The Torch Bearer | Page 4

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 incurs in this way
alone, the result would shock the average suffragist into a new attitude
toward the paper, which she has called upon as freely and thoughtlessly
as a girl in her teens calls upon the time and resources of the mother
who has always stood near and ready to meet her every need "without
money and without price."
At this point, I want again to call attention to the fact that the Woman's
Journal is, with one exception, the only suffrage paper in existence
which does not have some organization back of it which helps to meet
its financial responsibilities. Although it has always been the organ of
the movement, it has stood alone for the most part, depending on the
devotion of a few to make up any sum that might be needed to meet the
lack of organized suffragists to support it as part of their suffrage work.

It is, of course, easy to see how this has come about. In the beginning
the number of suffragists was so small that there was little organization.
The movement was carried on by a few and a few supported the paper.
Times have changed, however, and all of the other branches of suffrage
work are being carried on by organizations with the body of believers
meeting the expense of running the work.
There has, however, always been this difference between the expense
of maintaining the Journal and supporting the work of the suffrage
organization: The Journal has been published every week for over
forty-six years; it has never missed an issue, and its expenses have gone
on. In other words, it has always been in campaign, while for the most
part during those forty-six years the organizations have had
comparatively little expense, they have not usually maintained a
headquarters, have had few or no meetings, and have had few and short
campaigns. Now, because the Journal has survived the times of no
organizations, the times of few and weak organizations, it is
thoughtlessly expected to go on as it has since 1870, paying its bills as
best it might. In the meantime, its work has increased so that it is large
enough to be unwieldy without being self-supporting. (Self-support
cannot come until its paid circulation is about 50,000.)
We are, therefore, face to face with the fact that, while all suffragists
are agreed as to the merits of the paper and the need it fills, very few
have considered its problems, few have helped to carry its burdens, and
no organization today makes itself responsible for any of the paper's
expenses.
With the advancing movement's heavy demands on the paper, however,
the time for a change has come. The paper's support in the future ought
to be borne by the body of organized suffragists rather than by the
devotion and sacrifice of the few. Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell
died in harness. Alice Stone Blackwell, their daughter, is no longer
young, and ought not to suffer from overwork and worry in connection
with the struggle to keep the paper going.
So much for the past. What shall be the story of the future? The paper
has been almost inevitably in debt. Its present bills and loans must be
met. It will doubtless be possible to raise money to meet them from
individuals as in the past, although that is an uphill and rather thankless
task. But it does seem as if those who labor early and late in the office,

often single-handed, ought not to have to go out to raise money to meet
a deficit they were obliged to incur purely in order to serve the
woman's movement.
What is the solution? I want to propose a definite, practical,
constructive solution,--one that will not only lift the paper to
self-support almost at once, but will strengthen the whole movement in
the very things that Mrs. Chapman Catt and all others know is most
needed,--education and organization of women. What I want to propose
is that as suffragists we show what our present power is; that we show
the strength of our present organization; that as leaders and workers,
organizers and speakers, we get behind our paper and push it with all
our might; that, so far as is humanly possible, we enroll as regular
readers every member