The Torch Bearer

Part 1

=Woman's Journal and Suffrage News=

A weekly paper devoted to the interests of woman, to her educational, industrial, legal and political equality, and especially to her right of suffrage.

Founded in 1870 by Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell

Editor-in-Chief Alice Stone Blackwell

Contributing Editors

Mary Johnston Stephen S. Wise Josephine P. Peabody Zona Gale Florence Kelley Witter Bynner Ben B. Lindsey Caroline Bartlett Crane Ellis Meredith Mabel Craft Deering Eliza Calvert Hall Reginald Wright Kauffman

Artists

Mayme B. Harwood Fredrikke Palmer Mrs. Oakes Ames

Deputy Treasurer Assistant Editor_

Howard L. Blackwell Henry Bailey Stevens

Circulation Manager Advertising Manager

Marie Spink Joe B. Hosmer

Finance Managing Editor

Mildred Hadden Agnes E. Ryan

=THE TORCH BEARER=

A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the Woman's Movement

By Agnes E. Ryan

=Contents=

The Torch Bearer

In the Balance

Taken Into Our Confidence

Some Changes

It Speaks for Itself (Editorial Department)

Suffrage Volunteer News Service

The Connecting Link (Circulation Department)

What Papers Live By (Advertising Department)

Prints and Reprints (Literature Department)

The Graveyard (Research and Information Departments)

Part 2

Holding the Reins (Administration Department)

Capturing the Imagination (Press and Publicity Dept.)

A Word in Time (Field Workers' Department)

The Hope Chest (Finance Department)

Early Stockholders

Present Stockholders

The Journal Goes to 39 Foreign Countries

The Corporation

=List of Illustrations=

Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell Alice Stone Blackwell Charts: Increase in Cost of Publishing Increase in Circulation Propaganda Work The Woman's Journal Staff: Circulation Department The General Staff The Directors: Alice Stone Blackwell, Emma L. Blackwell, Maud Wood Park, Grace A. Johnson, Agnes E. Ryan The Woman's Journal artists: Fredrikke S. Palmer Mrs. Oakes Ames The Woman's Journal Printers: E.L. Grimes, M.J. Grimes, William Grimes Mary A. Livermore William Lloyd Garrison Wendell Phillips Julia Ward Howe Armenia White Margaret Foley Thomas Wentworth Higginson Mrs. David Hunt The Anti and the Snowball

Justice, simple justice is what the world needs. --Lucy Stone

=Founders of the Woman's Journal=

=The Torch Bearer=

So wonderful are the days in which we are living and so rapidly is the canvas being crowded with the record of achievement in the woman's movement that it is time for readers of the Woman's Journal and for all suffragists to know somewhat intimately and as never before what goes on in the four little rooms in Boston where the organ of the suffrage movement is prepared for its readers each week.

Before telling what has been done and what is planned and hoped, it will perhaps be well to give a little picture of the paper which to many has been the "Suffrage Bible" since it was started over forty-six years ago by Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell and the little band of woman's rights pioneers who saw, almost at the dawn of the movement, the need of an organ.

Before the charter for the Woman's Journal was granted in 1870, $10,000 had to be paid into its treasury. This was at a time when there were few millionaires in the world, and $10,000 then must have looked like as many millions today.

How ardent, then, must have been the few, how eloquent the presentation, to have raised $10,000 with which to start a paper for the sole purpose of advocating equal rights for women! But they were ardent and eloquent, and from the road to martyrdom they have come to us through history as great men and women of their time. The pages of the Woman's Journal are brilliant with their sayings, and the reports of the early stockholders' meetings echo the voices of that pioneer band led by Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe.

Never for a single week since 1870 have the women of the country been without a mouthpiece to voice their needs and wrongs. This has been due chiefly to the fact that the Stone-Blackwell family has continuously given not only of its services in editing and managing the paper, but also has made generous contributions for years to enable the paper to continue.

So much in brief for the forty years from 1870 to 1910. From July 1, 1910, to September 30, 1912, the financial support of the paper was assumed by the National American Woman Suffrage Association. After that it fell to the manager of the paper either to get contributions to meet the deficit each year or to borrow. On October 1, 1912, Miss Blackwell contributed $2,000; on January 31, 1914, she again gave the paper $2,000.

With the exception of these $4,000, I have raised or borrowed each year the necessary money, over and above receipts, to keep the paper going. With the beginning of 1915 Miss Blackwell began to feel that she could not continue indefinitely to make up a deficit, and she began seriously to consider cutting the size of the paper to four pages or making it a monthly.

The 1915 campaigns particularly needed all the aid that the Journal could give, and feeling keenly that the proposed changes would greatly reduce its power of usefulness, the following points were made by Mr. Stevens and myself in further consideration of the matter with Miss Blackwell and a few warm friends of the Journal:

With the single exception of the Irish Citizen, the Woman's Journal is the only suffrage paper in existence which has no organization back of it. Jus Suffragii has the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. The Woman Voter has the New York Woman Suffrage Party. Votes for Women in England has the United Suffragists. The Suffragette had the Woman's Social and Political Union of England. The Suffragist has the Congressional Union. The Headquarters News Letter has the National Suffrage Association.

Now, while the Journal has had no organization with large membership and resources to make it a power, it has shown great vitality as witnessed by the fact that it is the oldest surviving suffrage periodical in the world. Furthermore, it has shown such remarkable growth during the past few years, with no capital put up to promote it and build it up as other businesses are built up, that it seemed apparent that all it needed to make it strong and self-supporting was a reasonable amount of capital, a reasonable amount of time and the wholehearted co-operation of suffragists in general which has been growing in an encouraging degree. It seemed a time for faith and not for fear.

It was accordingly decided to retain the eight-page size, to continue the paper as a weekly and to borrow the money necessary to meet the deficit, believing that the great body of readers of the Journal would approve and sustain this decision when it was brought to their knowledge. They would feel that a backward step should be impossible.

At the present time and covering the indebtedness of the Journal from October, 1912, to January, 1916, the figures are as follows:

Borrowed in 1915....................... $10,500

Owed E.L. Grimes Company for printing, paper stock, mailing, approximately .. 9,000 ________ $19,500

The assets of the Journal at the time of the last stockholders' meeting (January 28) included the following:

Part 3

Subscriptions in arrears .................$4,968 Sales accounts ........................... 45 Advertising accounts ..................... 460 Legacy of Miss Caroline F. Hollis......... 3,000 Legacy of Mrs. Mary E.C. Orne............. 4,000 Legacy of Mrs. Hollingsworth ............. 1,000 ______ $13,473

The amount to be raised, therefore, to meet the indebtedness of the three years and three months from October 1, 1912, to January 1, 1916, is $6,027.

From these figures it will be seen that we have to count upon collecting nearly $5,000 in subscriptions in arrears, upon legacies to be paid within the year, to meet the expenses of furnishing a paper to the cause, and that even then we must have over $5,000 additional to be out of debt for 1915.

While the Journal has always had a few gifts each year and an occasional legacy, both gifts and legacies have, in their very nature, been uncertain quantities and not to be relied upon. It has, therefore, followed that from 1870 to 1910, as well as in the period above referred to (1912 to 1915), for forty-three years, the Stone-Blackwell family has borne the brunt of the burden of the support of the paper on which the whole suffrage movement has depended so completely for nearly half a century. As Mrs. Chapman Catt says, "The Woman's Journal has always been the organ of the suffrage movement, and no suffragist, private or official, can be well informed unless she is a constant reader of it. It is impossible to imagine the suffrage movement without the Woman's Journal." That is the way suffragists feel about the paper from the Atlantic to the Pacific and abroad,--and yet there is no organized, systematic effort made for its support and maintenance.

There is, moreover, no suffragist but will say at once that this paper, which is for the advancement of all women, should be supported by all suffragists in an organized way rather than by a few--out of their own pockets. I am working to bring this to pass. I believe one of the results that will follow the heavy expenditures made by the Journal in 1915 will be organized support of the paper.

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