Patriarchs and Profits

Chapter 19 - ...and Profits

by Dirk Anderson

There is one final chapter to this story. If, as the evidence throughout this article suggests, Patriarchs and Prophets was not the product of divine revelation, why did Ellen White insist so forcefully that it was? The answer lies not in the writing of the book, but in its marketing.

Unlike the biblical prophets, Ellen White did more than write books. She received royalties from them. Not only that, when those books struggled in the marketplace, she repeatedly appealed to her prophetic authority to persuade sect leaders and canvassers that selling Patriarchs and Prophets was nothing less than the will of God.

The Business Problem

Patriarchs and Prophets was birthed in the midst of a business crisis. By the late 1880s the Review and Herald Publishing Association was under financial strain. Costs were being cut, employee wages reduced, and management was looking for practical ways to stay afloat and increase profits. Every dollar mattered.¹

At precisely that moment the sect discovered a goldpot. Bible Readings for the Home Circle, a popular denominational book of Bible lessons designed for families to study together in the home, was outselling all other denominational books — by far.² It was inexpensive to produce, easy for inexperienced canvassers to sell, and remarkably successful. Better still, its contributors had agreed to receive no royalties. Every sale benefited the publishing work rather than an individual author. Ellen White's nephew, Francis E. Belden, who worked at the Review, later recalled that many SDA leaders interpreted the book's amazing success as evidence that God was blessing a royalty-free book.³

Standing beside it were The Great Controversy and the newly published Patriarchs and Prophets. They were larger, more expensive, more difficult to sell, and each copy generated a royalty payment to Ellen White.

From the publisher's perspective, it was as a simple business decision. It made more economic sense to push Bible Readings than White's books.

Ellen White's Problem

Unlike the contributors to Bible Readings, Ellen White received 15 cents in royalties from every copy of Patriarchs and Prophets sold. White had invested heavily in the printing plates used to reproduce her books, expecting strong sales to recover that investment. Instead, sales faltered, her account with the Review mounted, and her personal finances began to suffer. She was no longer able to meet some of her financial obligations.⁴

Writing privately, White made it clear that she believed the publishers themselves were responsible for her predicament:

One from Edson stated that my account at the office had swelled to the enormous sum of seven thousand dollars. This is, much of it, in publishing Volume 4, Great Controversy, and Patriarchs and Prophets, which they have not handled but have let fall dead from the press, while Bible Readings has been extolled and all the canvassers have been educated to work for it… Well, I am informed that I can draw no more from the office, and now I must cast about to see what I shall do next. I trust in the Lord, that He will open the way before me and put it into the hearts of those who might help me to do so by educating the canvassers to handle my books. ...the very light that God has given me for His people they shall have.⁵

The emotion in White's complaint is impossible to miss. Her account had “swelled” to an “enormous” sum. Her books had been allowed to “fall dead from the press,” while Bible Readings was “extolled” and the canvassers were trained to work for it. These are not the words of someone calmly reporting a difference in business strategy. They reveal a woman who believed she had been wronged — and, as her other correspondence makes clear, she regarded the publishers' treatment of her as a betrayal.

Her proposed solution is revealing. White does not suggest lowering her royalties, offering promotions, or reducing the production costs of the book. She wants the canvassers educated to handle her books. In other words, she believes the problem is that her books had been neglected while Bible Readings received the aggressive promotion she felt her books deserved.

Compounding the problem was the Review's own financial distress. In the past, White had been able to draw upon the publishing office when she needed financial assistance. Now that source was drying up. She was told plainly: “I can draw no more from the office.”⁶

White's complaint exposes the conflict at the heart of the matter. She had invested heavily in books from which she received royalties, expected those books to sell, and depended upon the publishing operation to market them. Yet she believed the very people responsible for selling them had instead thrown their weight behind a royalty-free competitor. Bible Readings was being “extolled”; her books had been left “dead from the press.” From White's perspective, this was not simply bad business. It was betrayal. The problem became: the canvassers have been "educated" to sell Bible Readings instead of her books.

Problems with her Public Image

Adding to Ellen White's financial problems was a growing assault on her public reputation. By the late 1880s, White's name had become increasingly controversial in America. In 1877, first-day Adventist Miles Grant published a tract critical of White entitled An Examination of Ellen White's Visions. It was distributed widely throughout North American churches and even circulated in foreign countries. The problem intensified in 1889 with the publication of Dudley M. Canright's Seventh-day Adventism Renounced, a widely circulated book that directly challenged White's prophetic authority.

For Ellen White, this created a serious problem. Her books depended heavily upon personal reputation and the work of canvassers. Grant's and Canright's books was tarnishing her reputation amongst the target audience she was trying to sell to.

White herself recognized the damage. She later complained that Grant's and Canright's publications had been “scattered broadcast,” that they had even been “printed in the [news]papers,” and that they had succeeded in bruising and blackening the reputation of SDAs — including her own.⁷ The commercial problem would be obvious to any book publisher: a damaged reputation makes a difficult book even harder to sell.

Problems with Spending

One reason for Ellen White's financial woes was her apparently unconstrained generosity and spending. She wrote of being solicited for money "from every quarter." Eventually, she claimed that "light" came to her in the "night season," instructing her to stop "passing out means in large sums."⁸ White can certainly be commended for her generosity toward the SDA cause. But generosity was not the only drain on her finances. Her financial problems were compounded by the money she poured into her publishing ventures and by expenditures for her own luxuries.

Consider what happened in December 1885, while White was working on Patriarchs and Prophets in Basel, Switzerland. She complained about having to travel by public conveyance: "I do not take pleasure in the rides taken with a coachman or hackman."⁹ The solution was not to tolerate an inconvenience that other SDA workers routinely endured. White wanted her own horse and carriage.

That was no trivial purchase. A respectable horse, carriage, and harness represented a substantial capital expense in the 1880s, followed by continuing costs for feed, stabling, shoeing, and maintenance. At a time when SDA workers were being urged to sacrifice for the cause, White was contemplating a private mode of transportation that was a luxury well beyond the means of the ordinary laborer. The initial purchase alone represented more than three years of wages for a typical laborer.

Cost of a Horse and Carriage

Item / Service	1885 Cost (USD)
Driving Horse	$100 – $200
Carriage / Phaeton	$150 – $300
Harness & Equipment	$25 – $50
Total Initial Setup	$275 – $550
In 2025 dollars	$10,021 – $20,042

Not including the continuing costs of stabling, feed, shoeing, and maintenance.

The timing makes this especially difficult to overlook. White was already experiencing serious financial pressure and had started accumulating debt. Yet in the midst of those financial difficulties, she was prepared to spend a substantial sum to avoid the inconvenience of using public transportation.

That becomes all the more striking when compared with her own published counsel. White's Testimonies repeatedly warned believers about the dangers of living in debt. After purchasing printing plates for Patriarchs and Prophets, she placed her indebtedness to the Review at approximately $10,000.¹⁰ When the publishing operation could no longer continue advancing her money, she did not respond by proposing to reduce her royalties or provide a promotion to spur book sales. Instead, she appealed for the canvassers to be retrained to sell her books.

The contradiction becomes difficult to ignore. White's financial solution was not to control her expenditures but to increase the sales of the books that generated royalties for her. She invoked her prophetic authority, presenting their sale as a matter of advancing "the very light that God has given me for His people."

The Marketplace Answered

By October of 1890, Patriarchs and Prophets was starting to roll off the presses of Pacific Press with high hopes. To spur sales, the publishers introduced one of the most generous discounts they had ever given for a book. Despite this, the response was disappointing. Writing publicly in the SDA Home Missionary, corporate leader C. Eldridge could only express his surprise. He lashed out at state agents, baffled as to why so few orders had been received.¹¹

The reasons were not mysterious. Patriarchs and Prophets was a large, expensive book that demanded more time and persuasion than Bible Readings. Many canvassers regarded it as "a harder book to canvass for."¹²

Price only compounded the problem. Depending on the binding, the book sold for between $1.75 and $4.25 — $70 - $170 in modern dollars.¹³ At a time when many American laborers earned less than $1.75 a day, purchasing the deluxe edition represented a substantial financial commitment. One canvassing leader acknowledged that many agents believed the price alone kept the books out of reach.¹⁴

None of this reflected any animosity toward Ellen White. On the contrary, the canvassers were deeply committed SDAs who sincerely believed they were spreading God's final message for the world. Yet even they acknowledged the challenge with selling Patriarchs and Prophets.¹⁵

The market had rendered its verdict. The sect's sales force had rendered theirs. The problem was not about whether Patriarchs and Prophets was useful in winning converts to Seventh-day Adventism. Reports trickled in of some successes. The problem was that it was challenging to sell.

Selling by Divine Command

Faced with a difficult book to sell, Ellen White did not merely recommend Patriarchs and Prophets to her followers. She repeatedly claimed that God Himself was directing the sect to sell it.

This was not an isolated appeal made during financial hardship. For the next sixteen years, she repeatedly presented the promotion of her own royalty-bearing books as a matter of divine instruction.

In 1899, in a document titled Special Instruction Regarding Royalties, she wrote that Patriarchs and Prophets contained "the very message the people must have, the special light God had given His people" and added that "angels of God would prepare the way for" the book.¹⁶ The appeal is no longer commercial. It is supernatural.

In 1903, she wrote that Patriarchs and Prophets contained "precious instruction" and "must be regarded as of special importance, and every effort should be made" to market them.¹⁷ The same year, in the Review and Herald, she wrote that her book "should be sold everywhere" because it contained "truth for this time" and nothing was to be allowed "to hinder" its sale.¹⁸ Selling the book becomes a religious duty.

In 1905, again in the Review and Herald, she went still further:

Instruction has been given me that the important books… should be given a wide circulation just now… Patriarchs and Prophets, Daniel and the Revelation, and The Great Controversy are needed now as never before… Had tact and skill then been shown in the sale of these books, the Sunday-law movement would not be where it is today.¹⁹

The implication is extraordinary. Had canvassers done a better job selling her books, the Sunday-law movement would not have advanced as it did.

Then, in 1906, she wrote about the content of Patriarchs and Prophets, saying: The Holy Spirit traced these truths upon my heart and mind as indelibly as the law was traced by the finger of God, upon the tables of stone.²⁰

The claim has now reached astonishing heights. The book was placed on the same level as the Ten Commandments.

To these canvassers, Ellen White was God's prophet. When she declared that angels would prepare the way for Patriarchs and Prophets, that its sale was a matter of divine instruction, and that the Holy Spirit Himself had traced its truths upon her mind, faithful SDA canvassers had every reason to believe her.

That is precisely what made these appeals so powerful. She was not relying on the merits of her book alone. She was leveraging her prophetic authority to manipulate the men and women responsible for selling it.

The Meeting in Brooklyn

On the evening of November 24, 1890, Ellen White stood before a room full of canvassers in Brooklyn. These were not critics. They were SDA loyalists whose livelihood depended on selling the sect's books from door to door in New York City.

The discussion turned to the very controversy dividing the publishing work. Why had they been instructed to emphasize Bible Readings when many believed they could successfully sell Patriarchs and Prophets instead?²¹ Ellen White answered the question herself:

I told them that the Lord had never given any direction in harmony with the one which they had received. God gave me the light contained in Great Controversy and Patriarchs and Prophets… It cannot be denied that these works were not the product of any human mind; they are the voice of God speaking to His people, and they will have an influence upon minds that other books do not have.”²²

Notice what just happened. The publishing managers had made a practical business decision. Canvassers had reported that Patriarchs and Prophets was more difficult to sell than Bible Readings. Ellen White was likely aware of this and the success canvassers were having with Bible Readings. Not only was it selling well, but SDA literature was full of success stories of converts joining the sect after reading the book. Not only was it selling well and bringing in new converts, the sales were helping to lift the Review out of debt. White could have been generous with the publishing house leaders for developing and implementing such a successful book venture. Instead, she publicly shreds them — portraying them as disobedient to God's "direction."

The reason she gave was not a practical one. She answered with a supernatural argument.

She declared that God Himself had given the book's contents to her, that it was "not the product of any human mind," and that it was "the voice of God speaking to His people." A canvasser who accepted her prophetic authority could scarcely reach any other conclusion than that promoting competing books was resisting God's expressed will.

White drove the point home by insisting that her book "was not the product of any human mind." The canvassers could not have tested that claim. The book contained no citations and no acknowledgment of the many authors whose work appears throughout its pages. To them, it was a divine revelation. Curiously, at the very moment her book business needed rescuing, heaven showed up to endorse her books.

The Standard She Applied to Everyone Else

Ellen White repeatedly taught that canvassers should never allow personal financial considerations to influence which books they sold. On that principle there could be no disagreement.

In the same season as the Brooklyn meeting, she wrote to the Review and Herald managers about the canvassers — the very men she had just addressed — and condemned the motive of financial gain in language that allows no confusion:

If our canvassers are controlled by the prospect of financial gain; if they circulate the book on which they can make the most money, to the neglect of others that the people need, I ask, In what sense is theirs a missionary work? Where is the missionary spirit, the spirit of self-sacrifice?²³

Should he turn his back on all the principles of missionary work, and handle the book — placed before him, shall I say, as a temptation — on which he can make the most money?²⁴

Yet only four paragraphs later, in the very same letter, the principle changes.

You know I needed the money which the sale of my books would bring. You undertook to manage the sale for me, and if I have been justly dealt with I have yet to learn what constitutes mercy and justice.²⁵

The dissonance is astonishing. When canvassers preferred another book because it sold more easily, Ellen White questioned their missionary spirit and warned them against the temptation of financial gain. When her own royalty-bearing books were not selling, she reminded the same men that she "needed the money" those sales would bring.

Consider how Francis Belden was treated when he requested a royalty of just five cents per copy for a book he had written on his own time. The Review and Herald refused.²⁶ Ellen White caught wind of it, and instead of coming to her nephew's aid, instead of fighting for him to get his royalties the same way she always fought for her own royalties, she thoroughly denounced him as selfish. Then, she saw to it that the testimony was circulated among influential corporate leaders.²⁷

Five cents was selfishness. Fifteen-cent royalties were "the voice of God."

Conclusion

Every faithful SDA canvasser believed Ellen White spoke for God. She knew they believed it. She used that belief to influence what books they carried from door to door. She did not merely recommend Patriarchs and Prophets. She declared that heaven wanted it sold, that angels would prepare the way, that refusing to give it prominence was contrary to God's instruction, and that its contents were "not the product of any human mind."

It is one thing for an author to say, "I believe my book is important." It is quite another for a prophet to tell her followers, "God insists you must sell my book." That is spiritual coercion.

The darkest part of this story, however, is that she leveraged the voice of God to market words and ideas that, in many cases, came from other authors, not God.

That was not merely a publishing business dispute. It was a profound abuse of spiritual authority.