New York: Brewer, Warren, & Putnam, 1932. First edition. 8vo. Original red cloth gilt, light rubbing, mild darkening to spine; publisher's dust jacket, wear to extremities, sunning to spine, mild toning.

Later retitled Hard Times on a Southern Chain Gang, the present work was born from John L. Spivak's travels through Georgia during the 1930s, during which time he carefully documented through photographs and his own writing the conditions under which African American convicts lived. His writings were serialized in The Daily Worker and the Des Moines Tribune, and the resulting work was hailed as "a second Uncle Tom's Cabin, an indictment of peonage and convict-labor in Georgia..."