The torch bearer : $b a look forward and back at the Woman's journal, the organ of the woman's movementRyan, Agnes E.
History
The torch bearer : $b a look forward and back at the Woman's journal, the organ of the woman's movement
Ryan, Agnes E.
Woman's journal (Boston, Mass. : 1870); Women -- Suffrage -- United States
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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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