Chapter 2

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.

In this connection a suffragist can scarcely help coveting for her paper the circulation which the various women's magazines of fashion have attained. The thought leads almost inevitably to the question, How did they get their large circulation?

Now whenever there is large use made of any article under the sun, the reasons for its extensive use simmer down to three; First, the article must be something that practically everybody needs; Second, the marketers of the article must spend a lot of money in advertising the article and making the public think it wants it; or, Third, the article must carry with it some great interest and attraction that makes people want it.

The first kind of article is usually one of the necessities of life. The second is in a greater or less degree usually one of the comforts of life. The third kind is neither a matter of physical necessity nor of physical comfort; it is usually something that feeds the mind, diverts the mind, or kindles the emotions. Obviously the manufacturer of the third kind of article must mind his P's and Q's or he will not sell his product at all.

Newspapers, periodicals, and magazines, of course, come under the third class. Now while a good daily paper and a good weekly review of events have become almost necessities for the mass of mankind, a propaganda paper is neither a necessity nor a physical comfort, and for its circulation it must depend to a great extent for financial support on making itself so interesting and attractive that a larger number of people than the already converted, the reformers, will want it.

How then shall a propaganda paper make itself so interesting and attractive that those outside its fold will want it and want it badly enough to pay for it and read it--when there are so many attractive and interesting publications to read in busy days?

The problem solves itself if the paper records news of vitality, of heroism, of martyrdom, of stinging injustice in connection with everyday life,--if the doings within the movement are vital and challenging and kindle the imagination.

One of the biggest "strikes" in the recent history of the Woman's Journal has been the addition of Mrs. Palmer to the staff. Her drawings, contributed gratis, have attracted country-wide attention, because of their artistic quality. Mrs. Palmer studied art in Christiania, Norway, and is the wife of Prof. A.H. Palmer, of Yale University.

One of Mrs. Ames's cartoons brought down the disapprobation of Ex-President Taft but the approbation of a great many suffragists. Mrs. Ames is treasurer of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association and wife of the director of the Botanic Garden of Harvard University.

But women's lives are full of just such vitally interesting matters. There are such glaring cases of inequality before the law, such abuses and atrocities in women's working world today, such humiliation and insinuation in the personal life of womankind, simply because of sex, that, were the half of it told, the suffrage movement would take on such proportions as even the leaders do not dream of.

Because an experience is common in the life of womankind, because an abuse is as old as the hills, it is no less vital, no less thrilling, no less in need of righting. And because some men are opposed, secretly or openly, to its righting is no reason why we should be silent. Before the women of this country are fully enfranchised, a hard fight, an almost life and death struggle for liberty, must be fought, and it will be a shorter fight the hotter it is. And the heat of the battle and the shortness of the struggle will depend almost entirely on our courage in presenting vividly and with power woman's case to women themselves.

=Members of the Firm of E.L. Grimes Co.=

Printers of The Woman's Journal

=Our Volunteer Suffrage News Service=

Instead of a staff of paid correspondents and a special news service, the Woman's Journal has a large unnumbered staff of volunteers and its news service which extends all over the civilized world also is voluntary.

The editorial output is, therefore, greatly enhanced each week by the careful vigilance of its many volunteer workers. In this service all readers are invited to join by mailing to the Journal clippings, news, articles, items, poems, pictures, jokes, examples of discriminations against women, examples of women's achievements, and ideas of all kinds.

=The Connecting Link=

When I think of the Circulation Department of the Woman's Journal, I feel as I think Angela Morgan must have felt when she wrote the following lines for the beginning of her great poem, "Today:"

"To be alive in such an age! With every year a lightning page Turned in the world's great wonder book Whereon the leaning nations look.... When miracles are everywhere And every inch of common air Throbs a tremendous prophecy Of greater marvels yet to be. O thrilling age!"

The Woman's Journal is the connecting link between the individual suffragist and the movement itself, and a certain thrill and delight and marvel get hold of me when I realize how wonderful each year is and how full of prophecy and promise and marvel is the cause for which we all work.

Because the Circulation Department of the Woman's Journal is the tangible bond which holds us all together and makes one big family of all who work for the movement and all who are in any way connected with the paper, I am going to try to take the readers of these pages into the Journal offices and let them see the processes of the department.

While Miss Blackwell, Mr. Stevens, Miss Smith, Mr. Morris and myself are spending part of our time in preparing reading matter and pictures for the paper, and while we are working at the printing office of the Grimes Brothers on Wednesdays, Miss Spink, Miss Ethel Costello and their assistants, Miss Mosher, Miss Isabel McCormick, Miss Falvey, Miss Hegarty, Miss McCarthy, Miss Collins, Miss Cox, Miss Johnson, Miss Gilbert, and Miss Hazel McCormick are diligently at work in the Circulation Department.

What do they all do? the subscriber may ask. In the first place, the Journal goes to forty-eight states, besides Alaska and the District of Columbia, and to thirty-nine foreign countries. On a page by itself, in the back of this little book, will be shown the list of foreign countries.

When a subscription is received at the office, the letter carrying it has to be opened and the money entered by Miss Elizabeth Costello in the ledger--and it takes just as long to enter 25 cents or a dollar as to enter $1,000, and it must be done just as accurately. If the subscription is sent in for one's self, no acknowledgment is necessary, for the next issue of the paper is sufficient to tell the subscriber that her money and order have been received. If, however, as so often happens, one person sends a subscription for another, two additional processes must be carried out: We must acknowledge the order and money to the person who sends it, and we must tell the other person (if the subscription is a gift) that the paper is being sent to her with the compliments of her friend, or by an anonymous person, as the case may be: but at any rate, that the subscription is for a certain time and that she will not be billed for it. This takes two letters and two stamps. When a subscription is sent in by some suffragist who is acting as agent in forwarding subscriptions for other people, we acknowledge the order only to the sender, thinking that receipt of the paper by the subscriber is sufficient acknowledgment. In this connection, one of our worst problems is to learn from those who mail us subscription orders whether they are simply forwarding for other people or are sending the paper at their expense in the hope of making a convert or of introducing it to someone, with the hope that she will want to continue the subscription. The trouble comes in the question of knowing whom to ask to renew. Sometimes the sender means to renew for the person, and sometimes she means to have us ask the person to renew for herself. We have no means of knowing unless the sender tells us. We have found that whichever way we do, some of our friends do not like it. We have, therefore, adopted the system of asking the person who has been receiving the paper to renew for herself unless we have been definitely instructed not to do this. Some people tell us to discontinue the subscription when the time has expired. We do not think this a fair thing to ask, for the obvious reason that everyone ought to have a chance to renew for herself in case the giver does not want to renew for her.

The third step in receiving a subscription is to write the name in the proper place on the subscription lists that go to the mailing company every Tuesday night. The states in these lists are arranged alphabetically, the towns and cities are arranged alphabetically and the names of subscribers are arranged in the same way. In addition to this the books have to be arranged in districts that correspond to the mail routing of the United States post office. This is an arbitrary dividing, and it increases the work of finding the proper place for entering a subscription. In this a post office chart has to be used constantly.

After an entry has been made in the mailing books, the subscription order, before it is filed, goes to the subscription cards. There the clerks must see whether the name is already on the books, or, if not, if it has ever been on our books (In the latter case we revise the former card instead of making a new one). The subscription cards look like the one reproduced below.

Some letters that bring subscription orders contain many other items that must be attended to before the order or letter is filed. For instance, a letter may contain a new subscription, a renewal, 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 January 1,297 407 February 2,088 346 March 1,048 714 April 532 225 May 1,259 301 June 972 492 July 1,513 253 August 2,265 188 September 1,135 168 October 657 312 November 326 140 December 563 263

In this connection it ought to be said here that all subscriptions divide into two classes: Those that are expected to make converts and may or may not be expected to renew, and second, those who are suffragists and may logically be expected to renew. When an order for a subscription is given, it, therefore, ought to make clear whether it is for a suffragist or for some one who it is hoped will be converted by reading the paper. If the name is that of a suffragist, it is legitimate and entirely fair that we should offer the paper for her at $1.00 a year and should expect her to renew, and it may be considered our fault if she does not. If, on the other hand, the paper is being sent merely as a piece of propaganda literature to a person who knows nothing of the cause, to one who is undecided, or to an avowed anti-suffragist, it ought to be paid for as literature and that name ought not to be counted as legitimate circulation.

How many of the total number of discontinuances come from the use of the paper as propaganda literature, and how many come from the rank and file of suffragists whom we ought to be expected to hold as regular readers, cannot be known. Detailed records showing this are being kept for 1916, and we expect to be in a better position to solve some of the circulation difficulties in the future than ever in the past,--chiefly because we never dared to spend the money to have the records and study and analyses made.

It ought to be said in this connection that we have, since the first of the year, revised our whole system of billing and are sending a different kind of reminder to renew to those who have been receiving a trial subscription, a complimentary subscription from a friend, a first year subscription for which they have themselves paid, from the one we send to those who have been taking the paper for a year or more. With the latter, for the most part, we simply have to remind them that their subscription has run out. In the billing department, therefore, we have six different kinds of reminders or requests to renew.

So much for that part of the work of the Circulation Department that has to do with entering, recording, billing, analyzing and studying. We turn now to what may be called plans and advance work for making more subscriptions come in, that is, for increasing the circulation of the paper.

We have on cards the names of nearly 35,000 members of suffrage leagues who are not subscribers for the Woman's Journal. This large list is, roughly, only about 30 per cent of the dues-paying membership of the suffrage leagues of the country. An effort is being made to get the total dues-paying and non-dues-paying membership of the leagues and organizations in order that we may send each member who is not a subscriber a sample copy of the organ of the movement and ask her to subscribe.

Besides the league lists, we have the names of over 1300 prominent men and women who believe in equal suffrage but are not subscribers. In addition we have other lists totaling about 32,000 suffragists whose names are not on our books.

This makes over 68,000 suffragists who, so far as we know, have never seen a copy of the organ of the movement, and have never been asked to subscribe. Each week scores and sometimes hundreds of such suffragists, who are not subscribers, write letters to our office, to the offices of the National Suffrage Association and to other headquarters and offices, asking for information which the Woman's Journal publishes from week to week. Think of the waste! They have the faith but not the knowledge to make converts, to answer objections, to write "copy" for the newspapers, to make addresses, to take part in debates, to write articles for the magazines, and to do the thousand and one things that suffragists must do if the present generation of women is not to go down to the grave unenfranchised as their mothers and grandmothers did.