NEQUA This is the book that has started me on a great adventure. I obtained it from a collection of books that I was hired to dispose of forty years ago. I took them home and last year I decided to sell them. The first problem to show up was the book Nequa. Everyone said it was pretty rare but no one knew of any copies selling so maybe people didn't want it. I didn't want to price it to cheap. I needed to know more about this book. It is listed as the first feminist science fiction novel. It was published by Equity Publishing in Topeka Kansas in 1900. So I set off to find out what the deal was.     Nequal or The Problem of the Ages by Jack Adams was a romance and a science fiction story of a trip to the north pole and then into the center of the earth. That is a formula that has been used by several writers. But with this book the authors were actually using that idea to introduce and present a look at another way for people to live. Women were equal, in fact Jack Adams reveals himself as actually being, a herself disguised as a man. The book sold well and was compared to Bellamys "Looking Backward" and Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth". As the Dedication says, "To all lovers of humanity, wherever found who believe that the application of the Golden Rule in human affairs would remove all the burdens that ignorance and greed have imposed upon the masses of mankind, this volume is respectfully dedicated by The Author." Copyrighted 1900, by A. O. Grigsby and Mary P. Lowe It came from the collection of George William Kleieghe a profesor at Bethany College in Lindsborg Kansas. He was about twenty when the book was published. The first year that I was at Bethany college he was still a dorm parent at Kalmar Hall. I could have asked him about the people envolved in the publishing of the book. The more research I've done the less I really know. Kleighe would have known the people envolved rather well as he was part of the Populist/Socialist political establishment in Kansas and later ran for Governor of Kansas on the Socialist ticket. I could have had the whole story about the development of this book. Attributed to A.O. Grigsby and Mary P. Lowe, but who were they? Grigsby was a disabled in the Civil War. Mary Lowe had five children. Grigsby opened an "Alliance" poitical meeting in Chicago, and spoke at the Co-operative Congress held in Topeka. Mary Lowe edited "The New Woman" and was coeditor with Grigsby of the EQUITY newspaper. So far I've found no photographs and very little personal info on them. The undersigned claims no credit for the concept of an "Inner World" in which the great economic problems which now confront the peoplehad been solved in the interest of humanity and ideal conditions established for all. This was the leading thought in a work by Dr. T. A. H. Lowe, deceased, which was placed in the hands of the writer by his widow, Mrs. Mary P. Lowe. It contains a glowing description of the ideal conditions which would provail under the practical application of the principals of Freedom, Equality and Fraternity in human affairs but the author died before he had an opportunity to work out a practical system by which the masses of the people, situated as they now are, without even a clear understanding as to just what is the matter, could commence with existing conditions, and peacefully, effectually and speedily establish the much desired system of absolute justice in distribution which he described. Hence it was determined to prepare a series of volumes, illustrating the operation of practica working methods by which this result could be secured, and then, publish Dr. Lowe's original volume, just as it was written as a fitting conclusion; and we now take pleasure in presenting to the reader the first volume of the series and respectfully ask a candid consideration of the principals which it is designed to elucidate Jack Adams