The Signs of the Times.
By James White
We have published twenty-three numbers of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES on our individual responsibility. The cost of editing, publishing, and mailing the SIGNS at $150 per number of 3400 copies, was submitted to a committee at the California Conference last September, who, after consulting with Bro. Wm. Saunders, editor and publisher of the Yolo Democrat, decided that the estimate was reasonable. Twenty-three numbers at this rate cost $3,450. Add to this the increase of 475 on Nos. 17-23 at $4.00 a hundred copies, and the postage since Jan. 1, 1875, and the entire sum reaches $3,614. But the sum including expense of getting up lists of subscribers, and getting the material for the office together, and all the expenses attendant on starting a paper, is now figured down to $3189.50 The receipts for the SIGNS, which were given in the first twenty-three numbers, amount to $1614.03. There is, therefore, due on the first twenty-three numbers the sum of $1575.47 for which we are individually responsible. We leave no debt whatever on the SIGNS Office, and make over to the youthful Publishing Association the entire material and lists which are worth at least $1500, for the sum of our individual subscription of stock. It is a pleasure to make these statements as we leave the financial management of the SIGNS Office. Our labors have been hard, and our sacrifices for the cause in California have been small. We have not found time to visit popular places of resort, and have not taken a single hour to call on friends, or to go out of our way to attend to matters of personal interest. We now earnestly invite the friends of the cause in California to show their interest in the cause by making sacrifices similar to those we have made. Do not let the work, which has been well begun, falter for want of your care and means. And we wish here to state to all those who read the SIGNS that somebody has to pay for your paper. If you are interested in the reading matter of the SIGNS, and are able to pay for it, you should show your interest by forwarding to the Office a donation not less than $2.00, and as much more as your good will and means will allow. Those who have gathered up names for the SIGNS and have forwarded them to the Office without pay, should not feel that their work is done. They should see these persons or should in some way ascertain whether they are interested readers, or whether our precious paper is cast, unread, into the waste-paper basket. Those who do not wish longer to receive the SIGNS should notify their postmaster, whose duty it is to notify the publishers. It is expressly stated in the Articles of Incorporation of the Pacific S. D. A. Publishing Association that no profits whatever are to arise from stock taken in the Association. Its object is the dissemination of religious truth, and the youthful Association should not be burdened with unworthy, non-paying subscribers. We commenced the SIGNS on a liberal plan, and ventured much. Not that we had money to expend in such an enterprise, but in the expectation that our liberalities would inspire the same in the numerous readers, we ventured out in faith that the interested readers in all quarters would send in liberal donations. But judge of our surprise as we open hundreds of letters and find all the way from a dime to a quarter for postage. Instead of those sums the readers are invited to send in all the way from $2 to $25 to pay arrears, and to continue the paper. Those who wish to pay one years' subscription, and donate for the future support of the SIGNS, will please forward to the SIGNS OF THE TIMES, Oakland, Cal. But those who wish to help make up the sum due on the first twenty-three numbers, will please address Eld. James White, Battle Creek, Michigan. All receipts will be acknowledged in the SIGNS.