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The Complete ‘Letters of a Pork Packers Stenographer’ by Marcy E. Marcy 1904-5.

Marvel at the speed and depth in which a young Mary Marcy absorbs ideas and develops her understandings – always with her confident humility – as her curiosity and empathy makes sense of her own experiences and the world around her. In five years, she would be the most widely read Marxist, after Marx, in the United States.

Comrade Marcy’s insightful, empathic intelligence, and compelling, combative personality are on early and full display in her ‘Letter of a Pork Packer’s Stenographer.’ These letters would bring her to the attention of the Socialist movement, a movement she would help to define next two decades. In 1902 Mary E. Marcy, then recently married and in her mid-20s, moved from Chicago to work as an assistant to the treasurer of the Armour meat-packing company in Kansas City. While there she began writing letters back home to her friend Katherine. Mary’s career was muckraking career exposing that industry’s dirty secrets was born as Charles H. Kerr printed Marcy’s letters over the following year. Gaining her national notoriety, the exposure, and her public testimony against her bosses at a Chicago grand jury, cost Mary her job in 1905. However, less than five years later Mary would be the editor International Socialist Review. The collected letters are a treasure.

  1. ‘Letters of a Pork Packer’s Stenographer, No. I’ by Mary E. Marcy from the International Socialist Review. Vol. 5 No. 2. August, 1904.
  2. ‘Letters of a Pork Packer’s Stenographer, No. II‘ by Mary E. Marcy from the International Socialist Review. Vol. 5 No. 2. August, 1904.
  3. Letters of a Pork Packer’s Stenographer, No. III‘ by Mary E. Marcy from the International Socialist Review. Vol. 5 No. 3. September, 1904.
  4. ‘Letters of a Pork Packer’s Stenographer, No. IV’ by Mary E. Marcy from The International Socialist Review. Vol. 5 No. 5. November, 1904.
  5. ‘Letters of a Pork Packer’s Stenographer, No. V’ by Mary E. Marcy from The International Socialist Review. Vol. 5 No. 5. November, 1904.
  6. ‘Letters of a Pork Packer’s Stenographer, No VI’ by Mary E. Marcy from International Socialist Review. Vol. 5 No. 6. December, 1904.
  7. ‘Letters of a Pork Packer’s Stenographer, No VII’ by Mary E. Marcy from International Socialist Review. Vol. 5 No. 7. January 1905.

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