Progress of the Publishing Work by W. W. Eastman

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 5, 1914

Progress of the Publishing Work

By W. W. Eastman

Up to the present I have attended five of the twelve union conferences planned for at the fall council. As it has been my work to look after our publishing interests at these meetings, I wish to mention a few things that have been reported in connection with them that indicate the Lord's providential leading in this important department of our work.

In the Atlantic Union Conference our brethren are grappling with such problems as great cities, large foreign population, and large numbers of Catholics, but nevertheless are gaining victories and making progress. One of their colporteurs reports having repeatedly gained entrance to a Catholic convent and a parochial school, where he successfully sold our literature, having the consent of the priest and the mother superior, a thing probably unknown heretofore in the history of our work.

In the Southeastern Union Conference the work had made a good gain over the last biennial period. Special progress has been made in the development of successful colored colporteurs. Two of this class of workers have each sold and delivered over a thousand dollars' worth of our books to their people during 1913. In fact, the work has made such encouraging progress among the colored people that it has become necessary to provide colored helpers to the field agents, to act as trainers of colored workers. This is a new feature in our work, and a very encouraging one indeed, for it has great possibilities for the rapid spread of the message to the millions of colored people of the South.

In the Southern Union Conference new records are being made by the colporteurs in the sale of our literature, and the work is making a most encouraging growth.

Brother C. G. Bellah, who has been so ably filling the position of general agent of the Central Union Conference for the past eight years, showed by his report that there had been a gain in that union of fourteen per cent over the last biennial period. Some very remarkable records have been made by different persons in the sale of literature in this union.

In the Northern Union, the most noticeable feature of the literature work is the development of student canvassing during vacation. A large number of young people are now in the denominational schools of the union because they have been able to earn scholarships by the sale of our literature during the summer vacation. The gain in sales for the union over the sales of former years, as shown by F. E. Painter, the general agent, in his splendid report, was especially encouraging.

On my way from the Minneapolis meeting to Lacombe, Canada, I met Brother Jacob Skodsheim, who has been spending the winter selling our books in the northwestern part of Minnesota. In January of the present year, in less than a month he sold over four hundred dollars'

worth of "Ministry of Healing" and "Great Controversy" in the Indian reservation, mostly among the Catholic Indians. Brother Skodsheim has had some remarkable experiences, which clearly indicate the hand of God in this work, and show what can be done when our brethren go forth with the burden of souls upon them.

W. W. EASTMAN.