January 1st, 1913.
My dear Miss Addams,
Under the advice of my physician, I am resigning my professorship at Wellesley. I am not ill, but I ought not again to subject myself to the strain of college apppointments. In looking about for something worth the doing with the years that remain, nothing appeals to me more than service for the Progressive Party. In this one cause seem to be embodied most of the interests that are dearest to me, and I am fully convinced that it is destined to fulfill the great purposes that condition our national well-being. Can you find me some work to do in your department of social and industrial justice? I am financially independent so there need be no question of salary. Moreover, I expect to be abroad next year and can choose quite freely as to habitat both next year and hereafter, and I am hoping that you have some piece of investigation that you would like me to do.
You are going to Egypt in February, I am told. Would you care to run through my new book, the Economic Beginnings of the Far West on the voyage? It contains the best there is in me, and without conscious effort it proves to be an argument in behalf of the cause your father and mine held dearest, the cause of free land and free labor. If you can undertake a two volume treatise, please let me know when and by what steamer you sail, and I will have the book delivered to you on board.
<Always your devoted friend,>
Katharine Coman. [signed]
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