo, New York, concerning the takeover of an independent steel mill by a larger corporation ("the fiction is easily penetrated by any Buffalonian," noted one contemporary reviewer), and the sincere but ultimately doomed efforts by the new owner to reorganize the plant on a co-operative basis. (Hanna (1738) summarizes it: "Perplexities of the well-meaning head of a steel mill.") There is also a romantic triangle, involving the industrialist, his "unattractive, hard and mean" wife, and the younger woman with whom he seeks solace -- who also happens to be the daughter of the head of the taken-over mill (who himself is killed in a strike). The contemporary reviewer cited the author for his knowledge of the steel industry, but criticized the book's conclusion as "not only beside the plot, [but] it is absurd melodrama." .