$3,000 and severed his connection with it after sixteen months. Mr. Melliss continued his assistance for nearly the same length of time, contributing altogether $7,000. He was its staunch supporter as long as his means would allow, but at length became apprehensive that it never would reach a paying basis and, as he was not a man of wealth, felt unable to advance more money.
From a pecuniary point of view things looked very dark for The Revolution. Every newspaper, in its early days, swallows up money like a bottomless well. The Revolution had started on an expensive basis; its office rent was $1,300 per annum; it was printed on the best of paper, which at that time was very costly; typesetting commanded the highest prices. Partly as a matter of pride and partly for the interest of the paper, Miss Anthony was not willing to reduce expenses. At the end of the first year The Revolution had 2,000, and at the end of the second year 3,000 bona fide, paying subscribers, but these could not sustain it without plenty of advertising, and advertisers never lavish money on a reform paper. Mr. Pillsbury's valuable services were given at a minimum price, Mrs. Stanton received no salary and Miss Anthony drew out only what she was compelled to use for her actual expenses. She was exhausted in mind and body from the long and relentless persecution of those who once had been her co-workers, but to the world she showed still the old indomitable spirit. Her letters to friends and relatives at this time, appealing for funds to carry on the paper, are heart-breaking. A dearly loved Quaker cousin, Anson Lapham, of Skaneateles, loaned her at different times $4,000. To him she wrote:
My paper must not, shall not go down. I am sure you believe in me, in my honesty of purpose, and also in the grand work which The Revolution seeks to do, and therefore you will not allow me to ask you in vain to come to the rescue. Yesterday's mail brought forty-three subscribers from Illinois and twenty from California. We only need time to win financial success. I know you will save me from giving the world a chance to say, "There is a woman's rights failure; even the best of women can't manage business." If I could only die, and thereby fail honorably, I would say "amen," but to live and fail—it would be too terrible to bear.
To Francis G. Shaw, of Staten Island, who sent $100, she wrote: "I wonder why it is that I must forever feel compelled to take the rough things of the world. Why can't I excuse myself from the overpowering and disagreeable struggles? I can not tell, but after such a day as yesterday, my heart fails me—almost. Then I remember that the promise is to those only who hold out to the end—and nerve myself to go forward. I am grateful nowadays for every kind word and every dollar." On the back is inscribed: "My pride would not let me send this, and I substituted merely a cordial note of thanks." Her letters home during this dark period are too sacred to be given to the public. The mother and sisters were distressed beyond expression at the merciless criticism and censure with which she had been assailed, and begged her to withdraw from it all to the seclusion of her own pleasant home, but when she persisted in standing by her ship, they aided her with every means in their power. Her sister Mary loaned her the few thousands she had been able to save by many years' hard work in the schoolroom, and the mother contributed from her small estate.
Her brother Daniel R., a practical newspaper man, assured her that he was ready at any time to be one of a stock company to support the paper, but that it was useless to sink any more money in the shape of individual subscriptions. He urged her to cut down expenses, make it a semi-monthly or monthly if necessary, but not to go any more deeply in debt, saying: "I know how earnest you are, but you stand alone. Very few think with you, and they are not willing to risk a dollar. You have put in your all and all you can borrow, and all is swallowed up. You are making no provision for the future, and you wrong yourself by so doing. No one will thank you hereafter. Although you are now fifty years old and have worked like a slave all your life, you have not a dollar to show for it. This is not right. Do make a change." Her sister Mary spent all her vacation in New York one hot summer looking after the business of the paper, while Miss Anthony went out lecturing and getting subscribers. After returning home she wrote:
You can not begin to know how you have changed, and many times every day the tears would fill my eyes if I allowed myself a moment to reflect upon it. I beg of you for your own sake and for ours, do not persevere in this work unless people will aid you enough to do credit to yourself as you always have done. Make a plain statement to your friends, and if they will not come to your rescue, go down as gracefully as possible and with far less indebtedness than you will have three months from now. It is very sad for all of us to feel that you are working so hard and being so misunderstood, and we constantly fear that, in some of your hurried business transactions, your enemies will delight to pick you up and make you still more trouble.
At this time, in a letter to Martha C. Wright, Mr. Pillsbury said: "Susan works like a whole plantation of slaves, and her example is scourge enough to keep me tugging also." With her rare optimism, Miss Anthony never gives up hoping, and on January 1, 1870, writes to Sarah Pugh: "The year opens splendidly. December brought the largest number of subscriptions of any month since we began, and yesterday the largest of any day. So the little 'rebel Revolution' doesn't feel anything but the happiest sort of a New Year."
A movement was begun for forming a stock company of several wealthy women, on a basis of $50,000, to relieve Miss Anthony of all financial responsibility, making her simply the business manager. Paulina Wright Davis already had given $500, and January 1, 1870, her name appeared as corresponding editor. Isabella Beecher Hooker took the liveliest interest in the paper and was very anxious that it should be continued. She devised various schemes for this purpose and finally decided that her sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and herself would give The Revolution their personal influence and that of their large circle of friends, by putting their names on the staff of editors. Early in December, 1869, she sent the following:
We will give our names as corresponding editors for your paper for one year and agree to furnish at least six articles apiece and also to secure an original article from some friend every other week during the year. We agree to do this without promised compensation, but on the condition that you will change the name of the paper to The True Republic, or something equally satisfactory to us; and that you will pay us equally for this service according to your ability, you yourself being sole judge of that.
H.B. STOWE, I.B. HOOKER.
This was written while they were in New York City, and on her way home Mrs. Hooker wrote, while on board the train, an enthusiastic letter regarding details of the work, ending, after she arrived: "I give you my hand upon it. I have read the above to my two Mentors, and they approve in the main." In a few days, she said in a long letter:
I wish Mrs. Stanton's "editorial welcome" to us might be in the dignified style of her best essays or speeches, not in the least gossipy or familiar, but stately and full of womanly presence. She ought to have a copy of Mrs. Stowe's editorial the moment it is written, for approval and suggestion. If Mr. Pillsbury would stay for a month or two and initiate Phoebe Cary, and we all work well as we mean to, I think she might get on.... I shall go to the Washington convention to work, not to speak. Tilton should be secured by all means—his wife, too. Our parlor needs her demure, motherly, angelic sweetness, as much as our platform needs him. These little, quiet, domestic women are trump cards, nowadays. I wish we had a whole pack of them.... Mr. Burton will hunt up a capital motto or heading, and he will write, I am sure. Mrs. Jewell met me in the street and said, "Is it true that you and Mrs. Stowe are going to help The Revolution?" I told her what we proposed and she was much delighted.
In reply to a letter asking her opinion, Mrs. Stanton wrote: "As for changing the name of The Revolution, I should consider it a great mistake. We are thoroughly advertised under the present title. There is no other like it, never was, and never will be. The establishing of woman on her rightful throne is the greatest of revolutions. It is no child's play. You and I know the conflict of the last twenty years; the ridicule, persecution, denunciation, detraction, the unmixed bitterness of our cup for the last two, when even friends have crucified us. We have so much hope and pluck that none but the Good Father knows how we have suffered. A journal called 'The Rose-bud' might answer for those who come with kid gloves and perfumes to lay immortelle wreaths
