PRESIDENT'S OFFICE
January 4/1911
Dear Miss Addams,
There is some talk of a wish on the part of the authorities in the Chautauqua Circle to prescribe your book for next year's reading course and I should be glad if you would kindly let me know whether you feel inclined to give authority for the book being used in this way. This will mean the sale of a number of thousand copies, probably 6000 or 7000 in all, the books being sold at a very low price by the Society to its members, the price received for the books being about 30 [cents] each. I cannot tell you exactly the price received because the books are sold only in a set with others and combined with a subscription to the Chautauqua Magazine.
If we succeed in having the book used by the Chautauqua Society in the manner proposed, we shall receive about 12 [cents] per copy for the book from the Society and in the case of books so sold to the Society, it is customary for us to pay the authors 10% of the amount so received by us from the sale of these copies of the book.
I am aware, of course, that this is a very inadequate payment for the use of your book, but I am fully persuaded that the use of the book in the Chautauqua Course would not be likely to decrease its regular sale. On the contrary, it is more likely to [page 2] increase the sale of the book at the regular price by making the book known to a large and intelligent class of readers, who would otherwise not be likely to hear of it.
In any case the sale of the book up to this time has been very satisfactory, some 6000 copies having already been shipped with every indication that there will be a much larger number than this to report as sales of the book when the time of the annual accounting comes round.
Will you kindly let me know if, under the circumstances, you will authorize us to make the sale of the copies of the book to the Society if we are able to do so, and to pay you, as proposed, a royalty of 10% upon the price which we receive from the Society for the books sold to them.
I have ventured to write you once or twice in regard to another book which I think is much needed, on the position of young girls and women when they first come to the city to take up work in the great manufacturing and mercantile establishments. I am not quite sure that there is a book in this, and yet, it is an increasingly important matter from the standpoint of our modern business and social life, and I hope that before very long you may be able to tell me that you are willing to undertake the work.
Yours very truly,
George P. Brett [signed]
Miss Jane Addams.
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