Among Ourselves

This first issue of DISSENT contain 112 pages. We hope to stabilize the magazine at 96 pages each issue. To a large extent, the size will depend on the response we get from our readers. Though our life is now assured for at least a year, we are beginning with an extremely modest budget. And if we receive as many subscriptions as we hope to, we will be able to promote the magazine more widely and efficiently, thus gaining more readers.

We want to place DISSENT in as many libraries, both town and college, as we can. It would help if you would ask for it at your local library. It would also help if you sent us the name and address of the library. A sample mailing of the first issue has gone out to several hundred college libraries, but we may have missed yours.

For that matter, we’d appreciate having lists of potential subscribers to whom to send sample copies.

DISSENT badly needs clerical help. If you live in New York City and can donate an afternoon or an evening regularly, drop us a card.

What do you think of this first issue? Would you like to see the emphasis of the magazine shifted in one or another direction? We are very eager to receive comments from readers, and we hope to print some in the next issue. Criticisms, too.

Since all the work on DISSENT is being done on a volunteer basis, we are not too well equipped to take care of bundle orders. But we are prepared to send bundles to reliable agents in colleges, cities, etc. If there is a bookstore in your city that should receive DISSENT, why not talk to its owner, and send us his name and address? Subscriptions remain, however, our main goal. We offer DISSENT to dealers and agents at 40c per copy; returns permitted.

We have received a communication from Peacemakers, 2006 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa., enclosing a statement adopted at a conference in Chicago, held in October 1953. This statement in behalf of a “nonviolent revolutionary movement” to promote a “third Camp” position on the war question is too long to print here; but in a symposium on the war question that we hope to hold in later issues, a representative of this point of view will be invited to participate.

To Contributors: It would expedite the handling of your articles if you could send one or more carbons. The editors of DISSENT are widely scattered, and reading of manuscripts could be hastened by having several copies.

In Future Issues: NORMAN MAILER has promised an article for the second issue. The sociologist MELVIN TUMIN is working on a study of class relations in the U. S., which may be ready for the second issue. LEWIS COSER and IRVING HOWE are collaborating on a study called “The Image of Socialism”—what vision of the future various socialist tendencies have had. ...