How do you like it? The eighty pages represent a heavy_cash outlay from slender resources, besides an immense amount of unpaid labor. The Review has been published nearly eight years and it has been a steady drain on the publishing house all the time. A magazine of this size can not be run properly without an income of five thousand dollars. The income of the Review last year from all sources except donations was $2,533.26, nearly all of which came from subscriptions. Our receipts for the first three months of 1908 were $968.57 as compared with $702.68 in the corresponding months of 1907. This is a fair start, but we must do a great deal better to maintain the issue of eighty pages a month. What we are trying to do in connection with the increased size is to make a magazine that every active socialist and every studious investigator of socialism will enjoy reading. Do you think we have done it? If so, show your faith by sending at least one NEW subscription for a year with a dollar before the month is out. AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. On the first of April we received a cash contribution of $250.00, with a pledge of a like sum every three months for a year to come, from Eugene Dietzgen. The greater portion of this contribution is to be used for the special purpose of securing articles for the Review from leading European socialists; the remainder is to help out on the deficit. If the American comrades help as well in proportion to their ability as this comrade in Germany, the deficit will soon be a thing of the past, and the future of the Review will be assured. VOLUME III OF CAPITAL. Comrade Dietzgen's help to the publishing house does not stop with the contribution, we have just acknowledged. Two years ago he paid for the translation, typesetting and electrotyping of the two large volumes "Philosophical Essays" and "The Positive Outcome of Philosophy", by his father, Joseph Dietzgen, whose works thus published in library style are second in importance only to those of Marx and Engels in the literature of socialism. A second edition of each of these volumes has just been published. A year ago Eugene Dietzgen paid for the translation of the second volume of Marx's Capital, already in its second thousand, and he has now presented the co-operative publishing house with the magnificent gift of a complete English translation by Ernest Untermann of the third and last volume of Marx's great work. The manuscript is now completed, but the typesetting, proof reading, electrotyping, press work and binding will take about four months. Moreover, this work will involve a cash outlay of about two thousand dollars. The third volume will be larger than either of the other two. If a capitalist house were to bring out a book of this sort at all, the price would be fixed at not less than five dollars. Our retail price will be . $2.00, and we shall mail the book to any stockholder in our publishing house for $1.20. Advance orders will be a help, but they must be sent with the understanding that the book can not be promised for delivery earlier than September. But the advance orders will not pay the first cost of the book. Part of the money must be raised otherwise. STOCK SUBSCRIPTIONS. A share of stock in our publishing house costs ten dollars, and it carries with it the privilege of buying books at cost. Moreover for a short time longer we shall continue the offers published in our bulletins and cirulars of books free with a share. These offers will soon be withdrawn, and those who wish to take advantage of them should do so at once. Two hundred shares subscribed for this month would give us the working capital we need.. LOANS FROM STOCKHOLDERS. As no dividends are paid on stock, we do not expect any one to subscribe for more than one share. But a number of comrades can spare larger amounts than this for a longer or shorter time. If you wish to leave money with us to be returned on a day's notice, you can count on having it when called for, but in that case we can not afford to pay interest on it. If you leave it with the agreement that it be returned on thirty days' notice, we will pay four per cent. If we can have six month's notice, we will pay five per cent. We do not offer a higher rate of interest, for two very good reasons. One is, that the commercial standing of our publishing house is such that we do not need to pay high interest rates; high rates go with extra risk. The other is that we are selling nearly all our books to stockholders at prices that simply cover the cost, including the general expenses of the business, so that we can better afford to grow more slowly than to pay high interest rates. If you want to put your money where it will be safe and where at the same time it will be used to circulate Socialist literature, let us hear from you. One way to help and at the same time save trouble and expense for yourself is to send from $5 to $20 at a time to apply on future orders for books. In this way you save the trouble and expense of sending a money order every time you want a single book, while a hundred such deposits will make an important addition to our working capital. NEW BOOKS NOW READY. The Common Sense of Socialism, by John Spargo, just issued in cloth at $1.00 and paper at 25 cents, is if we are not greatly mistaken destined to be the most popular book we have yet published. It is scientific and original enough to be acceptable to veteran party mem bers, yet simple and readable enough to interest the man in the street. It is clear on the class struggle and historical materialism, yet does not state these theories in a way to upset the nerves of people to whom they are new. In short it is a book that will please both socialists and inquirers, in city and country alike, and it is in our opinion the only book yet published with such a wide range of usefulness. Stories of the Struggle, by Morris Winchevsky, is á volume of short stories full of live people worth knowing, and nearly all revolutionists. This is a book that will be most popular in the cities where the struggle is warmest. It will appeal to the fighters in the. movement, whether they care for literary style or not. On the other hand these stories simply as literature will appeal to thousands of readers who are not socialists but who recognize good craftsmanship in a book when they see it. Cloth, 50 cents. The Russian Bastile, by Simon O. Pollock, announced some time ago, has been unavoidably delayed but will be ready for delivery by the time this issue of the Review is in the hands of its readers. It is not fiction but a recital of the most terrible facts concerning the reign of terror not yet ended in Russia. Illustrated, cloth, 50 cents. Where We Stand, an address by John Spargo, which had a wide circulation when published by the Comrade Company, and has for some time been out of print, is the latest addition to the Pocket Library of Socialism. Other new numbers are "History and Economics", by J. E. Sinclair, "Industry and Democracy", an address before the Butte Miners' Union by Rev. Lewis J. Duncan, and "Socialism and the Home", by May Walden, a revised edition from new plates. Several more booklets in this series are in press and will soon be ready, among them "Forces that Make for Socialism in America", by John Spargo, formerly published at 10 cents and "Industrial Unionism", by William E. Trautmann. The Pocket Library of Socialism contains sixty booklets, and we mail a full set to any one for a dollar or to a stockholder for sixty cents. NEW BOOKS IN PRESS. Value, Price and Profit, by Karl Marx, is beyond question the most important of the few socialist classics not yet brought out by our publishing house. We shall have a beautifully printed edition ready for delivery before the end of May, price 50 cents. There is no book quite so urgently needed for those who call themselves socialists as this. It was written by Marx in English so that the strength of his style is not diminished by translation. It explains in the clearest possible fashion the process by which the capitalist now gets the greater part of what the laborer produces. Nothing will help a writer or speaker so much to appeal convincingly to wageworkers as a clear understanding of Marx's theory of surplus value. No one else has stated this theory so well as Marx, and he has nowhere else stated it so simply and clearly as in "Value, Price and Profit." Changes in the Theory and Tactics of the (German) Social Democracy, translated by Winfield R. Gaylord, will be ready for delivery about the last of May. It will be a valuable help to the comrades who are beginning here and there to elect socialists to city councils and state legislatures. The author and translator of the book are opportunists, but the work includes many valuable quotations from Engels, Bebel, Liebknecht and other writers taking the view usually held by Marxian socialists. Cloth, 50 cents. "The Socialism that inspires hopes and fears to-day is of the school of Marx. No one Descriptive catalogue of these and other books mailed free. CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 264 East Kinzie Street, Chicago "The Clearing House for All Socialist Literature" OUR AIM The object of the Wilshire Book Company is to further the Socialist movement through helping in the widest possible distribution of Socialist Literature. To this end we publish as many books pamphlets and leaflets as possible. In addition, we endeavor to carry a complete line of Socialist Literature of all kinds. Our endeavor in this line can best be judged from our new book catalogue "The Question of the Hour," which will be sent upon request. We handle a complete line of the Kerr books, with special discount to Kerr stockholders. Besides the books which we carry ourselves the most complete collection of its kind in the country we will gladly get for any customer any book requested, if it is to be had. -- Agitate, Educate, Organize! Circulate Literature. Keep at it ever- WILSHIRE BOOK COMPANY 200 William Street ::: New York, N. Y. |
