"We'll have our clerks," he continued, "all ready with the books--a book
for each State--to enter the names as soon as the answers begin to come.
We must have one distributing clerk with a little post-office
arrangement to assort the letters and cards into States and give them to
the others. These will enter them and turn them over to another set of
clerks, who will address wrappers from the letters and cards themselves.
Then the wrappers will go to another set of clerks, who will wrap the
papers and mail them."
The admiration for Perner grew. It seemed simplicity itself.
"One hundred thousand a day," he continued, "will give us two million
papers in about three weeks. That'll be the first round of the first
issue. Before those are half out we will be getting subscriptions like
hot cakes, and we'll have to double our force to handle them. But
subscriptions mean money, and with twenty or thirty thousand dollars a
day coming in, we'll have money to double them up with."
"If the subscriptions don't come it will double us up," laughed Van
Dorn.
As for Barrifield, he seemed stupefied. He had started the wind, but the
cyclone it had grown to was whirling him along faster than he could
follow; also the memory of Frisby and Bibles still clung to him
somewhat, despite this new and startling method of taking fortune by
storm. He started to speak, but Perner, who had taken on fuel enough for
a long run, was too quick for him.
"When the first round of the first issue has been going out one day," he
said with conviction, "those subscriptions will begin to come. Each
subscription will bring twenty new names, and that'll mean another round
of the first issue, and the checking off in the books of the people that
have subscribed, showing just who sent them and what he is entitled to
in cash."
"We'll send it to him in a check," said Van Dorn. "Checks always look
well."
"Then," continued Perner, "when these new names begin to come, we'll
commence on the third round of the first issue to the names they send,
and so on to a fourth and even a fifth. We must send as many rounds of
the first issue as possible, for it contains the first chapters of our
serials."
"That's so!" interjected Livingstone, "it does!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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