Beginning with less than a dozen subscribers, the New Yorker gained steadily in circulation at the rate of about one hundred a week, until, in 1836, its subscribers numbered 7,500. Unfortunately, many of these readers did not pay for their subscriptions. The paper had agents all over the country (a list of them fills two columns of one number) who sent in the names of subscribers, but in many cases did not accompany these names with the cash. Greeley lived with the utmost frugality — the life of a miser, as he once expressed it to Thurlow Weed-and for two years was obliged to look to his job-office for his income. Then, the paper having a fair prospect, he gave over the job-office entirely to his partner, and took the charge of the paper on himself. In 1836, when he was married, he thought that he was worth $5,000, and that he could safely count on an income of $1,000 a year. But the panic of 1837 came, and his books began to show a weekly loss of $100. He had given notes for his white paper, and he had used up some three thousand subscriptions paid in advance. Earnest appeals to the delinquents appeared in the paper: “Friends of the New ”
