Manager's Column (September 1942) (original) (raw)
Fourth International, September 1942
From Fourth International, vol.3 No.9, September 1942, p.258.
Transcribed, Edited & Formatted by Ted Crawford & David Walters in 2008 for the ETOL.
Our agents have responded very well to a letter requesting back copies of Fourth International for 1940 and 1941. However, we are still in need of copies of the following issue: December 1940. We have sold out all bound volumes for 1940-41 and cannot have additional volumes bound until we succeed in getting a sufficient number of this issue. Meanwhile orders for bound volumes are piling up.
Just as a reminder – we still have in stock bound volumes of the New International for 1938 and 1939 $2.50 a volume). For the newcomer to the ranks of Fourth International readers, these volumes are indispensable.
* * * *
H.A. of Stanmore, England, writes:
“This is a fine issue (April, 1942), particularly the contributions by Felix Morrow and John G. Wright. This, of course, with-out any aspersions on the other articles.
“We particularly appreciate the Indian and Ceylonese material which you are publishing. It is both edifying and inspiring and of tremendous importance to the British movement at the present time. You will be interested to know that we will have a pamphlet out this week-end on India. It states our position together with the manifesto of the Indian section of the Fourth International.
“We are continuing to make headway here and feel that for the first time our tendency has a national basis. This is true in industry as you will gather from our press.”
* * * *
There has been a goodly amount of activity in the sub-scription field this month.
From a town in Montana comes this note:
“Find enclosed a check for $5.00 out of which take a one-year combination sub to Fourth International and The Militant and give the balance to the Civil Rights Defense Committee. Here’s hoping the Indian masses set the spark for a move for world freedom.”
And from a town in Minnesota comes another $5.00 check to pay for a one-year combination sub to the magazine and The Militant, accompanied by the words: “Please forward the balance to Civil Rights Defense Committee to protect our civil rights.”
D.P. of Youngstown writes in regard to his expired subscription:
“I just received your letter about my subscription ending for the Fourth International and I feel sorry I cannot send you any money right now because the department in which I work has gone from bad to worse for a long time and especially in the last three months. They have replaced the chippers with a few scarfers and now they are sending steel to England without being finished in order to save money in case the ship gets sunk and also to finish in England because the English workers get less than we do over here.
“But, I am going to try my best, in the next few weeks to send you the price for the subscription to the Fourth International and also The Militant. Please continue to send both of them.”
We were only too glad to continue his subscriptions as requested and we have since received $3.00 from this friend.
A.S. of Seattle requested that we send him a complete list of all subscriptions, active and expired, in that vicinity. This was done and a week or so later we received the following letter from him:
“I am hammering on one idea here and that is a contact is no contact who is not a regular reader of our paper, which means a subscriber. I expect we’ll have a few going in regularly from now on. I am also making up a list of names to recommend for trial subs. Keep us up on expired subs and we’ll chase ’em down.”
* * * *
Some time ago, we inquired of Los Angeles how they dispose of the very large bundle of Fourth Internationals they get every month, to which they replied:
“You asked how we sell the FI. Mostly to friends and con-tacts through the branches, but quite a few on the newsstands where they sell pretty fast. It’s really not so much the push we give it, but the interest every-one has for the contents.”
* * * *
D.C. of a city in the South writes:
“The Fourth International and The Militant are both written very well now and can be read, enjoyed and understood by the very poorly educated workers. The wives of colored workers to whom we have been distributing the paper and magazine have shown an increasing interest in them lately, which is very helpful in cases where only one member of the family can read and I believe (although I have not the knowledge of enough cases to be sure) that most of the time it is the woman who does the reading for the family. I know that it is generally the woman who finds most time to read.
“Our average reader here reads very slowly and reads our paper more carefully than other papers – often takes several weeks to read a paper.”
* * * *
While we have not received particular comments from others of our agents throughout the country, still we know that they are active in selling Fourth International because in addition to new subscriptions we have received full payment on account from them. Still, we’d like to hear from those few agents who have been silent dur-ing the past period.
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Last updated on 21.8.2008