December 27 Tuesday – Charles Webster wrote two letters to Sam; he rejected a single payment plan to settle amounts charged to his account by the embezzler Frank M. Scott. Webster claimed that Scott had charged $8,000 to Webster’s account when in fact he’d only drawn $4,000. But since Scott destroyed the cashbook holding the entry, it could not be proven. At the time the theft was discovered, Sam offered Webster $4,000. Webster said no to this idea because,

I could not get at the exact amtt. I thought it would be easier for the firm to pay me $800 a year extra, this method would take five years to pay me what you offered to let me take in one and what I could have legally taken could I prove the amtt. But the books having been destroyed I could not [MTNJ 3: 315n46].

Webster also wanted to hire W.E. Dibble of Cincinnati to manage the New York General Agency of the Company. Dibble had initiated plates for a few volumes of the LAL. Webster wrote,

Although under our partnership agreement I have the sole right of employing whomever I please and of discharging whomever I please, still in a matter of as much importance as the present I feel it my duty to consult you…our subscription department is the weakest part of our business. I find that I can get Mr. Dibble by giving him a salary of two thousand dollars ($2,000) a year and one-fourth of the net profits of the local agency…. I have talked it over with Mr. Dibble and with Mr. Hall, and we have come to the conclusion that it would be very desirable for us to have him on those terms [MTLTP 241n1].

Also noted was the rejection of a book on the Haymarket Riots, Anarchy, by Mr. Thompson [MTLTP 236n1].