Treasury Chambers,
Great George Street,
S.W.1.
To Sir Cornelius Gregg K.C.B., K.B.E.
13th June, 1944
Dear Gregg,
I enclose a letter from Sir David Ross, the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, about the incidence of E.P.T. on the Clarendon Press.
Their point briefly is that in all times they devote a large part of the profits which they make on saleable books to producing learned works for which there is a small but slow market and on which they can never hope to recover the cost of production. They have had to stop production of this kind of book during the war and the profits which they would have devoted to them are being consumed by E.P.T. Meanwhile their stocks of readily saleable and of learned books are being exhausted and they have no resources after the war for resuming the production of learned books, a process which takes a long time and means considerable outlay, or for building up their stocks again, and in particular for restoring the stocks of books of the second class. Incidentally, I believe they have no borrowing powers.
As I told Ross it is a matter upon which it is for you to advise the Chancellor. I expect you know that the contribution which the Press makes to learning, both scientific and humane, by producing books which are of great value to a small number of people but have a small sale, is immense. The Oxford English Dictionary or their International Science series are examples. I should personally be interested to know whether there is anything that can be done to help them and so would the University Grants Committee.
You can ignore the point numbered 2 on the second page iof the letter.
Yours sincerely
J. A. Barlow