id="id00180">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.

Think of it! Nearly 70,000 known suffragists who do not subscribe. In the interest of efficiency they ought all to be constant readers of the paper. But how are they to be reached? There are two ways: First, by the officers of the organization to which they belong; and second, by means of letters, sample copies, and follow up letters until the last one of them has enrolled as a regular reader.

But advance work requires funds. No matter how necessary to the cause of equal suffrage it may be to enroll those 68,000 suffragists as readers, the United States Post Office will not sell us stamps for writing to them unless we can make cash payments. Funds for other parts of the work of increasing the circulation are equally necessary, and the work halts for lack of that which reformers always lack.

The Woman's Journal can make suffrage speeches every week in the remote parts as well as in the crowded cities, and it can do this more cheaply than can any other agent of equal quality. But if the paper is to do its part in the general suffrage work, it must be through the body of organized suffragists, and not single-handed. The movement is growing too fast for the management, unaided by organization, to make the obvious and necessary expansion.

=What Papers Live By=

[Illustration: The First Editor of the Woman's Journal Mary A.
Livermore]

One of the well-known facts in the world of publishing newspapers and periodicals is that neither magazines, newspapers nor periodicals of any kind live by the subscription price. Most of them live chiefly by advertisements.

Why, then, does the Journal not carry more advertising? The answer is that it will not take most of the advertisements it can get, and it cannot get most of the advertisement sit wants. In the first place. The Woman's Journal will not accept liquor or tobacco advertisements, or any advertisements of patent medicines, swindling schemes, or matters of a questionable character. Every year it declines a considerable amount of business on this score.

"But," the reader is sure to say, "what about the thousand and one advertisements which are legitimate? There are hundreds and thousands of advertisements of women's products for which the Journal ought to be an excellent medium." In answer to this one might almost say that the better the grade of advertising the harder it is to get. The better grades of advertising require a much larger circulation than we have and a better grade of paper on which to print their advertisements; they naturally want their advertisements to be shown in the most attractive manner. And there are hundreds of publications just as good as ours which can give them the proper display.

Another difficulty we have to combat is the fact that our paper is not well