The Torch Bearer | Page 6

work into ten variously developed
departments, which will be described in the following pages.

=It Speaks for Itself=
The Editorial Department in the main speaks for itself and does not
need a special report. It has its seamy side, however, and little as people
want to believe it, it is not merely the literary branch of the work. On
the contrary, the editorial work of the Woman's Journal is, figuratively
speaking, divided into sevenths. It is one part literary or journalistic,
two parts business, and four parts propaganda.
There is, of course, a great deal of pleasure in editorial work for the

mere fun of it, for the variety and fascination it affords, for 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