The Torch Bearer | Page 9

a remittance or a request to send a bill, an order for sample copies, for papers to sell at a meeting, for literature, a request for information and an item or poem or article for the columns of the paper. Each matter mentioned in the letter must, of course, be attended to before the letter can go to the files. To avoid having a letter filed before all of its orders or requests have been attended to, we stamp each piece of mail with a little rubber stamp that looks like the following:
A.S.B.....Bill
A.E.R.....Fin.
H.B.S.....Advt.
Date Received
Ackg......Sub.
Papers....Lit.
Circ......Amt. & page.
Every piece of first-class mail that reaches the office is stamped with these abbreviations and is at once checked for the different stages through which it must go before it is filed. The clerk filing must see that every check on the stamp has a sign after the check to show that the particular matter indicated has been attended to.
Of course, another part of the subscription work is in making changes of address, changing dates of expiration and removing names of those who do not want to continue to receive the paper, such as the anti-suffragists, who do not want to be converted, to whom some relative or friend or acquaintance has been sending the paper out of her own pocket.
Then there is the work involved in getting subscribers to renew. When the subscription list contained only twenty-four hundred names and when there were few letters to write, it was possible to know the names and perhaps something of the history of every subscriber, especially since only a few were put on the books in a week. But with a circulation of nearly thirty thousand it is obviously impossible for any one person to give the whole list personal attention.
The result is that the business policy of the paper has had to be changed a number of times to meet the changing needs. In the earlier days of the paper it was thought that subscribers would watch the expiration date on the wrapper of their paper and would send in the renewal price without any kind of reminder. In those days Miss Wilde and her assistant would go over the books twice a year and send a reminder to all who had not renewed. As the list grew larger, this plan seemed unsatisfactory to both the subscriber and the paper. Since people were at liberty to start a subscription at any time in the year, it was plain that a year's subscription would run out at the same time the following year, and since this was going on twelve months in the year, we began sending out bills each month to those subscribers whose subscriptions were about to expire. That system was in operation from 1910 through 1915.
During 1915, it was made possible for us to have enough helpers in the office to make a study of the Circulation Department with a view to seeing where improvements could be made, what leakages could be stopped, and what kind of circulation work was paying. The result was that we decided that along with our efforts to get new subscriptions we must carry on a new kind of work to keep those already obtained on our books. We found that it was not sufficient simply to send the paper to a person for a certain time and then ask her to renew. We found that we needed to study the source of the subscription, the motive for subscribing, and how best to appeal to the subscriber to renew. We found that since we had been keeping the record (1910 through 1915), about 26,000 persons have been on our books and for some reason or other are no longer there. A careful study and a long one showed that those whose papers had been discontinued in that period fell into the following classifications:
1. Those who had died.
2. Unconverted antis.
3. Those who had not paid after we had sent three bills.
4. Those who had moved without giving us their change of address.
5. Those whom the post office reported as "not found."
6. Those who asked to be discontinued without giving a reason.
7. Those who said they could not afford it.
8. Those who said they were too busy to read it.
9. Those who said they were converted and did not need it.
10. Those who disapproved of our policy in some way.
The number of new subscriptions and the number of papers discontinued for 1915, by the month, is shown below so that readers may understand how serious is this problem and so that they may understand why every subscriber and every suffragist ought to help keep the numbers in these ten classes as small as is possible, if they care to have a part in making the paper self-supporting.
1915 New Subscriptions Discontinuances