Dear TIME-Reader:

A Midwest housewife not long ago sent "an urgent request to our Subscription Service Division in Chicago. It read:

"I hope this reaches you in time. I just found out that my husband wrote you two days ago to cancel the TIME subscription we've had for 20 years. Now Pete is a pretty nice guy and I love him, but I just can't put up with missing copies for a month or two, and waiting for him to get around to quietly asking you to put our house back on the mailing list. So please, please disregard my husband's order to cancel . . ."

The trouble, it seems, was that Pete thought TIME too often and too favorably mentions the University of Chicago, where Pete played football under Alonzo Stagg--before Dr. Robert M. Hutchins took Chicago out of the Big Ten. Pete's wife wasn't too upset because, as she wrote, "I sat out too many games in pouring rain and wrung water from my purple velvet hat in our courting days."

Now our Subscription Service knows better than to come between what God hath joined together. So we let Pete's cancellation take its course, and sure enough, just as his wife said, he asked us soon afterwards to reinstate his subscription.

But Subscription Service gets many other and sometimes equally urgent requests that it is wise not to ignore. With TIME'S domestic circulation now over 2,000,000 (some 400,000 other readers buy TIME in the four editions distributed outside the U.S.), and the total circulation of all TIME Inc. publications over 7,500,000, Subscription Service receives orders, notices of change of address, and inquiries by the millions each year. And these inquiries include just about everything ranging from requests for back copies to demands for legal advice.

In the past, when "540" -- as Subscription Service is called for its street number on North Michigan Avenue -- put down addresses practically with quill pens and bent stencils, magazines often went every which way but the right one. We heard about that from our readers, believe me! Now, I'm happy to say, our 1,100 people at 540, aided by 257 electronic business machines and 20 photoelectric addressing machines, can handle all of their correspondence, and print 377,900,400 address labels a year besides with a barest minimum of error. Last week our circulation people in New York celebrated the 2,000,000 domestic milestone by inviting a hot jazz combo to the TIME & LIFE Building lobby for a midday jam session. At 540, many expected those electronic units to signal the event by lighting up like a pinball machine in a Saroyan play -- but the machines went on unemotionally, clocking their way toward TIME'S third million.

Cordially yours,

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