p. 60 | How to Do It by William C. White

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 15, 1877

How to Do It.

By William C. White

The question has long stood unsolved: How can we, as publishers, favor those who read the SIGNS but through carelessness or lack of ready cash have fallen behind in their subscription, without doing injustice to ourselves and to another class of subscribers who expect the paper only for the time subscribed, and feel offended if it is sent longer, thus bringing them in debt to us!

If we cut off delinquents without notice, some will be justly offended, and where so large a proportion of our subscribers are furnished by Tract Societies we cannot send out a publisher's notice without offending many who have received the SIGNS from friends, and therefore do not feel responsible to the publishers. We therefore adopt the following plan:

We ask all our Tract and Missionary Societies to act as agents for the SIGNS, not only in getting new subscribers but in soliciting renewals, and in stopping papers not wanted. If the societies will act with us in this matter we will furnish, at the first of each month, a complete list of all whose subscriptions end during that month. These lists will be sent to the State Secretary, who should at once put them into the hands of the officer in whose district the person may reside. In the case of scattered individuals, out of reach of personal visits from members, the Secretary, or other officers as he may appoint, should send them a card or letter.

In many cases where the SIGNS has been received, and a partial interest aroused in its truths, a friendly letter from a missionary member, or a personal call if it is possible, would turn the scale and bring the readers into connection with the society, and under the influence of our religious publications, which might result, as it has with hundreds of others, in their conversion. On the other hand, an unceremonious discontinuance of the paper or a publisher's notice at this time, might break off all connection, and thus the previous work of the society would be lost. Care should be exercised that these visits create kindly relations, and that the letters encourage friendly correspondence. Here may be the missionary's harvest.

We shall ask the Tract Society to take the responsibility of saying who shall have and who shall not have the SIGNS continued after the expiration of subscriptions. If worthy persons want the paper, can pay for it, but not at present, and the society will be responsible for them, we will put them on a credit list. This credit list we will send to the State Secretaries once in three months for revision.

We shall throw no debt for delinquents upon the societies, only as it may assume the responsibility of sending papers on credit. We have not suggested the above plan to save ourselves from labor, but because it opens a door for missionary work which has in some States, and must wherever tried, result in much good.

Try it brethren, if necessary, as Bro. Van Horn has done. With a large and widely scattered list, he sent a card to all whom he could not visit. In return, some sharp rebuffs were received, some wrote indifferently, while a few others confessed an interest in the truth awakened by reading the SIGNS, which interest had deepened into conviction and conversion. Try it brethren, and see how it will work.

W. C. WHITE.