Vigilante
New York: Vigilante Press, [1931?]. An extremely scarce issue of an obscure and chaotic newspaper edited and published by the eccentric engineer, contracter and capitalist Charles Bright, which compiles a photoplay called "The Wall Street Stenographer," selections from Bright's expose of the Rockefeller family called The Rockefeller Dynasty (1830-1930), and photostat court documents, newspaper articles, and photographs related to Bright's obsessive, litigious campaign against the Rockefellers, judges, and public officials that began in 1912.
Bright was a partner, along with New York City attorney, John J. McKelvey, in the Pan-American Transcontinental Railway Company, which received a concession to link Brazil and Argentina through Uruguay. Financed by a banker syndicate that included the Rockefellers, Bright maintained that McKelvey, on behalf of Rockefeller, fired him as project manager and had his stenographer alter contracts with the Urguyan government (see "The Wall Street Stenographer" in this issue) to defraud him of millions of dollars.
Over the next 20 years, Bright brought multiple failed suits against the Rockefellers and various judges who he accused of protecting corporate interests, harangued passerbys while hawking his two publications, Vigilante and The Vigilant American (organ of the Vigilantes of the Constitution and Legal and Human Rights For Equality and Justice to Make America Safe for Democracy), and operated the Vigilante Press and a one-man organization called the Equality League. Besides the mainstream press, Bright's activities delighted Communist Party members who covered his suits in the "Daily Worker." Bright died in 1970, aged 77, and was buried in Sandusky, Ohio where he was born.
Tabloid format printed in black & red, four pages printed in higher quality stock and the other 20 on cheap newsprint, which are brittle. Spine split between staples with a few of the interior pages loose from spine, illustrated throughout; some minor chipping to the fold of a few pages. Despite our best efforts, we could not locate a record for the Vigilante nor the Vigilant American in WorldCat. Item #14871
Price: $350.00