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Finances We have been having some economic difficulties at the Observer the last year. Costs of nearly everything entailed in putting out the paper have gone up. Our circulation has continued its slow, steady increase, but the gap between income and costs has persisted, until we are now laboring under a $3,000 deficit \(our annual income and outgo is in the $50,000 the penny city sales taxes; since Oct. 1, we have been absorbing the three-cent state sales tax which then became applicable to Observer subscriptions. This item alone is about $2,000 on an annual basis. A deficit is a deficit; you have to do something about it. Cliff Olofson has launched many-faceted sub scrip t ion drives in Houston and Austin. Will people who will help to do this in the other major cities please write him? I have signed a note so we can launch a streetcorner newsrack Observer-exposure pilot program in the cities. These are strange and uneven times in the national life, yet our sense of the strong support of our subscribers is steady. By next April we are going to be out of the woods or deeper in them, and there 12 The Texas Observer are no money trees in there. We ask that you give special consideration this year to giving the Observer for Christmas. This helps a lot. We will be in need of volunteers to maintain the street Y’AII Come The Observer is holding its First Annual New Subscriber Beer, Bull and Ballad Party Saturday, Dec. 7, at 8 p.m. at the home of Roger and Nora Shattuck, 1607 Sharon Lane, Austin. Individuals or couples with tion are invited, indeed encouraged, to attend. A similar event may be held in Houston early next year. Persons interested in organizing other subscription drive parties in their areas should contact the Observer. corner racks, on a modest commission basis. In connection with our recent mailing to 16,000 Texas college professors, would professors now subscribing please encourage their colleagues to subscribe? The Observer’s growth has always been the consequence of this very personal kind of advocacy. Remember that although you can save 20% buying books as an Observer book-plan member, the paper makes money on these sales, too. We may feel compelled to increase the $6 annual subscription rate, and I ask that you let us hear your reaction to this. About three months ago I read our whole subscription list, city by city, town by town. Here are so many people known to me, and who are so many people, living out life simultaneously these many places, little dusty towns, great brutal urban traffic shuffles! Feeling the limits of life, that we know so little about so few of each other, I wrote something, but threw it away. The Observer makes sense; it is an institution that has integrity, and this is not ordinary ; As I have said before, we have here some kind of Utopian community, some kind of still cherishable hope, a faith in the power of moral intelligence in a free place. We go on, of course. Yet our resources are thinly spread, and we need your continuing being with us. R.D. ATHENA MONTESSORI SCHOOL RED RIVER AT 41ST Opposite Hancock Center GR 6-9700 or GL 4-4239 lE = Leo Nitch, Director Doesn’t this make sense? It is the fear of losing the wage earner’s earning power for a year or longer which presents a threat to every Union family. Just as it is impossible to insure an existing fire, it is impossible to insure an existing illness or injury at the time of occurrence! Insurance must be placed before the catastrophe before the lockout of “living death.” We invite your consideration of the policy contract clauses of the American Income Life Insurance Company, the company with the policy with the arbitration clause for Union Labor! Our credentials? Our employees are organized and represented by Local 277 of The Office and Employees International Union of the AFL-CIO. And we like it! AMERICAN INCOME LIFE Yr/Awl/ewe ar Executive Offices, P. 0. Box 208, Waco, Texas BERNARD RAPOPORT President