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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Karl Germer
[EXTRACT]
[22 February 1926]
I started life with about a hundred thousand pounds, which I used in building up an important publishing business. Until the war broke out, I was making from two to three thousand pounds a year out of it. This may seem poor interest, but it was a young business, increasing constantly. The war killed the whole thing. I was left with a practically unsaleable stock, and no money to put it on the market again, when "Peace" (!!!!) came. Then came the period of persecutions and robberies from me, when I was just beginning to get my head above water once more. This brings us to the present date.
We are under-capitalized. We are in the position that we cannot save all our assets: we have to save the important ones, and let the others go. These assets are:
1. My power to live and work, with proper assistance, in conditions favorable to my production.
2. Stock which we may value roughly at 40,000. Nearly half of this is in danger, my American representative having decided to try and steal it. [ . . . ] Arrangements are pending to sell the great bulk of this stock in Washington and New York. Putnam's want some of it, and so does a big bookseller in Washington. Please not once more that it is quite impossible to value this stock effectively. Take the Drug Fiend [The Diary of a Drug Fiend]: the same buyer who paid half a crown for a secondhand copy some months ago, tried to get another, and was asked 42 shillings. The whole thing is a pure gamble.
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