The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Torch Bearer, by Agnes E. Ryan

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Title: The Torch Bearer A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the Woman's Movement

Author: Agnes E. Ryan

Release Date: April 17, 2004 [EBook #12071]

Language: English

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Produced by Bill Hershey and PG Distributed Proofreaders

[Illustration: Women's Suffrage.]

=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

[Illustration: Lucy Stone.]

[Illustration: Henry B Blackwell.]

=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