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Publishing Work in India

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 28, 1914

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 91, No. 22.

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Publishing Work in India

By William Ambrose Spicer

We learn from India that the Oriental Watchman is having probably the largest circulation of any religious paper in India, just as in China the Chinese Signs of the Times evidently has the largest circulation of any religious journal there. Of recent activities in the production and circulation of the publications by the India press, Elder S. A. Wellman, of Lucknow, writes:—
“We have not a copy of the Temperance Annual left on our hands. Altogether ten thousand were sold, and we have prospects of at least doubling the number for the coming year. Perhaps Brother Enoch has done the best of any in his part of the field.” The plan that he has worked for the Temperance Annual certainly gets the papers where we want them. He took a sheet to the leading men of the Indian and European communities who are interested in temperance, asked them to subscribe something to the fund for the distribution of these papers among the high school and college students, had an influential committee of five appointed to cooperate with him in looking after the distribution, and then gave short temperance talks in the schools before distributing the papers. They disposed of nearly four thousand in this way, and raised the money among the people for the purpose. They promise ise to make their list for the west side ten thousand for the coming year. In addition we are approaching some of the native princes of the country, with a view to having them take the paper for distribution among the school children of their state schools.
“We are preparing booklets, cheap ones in the vernacular, for sale among the Indian peoples. Our program includes literature on the second coming of Christ, on health and temperance, the Sabbath, the state of the dead, and other truths held by us as a people. We are also working out a list of tracts on these subjects—free literature in the line of small leaflets. In another two years we ought to have a very comprehensive survey of the entire message in abbreviated form. We are making these as effective as possible, and I believe that it will be one of our strongest features in the giving of the message to this land.”
W. A. SPICER.