How We Find Things by James White

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 7, 1875

How We Find Things.

By James White

AFTER an absence of five months we reached Oakland in the evening of the 24th ult., and lodged at our good home that night on Eleventh street, near Castro. The carpenters had but commenced this house when we left last April. The next object that called our attention was our Office building on the same block, commenced some weeks after we left, and brought very nearly to completion more than a month since. When rooms were finished sufficient to receive the new presses and other material sufficient to carry on the business of the Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, our builder, Bro. O. B. Jones from Michigan took his men to San Francisco to build a house of worship in that city for our people. We learn that the house is progressing finely, and will be ready for dedication at the close of the tent-meeting to be held in that city by Elders Loughborough and Waggoner during October and November. When that house shall be finished Bro. Jones will return and finish the Office building, and furnish it with tables, desks, shelves, drawers, &c.

The appearance of this building from the outside is fine. The arrangement inside from the basement to the attic is admirable. The room in the basement is valuable. The several rooms of the two stories of the building are next to perfection in arrangement and conveniences. And there are four valuable finished rooms in the attic. In the rear of the main building and separated from it the distance of eleven feet, is the brick engine house. And all will cost less than first calculated, and are much better than first expected, owing principally to the ability and faithfulness of Bro. O. B. Jones who took successful charge of our three printing houses, and our College building, at Battle Creek, Michigan.

We left the SIGNS Office in charge of our sons, J. E. and W. C. White, with advisers and helpers who had a lively interest in the work. They have succeeded beyond our expectations. And to our happy surprise we found the Cottrell and Babcock, First-class, Four Roller, Air Spring, Drum Cylinder Printing Press, and the Universal Job Press in the new building in complete running order, driven by the New York Safety Engine from Babcock and Wilcox. Only six weeks before these were doing good printing on the Pacific Coast they were lying at the freight warehouse across the continent in New York City waiting for shipment. Having run one of the large presses from Cottrell and Babcock, No. 8 Spruce street, New York, for nearly two years in our Battle Creek Office, we knew just where to go for a second press for our Oakland Office. These gentlemen are evidently taking the lead on printing presses in our country.

The friends of the cause in this State are meeting their pledges as well as could be expected considering the condition of money matters ; and it is expected that they will, by New Years, raise an amount sufficient to pay for the Office building and the site.

Our eastern brethren have come nobly up to the work of raising means to furnish the Oakland Office with presses, engine, types, binders' machinery, &c. We have already two presses, engine, paper cutter and book trimmer, standing press, and types and material sufficient to print the SIGNS. These are all paid for at a cost, including transportation and setting up, of $6,500, and there are eastern funds on hand to purchase more material, and more pledged by our liberal eastern people to make the SIGNS Office a complete book and job printing Office where as good work may be done as anywhere on the continent. It is with great pleasure that we report the success of this enterprise thus far.

CIRCULATION OF THE SIGNS.

But now the greatest work is still before us. To secure to the SIGNS OF THE TIMES a wide and judicious circulation that will soon be self-sustaining, is the most difficult task of all. And yet, by the request and vote of the Board of Directors of the Pacific S. D. A. Publishing Association, we have consented to undertake this work as local editor and general agent, to report to the Board at the close of each three months. And as we enter upon this work we return at the very start to our first plan when we issued the first number of the SIGNS, to make it a pioneer sheet to be circulated in our own country, and in all others where the English language is read.

No one with the least knowledge of publishing would for a moment suppose that the SIGNS could be sustained by its limited circulation among the comparative few friends on this coast at present. And to sustain the paper by donations from this people alone, would be found to be a heavy tax upon their liberality. Already a debt of not less than $3,000 is upon the SIGNS because of circumstances we could not control, which broke up our first plans to make the SIGNS a pioneer paper, and which put 10,000 copies of The Voice of Truth in the field we had designed for it.

The Voice is circulated by the Tract and Missionary Societies. The SIGNS would have been the choice of our people, and we now set about the work to make it just the paper that all our people, East, West, North, and South, will be pleased to send to their friends, and that the Tract and Missionary workers will send to the ends of the earth. The Voice will cease for the present at the close of the volume, which will have to be cut short to prevent loss upon it. The proposition to furnish a sheet the size of the SIGNS for $1.00 a year, or one-half the regular price, and pay the postage for that small sum, was a hazardous one. One-fourth discount to those who were not regular, full-paying subscribers would have been liberal.

We now suggest that the price of the next volume of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES, postage paid, be put at $3.00, and that it be offered to Tract and Missionary Societies, and to those who wish to send it to their friends, at one-half that sum, or at $1.50 a year, postage paid.

Our patrons on this coast will not object to raising the price of the SIGNS to $3.00 a year when they consider, first, that it is below the usual price of such papers here, and, secondly, that we provide for them to circulate it to others on the coast at one-half this sum. And our eastern friends, who wish to help our young Publishing Association, can do it no better than to pay $3.00 a year for the SIGNS.

In order to circulate the SIGNS everywhere, and make up large lists to extend its influence in every part of our land and to other countries, we make the liberal offer to our missionary workers, and also to individuals, to furnish a volume of forty-eight numbers of our paper, common postage paid, for the small sum of $1.50.

There will be no paper next week. Meantime we shall issue in pamphlet form a report of the condition of the Pacific S. D. A. Publishing Association, and state more fully our plans, with an appeal to all the friends of the cause from the Atlantic to the Pacific for active co-operation in the work of circulating the SIGNS OF THE TIMES. We shall be very happy to receive letters from friends in all parts of the field. Their suggestions will receive attention, and have a bearing upon our movements. The important work of the Tract and Missionary Societies will be carefully considered at the earliest possible moment.

J. W.