Your Mother's Gone Away To Join The Army

New York: Broadway Music Corporation, 1913. First Edition. Quarto (35cm); original pictorial wrappers; 6pp. Old horizontal fold at center, some creasing to wrappers, a few splits along the spine-fold, and several small tears and attendant creases to edges and margins of the inner leaf; Good to Very Good.

Attractive piece of suffrage-themed sheet music, the lyrics told from the perspective of a father and his little boy, whose mother was absent due to her involvement in the women's rights movement. "A little lad with curly hair stood by his father's knee / Could see that he was crying he was sad as he could be / He sobbed and said "I feel so blue," as tears ran down his cheeks / "Oh father where is mother she has not been home for weeks" / His Pa said "Lad the tale is sad, She's down at Suffrage Hall / She's gone to fight for women's rights, why there's their bugle call." In comparison to the denigrating tone of other suffrage songs from the period, the chorus here conveys familial pride: "Hear the tramp of their feet - as they come down the street / Gee those girlies look sweet, They're all dressed up so neat / Your dear old ma just took a fighter's place / She likes the smell of powder 'cause it's always on her face / There's no rats in her hair - you can see she don't care / Holds her head in the air, Gee your mother's a bear / Tramp, Tramp, Tramp the girls are marching, Your Mother's gone away to join the army." OCLC notes 3 holdings (LC, Baylor, British Library). CREW S-1913-18. 83995.