SirNose, Gary and Atlantis: You're welcome! Glad you could use them.
Gayle,
This was right after Rutherford was made President of the WT Society and 4 of the 7 Board of Directors felt he was taking too much power to himself. The majority of the board began to oppose Rutherford's tactics and a June meeting of the board tabled the idea of restructuring the by-laws to make sure the board controlled the Society and not just Rutherford. Instead, before the board could meet again, Rutherford pre-empted them by dismissing them on a technicality and he installed his own people on the board instead. This was the same day Rutherford released the book The Finished Mystery (which had been written and published without the board's knowledge--nor reviewed by the editorial committee for the Watch Tower set up in Russell's Will).
All ironic, if you consider that in 1975 the Governing Body effectively de-throned the Office of the President from controlling the Society. The Governing Body (which earlier had been virtually identical with the Board of Directors of the Pennsylvania Corp) took full control of the Society in January of 1976. So, in 1975 it was Jehovah's will that the Society be led by a group of senior elders, but in 1917 the same idea was contrary to God's will!
The booklets here present the view of the majority of the Board of Directors in 1917 that the Society should be directed not by the will of one man.
As to your second question about the number of people who defected at that time. There were many who left, but most stayed with Rutherford, at least initially. However, as he took on more and more power and began jettisonning some of Russell's doctrines, many old-timers left to join the various Bible Student groups that were set up. By about 1928, the vast majority of the old-timers had left. Rutherford referred to the minority who stayed with him as the "remnant."
