s of few and weak organizations, it is
thoughtlessly expected to go on as it has since 1870, paying its bills
as best it might. In the meantime, its work has increased so that
it is large enough to be unwieldy without being self-supporting.
(Self-support cannot come until its paid circulation is about 50,000.)

We are, therefore, face to face with the fact that, while all
suffragists are agreed as to the merits of the paper and the need it
fills, very few have considered its problems, few have helped to carry
its burdens, and no organization today makes itself responsible for
any of the paper's expenses.

With the advancing movement's heavy demands on the paper, however, the
time for a change has come. The paper's support in the future ought
to be borne by the body of organized suffragists rather than by the
devotion and sacrifice of the few. Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell
died in harness. Alice Stone Blackwell, their daughter, is no longer
young, and ought not to suffer from overwork and worry in connection
with the struggle to keep the paper going.

So much for the past. What shall be the story of the future? The paper
has been almost inevitably in debt. Its present bills and loans must
be met. It will doubtless be possible to raise money to meet them
from individuals as in the past, although that is an uphill and rather
thankless task. But it does seem as if those who labor early and late
in the office, often single-handed, ought not to have to go out to
raise money to meet a deficit they were obliged to incur purely in
order to serve the woman's movement.

What is the solution? I want to propose a definite, practical,
constructive solution,--one that will not only lift the paper to
self-support almost at once, but will strengthen the whole movement
in the very things that Mrs. Chapman Catt and all others know is most
needed,--education and organization of women. What I want to propose
is that as suffragists we show what our present power is; that we show
the strength of our present organization; that as leaders and workers,
organizers and speakers, we get behind our paper and push it with all
our might; that, so far as is humanly possible, we enroll as regular
readers every member of our respective organizations; that we give our
paper a backing as much to be reckoned with as the so-called women's
publications that are so conspicuous on the news-stands. It can be
done. We have the power.

Doing it is bound