The Torch Bearer | Page 7

attraction that makes people want it.
The first kind of article is usually one of the necessities of life. The second is in a greater or less degree usually one of the comforts of life. The third kind is neither a matter of physical necessity nor of physical comfort; it is usually something that feeds the mind, diverts the mind, or kindles the emotions. Obviously the manufacturer of the third kind of article must mind his P's and Q's or he will not sell his product at all.
Newspapers, periodicals, and magazines, of course, come under the third class. Now while a good daily paper and a good weekly review of events have become almost necessities for the mass of mankind, a propaganda paper is neither a necessity nor a physical comfort, and for its circulation it must depend to a great extent for financial support on making itself so interesting and attractive that a larger number of people than the already converted, the reformers, will want it.
How then shall a propaganda paper make itself so interesting and attractive that those outside its fold will want it and want it badly enough to pay for it and read it--when there are so many attractive and interesting publications to read in busy days?
The problem solves itself if the paper records news of vitality, of heroism, of martyrdom, of stinging injustice in connection with everyday life,--if the doings within the movement are vital and challenging and kindle the imagination.
[Illustration: Mrs. Fredrikke S. Palmer, Staff Artist]
One of the biggest "strikes" in the recent history of the Woman's Journal has been the addition of Mrs. Palmer to the staff. Her drawings, contributed gratis, have attracted country-wide attention, because of their artistic quality. Mrs. Palmer studied art in Christiania, Norway, and is the wife of Prof. A.H. Palmer, of Yale University.
[Illustration: Mrs. Oakes Ames, Staff Artist]
One of Mrs. Ames's cartoons brought down the disapprobation of Ex-President Taft but the approbation of a great many suffragists. Mrs. Ames is treasurer of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association and wife of the director of the Botanic Garden of Harvard University.
But women's lives are full of just such vitally interesting matters. There are such glaring cases of inequality before the law, such abuses and atrocities in women's working world today, such humiliation and insinuation in the personal life of womankind, simply because of sex, that, were the half of it told, the suffrage movement would take on such proportions as even the leaders do not dream of.
Because an experience is common in the life of womankind, because an abuse is as old as the hills, it is no less vital, no less thrilling, no less in need of righting. And because some men are opposed, secretly or openly, to its righting is no reason why we should be silent. Before the women of this country are fully enfranchised, a hard fight, an almost life and death struggle for liberty, must be fought, and it will be a shorter fight the hotter it is. And the heat of the battle and the shortness of the struggle will depend almost entirely on our courage in presenting vividly and with power woman's case to women themselves.
=Members of the Firm of E.L. Grimes Co.=
Printers of The Woman's Journal
[Illustration: M.J. Grimes]
[Illustration: E.L. Grimes]
[Illustration: W.P. Grimes]

=Our Volunteer Suffrage News Service=
Instead of a staff of paid correspondents and a special news service, the Woman's Journal has a large unnumbered staff of volunteers and its news service which extends all over the civilized world also is voluntary.
The editorial output is, therefore, greatly enhanced each week by the careful vigilance of its many volunteer workers. In this service all readers are invited to join by mailing to the Journal clippings, news, articles, items, poems, pictures, jokes, examples of discriminations against women, examples of women's achievements, and ideas of all kinds.

=The Connecting Link=
When I think of the Circulation Department of the Woman's Journal, I feel as I think Angela Morgan must have felt when she wrote the following lines for the beginning of her great poem, "Today:"
"To be alive in such an age! With every year a lightning page Turned in the world's great wonder book Whereon the leaning nations look.... When miracles are everywhere And every inch of common air Throbs a tremendous prophecy Of greater marvels yet to be. O thrilling age!"
The Woman's Journal is the connecting link between the individual suffragist and the movement itself, and a certain thrill and delight and marvel get hold of me when I realize how wonderful each year is and how full of prophecy and promise and marvel is the cause for which we all work.
Because the Circulation Department of the Woman's Journal is the tangible bond which holds us all together and makes one big family of all who work for