Items of Interest December 17, 1932 Issue

Items of Interest

There have come to our attention recently the stories of several individuals whose desire for the periodicals enabled them to change "I can't afford them" into "I can't afford to be without them," and ways have opened up for them to subscribe. One person with a limited income felt she must have the periodicals, and she figured that on the Quarterly Plan she would need to pay only thirty-five cents a week. Therefore she prepared a small box in which to place the savings derived from omitting the dessert at dinner occasionally. Another, a household worker, receives besides her board and room four dollars for her clothes and other necessities. Out of this she saves the thirty-five cents needed for her subscription. A family which has experienced lack of abundant means includes two boys who earn something by selling papers. Their mother, a widow, has the money ready for the Monitor worker when she calls, and said recently, "I know I can't afford not to have it."

An argument which sometimes operates to cause one to delay subscribing or reading is, "The periodicals are too old when they reach us, especially the Monitor." In this connection it should be remembered that a good definition of "news" is "something that you have not heard before." That many subscribers in distant countries find the periodicals interesting and highly informative is evidenced by their reading and rereading them. For instance, not long ago in The Mother Church a testimony was given about a married couple living in a small town in Alaska near a woman who is a subscriber to The Christian Science Monitor. Each year the couple travel into the interior of Alaska, but for two months they return to their home, where the Monitor subscriber has carefully saved for them in chronological order her copies of the Monitor. Each year they take this file of issues with them, and each day they eagerly read a copy just one year old. As one of them said, "There is always good news in the Monitor."

The outstanding features of progress on the new Publishing House building are the setting of the stone and brick walls on Section "A," including the eight columns above the front entrances, mention of which was made in our last Item. The eight fifteen and a half ton columns which have already been described in these pages were set in less than a week. The weather was extremely cold—much below the freezing point—when the setting of the first two was undertaken. Accordingly, in a sheet iron wheelbarrow top a fire was made on the top of the plinths in order to warm the stone. The columns themselves were heated by the sun as they lay in a sheltered section of the railroad yards. The heating was necessary in order that the stone might absorb the moisture from the mortar.

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