“Friends and Readers,
“If you would be useful to the Journal du Peuple, and serve the ideas which it defends, buy several copies and distribute them to the persons whom you judge capable of buying it later for themselves.”
“We urge our friends in Paris to keep demanding our paper of the newsdealers in order to compel them to handle it. A bit of determination on the part of each, and ça ira.”
Often the advertisement appears as a more presuming and exacting appeal to loyalty, as, for example:—
“Our liquidation of the end of the year permits us to spare a quantity of back numbers. We beg those of our friends who are willing to take upon themselves their distribution, either in the meetings or at the doors of the factories, to let us know how many copies to send them.”
At other times, resort is taken to such original and audacious schemes as the following:—
“Journals for All
“The reactionary press penetrates into the rural districts, while many of the libertaire journals are unknown there. We remind our readers that the enterprise ‘Journals for All,’ 17 rue Cujas, holds itself at their disposition to give them the addresses of poor provincials who would be delighted to receive their papers once they have been read. It will cost them a stamp of two centimes each day and the trouble of wrapping and addressing. In thus sending away their papers, our readers will be doing a work highly advantageous to the propaganda. Write the secretary for fuller particulars.”
“Here is a means of circulating our paper which, employed upon a certain scale, would be highly efficacious: All the camarades who can make the sacrifice of a certain number of copies should roll them into a more or less tempting small package, wrap them well to protect them, and then throw them into the doorways of houses, slip them into the baskets of women on their way to or from market, or give them to the children in the street to take home to their parents.”