The Desire of Wages
Appendix E - The Ledger
by Dirk Anderson
Throughout this book we have let Ellen White and her publishers state the figures in their own words. This appendix gathers them in one place, by year. Every figure is taken from a letter, a manuscript or a report cited in the chapters. Where a figure is a request or an estimate rather than a payment, the table says so.
Royalties and Rights
| Year | What she received or asked | Source |
|---|
| 1885 | Royalty on Spirit of Prophecy, vol. 4, of 15 cents a copy; wants “more than fifteen cents” | Lt 15, 1885 |
| 1891 | 10 cents on her temperance book, 15 cents on Patriarchs and Prophets, 12½ cents on Spirit of Prophecy, vol. 4 | Lt 61, 1891 |
| 1892 | Revell pays 10% of retail on Steps to Christ (75 cents); about 7½ cents a copy to her | Revell to W. C. White, Apr. 18, 1892; Nelson to W. C. White, Aug. 10, 1892 |
| 1895 | Agrees to cut Great Controversy and Patriarchs from 15 to 10 cents at the General Conference Association’s request | GCA to EGW, Mar. 28, 1895; Nelson to W. C. White, Aug. 14, 1895 |
| 1895 | Foreign rights to Mount of Blessing sold for $500; 5% of retail in the U.S. | Nelson to W. C. White, July 9 and Aug. 14, 1895 |
| 1896 | Offers to take 12½ cents a copy on the life of Christ if the publisher pays for plates and publishing | Lt 144, 1896 |
| 1897 | Demands back royalty on Christian Education: “give me my due” | Lt 218, 1897 |
| 1897 | Foreign royalties to her “mission fund” at 10% of wholesale (equal to 5% of retail on subscription books, up to 8% on trade books) | W. C. White to Holser and Conradi, Nov. 21, 1897 |
| 1898 | 5% of retail on The Desire of Ages: 35 cents on the $7.00 morocco binding | Jones to Sisley, June 8, 1898 and Jan. 1899 |
| 1899 | One-third interest in the subscription edition of The Desire of Ages, with her own set of plates and foreign territory | Jones to W. C. White, July and Oct. 31, 1899 |
| 1899 | “Satisfied with 35 cts. per copy royalty” if the book is sold in parts | Jones to W. C. White, Dec. 19, 1899 |
| 1899 | About $330 royalty held in Hamburg on the German Life of Christ | Conradi to EGW, early 1899 |
| 1903 | Hamburg cuts her royalty on the German Christ Our Saviour from 4½ to 3 cents as “out of proportion” | Conradi to W. C. White, Aug. 1903 |
The Desire of Ages as a Product
| Item | Figure | Source |
|---|
| Retail prices, 1898 | Cloth $3.00; cloth gilt $3.75; library $4.00; half morocco $5.00; full morocco $6.00 (later $7.00) | Jones to Sisley, June 8, 1898 |
| Initial expense | Expected $3,000; actually over $8,000 (about $8,400) | Jones to Sisley, Jan. 1899; Sisley to W. C. White, Nov. 1898 |
| Illustrations | Planned $3,000; “crept up to over $6,000” | Jones to EGW, Nov. 1, 1899 |
| First printing | Paper for 10,000 copies | Jones to Sisley, June 8, 1898 |
| Offer to SDAs | Cheapest binding at $2.50 “to our people” for two or three months | Jones to W. C. White, Jan. 1899 |
| Second edition | 10,000 copies, March 1899 | Jones to W. C. White, Mar. 21, 1899 |
| Trade edition | Without pictures, $1.50 cloth and $2.00 leather, October 1899 | Jones to W. C. White, Oct. 1899 |
| Preparing the manuscript | “I have employed workers to prepare this book, especially Sister Davis, and this has cost me three thousand dollars. Another three thousand will be needed.” | Lt 114, 1896 |
Income, Wages and Advances
| Year | Item | Source |
|---|
| 1891 | Her workers paid $7.50 a week, “and board themselves” | Lt 61, 1891 |
| 1885–1897 | Royalties paid her by the Pacific Press alone: $19,438.40 | C. H. Jones to W. C. White, July 13, 1897 |
| 1897 | Receives “an ordinary salary from the General Conference” as well as royalties | Tenney, “Royalties,” Review and Herald, Aug. 17, 1897 |
| 1899 | Pacific Press pays off her $930 note to A. G. Lockwood ($1,141.60 with interest) and the $1,086.44 Leininger mortgage “as soon as sufficient royalty had accumulated” | Jones to W. C. White, Mar. 21, 1899 |
| 1899 | London remits her royalty balance on British sales | International Tract Society to W. C. White, May 5, 1899 |
| 1903 | Workers in Hamburg, where her royalties were held, earn $4.10 to $7.25 a week | Conradi to W. C. White, Aug. 1903 |
| To 1915 | “The salaries paid to her secretaries came chiefly from the royalties that she received” | W. C. White and D. E. Robinson, 1933 |
Debts and Loans
| Year | Item | Source |
|---|
| 1891 | Paying interest on $10,000 | Lt 61, 1891 |
| 1897 | Borrowed £1,000 at 4½%, £100 at 5%, and £1,000 at 4% | Ms 80, 1897; Lt 218, 1897 |
| 1897 | $14,000 of Elder Haskell’s money invested in Australia; “some of this I may be able some time to pay” | Lt 114a, 1897 |
| 1899 | “At least twelve thousand” hired for the work in Australia | Lt 262, 1899 |
| 1902 | “More than $10,000 in debt” | Ms 230, 1902 |
| 1903 | $10,000 from illustrated editions and four sets of plates “with the expectation of large sales”; about $6,000 for Edson; heavy expense on The Desire of Ages | Lt 237, 1903 |
| 1903 | A $100 gift entered “as a loan . . . at five per cent interest” | Lt 258, 1903 |
| 1904 | Asks four members for $1,000 each for The Ministry of Healing, at 4 to 6%; otherwise the bank at 8% | Lts 231, 247, 339, 349, 1904; Ms 155, 1904 |
| 1905 | “I am paying interest on twenty thousand dollars”; “a thousand dollars a year interest”; $3,000 hired at 7% | Lt 41, 1905; Lt 123, 1905; Lt 363, 1905 |
| 1907 | 8% on $1,000 from the bank | Lt 292, 1907 |
| 1908 | Debt of $30,000, “interest of one thousand dollars per year”; asks for “another thousand dollars”; asks loans of $500 to several thousand | Ms 127, 1908; Lt 176, 1908; Lts 96, 100, 328, 1908 |
| 1915 | Owed $86,923.70, mostly on notes; copyrights, plates and manuscripts on her books at $74,797.32 | W. C. White and D. E. Robinson, 1933 |
| 1915 | Estate valued at about $121,000, liabilities about $88,000; “the bulk of the estate” in literary properties, plates and copyrights | A. L. White, The Later Elmshaven Years, 456–457 |
The reason given for the debt changes from letter to letter: illustrated editions and plates, her son Edson, the work in Australia, the publishers who did not push her books. What does not change is that the debt was carried at interest, much of it borrowed from SDA members, and that the largest assets behind it were the plates and copyrights of her own books.
The Royalty Crisis of 1898–1899
| Year | Item | Source |
|---|
| 1898 | Testimonies read to the Review and Herald board call cuts in authors’ royalties “robbery” and the office a “den of thieves” | Report of Special Meeting, Nov. 8, 1898 |
| 1899 | Claims for back royalties pass $500,000 | Jones to W. C. White, Mar. 21, 1899 |
| 1899 | “Let the sponge be passed over the board”: no light for restitution | Lt 43, 1899 |
| 1899 | Except for Edson’s Gospel Primer: five men average their guesses at $1,060; $1,000 paid to the authors | Lt 142 and Lt 130, 1899; Sisley to EGW, Nov. 10, 1899 |
The chapters where these figures are discussed are: royalties and rights, Chapters 1, 15 and 16; the product, Chapter 15; foreign royalties, Chapter 17; debts, loans and the estate, Chapters 18 and 19.