We often see reports in our publications of the work of the factory and circulation departments of our publishing houses, but we seldom see anything about the mailing department. In the Review and Herald Office this is one of the most important, hard-working corners of the institution. It is under the direction of Brother D. W. Reavis, manager of the periodical department. In this department our papers and magazines are wrapped, addressed, distributed, and put in the proper mail-bags ready for the train.
Each week we send out about sixteen thousand copies of the Review and fifteen thousand of the Youth's Instructor; and on an average monthly about forty thousand of Life and Health, sixteen to twenty thousand of the Protestant, nearly ten thousand of the Sabbath School Worker, ten to fifteen thousand of Liberty, and several thousand of Education and Temperance Instructor, and over ten thousand sets of Memory Verse Cards each quarter.
This has been a specially busy season for our mailing department. In addition to the regular work, which has prospered, these faithful workers have handled the General Conference Bulletin, nearly fifteen thousand copies daily for three weeks, and now for fully two months have had in hand the Harvest Ingathering Review.
We invite the reader to undertake, by a little careful figuring, to understand what it means to a department already carrying full work to count, wrap in bundles, mail, and send away half a million copies of a large magazine like this special number. Before mailing day, four hundred thousand copies were ready.
The entire edition makes ten thousand bundles with fifty copies in each.
Photo by R. L. Hendrick
ONE OF THE FIFTY TRUCK-LOADS OF HARVEST INGATHERING REVIEWS
We wish our readers could have seen them all corded up beautifully in the basement, ready to send out. In the accompanying picture we show a truck-load just starting for the post-office. The entire edition will make fifty loads like this one.
Two hundred and ninety thousand copies have been ordered up to this morning, September 22. Seventy-six thousand copies were ordered last week, and the orders are now coming in on an average of fifteen to twenty thousand copies a day.
What a beautiful movement this Harvest Ingathering work is! How much of really eternal value is comprehended in our people's distributing this magazine and collecting funds for foreign missions!
In our office, in every department, our prayers go up to God daily that he will bless his people in this great work; and while we are thinking of the great work being done in connection with this movement out in the harvest-field, let us also remember these busy, faithful workers who have toiled all the long, hot summer, getting these papers ready for our use. When the great work is finished, all who have had a part in it, whether in the publishing houses or out in the streets going from door to door, will have part in the reward.
