The Capital Fund is used to finance major upgrades of equipment and the physical plant in the building that houses Pathfinder Press and its print shop, and to help meet Pathfinder's ambitious publishing goals.

Individuals make contributions to the fund from various sources that include windfalls, inheritances, and accident and injury settlements. This particular drive was no exception. Auto workers, coal miners, and other trade unionists donated the bonuses their employers paid in lieu of giving workers wage increases.

Socialist workers consider it a badge of honor to contribute "blood money" like this to the Capital Fund. A Chrysler worker at a Midwest plant kicked in the final $1,500 before the Chicago meeting opened from a bonus payment he received a few days earlier.

One large contribution covered the $128,000 price of the new state-of-the-art stitcher that will be purchased later this month, replacing an old piece of equipment far less suited to the needs of the Pathfinder print shop today. A veteran socialist and his attorney contributed $16,666 they won as part of an auto accident settlement, thus providing the funds to cover the installation of the new piece of stitching equipment.

A stitcher is a machine that collates the components or "signatures" of a book, staples or "stitches" them together, and trims the finished product. The manufacturers of the machine that has been selected offered a price discount, said Barnes, since they want to use the Pathfinder print shop as a Manhattan showcase for their technology. An attractive photo display of the new piece of equipment drew steady attention at the Chicago meeting.

Capital Fund contributions were raised during and after the previous two meetings as well. At the close of the March 5 meeting in New York, a total of $150,000 had been raised; the figure grew to $162,000 by the end of the San Francisco event. On the eve of the Chicago meeting, further donations took it over the top to $227,000!

A significant number of those attending the three meetings were either working in the shop today or had done so in the past three decades.

With their target for the Capital Fund reached a month ahead of time, Barnes announced that fund organizers were setting a new goal of raising an additional $250,000 between April 1 and August 1. These funds are badly needed to help offset the high costs the shop is incurring due to dislocation of work as these major pieces of equipment are installed, shop workers begin to learn how to use them in an efficient way, and a long-term customer base that fits the new configuration of the printing equipment is established.

Such costs have been factored into expenses with each upgrade in plant equipment the shop has brought in from a substantial modernization of the physical plant in the early 1990s, to replacing the pre-press department with computer-to-plate equipment, to installation and start-up of a new stitcher.  
 

Reprinting 75 titles

There are also large expenses coming up for the publishing house this spring and summer as it puts more than 75 Pathfinder titles--an average of three a week--on the presses. Specific time will be scheduled on the shop's presses each week for printing these Pathfinder titles. This means that the presses are not available for commercial work during those slots.

This is the most ambitious printing effort that Pathfinder has ever undertaken. It will require purchase of a big stock of paper and other printing supplies to make this possible. Most of these titles, out of print for several months or longer, are either now completed or being prepared for the presses by the team of some 190 Pathfinder reprint project volunteers around the world. In the first week and a half of April, Malcolm X: The Final Speeches, Fidel Castro on Chile, and the bulk of the new printing of Che Guevara Speaks will be delivered. Nine more titles are scheduled to go on the presses this month alone.

The morning of the Chicago meeting a $50,000 pledge was made to get this new fund started. Another $12,000 was raised at the Chicago meeting itself. Two auto workers have since sent in bonuses and an additional substantial contribution brings the fund to a total of $93,500 pledged toward the $250,000 goal.

At the Chicago celebration Barnes explained that the victory in raising funds to pay for the new stitcher was coupled with substantial reductions in costs--especially in the Pathfinder print shop.

In the past several years the shop has adopted computer-based technology for tasks ranging from the laying out of the Militant to the preparation of plates that go on the print shop presses. A number of labor-intensive tasks have been eliminated, meaning the books can be produced with fewer people. This has released more socialist workers to build the communist movement as members of the Socialist Workers Party's industrial trade union fractions.

Barnes described further progress along these lines. An in-house server is up and running that eliminates the $8,000 annual fees formerly paid to an Internet service provider company.

Where E-mail is still necessary, steps are being taken to switch over to a web-based program using the high-speed digital connection already installed in the building, he said. Four modems, each of which requires the rental of a dedicated phone line, will be disconnected.

This one step alone will lead to annual savings of $9,000. Some $2,000 of the total savings of $17,000 comes from being able to discontinue subscriptions to publications for proprietary software that has now been eliminated.

These cost savings can be channeled to further improvements in technology and production of books. They are "part of ongoing efforts to improve the efficiency of the books-producing apparatus," said the SWP leader.  
 

Pathfinder fighting fund

At the Chicago event, participants also donated or pledged $6,500 to a "Pathfinder fighting fund" launched at the New York meeting and continued in San Francisco to help cover the costs of Pathfinder's publishing and promotional efforts, such as those discussed at the three gatherings. Participants in a meeting held the previous week in Minneapolis to honor Donald Peterson, a veteran cadre of the communist movement recently deceased, contributed an additional sum. At these four meetings a total of $17,400 was pledged or donated.

This fund is still open for donations. New contributions or pledges can be sent to Pathfinder Press, 410 West Street, New York, N.Y. 10014.

In addition, more than $6,500 has been generously sent into the Militant in response to an appeal for the Books for Cuba fund. The teams that represent Pathfinder at the Havana International Book Fair, and on other occasions in Cuba, draw on this fund to help cover the costs of eagerly sought after donations of books to libraries and other institutions there.  
 
 
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