The Torch Bearer | Page 6

the mere delight in expressing thought in writing and in choosing pictures to carry the weekly message. But when a publication has to be put to press on the same day every week, when one feels almost instinctively that each issue must be better than the one before, and when each week of the world every worker in the department carries a double or triple load, some of the pleasure of writing and editing and planning is worn away.
The material for the contents of the paper is gathered each week from a variety of sources: From letters, personal interviews, press chairmen of league and associations in the different states, from bulletins, newspapers, periodicals, reports of meetings and conventions, and from clipping bureaus. All material has, of course, to be sorted and worked over for the various departments. It divides chiefly into matter for editorials, for propaganda articles, for the news columns, and for the activities reported under the headings of the various states.
The editorial page of the Journal carries about 2,200 words each week. This page goes to about 30,000 homes, libraries and clubs, and is read by approximately 100,000 persons. Issued fifty-two times a year, it means that Miss Blackwell makes about five million two hundred thousand "drives" per year with her editorials alone to educate the public on equal suffrage.
The news of the whole movement gleaned from the various sources including some two hundred papers and periodicals each week, must be so combined and boiled down as to occupy the smallest space; and it must be interpreted, investigated and its relation to the general current of events brought out so that the propaganda value of the week's news is unmistakable.
Besides the editorials and the regular news of the movement, we use occasional contributed articles, poems and stories. During 1915 for the first time investigations of various sorts and analyses of news, reports and various kinds of data were made to furnish a telling and convincing array of facts, figures, data and information particularly fitted for suffrage workers. Such material has been found especially valuable for use with those who were wavering as to the merits of the cause.
Many people would find it hard to believe, but it is true nevertheless that a paper needs to consider itself something of a business matter. This is particularly true of propaganda papers in spite of all that has been said to the contrary. In the case of the Journal, we need to plan to produce an article that cannot be excelled; we need to manufacture a product so useful, so valuable, so indispensable, that there must be a market for it.
It must be so run that the largest possible number of people will be satisfied with its policy, and this is no easy matter if one has convictions and wants to run the paper according to high ideals and with certain principles dominant. Many people want personal notices and trivial articles in the paper; some wish long manuscripts published; others think their league meetings should be more fully reported. The paper must, therefore, be so edited and the letters of the department must be so written as to make every one feel that the Journal is fair to all and that whatever it does is done with no personal animosities, with no biases, and purely for the welfare of the cause and in accordance with the best ideals we have been able to work out. One of our tasks is to make all realize that in editing the organ of the movement a great responsibility must be met and that mean or small things cannot influence us.
All daily papers, all periodicals and magazines that live and become powerful relate their editorial policy very closely to their business plans. And whether the end and aim of a publication is to make money or to make converts to some cause or idea, the editorial policy cannot be planned independent of the circulation of the paper without running the risk of defeating its purpose.
[Illustration: THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS Left to Right--Lower row Emma L. Blackwell, Alice Stone Blackwell, Grace A. Johnson Upper row Maud Wood Park, Agnes E. Ryan]

In this connection a suffragist can scarcely help coveting for her paper the circulation which the various women's magazines of fashion have attained. The thought leads almost inevitably to the question, How did they get their large circulation?
Now whenever there is large use made of any article under the sun, the reasons for its extensive use simmer down to three; First, the article must be something that practically everybody needs; Second, the marketers of the article must spend a lot of money in advertising the article and making the public think it wants it; or, Third, the article must carry with it some great interest and