The Desire of Wages

Chapter 19 - The Book Business

by Dirk Anderson

The Desire of Ages has a good deal to say about money. Its Judas “had naturally a strong love for money,” and as treasurer of the disciples’ little fund, “often when he did a little service for Christ, or devoted time to religious purposes, he paid himself out of this meager fund. In his own eyes these pretexts served to excuse his action.”¹ Its Pharisees “gained the confidence of pious widows, and then represented it as a duty for them to devote their property to religious purposes. Having secured control of their money, the wily schemers used it for their own advantage.”²

The author of those lines spent her last years running a publishing business. This final chapter follows it from the printing plates to the probate court.

A Debt Built on Plates

Ellen White was often in debt, and SDAs cite her debts as proof that she never profited from her books. She explained the debts herself. In 1903 she wrote to the president of the General Conference:

Ten thousand dollars of this debt was incurred before I went to Australia. I went to large expense in bringing out the illustrated editions of Great Controversy and Patriarchs and Prophets and in making four sets of plates of each. This was done with the expectation of large sales. . . . While I was in Australia, I went to large expense in bringing out Desire of Ages.³

A few weeks later she added that The Desire of Ages “was a heavy expense, and enough copies of the book have not yet been sold to settle the debt thus incurred,” and that the money she had paid for the Australian plates “will slowly come back to me as the office there disposes of the books.”⁴

This was not the debt of a poor widow. It was the debt of a publisher who borrowed to manufacture her own product, expecting the sales to pay it back with something over. Plates, illustrated editions and translations were capital. The money went out; the books came in; the royalties followed. When sales were slow, the debt grew. By 1908 she said she owed thirty thousand dollars, “upon which I pay interest of one thousand dollars per year.”⁵

“Will You Lend Me One Thousand Dollars?”

Where did the money come from? Much of it came from SDA members. In 1904, with The Ministry of Healing nearly ready for the printer, White wrote one believer after another:

• To Marion Crawford, July 11: “Can you lend me one thousand dollars? I need money to help me in getting out my books.”⁶
• To W. R. Young, July 19: “I now wish to ask you if you could lend me one thousand dollars, to be used in bringing out some important books.”⁷
• To Walter Harper, December 26: “Will you lend me one thousand dollars? I will pay you interest on it and will give you my note. I usually pay four or five per cent.”⁸
• To Marion Crawford again: “I wish to ask you if you can lend me the thousand dollars for which I asked you several months ago. I will give you six percent interest.”⁹

The letter to Harper is worth reading whole. It opens by praising him for selling her books, “for thus you are giving to the world the light that God has given me. These books contain clear, straight, unalterable truth. . . . The instruction they contain is not of human production.” Two paragraphs later comes the request for a thousand dollars at four or five percent.¹⁰ White attempted to obtain the loan under false pretenses. The book was very much a human production. It contained the writings of Harris, Farrar, and other Christian authors. It was put together by Marian Davis. To say the instruction in the book—other than the Bible verses—was "not of human production" is a bald-faced lie.

In 1908 the requests continued. To a Sister Rasmussen in Dakota: “I am desirous of obtaining money; and I will come right to the point by asking you if you can loan me some at interest . . . five hundred or one thousand dollars until the books that are now being prepared for the press are ready for publication.”¹¹ To Alexander Gilmore in British Columbia: “Will you loan to me some of the money which the Lord has entrusted to you, that I may represent you in a work that you cannot do yourself? . . . please let me know on what terms you would lend me several thousand dollars.”¹² And to Marion Stowell-Crawford, as Chapter 1 showed, she advised taking five thousand dollars out of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, “from all that has been shown me,” and suggested a better place for it: “with me,” at six per cent.¹³

These were not gifts. They were investments in White's publishing empire for which she paid interest and gave notes. Some of the proceeds of The Ministry of Healing were promised to the sanitariums. But look at the structure. Members lent their savings. Their money paid for the plates and the publishing. The plates belonged to White. The royalties went to White. When the members were repaid, they got back their money with interest. The author and her family got back her money, the plates, the copyrights and every royalty for as long as the books sold.

Set that beside her own description of the Pharisees: they persuaded pious believers “to devote their property to religious purposes,” and then, “having secured control of their money,” used it for their own advantage. White borrowed rather than took, and she paid interest. But she used the language of the Lord’s entrusted means to raise money for books she owned.

“Not One Penny as a Gift”

In 1903 the General Conference proposed to sell her book Education in the way Christ’s Object Lessons had been sold, with the proceeds going to clear her debts. She refused, and her refusal has been quoted ever since as proof of her selflessness:

I do not want any effort made to raise money for me. I do not want one penny as a gift. I am opposed to receiving money as a gift for the settlement of my debt. I can carry this debt.¹⁴

Three weeks later she wrote to a sister who had sent her a hundred dollars: “I cannot consent to accept it as a gift. . . . But the money has been entered on my books as a loan from you, at five per cent interest.”¹⁵ The gift became a debt she would repay with interest, which looks noble until one notices that it also kept the arrangement on business terms.

Five years later the tone had changed. “There has been a debt of thirty thousand dollars upon which I pay interest of one thousand dollars per year. Many of our people know this, but no effort has been made to relieve the situation.”¹⁶ In May 1908 she thanked Alexander Gilmore for money he had sent, and added: “When you can spare another thousand dollars for the advancement of the cause, it will be gladly received.”¹⁷ In 1903 she wanted not one penny as a gift. In 1908 she complained that no one had helped, and asked for another thousand.

Owning the Plates

Through all of this, one principle never changed. In 1903 her son wrote that “she regards it as her duty to own the plates to her books so far as possible.”¹⁸ In 1908 she wrote it herself: “I have been instructed that it is best for me to own the plates of my books.”¹⁹ Instructed by whom? The same mysterious voice that always took her side in business disputes?

The plates were the heart of the business. Whoever owned the plates of a book controlled where and how it could be printed, and every copy printed from them earned the owner a return. Chapter 15 showed her one-third interest in The Desire of Ages, with its set of plates and its foreign territory. Chapter 17 showed the “mission fund” paying for plates of her Testimonies. By the end of her life the plates, copyrights and manuscripts were the largest part of what she owned.

After her death her son W. C. White and D. E. Robinson explained the estate’s debts. “The assets which were chiefly responsible for the debt were in the form of book copyrights, book plates,” manuscripts, indexes and a library, valued on her books at $74,797.32. They also explained who had been paid out of the royalties: “The salaries paid to her secretaries came chiefly from the royalties that she received.”²⁰ The women who prepared the books were paid wages out of the royalties on the books they prepared. The name on the cover kept the plates.

The Will

On February 9, 1912, Ellen White signed her last will. W. C. White and C. H. Jones, manager of the Pacific Press, were named executors.²¹ The literary estate, the books with “their printing bookplates in all languages, and the copyrights to them,” along with her manuscripts, went to five trustees to manage after her death.²² Five individuals were to receive $500 each, and her son Edson $3,000. W. C. White received the rights to several of her books, including Education, along with her personal library and her unassigned manuscripts. And the San Francisco attorney who drew up the will added one more provision: if the trusts were ever terminated, the remaining assets would revert directly to W. C. White or his heirs.²³

When she died in July 1915, her estate was valued, in round figures, at $121,000, and her liabilities at $88,000. The White Estate’s own biographer admitted that “the bulk of the estate, however, was in literary properties, book plates, and copyrights.”²⁴ There was not enough cash to pay the debts, so the trustees borrowed from the General Conference and repaid it, at interest, out of the royalties on her books.²⁵

So the story ends where it began: with royalties. The sect lent the estate the money to pay the prophet’s debts, and the royalties on books like The Desire of Ages, which Hanna, Harris, Cumming, Geikie, Farrar, March, Ingraham and the commentators had helped to write and Marian Davis had assembled, paid the sect back with interest. Hanna, Harris and the rest were never paid a cent.

The Desire of Wages

The evidence has now come full circle. The Desire of Ages was planned as “one large book for canvassers.” Its chapters were assembled by paid workers from Ellen White's earlier writings and the books of other authors. Their words—and sometimes their mistakes—found their way into a volume published under her name. It was marketed as a work of divine inspiration, sold at a premium, and protected by royalties, copyrights, and ownership interests. When White believed she was being cheated, the publishers faced the wrath of heaven. When other writers made similar claims, they were told to pass the sponge. And when her own family's interests were at stake, the revelations always favored them.

There is one final irony. In The Desire of Ages, White portrays Judas as a man who helped himself to the common purse while finding religious pretexts to justify his conduct. She knew exactly how damning that behavior was. On its pages, The Desire of Ages presents a picture quite at odds with the financial enterprise behind its production.

The historical records tell a different story. A story of manuscripts assembled by hired hands, plagiarized words published as prophetic insight, royalties defended in the name of God, and a lucrative literary brand built around the name of its author. After following the money for nineteen chapters the time has come for you to decide:

Was this really about Jesus, The Desire of Ages—or was it all about The Desire of Wages?