Part 8

In 1910 there was one woman worker besides the editor-in-chief in the office of the Woman's Journal, and one woman who worked part time. Mr. Henry B. Blackwell, who always gave his services to the paper, had died in 1909. There were only four pages to the paper then, and the total subscription list was 3,989. Bills were sent out only twice a year, and hardly any work was being done to increase the subscription list or any department of the paper. Office administration was then a very simple matter--whereas now the Subscription Department alone requires the full time of more than ten workers.

The result is that office administration now is a very different matter. It has become a question of holding the reins of twenty-four young people, all of whom have special work to do, but all of whom need almost constant direction. And while there are heads of departments who oversee the work of clerks and stenographers up to a point, almost daily conferences and supervisions are necessary in order to have the work go on satisfactorily. This takes an immense amount of time and energy and initiative and planning. It is a case of driving twenty-four in hand. Some days it sends the driver home thoroughly wearied.

Besides the absorbing task of keeping the whole staff busy, there is always the exhausting and important matter of mapping out the work, laying plans for advance work, originating and initiating, and making decisions that involve more or less risk.

Then there is the actual personal labor of helping to get the paper to press each week, choosing from a limited supply suitable illustrations, writing some "copy," writing heads, making up, dictating and signing hundreds of letters each week, seeing all callers who need to be seen, and constantly directing and overseeing to keep matters of a thousand and one details ship-shape and accurate.

There is the question of office space, rent, subletting office room, buying typewriters, stationery and other supplies to advantage. The question of ventilation, health and sick leave of staff, obtaining efficient and conscientious work and maintaining a wholesome esprit de corps.

=Capturing the Imagination=

Capturing the imagination for equal suffrage or for the Woman's Journal is another way of saying "getting so many inches or columns of free advertising in the papers." Each week for some time we have been watching the Journal's columns to see whether, by sending an advance clipping from the week's paper, we could not get a certain amount of free publicity in the daily paper. We have also experimented to some extent to see if we could get publicity for the Journal aside from what appears in its columns. The result has been that such stories as the analysis of the source of income of the anti-suffragists has had very wide publicity. It has even been published in country weeklies and monthly magazines. In the majority of cases, the Journal has been credited, and in this way much free advertising has been secured.

At the time of the elections, we sent a copy of Mrs. Fredrikke Palmer's drawing called "Waiting for the Returns" with a little sketch of the artist to a number of first class dailies. A number of these papers used it, giving full credit to the Woman's Journal.

The Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association has a showcase on the sidewalk in front of its headquarters where it displays pictures, clippings, novelties and anything that may capture the interest of the passing pedestrian. We asked to have the Journal displayed there each week and to have special articles clipped and attractively mounted. This has been done with benefit to both the Association and the Journal. The suggestion might well be adopted for every suffrage headquarters. The cost is very slight and the people whose attention one gets in this way are not those, as a rule, who attend suffrage meetings or are easily reached. They are the great host of "passers-by."

A method of publicity for the Journal and the cause which has been adopted successfully by many individuals is that of displaying a copy of the Journal on the library table in one's home. In some cases the front page drawings have been considered so good that requests have been received to have extra copies struck off for use in showcases, bulletin boards and booths.

Other suffragists adopt other methods of making the paper known to the public. Some make a point of earning a copy to read in the street car or train whenever possible. Anyone who tries this will find many and many a pair of eyes diverted to the picture or the appearance of a publication with which the onlooker is not familiar. Ardent partisans of the Journal always mention it in reports and speeches at meetings and even in debates. They are usually persons who have been converted to the principle of equal suffrage by a stray copy of the Journal sent to them by ardent friend!

=A Word In Time=

Miss Margaret Foley has been doing Field Work for the Woman's Journal since the elections in November. She has been working as an experiment to see if Journals cannot be sold successfully at all suffrage meetings when from three to ten minutes are devoted to calling attention to the paper from the platform.

From the last thirteen meetings at which she sold papers and took subscription orders she got $74.42. Many of the meetings were small and at the larger number of them the attendance was made up mostly of those who already subscribe for the paper. Miss Foley's work is proof positive, if such were needed, that it pays to mention the Journal at suffrage meetings and to have it on sale and to take subscriptions. The results she has had can be duplicated at every suffrage meeting in the United States where 100 or more are gathered together, and a word spoken in time at suffrage meetings saves much of the more expensive converting and canvassing to bring out the vote when election time comes. One of the greatest wastes of the movement today is the failure of those in charge of meetings to make provision for this part of propaganda work.

Miss Foley usually speaks toward the close of a meeting. The gist of her remarks is something like this:

"You have just heard about our cause and how wonderful it is to be connected with it. I am sure you will want to know more about it. The best way to get authentic information and news about Votes for Women is to read the organ of the suffrage movement, The Woman's Journal and Suffrage News, on sale in the corridor. The paper is only five cents a copy and you can get a full year's subscription for $1.00. Do not fail to get a copy from me before you go."

The Woman's Journal has many field workers who do in connection with the regular suffrage work what Miss Foley has been doing for the Journal as an experiment. For the vitality of the movement every locality which holds suffrage meetings should have a Journal field worker for every occasion. A word in time saves an endless amount of converting.

=Our Hope Chest=

Other causes, other propaganda papers, have their budgets, their war chests, their exchequers, their ways and means committees, their financial backers of wealth and prestige, but the Woman's Journal has had only what we may perhaps call our "Hope Chest." It was constructed purely out of the hope that, if the paper filled a need, if it was found worthy of the movement it represents, its finances would in some way take care of themselves. And it is a wonderful tribute to the believers in the cause for equal suffrage that this plan has worked for better or worse for more than forty years.

As the financial responsibilities of the paper have grown during the past six years, however, it has become apparent that we must not merely publish the paper each year and hope to pay our bills but that we must study the question of financing a growing paper with ever growing needs of expansion and consequent growing financial risks.

Accordingly, we decided that if we must "raise money" each year in some way or other, we must go about it in a well thought out way and not leave such an important matter to haphazard uncertainties. We have, therefore, formed a small Finance Department and have studied all of the ways of raising money that are known to us, trying of course to make out which ones are particularly adapted to our needs.

The result is that we have decided on the following course:

(1) To issue this survey of the Journal's work, and ask suffragists to consider the value of the paper purely on its merits and contribute to it and support it if they believe in what it is doing.

(2) To form a Central Finance Committee with a branch in each state in the Union.

(3) To ask able women and friendly organizations in various towns and cities throughout the country to give a ball, banquet, bazaar, festival or other benefit or entertainment with the express purpose of sharing the proceeds with the Woman's Journal.

Because of the vitality of the paper through the barren pioneer days, through the days of ridicule and up into these times of great numbers, splendid prestige and backing for the whole movement, we have faith that our hopes are not in vain.

One proof of our faith is that we find working in the Woman's Journal office year after year is in some ways like living in a fairy story. We never know what is going to happen next. The day after election--and defeat in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New Jersey--a woman came to the Journal office bearing a check for $1,000 in her hand and saying in substance, "Here is a small check to cheer Miss Blackwell and the Journal in the face of yesterday's defeats at the polls." She asked not to have her name used. Hers is an example of the way suffragists feel toward the Woman's Journal. To them it symbolizes the cause.

FORM OF BEQUEST