"Never saw a copper of their money. Paid a quarter apiece, cash, for
each of these subscribers."
"Mr. R---- says the paper is not worth reading. That he wouldn't pay a
shilling a year for it. I advise you to stop it. He never pays for any
thing if he can help it. Mr. S---- paid. Mr. T---- paid up to this
date, and wishes it stopped. Never ordered it. Mr. U---- paid. I called
upon a great many more, but they put me off with one excuse or other. I
never had a much worse lot of bills."
A basin of cold water on a sentimental serenader could not have
produced a greater revulsion of feeling than did this unlooked-for
return of my collector. Nineteen dollars and fifty cents, instead of
about two hundred dollars, were all he had been able to gather up;
there was no promise of success in the future on any different scale. I
received the money, less ten per cent. for collecting, and was left
alone to my own reflections. Not of the most pleasant kind, the reader
may well imagine. For an hour I brooded over the strangely embarrassing
position in which I found myself, and then, after thinking until my
head was hot and my feet and hands cold, I determined to reduce,
immediately, the edition of my paper from three thousand to one
thousand, and thus save an item of thirty dollars a week in paper and
press-work. To send off my clerk, also, to whom I was paying seven
dollars weekly, and with the aid of a boy, attend to the office, and do
the writing and mailing myself. I then went over the subscription-book,
and counted up the names. The number was just seven hundred and twenty.
I had but a little while before replied to a question on the subject,
that I had about twelve hundred on my list. And I did vaguely imagine
that I had that number. I knew better now.
To describe minutely the trials, sufferings, and disappointments of the
whole year, would take too much time and space. The subsequent returns
of my collector were about on a par with the first. Finding it
impossible to pay the printer and paper maker, as promised, out of the
advance subscriptions falling due at the end of three months, I
borrowed from some of my friends about four hundred dollars, and paid
it over, stating, when I did so, that I must have a new contract, based
upon a six months' credit.
I found no great difficulty in obtaining this from the paper maker, to
whom I spoke in confident terms of my certain ultimate success. The
printer required half cash, which I agreed to pay.
This arrangement I fondly hoped would give me time to make my
collections, and, besides paying off the debt already accumulated,
enable me to acquire a surplus to meet the notes given, from time to
time, for paper and printing.
At the end of a year, my list, through various exertions and
sacrifices, had arisen to twelve hundred. On this I had collected eight
hundred dollars, and I calculated that there were about sixteen hundred
dollars due me, which, I thought, if all collected in, would about
square me up with the world. This I thought. But, when I came to go
over my bill-book and ledger, I found, to my utter dismay, that I owed
three thousand five hundred dollars! This must be a mistake, I said,
and went over my books again. The result was as at first. I owed the
money, and no mistake. But how it was, I could not for some time
comprehend. But a series of memorandums from my cash-book, and an
examination of printers' and paper makers' bills, at length made all
clear. I had used, on my own personal account, four hundred dollars
during the year. Office rent was two hundred and fifty. My carriers had
cost over a hundred dollars. My boy one hundred and fifty, and ninety
had been paid to the clerk during the first three months. Sundry little
items of expense during the year made an aggregate of over a hundred.
Paper and printing for the first three months had been nearly a
thousand dollars, and for the last three quarters about twenty-two
hundred dollars.
To go on with this odds against me, I had sense enough to see was
perfect folly. But, how could I stop? I was not worth a dollar in the
world; and the thought of wronging those who had trusted me in full
reliance upon my integrity, produced a feeling of suffocation. Besides,
I had worked for a year as few men work. From sunrise until twelve,
one, and two o'clock, I was engaged in the business or editorial duties
appertaining to my enterprise, and to abandon all after such a struggle
was disheartening.
After much deliberation, I concluded that the best thing I could do was
to sell out my list of subscribers to another and more successful
establishment in the city, and, for this purpose, waited upon the
publisher. He heard me, and after I had finished, asked my terms. I
told him fifteen hundred dollars for the list. He smiled, and said he
wouldn't give me five hundred for the whole concern, debts and all. I
got up, put on my hat, and left him with indignant silence.
To go on was the worst horn for me to grasp in the dilemma in which I
found myself. To stop, would be to do so with some three or four
hundred persons paid in advance, for portions of a year. I was dunned,
daily, by my printer, for money, and in order to meet the notes which
had already fallen due, I had been compelled to borrow temporarily from
my friends. Unable to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion, in
despair, I summoned creditors and friends around me, and laid before
them a full statement of my condition. There were some long faces at
that meeting; but no one felt as I did. I shall never forget the
suffering and mortification of that day, were I to live a thousand
years.
The unanimous determination of the meeting was that I must stop,
collect in the money due, and divide it pro rata among my creditors. I
did so; announcing, at the same time, the heavy embarrassment under
which I had been brought, and earnestly soliciting those who owed the
paper, to settle their accounts immediately. To the few who had paid
the fraction of a year in advance, I stated how much I had lost, and
appealed to their magnanimity for a remission of the obligation I
remained under to furnish the paper for the time yet due to them. It
was but the matter of a few cents, or a dollar at most to them, I said,
but it was hundreds of dollars to me.
Well, and what was the sequel to all this? Why, to sum up what remains
to be told, in a few words; only two hundred dollars out of the sixteen
hundred were collected, and from those who had paid small trifles in
advance, I received dozens of letters, couched in the most offensive
terms. Some charged me with being a swindler, and said, if I didn't
immediately send the money overpaid, or some other paper in the place
of mine, they would publish me to the world. Others said they would be
in the city at a certain time and require me to refund; while many,
residing on the spot, took out their money's worth, by telling me to my
face what they thought of my conduct. One man issued a warrant against
me for thirty-five cents, the sum overpaid by him.
So much for my experience in starting a newspaper. A year and a half
before, I had a clerkship which brought me in seven hundred dollars a
year; was easy in mind, respected by all my friends, looked upon as an
honest man by every one who knew me, and out of debt. I started a
newspaper in a moment of blind infatuation, and now I owed above three
thousand dollars, my good name was gone, and I was dispirited, out of
employment, afraid to walk the street lest I should encounter some one
I owed, and as wretched as a man could well be. I soon after left the
city, and sought employment hundreds of miles away. So much for my
experience in starting a newspaper.