The Torch Bearer | Page 3

the results that will follow the heavy expenditures made by the Journal in 1915 will be organized support of the paper.
Since the Woman's Journal is the organ of the movement, since it gives the news of the movement, voices the wrongs of women, and furnishes data as well as inspiration with which to work, it is important that it reach the largest number of women possible each week with its message, and so far as is possible for a paper, convert them into efficient, consecrated workers, possessed with the ideal of equality and justice for women. It is, therefore, obvious that, however good the editorial output, it counts for comparatively little if it goes to only a small number of people.
From 1870 to 1907, there is no record of the number of subscribers to the paper, for the price of the paper was changed from $3 to $2.50 to $1.50. The price is now $1 per year. The last change was made in 1910 because it was becoming clear that a lower price would mean a larger circulation, while a higher price made it prohibitive to many. Furthermore, the lower price was in harmony with the growing tendency to remove the membership fee in suffrage organizations because it had proved a handicap in having a large backing of women for the cause. So many women of humble means, or no independent means, wanted to take the paper and could not!
Bearing in mind, then, that the aim of the Journal, both from a propaganda and business viewpoint, is to reach large numbers, that is, to have a large circulation, I have had two charts drawn which will show that, although the cost of publishing is heavy, the cost of production is not advancing as rapidly as is the increase in circulation. In other words, the circulation of the paper has multiplied over eleven times in the last eight years, while the cost of publishing for the same period has multiplied less than eight times. The following charts show this graphically.
Compare the two long vertical lines. The longer one shows the increase in the number of readers. The shorter one shows the increase in the cost of publishing the paper.
[Illustration: Increase in Circulation Increase in Cost of Publishing]
As a propaganda paper, the Woman's Journal has, of course, always sent out many papers per year purely for educational purposes. Hundreds of papers have gone each year since 1870 through 1915 to campaign states, to legislators, to libraries, to newspapers, to ministers and teachers, in the attempt to make converts, and every suffragist having any perspective of the movement knows that such propaganda work by the Woman's Journal is to a great extent what has advanced the movement to its present status. In other words, the Journal has from year to year carried the torch on,--but it has always been at the sacrifice of a large sum to be raised, over and above the receipts, either from the Stone-Blackwell family or from a few friends of the movement.
The year 1915, with the advance of the movement in general, and in the four big campaign states in particular, has been exceptional as a propaganda year for the Journal. When a call came for Journals or for information which the Journal workers could give, whether from New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania, the call has been answered promptly; we have not said,--when the amendments were to be voted on at a definite time,--"You must wait until we have raised the money to pay for what you ask." We are proceeding in the same way with the campaign states of 1916. What else can we do when the need is so great?
The following illustration shows the extent of our propaganda work, measured in papers, for 1915. It does not show what has been done in the way of furnishing information and argument, refutation and data, material and articles for the press or for special articles, debates, and speeches.
This chart shows the free propaganda use of the Journal as compared with the paid circulation. The black lines show the paid circulation of the Journal per month, that is, the number of papers paid for by the subscriber or by the single copy. The gray extension of the lines shows the number of papers furnished by the Journal, for which the recipient did not pay. The reader can here see at a glance what a large part of our work does not bring any financial returns.
[Illustration: The Journal as Propaganda]
If a diagram could be shown of the number of letters we have answered during the year, the amount of time it has taken, and the number of writers who do not even send a postage stamp to carry information back to them, and the consequent deficit the paper