Chapter 1
=Woman's Journal and Suffrage News=
A weekly paper devoted to the interests of woman, to her educational, industrial, legal and political equality, and especially to her right of suffrage.
Founded in 1870 by Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell
_Editor-in-Chief_ Alice Stone Blackwell
_Contributing Editors_
Mary Johnston Stephen S. Wise Josephine P. Peabody Zona Gale Florence Kelley Witter Bynner Ben B. Lindsey Caroline Bartlett Crane Ellis Meredith Mabel Craft Deering Eliza Calvert Hall Reginald Wright Kauffman
_Artists_
Mayme B. Harwood Fredrikke Palmer Mrs. Oakes Ames
_Deputy Treasurer _Assistant Editor_
Howard L. Blackwell Henry Bailey Stevens
_Circulation Manager_ _Advertising Manager_
Marie Spink Joe B. Hosmer
_Finance_ _Managing Editor_
Mildred Hadden Agnes E. Ryan
=THE TORCH BEARER=
A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the Woman's Movement
By Agnes E. Ryan
=Contents=
The Torch Bearer
In the Balance
Taken Into Our Confidence
Some Changes
It Speaks for Itself (Editorial Department)
Suffrage Volunteer News Service
The Connecting Link (Circulation Department)
What Papers Live By (Advertising Department)
Prints and Reprints (Literature Department)
The Graveyard (Research and Information Departments)
Holding the Reins (Administration Department)
Capturing the Imagination (Press and Publicity Dept.)
A Word in Time (Field Workers' Department)
The Hope Chest (Finance Department)
Early Stockholders
Present Stockholders
The Journal Goes to 39 Foreign Countries
The Corporation
=List of Illustrations=
Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell Alice Stone Blackwell Charts: Increase in Cost of Publishing Increase in Circulation Propaganda Work The Woman's Journal Staff: Circulation Department The General Staff The Directors: Alice Stone Blackwell, Emma L. Blackwell, Maud Wood Park, Grace A. Johnson, Agnes E. Ryan The Woman's Journal artists: Fredrikke S. Palmer Mrs. Oakes Ames The Woman's Journal Printers: E.L. Grimes, M.J. Grimes, William Grimes Mary A. Livermore William Lloyd Garrison Wendell Phillips Julia Ward Howe Armenia White Margaret Foley Thomas Wentworth Higginson Mrs. David Hunt The Anti and the Snowball
Justice, simple justice is what the world needs. --Lucy Stone
=Founders of the Woman's Journal=
=The Torch Bearer=
So wonderful are the days in which we are living and so rapidly is the canvas being crowded with the record of achievement in the woman's movement that it is time for readers of the Woman's Journal and for all suffragists to know somewhat intimately and as never before what goes on in the four little rooms in Boston where the organ of the suffrage movement is prepared for its readers each week.
Before telling what has been done and what is planned and hoped, it will perhaps be well to give a little picture of the paper which to many has been the "Suffrage Bible" since it was started over forty-six years ago by Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell and the little band of woman's rights pioneers who saw, almost at the dawn of the movement, the need of an organ.
Before the charter for the Woman's Journal was granted in 1870, $10,000 had to be paid into its treasury. This was at a time when there were few millionaires in the world, and $10,000 then must have looked like as many millions today.
How ardent, then, must have been the few, how eloquent the presentation, to have raised $10,000 with which to start a paper for the sole purpose of advocating equal rights for women! But they were ardent and eloquent, and from the road to martyrdom they have come to us through history as great men and women of their time. The pages of the Woman's Journal are brilliant with their sayings, and the reports of the early stockholders' meetings echo the voices of that pioneer band led by Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe.
Never for a single week since 1870 have the women of the country been without a mouthpiece to voice their needs and wrongs. This has been due chiefly to the fact that the Stone-Blackwell family has continuously given not only of its services 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.
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 the Atlantic to the Pacific and abroad,--and yet there is no organized, systematic effort made for its support and maintenance.
There is, moreover, no suffragist but will say at once that this paper, which is for the advancement of all women, should be supported by all suffragists in an organized way rather than by a few--out of their own pockets. I am working to bring this to pass. I believe one of the results that will follow the heavy expenditures made by the Journal in 1915 will be organized support of the paper.
Since the Woman's Journal is the organ of the movement, since it gives the news of the movement, voices the wrongs of women, and furnishes data as well as inspiration with which to work, it is important that it reach the largest number of women possible each week with its message, and so far as is possible for a paper, convert them into efficient, consecrated workers, possessed with the ideal of equality and justice for women. It is, therefore, obvious that, however good the editorial output, it counts for comparatively little if it goes to only a small number of people.
From 1870 to 1907, there is no record of the number of subscribers to the paper, for the price of the paper was changed from $3 to $2.50 to $1.50. The price is now $1 per year. The last change was made in 1910 because it was becoming clear that a lower price would mean a larger circulation, while a higher price made it prohibitive to many. Furthermore, the lower price was in harmony with the growing tendency to remove the membership fee in suffrage organizations because it had proved a handicap in having a large backing of women for the cause. So many women of humble means, or no independent means, wanted to take the paper and could not!
Bearing in mind, then, that the aim of the Journal, both from a propaganda and business viewpoint, is to reach large numbers, that is, to have a large circulation, I have had two charts drawn which will show that, although the cost of publishing is heavy, the cost of production is not advancing as rapidly as is the increase in circulation. In other words, the circulation of the paper has multiplied over eleven times in the last eight years, while the cost of publishing for the same period has multiplied less than eight times. The following charts show this graphically.
Compare the two long vertical lines. The longer one shows the increase in the number of readers. The shorter one shows the increase in the cost of publishing the paper.
As a propaganda paper, the Woman's Journal has, of course, always sent out many papers per year purely for educational purposes. Hundreds of papers have gone each year since 1870 through 1915 to campaign states, to legislators, to libraries, to newspapers, to ministers and teachers, in the attempt to make converts, and every suffragist having any perspective of the movement knows that such propaganda work by the Woman's Journal is to a great extent what has advanced the movement to its present status. In other words, the Journal has from year to year carried the torch on,--but it has always been at the sacrifice of a large sum to be raised, over and above the receipts, either from the Stone-Blackwell family or from a few friends of the movement.
The year 1915, with the advance of the movement in general, and in the four big campaign states in particular, has been exceptional as a propaganda year for the Journal. When a call came for Journals or for information which the Journal workers could give, whether from New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania, the call has been answered promptly; we have not said,--when the amendments were to be voted on at a definite time,--"You must wait until we have raised the money to pay for what you ask." We are proceeding in the same way with the campaign states of 1916. What else can we do when the need is so great?
The following illustration shows the extent of our propaganda work, measured in papers, for 1915. It does not show what has been done in the way of furnishing information and argument, refutation and data, material and articles for the press or for special articles, debates, and speeches.
This chart shows the free propaganda use of the Journal as compared with the paid circulation. The black lines show the paid circulation of the Journal per month, that is, the number of papers paid for by the subscriber or by the single copy. The gray extension of the lines shows the number of papers furnished by the Journal, for 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.
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 of our respective organizations; that we give our paper a backing as much to be reckoned with as the so-called women's publications that are so conspicuous on the news-stands. It can be done. We have the power.
Doing it is bound to mean more education and more organization. For the Journal fills its readers with zeal for the cause; it makes them want to work for it; and it makes them well informed, efficient workers. By taking this one step we have the power to put the entire movement on a new footing!
But how is the paper to be put into the hands of all suffragists? They are many and to send them a well-edited, well-printed paper will be expensive. How are bills and loans already incurred to be met? By gifts and legacies from individuals as in the past--in the uphill, undignified way? Or by getting all readers of the Journal, all believers in it as an educator, to join themselves into a mighty army to enroll as subscribers for the Journal every possible member of a suffrage organization?
Until the second way shall be in operation long enough--say, two years--to have a chance to work out successfully, there is absolutely no question but that the needs of the situation must be met in the first way. But must it be done by begging--in humiliation undeserved--or will those who are able consider it a privilege, an opportunity, to take the burden from the backs that are bent and sore from carrying it?
* * * * * In the Balance
If this were the crucial moment in a campaign and you saw that votes for a suffrage amendment were in the balance, you would give of the best that you have, with all the fervency of your heart. But campaigns are not won in a day. They are won only by constant and untiring advance work. The Woman's Journal does a big share of this advance work. The Journal is always in campaign. The Journal needs your help now and it needs it given as freely as if a critical Election Day were only six weeks off. The campaigns of this year and the next few years are in the balance now. A privilege, an opportunity for furthering a great world movement, waits on those who are able.
* * * * *
=Taken Into Our Confidence=
In the following pages our readers and the great body of suffragists are taken quite generally into our confidence. If they see any skeletons in the closets, we shall ask them to remember that we did not want the skeletons there.
All persons who have ever tried to raise money for a worthy cause, all suffragists who have given balls and bazaars, all who have labored to make an audience pledge its last dollar for suffrage, all who have ever tried to run an impecunious newspaper, all who have ever tried to finance any kind of a movement for the betterment of mankind, will know that the figures given here are written in blood and should be read only by those of an understanding and sympathetic heart.
1908--1915
Cost Circulation
1909.................. $5,303 2,328
1910.................. 10,020 3,989
1911.................. 18,510 15,275
1912.................. 24,499 19,309
1913.................. 24,588 20,309
1914.................. 27,509 21,303
1915.................. 38,137 27,634
=Some Changes=
To the friends of the Woman's Journal who used to visit its office on Beacon Street, and remember the tiny room with its staff of two or three workers, the pictures of the office staff on the accompanying pages will come as a surprise. This is the 1916 staff, however, and the movement has grown most encouragingly in every branch since the quiet days on Beacon Street.
Every phase of the Journal work, from handling a subscription list of about 30,000 to answering a thousand and one questions of debaters, press chairmen and speakers, has grown to such proportions that it has been necessary to divide the work into ten variously developed departments, which will be described in the following pages.
=It Speaks for Itself=