=Holding the Reins=

[Illustration:  Julia Ward Howe President of the Woman’s Journal Corporation for Many Years]

In 1910 there was one woman worker besides the editor-in-chief in the office of the Woman’s Journal, and one woman who worked part time.  Mr. Henry B. Blackwell, who always gave his services to the paper, had died in 1909.  There were only four pages to the paper then, and the total subscription list was 3,989.  Bills were sent out only twice a year, and hardly any work was being done to increase the subscription list or any department of the paper.  Office administration was then a very simple matter—­whereas now the Subscription Department alone requires the full time of more than ten workers.

The result is that office administration now is a very different matter.  It has become a question of holding the reins of twenty-four young people, all of whom have special work to do, but all of whom need almost constant direction.  And while there are heads of departments who oversee the work of clerks and stenographers up to a point, almost daily conferences and supervisions are necessary in order to have the work go on satisfactorily.  This takes an immense amount of time and energy and initiative and planning.  It is a case of driving twenty-four in hand.  Some days it sends the driver home thoroughly wearied.

Besides the absorbing task of keeping the whole staff busy, there is always the exhausting and important matter of mapping out the work, laying plans for advance work, originating and initiating, and making decisions that involve more or less risk.

Then there is the actual personal labor of helping to get the paper to press each week, choosing from a limited supply suitable illustrations, writing some “copy,” writing heads, making up, dictating and signing hundreds of letters each week, seeing all callers who need to be seen, and constantly directing and overseeing to keep matters of a thousand and one details ship-shape and accurate.

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.