REPORTS OF LABOR by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 10, 1876

REPORTS OF LABOR.

By Uriah Smith

A BROTHER writes from Kansas that he is in favor of short and frequent reports, but thinks the reports must be crowded into the REVIEW sooner than they are, to fully accomplish the object intended. He refers to the REVIEW of July 27, in which the reports are from nine to nineteen days old, and asks if this cannot be improved.

So long as the REVIEW is published as now, only weekly, this state of things must exist more or less. Thus a report is written, and if from a distance, is three or four or five days reaching this office. It arrives perhaps just after our paper has gone into the mail. Then, of course, it cannot appear till the next issue the following week. And after it is printed, the paper will

be four or five days reaching the most distant parts of the field. Thus reports are liable to be from fifteen to eighteen days old when they reach the readers. If the REVIEW should ever be issued semi-weekly or daily, that would remedy the difficulty.

We will state how the matter can be partially remedied as it is. We hold our pages open for reports just as long as it is possible to do and yet mail the paper in season. The first side, in which is the Progress Department, is closed up Sunday night, and put to press. The second side, in which are the appointments, which have a still greater claim to be on time than the reports, is closed up Monday night. The paper is mailed Tuesday, so as to reach most of the subscribers before the Sabbath. Reports should reach us as early as Friday to go into the forthcoming issue. If important, we can crowd them in if they reach us by Sunday morning.

Let all, then, consider how long it will probably take their reports to reach us, and mail them so that they will be received here as soon as the days mentioned above. A report mailed so as to reach us Monday cannot go in, for the paper is then on the press. If it had come two days sooner, it could have gone out in the REVIEW a week sooner. From most points, matter mailed on Monday, and if the route is direct, on Tuesday, will arrive in season to be put in type the same week and appear in the next paper. Then it will go out and reach most of the readers in a little over a week from its date. This is as well as can be expected in a weekly paper. We desire to have everything as fresh as may be each week. Make your articles short, crisp, and juicy in the start, and we will do the best we can not to have them grow stale in transit. U. S.