Careful Management and Promotion
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wasted. They should guard against supposed wants and expenditures
of means. Some men will live better on four hundred dollars a year
than others will on eight hundred. Just so it is with our institutions.
Some can manage them with far less capital than others. God would
have every worker practice economy, and especially learn to be faithful
accountants.—
Manuscript 1, 1879
.
Balance in Profit Between ABC and Publishers—I have felt a
very deep interest in tract and missionary work, and it may be my
strong and urgent appeals have done much to mold matters as they
now exist. But the last view, as I read what I wrote last fall, shows
me that there is great danger of running everything into the tract and
missionary work. This vigilant missionary work is as a wheel within a
wheel, but at the same time it must not swallow up other interests.
The office of publication must not be crippled in any sense to keep
this branch in vigorous action, leaving the matter of profit to the tract
and missionary society, while but little profit, if any at all, comes to
the publishing house.—
Letter 2, 1880
.
Mistakes Not to Be Publicized—He [God] has shown that our
leading men should be in harmony. They should not put articles in print
or bring matters before the people until, by counseling together, these
subjects are understood among themselves, and they are at agreement
[333]
among themselves.
Whatever may have been the mistakes in the tract and missionary
work, the motives were the best, and even if the matter has been carried
quite too far, and altogether too strongly, disproportionately with the
other branches of the work, without proper discernment, it would be
unwise to publish this fact in our papers. We should correct these
errors as soon as possible among ourselves without giving publicity to
them.—
Manuscript 1, 1879
.
Unnecessary Books and Costly Bibles—I was shown in my last
vision that you and Elder F were in danger of giving an example of
extravagance in the expenditure of money for books not on present
truth. Many who do not need these books, whom they will not benefit
at all if offered for sale by our ministers, will purchase them if the
statement is made that the profits on such books go to the tract and
missionary society; and the money thus expended should have pur-
chased publications on present truth, which they needed. There should
be a leaving off before there is a beginning to purchase costly Bibles.