The Torch Bearer | Page 2

in editing and managing the
paper, but also has made generous contributions for years to enable the
paper to continue.
So much in brief for the forty years from 1870 to 1910. From July 1,
1910, to September 30, 1912, the financial support of the paper was
assumed by the National American Woman Suffrage Association. After
that it fell to the manager of the paper either to get contributions to
meet the deficit each year or to borrow. On October 1, 1912, Miss
Blackwell contributed $2,000; on January 31, 1914, she again gave the
paper $2,000.
With the exception of these $4,000, I have raised or borrowed each
year the necessary money, over and above receipts, to keep the paper
going. With the beginning of 1915 Miss Blackwell began to feel that
she could not continue indefinitely to make up a deficit, and she began
seriously to consider cutting the size of the paper to four pages or
making it a monthly.
The 1915 campaigns particularly needed all the aid that the Journal
could give, and feeling keenly that the proposed changes would greatly
reduce its power of usefulness, the following points were made by Mr.
Stevens and myself in further consideration of the matter with Miss

Blackwell and a few warm friends of the Journal:
With the single exception of the _Irish Citizen_, the Woman's Journal
is the only suffrage paper in existence which has no organization back
of it. Jus Suffragii has the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. The
Woman Voter has the New York Woman Suffrage Party. Votes for
Women in England has the United Suffragists. The Suffragette had the
Woman's Social and Political Union of England. The Suffragist has the
Congressional Union. The Headquarters News Letter has the National
Suffrage Association.
Now, while the Journal has had no organization with large membership
and resources to make it a power, it has shown great vitality as
witnessed by the fact that it is the oldest surviving suffrage periodical
in the world. Furthermore, it has shown such remarkable growth during
the past few years, with no capital put up to promote it and build it up
as other businesses are built up, that it seemed apparent that all it
needed to make it strong and self-supporting was a reasonable amount
of capital, a reasonable amount of time and the wholehearted
co-operation of suffragists in general which has been growing in an
encouraging degree. It seemed a time for faith and not for fear.
It was accordingly decided to retain the eight-page size, to continue the
paper as a weekly and to borrow the money necessary to meet the
deficit, believing that the great body of readers of the Journal would
approve and sustain this decision when it was brought to their
knowledge. They would feel that a backward step should be
impossible.
At the present time and covering the indebtedness of the Journal from
October, 1912, to January, 1916, the figures are as follows:
Borrowed in 1915....................... $10,500
Owed E.L. Grimes Company for printing, paper stock, mailing,
approximately .. 9,000 ________ $19,500
The assets of the Journal at the time of the last stockholders' meeting
(January 28) included the following:
Subscriptions in arrears .................$4,968 Sales
accounts ........................... 45 Advertising accounts ..................... 460
Legacy of Miss Caroline F. Hollis......... 3,000 Legacy of Mrs. Mary
E.C. Orne............. 4,000 Legacy of Mrs. Hollingsworth ............. 1,000
______ $13,473

The amount to be raised, therefore, to meet the indebtedness of the
three years and three months from October 1, 1912, to January 1, 1916,
is $6,027.
From these figures it will be seen that we have to count upon collecting
nearly $5,000 in subscriptions in arrears, upon legacies to be paid
within the year, to meet the expenses of furnishing a paper to the cause,
and that even then we must have over $5,000 additional to be out of
debt for 1915.
[Illustration: Alice Stone Blackwell Editor of the Woman's Journal]
While the Journal has always had a few gifts each year and an
occasional legacy, both gifts and legacies have, in their very nature,
been uncertain quantities and not to be relied upon. It has, therefore,
followed that from 1870 to 1910, as well as in the period above referred
to (1912 to 1915), for forty-three years, the Stone-Blackwell family has
borne the brunt of the burden of the support of the paper on which the
whole suffrage movement has depended so completely for nearly half a
century. As Mrs. Chapman Catt says, "The Woman's Journal has
always been the organ of the suffrage movement, and no suffragist,
private or official, can be well informed unless she is a constant reader
of it. It is impossible to imagine the suffrage movement without the
Woman's Journal." That is the way suffragists feel about the paper from