Making the Papers Pay by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Apr 6, 1905

Making the Papers Pay

By W. A. S.

THERE was a time when every paper started in the mission fields meant an added burden upon mission funds. But it was an excellent use of money to publish the truth in this way.

Now, however, even some of the newer fields are managing to do this work without calls for appropriations to sustain the papers. The developments in this direction are very encouraging; for it means that the literature will be scattered more widely than ever.

Porto Rico is putting out one of the newest papers. It is a Spanish monthly, in magazine form, filled with the truth, and not a dollar of appropriations has ever been called for to finance it. With no constituency whatever to begin with, and in a Catholic field, the workers printed what they could sell; and now that colporteurs have come into the ranks in Porto Rico, this little journal has a good circulation, and improves in appearance each month.

Less than two years ago the West Indian field began the issue of the Caribbean Watchman, in Port of Spain, Trinidad. It is a powerful organ of the truth, and in the annual reports for 1904 the paper shows a profit for the year of one hundred and eighty dollars.

The brethren on the Chilean coast of South America print a live Spanish journal, which has been a helping hand in the work from the start. It comes off from an old press, and its editor has most of the time been far away in the field, but it does the work effectively and well in that Catholic land, and last year it showed a net profit of one hundred and seventy-two dollars.

The Oriental Watchman, of Calcutta, is now in its seventh or eighth volume. Its circulation, at last reports, was about five thousand, reaching people with its message in all parts of the empire, from Burma and the Straits Settlements in the east to Bombay, and from Ceylon northward to Assam and the Himalayas. It has shown a good credit on the accounts for years.

Other examples might doubtless be cited in the newer mission fields, but these are sufficient to show that there is bright hope before us in the issuing of missionary periodical literature.

W. A. S.