Miss Margaret Foley has been doing Field Work for the Woman's Journal since the elections in November. She has been working as an experiment to see if Journals cannot be sold successfully at all suffrage meetings when from three to ten minutes are devoted to calling attention to the paper from the platform.
From the last thirteen meetings at which she sold papers and took subscription orders she got $74.42. Many of the meetings were small and at the larger number of them the attendance was made up mostly of those who already subscribe for the paper. Miss Foley's work is proof positive, if such were needed, that it pays to mention the Journal at suffrage meetings and to have it on sale and to take subscriptions. The results she has had can be duplicated at every suffrage meeting in the United States where 100 or more are gathered together, and a word spoken in time at suffrage meetings saves much of the more expensive converting and canvassing to bring out the vote when election time comes. One of the greatest wastes of the movement today is the failure of those in charge of meetings to make provision for this part of propaganda work.
Miss Foley usually speaks toward the close of a meeting. The gist of her remarks is something like this:
"You have just heard about our cause and how wonderful it is to be connected with it. I am sure you will want to know more about it. The best way to get authentic information and news about Votes for Women is to read the organ of the suffrage movement, The Woman's Journal and Suffrage News, on sale in the corridor. The paper is only five cents a copy and you can get a full year's subscription for $1.00. Do not fail to get a copy from me before you go."
The Woman's Journal has many field workers who do in connection with the regular suffrage work what Miss Foley has been doing for the Journal as an experiment. For the vitality of the movement every locality which holds suffrage meetings should have a Journal field worker for every occasion. A word in time saves an endless amount of converting.
=Our Hope Chest=
[Illustration: Thomas Wentworth Higginson For Many Years Contributing
Editor]
Other causes, other propaganda papers, have their budgets, their war chests, their exchequers, their ways and means committees, their financial backers of wealth and prestige, but the Woman's Journal has had only what we may perhaps call our "Hope Chest." It was constructed purely out of the hope that, if the paper filled a need, if it was found worthy of the movement it represents, its finances would in some way take care of themselves. And it is a wonderful tribute to the believers in the cause for equal suffrage that this plan has worked for better or worse for more than forty years.
As the financial responsibilities of the paper have grown during the past six years, however, it has become apparent that we must not merely publish the paper each year and hope to pay our bills but that we must study the question of financing a growing paper with ever growing needs of expansion and consequent growing financial risks.
Accordingly, we decided that if we must "raise money" each year in some way or other, we must go about it in a well thought out way and not leave such an important matter to haphazard uncertainties. We have, therefore, formed a small Finance Department and have studied all of the ways of raising money that are known to us, trying of course to make out which ones are particularly adapted to our needs.