BY NELL WHEELER

The flow of contributions to the 1996 International Pathfinder Fund picked up last week, bringing the amount collected from $26,000 to over $37,000. However, Miami is still the only city on time or ahead of schedule. Pathfinder Fund supporters in other cities need to emulate Miami and catch up in the coming weeks. An average of $22,000 a week is needed to end the drive in full and on time November 12.

More fund-raising meetings are being organized by Pathfinder supporters. In Boston, Argiris Malapanis, co-author of The Truth About Yugoslavia, will speak October 26 on the Palestinian struggle and the crisis in the Mideast.

In Newark, New Jersey, supporters have announced an afternoon meeting Sunday, October 27, featuring Olga Rodríguez, editor of The Politics of Chicano Liberation. Sarah Harris, who helps coordinate the fund there reports that supporters will be selling tickets for the event to co-workers and others.

The $125,000 fund helps to finance Pathfinder's reprint program, so that the publisher's entire range of books by revolutionary and working-class fighters can remain in print.

"We are on a campaign to increase our capacity to produce Pathfinder books," said Rose Ana Berbeo, the press operator who heads up the sheetfed printing department in Pathfinder's printshop in New York. "This means keeping track of our production rates, improving productivity in every department, striving for the highest quality through training, and carrying out regular maintenance on all the machinery to avoid down time." The key for increasing Pathfinder production, she said, "is keeping track of and expanding the hours spent on Pathfinder on the sheetfed presses."

Berbeo emphasized that using the Heidelberg sheetfed presses - state-of-the-art presses the printshop invested in several years ago - makes it possible to achieve the kind of quality that befits Pathfinder titles, both on the covers and in the text.

The desktop and design department is where proofreading takes place alongside the designing of new covers and ads for Pathfinder books.

Chris Remple, who directs this department, reports that several titles are in the process of being reset. Volunteers in several cities have taken books to scan electronically and check the text.

"After a book is scanned, we do another round of proofing and then set the type to be more up-to-date and readable," said Remple. He said the reprint of Socialism on Trial by James P. Cannon will have new text, as the type in the current book is broken up and difficult to read. The First Five Years of the Communist International, also scheduled for reprinting, will sport a new cover.

"Efficiency is very important," Berbeo added, "in order that to be confident in our ability to produce the reprints in a timely manner."

When Washington began its most recent bombing of Iraq, "we knew we could produce New International no. 7, with the article `Opening Guns of World War III,' from beginning to end in less than a week, because we've been tracking our progress in all aspects of its production."

Berbeo said she is looking forward to the upcoming reprint of The Politics of Chicano Liberation because "it's a chance to be a part of responding to what is happening in politics today. So many people are buying this title because of its relevance for the struggles of today. We then can turn to producing these weapons right away and keep them in print. That is why we need the Pathfinder fund - to enable us to do that."

To make a contribution to the Pathfinder Fund, send a check or money order to Pathfinder Fund, 410 West Street, New York, NY 10014.  
 
 
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