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.