A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Ja Toews

ving devotion Harms had promoted the work of publications in the brotherhood for more than twenty years. With great reluctance the conference accepted his resignation. Harms felt, however, that because of his wife's poor health he should seek a new place of residence in Canada, at least temporarily. When after approximately fifteen years he returned to Hillsboro in 1921, he again became actively involved in conference publications as assistant editor of the Zionsbote (1922-1934) and as contributor to the PUBLISHING FOR THE BROTHERHOOD 287 Vorwaerts and other periodicals. What A. J. Kroeker was for Mennonite Brethren publications in Russia, J. F. Harms was for M.B. publications in America — its founder and father. II. Consolidating Publication Efforts (1907-1930) When J. F. Harms resigned at the 1906 conference in Minnesota, the Publications Committee was charged with the responsibility of finding a new editor-manager for the Publishing House. A call was extended to A. L. Schellenberg, oldest son of elder Abraham Schellenberg, to step into the gap. Schellenberg, also a teacher by profession, was reluctant to accept the new assignment. In retrospect he wrote: "With trust in God, and confident of the help of the brethren, I undertook this work though it was quite unfamiliar." 12 Early in 1907 he began the assignment to which he devoted most of his life's energy. The beginnings of his publishing work were not very auspicious. The 1906 conference had decided to relocate the M.B. Publishing House to McPherson, Kansas. This meant that the printing press had to be moved from Medford (Oklahoma) to McPherson where a building to accommodate it had been purchased for $2,500. The press was slow in arriving, for it was snowbound en route fourteen days. Great difficulties were encountered in setting up the plant. Then job work had to be found, for the conference had decided to move the plant to this new location in the hope that such work would make the business financially self-sustaining. The enterprise was successful almost from the beginning. Schellenberg proved to be a good business manager. The printing of Der Deutsche Westen, a weekly newspaper published by H. J. Martens, brought in $1,500 a year. Job work flowed in from the business firms in town. Subscriptions to the Zionsbote increased steadily in number. But Schellenberg's concerns went beyond operating the publications business successfully from a financial point of view. At the 1908 convention he made the following observation: "Even though the business has been financially successful, I see the true gain in an increasing readership of the Zionsbote and in an unproved content of the paper, and I rejoice when brethren and sisters are strengthened and encouraged by it." 13 Because McPherson was an English-speaking community, the 1909 conference agreed that it was not the most suitable place for the M.B. Publishing House since it offered no