Scarce San Francisco Spanish Imprint
Moral teórico-práctica y educación para el uso de las escuelas y de las familias
Notes: 208 pages. A very scarce San Francisco Spanish imprint, with four copies located in OCLC.
Trigo's Moral téorico-práctica, the title of which translates to something like, "General Instruction and Theoretical and Practical Morals for Schools and Families", is a curious work, approaching the modern self-help book. In his dedication, Trigo explains that his goal is to offer "some teachings that I find useful to guide you on the path to the good life, which can only be reached with a healthy body and a tranquil soul" ["algunas enseñanzas que considero útiles para guiaros por el camino del bien en la vida; único por el que podreis alcanzar la salud del cuerpo y la tranquilidad del alma"].
Trigo addresses a wide range of topics, from the notion of liberty to physical development to citizen obligations during war. There are sections, with portrait illustrations, of the heroes of independence, George Washington and Simón de Bolivar. He ends the book with a strong statement of equality, arguing that "all men, regardless of race, color, or religious belief, are our brothers" and that modern science has proven that there is no difference between the races ["Todos los hombres, cualquiera que sea su raza, color, ó creencia religiosa, son nuestros hermanos...La ciencia moderna no admite diferencia esencial entre las facultades de los hombres de cualquiera raza que sean..." (p. 186)].
Trigo was an immigrant from Spain who arrived in the US about 1883 (see St. Louis Dispatch, April 20, 1900). In the early 1890s, he wrote a number of educational books in Spanish for Hubert Howe Bancroft's History Company, with the intent of distributing them throughout California and Latin America. Within two years, Trigo had filed suit against Bancroft, alleging that he had never received any royalties and that late in 1891, the company stopped selling the books. According to newspaper accounts of the lawsuit, "a good many thousand copies were sold in California and the Spanish countries of the south" (San Francisco Examiner, Feb. 3, 1893).
In 1895, Trigo was in St. Louis operating the Spanish-American Educational Company, which reprinted several of his History Company titles. He was appointed as honorary consul to Spain in St. Louis in 1900 and lived in that city until 1915, when he and two of his sons set out for South America to run the Latin American offices of a midwest barber supply company.
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing). In the publisher's decorated cloth binding. An ex-library copy, with call numbers on the spine, a decorative bookplate on the front pastedown, and a pocket affixed to the rear pastedown. Very scarce.
Publication: San Francisco de California: The History Company, 1891.
Item No: #35483
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