BY NAOMI CRAINE
Nearly 100 individuals have contributed $1,000 or more to help fund the long-term capital needs of producing Pathfinder books. As of January 15, $253,000 has been raised toward a goal of $280,000. The fund, which was launched on November 29 at four socialist educational conferences, runs through the end of February.

Contributions include $10,700 from 16 members of industrial trade unions who pooled year-end and other bonuses. Six members of the International Association of Machinists who work at Boeing in Seattle made a collective contribution of more than $4,600. Other donations have ranged from $1,000 to $20,000, and come from bequests, industrial accident settlements, and other windfalls. Contributors from the United Kingdom, Canada, France, New Zealand, and the United States have kicked in.

These large contributions will be applied toward necessary expenditures to maintain the physical plant and equipment used to produce the books by revolutionary and working-class leaders that Pathfinder publishes. A portion of the fund covered the completion of repairs on the south wall of the six-story Pathfinder building, which had developed cracks that threatened the long-term stability of the structure. It has been repaired and covered with metal siding that will protect the wall - and the offices and factory behind it - for the next several decades. The capital fund also financed the project carried out by dozens of volunteers over the month of December to return Pathfinder's fulfillment operation to the building in New York.

"We'll be making a special effort over the next few weeks to reach the $280,000," said fund director Dave Prince. "This will put us in a position to look toward accelerating payments on major equipment purchases -" thereby saving interest.

Meanwhile, Pathfinder's special sale of the works of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, and V.I. Lenin has been picking up steam. Two weeks into January more than three dozen individuals had taken advantage of Pathfinder's special sale of the collected works of the communist leaders. To date, some 37 sets of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels and 22 sets of the Collected Works of Lenin have been ordered. The offer ends on January 31, although sets will be held until the end of March with a 25 percent down payment. (See ad on pages 8-9.)

The new owners of these important writings by the revolutionary leaders are from 11 cities in the United States, as well as the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.

The response to the sale has been better than anticipated. On January 12 and 13 some 50 volunteers gathered at the Pathfinder building to collate additional sets of the collected works in preparation for anticipated orders during the last two weeks of the offer. Volunteers also put on the finishing touches of the new distribution operation that has been set up here to ship Pathfinder titles to customers around the world.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home