Smithsonian Imbroglio

With the name of the Smithsonian Institution to conjure guards and secretaries, a polite book agent worked his way to the presence of Chief Justice Taft. The Smithsonian Institution, related the book agent, was preparing a 12-volume survey of Science. The first edition was to be strictly limited to 875 copies. Only 875 world leaders, like Mr. Taft, would be permitted to purchase those sets. Each set would carry the owner's name. Mr. Taft would be aiding the Smithsonian Institution by buying a set. The price was only $500.

Mr. Taft, as President, had had the Smithsonian, a quasi-Federal institution, under his authority. As a learned gentleman he wished it well. So, believing that the Institution would get handsome royalties, he subscribed.

So did Secretaries Mellon and Kellogg, when similarly approached. So too J. Pierpont Morgan, George F. Baker, John J. Raskob, William K. Vanderbilt, William A. Rockefeller--800 personages all told.

That was up to last week, when Smithsonian Secretary Charles Greeley Abbott, zealous for his scientists' labors and his Institution's reputation, made a loud and lusty complaint. Those book agents, he declared, were misrepresenting. They let buyers believe that the Smithsonian Institution was publishing the books and making large profits. Really the Smithsonian Scientific Series, Inc., new Manhattan concern, was publisher. The Institution received only 10% royalties, a ridiculously small percentage, which he had vainly sought to get increased, whereas the book agents were getting 25% to 35% commissions. The Institution was tied up by contract for 30 years.

The book publishers replied with prompt asperity that the Institution directors had their wits about them when they signed the contract, that the Smithsonian's scientific writers were receiving $47,000 pay for their efforts and the Institution, for merely lending its scientists and its name, would reap $43,750 on the first edition alone; when the second edition (at $150) is offered the general public, royalties would be enormous.

Thus the imbroglio stood last week.

Evidence of the great business done by publishers of "sets" lies with the promoters of Smithsonian Scientific Series, Inc.--Walter F. Austin (president) and Charles Lipscomb (treasurer). They, with one Vincent Parke, publish Great Events of the Great War. Because the American Legion endorses the book and hence gives book agents a talking point and entry to Legionary homes, the Legion gets 3% on each sale. Its income so far amounts to $135,907.45, which means $4,500,000 worth of books sold by the publishers and more than $1,000,000 in commissions for the salesmen.