There is the question of office space, rent, subletting office room, buying typewriters, stationery and other supplies to advantage. The question of ventilation, health and sick leave of staff, obtaining efficient and conscientious work and maintaining a wholesome esprit de corps.
=Capturing the Imagination=
[Illustration: Armenia White One of the First Stockholders]
Capturing the imagination for equal suffrage or for the Woman's Journal is another way of saying "getting so many inches or columns of free advertising in the papers." Each week for some time we have been watching the Journal's columns to see whether, by sending an advance clipping from the week's paper, we could not get a certain amount of free publicity in the daily paper. We have also experimented to some extent to see if we could get publicity for the Journal aside from what appears in its columns. The result has been that such stories as the analysis of the source of income of the anti-suffragists has had very wide publicity. It has even been published in country weeklies and monthly magazines. In the majority of cases, the Journal has been credited, and in this way much free advertising has been secured.
At the time of the elections, we sent a copy of Mrs. Fredrikke Palmer's drawing called "Waiting for the Returns" with a little sketch of the artist to a number of first class dailies. A number of these papers used it, giving full credit to the Woman's Journal.
The Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association has a showcase on the sidewalk in front of its headquarters where it displays pictures, clippings, novelties and anything that may capture the interest of the passing pedestrian. We asked to have the Journal displayed there each week and to have special articles clipped and attractively mounted. This has been done with benefit to both the Association and the Journal. The suggestion might well be adopted for every suffrage headquarters. The cost is very slight and the people whose attention one gets in this way are not those, as a rule, who attend suffrage meetings or are easily reached. They are the great host of "passers-by."
A method of publicity for the Journal and the cause which has been adopted successfully by many individuals is that of displaying a copy of the Journal on the library table in one's home. In some cases the front page drawings have been considered so good that requests have been received to have extra copies struck off for use in showcases, bulletin boards and booths.
Other suffragists adopt other methods of making the paper known to the public. Some make a point of earning a copy to read in the street car or train whenever possible. Anyone who tries this will find many and many a pair of eyes diverted to the picture or the appearance of a publication with which the onlooker is not familiar. Ardent partisans of the Journal always mention it in reports and speeches at meetings and even in debates. They are usually persons who have been converted to the principle of equal suffrage by a stray copy of the Journal sent to them by ardent friend!
=A Word In Time=
[Illustration: Margaret Foley]