Compare the two long vertical lines.  The longer one shows the increase in the number of readers.  The shorter one shows the increase in the cost of publishing the paper.

  [Illustration: 
  Increase in Circulation
  Increase in Cost of Publishing]

As a propaganda paper, the Woman’s Journal has, of course, always sent out many papers per year purely for educational purposes.  Hundreds of papers have gone each year since 1870 through 1915 to campaign states, to legislators, to libraries, to newspapers, to ministers and teachers, in the attempt to make converts, and every suffragist having any perspective of the movement knows that such propaganda work by the Woman’s Journal is to a great extent what has advanced the movement to its present status.  In other words, the Journal has from year to year carried the torch on,—­but it has always been at the sacrifice of a large sum to be raised, over and above the receipts, either from the Stone-Blackwell family or from a few friends of the movement.

The year 1915, with the advance of the movement in general, and in the four big campaign states in particular, has been exceptional as a propaganda year for the Journal.  When a call came for Journals or for information which the Journal workers could give, whether from New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania, the call has been answered promptly; we have not said,—­when the amendments were to be voted on at a definite time,—­“You must wait until we have raised the money to pay for what you ask.”  We are proceeding in the same way with the campaign states of 1916.  What else can we do when the need is so great?

The following illustration shows the extent of our propaganda work, measured in papers, for 1915.  It does not show what has been done in the way of furnishing information and argument, refutation and data, material and articles for the press or for special articles, debates, and speeches.

This chart shows the free propaganda use of the Journal as compared with the paid circulation.  The black lines show the paid circulation of the Journal per month, that is, the number of papers paid for by the subscriber or by the single copy.  The gray extension of the lines shows the number of papers furnished by the Journal, for which the recipient did not pay.  The reader can here see at a glance what a large part of our work does not bring any financial returns.

[Illustration:  The Journal as Propaganda]

If a diagram could be shown of the number of letters we have answered during the year, the amount of time it has taken, and the number of writers who do not even send a postage stamp to carry information back to them, and the consequent deficit the paper incurs in this way alone, the result would shock the average suffragist into a new attitude toward the paper, which she has called upon as freely and thoughtlessly as a girl in her teens calls upon the time and resources of the mother who has always stood near and ready to meet her every need “without money and without price.”