Maurice Browne to Jane Addams, March 15, 1915

My dear Miss Addams,

Since receiving your last letter, I have gone into the question of Union hands for the "Trojan Women" with the following results:

[illegible] Two Union men whom I know personally and believe to be reliable, tell me that unless we carry Union hands, we are likely to have serious difficulties with the Unions; that we cannot carry a Union electrician without a Union carpenter, and vice-versa; that, while from our own point of view we could get along without even an electrician, we could not get along without a Union carpenter in handling the scenery and equipment; and that the wages of a Union carpenter and a Union electrician would be forty dollars a week each.

This means an increase of eighty dollars a week on the six hundred dollars a week I estimated. On the other hand we could save twenty five dollars a week by combining one of the Union men with one of the soldiers, and a further five dollars a week on the margin I had allowed for unforeseen expenses. This still, however, involves an extra outlay of fifty dollars a week. I am very loath to make this extra requisition, and I feel that in my original estimate I should have allowed for Union [labor]. We ourselves, however, have never had any, and have always managed to get along without any, so I did not take it into consideration. I am sorry; but under the circumstances there seems to be no alternative to my asking you for six hundred and fifty dollars a week in place of the six hundred I had estimated.

I have begun paying Mr. Head his salary and expenses allowance as from last Monday. The other salaries will not, of course, start yet. We have not yet got all of the final estimates for preliminary expenditure, but judging by those that are in, I think there is little or no chance of our [page 2] exceeding anyhow at all seriously the thirteen hundred and fifty dollars I had tentatively allowed.

With kindest remembrances and good wishes,

Believe me,

Yours very sincerely,

Maurice Browne [signed]

March fifteenth, nineteen hundred and fifteen.