In the first letter, London justifies his "big money" contract with The Cosmopolitan, stating that "any writer doing free lance stuff is gambling all the time," and that "said big money assures ones [sic] total fiction output for as long a period as five years," thus guaranteeing the writer a safety net and allowing him or her to take vacations every once in a while. The other three letters contain references to Cosmopolitan, "John Barleycorn", and some of Jack's other works.