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us directly from the subscribers; without such notes, we must submit to an agent's charge on nearly every collection.
Besides, the notes from the South Western States are now at from twenty to thirty per cent. discount; and have been more: those from the West range from six to twenty.
All notes beyond the Delaware River range from twice to ten times the discount charged upon them when we started the New Yorker.
We cannot afford to depend exclusively upon the patronage to be obtained in our immediate neighborhood; we cannot retain distant patronage without receiving the money in which alone our subscribers can pay. But one course, then, is left us—to tax our valuable patronage with the delinquences of the worse than worthless—the paying for the non-paying, and those who send us par-money, with the evils of our present depraved and depreciated currency.
Two years after, there appeared another chapter of pecuniary history, written in a more hopeful strain.
A short extract will complete the reader's knowledge of the subject:
Since the close of the year of ruin (1837), we have pursued the even tenor of our way with such fortune as was vouchsafed us; and, if never elated with any signal evidence of popular favor, we have not since been doomed to gaze fixedly for months into the yawning abyss of Ruin, and feel a moral certainty that, however averted for a time, that must be our goal at last.
On the contrary, our affairs have slowly but steadily improved for some time past, and we now hope that a few months more will place us beyond the reach of pecuniary embarrassments, and enable us to add new attractions to our journal.
And this word “attraction” brings us to the confession that the success of our enterprise, if success there has been, has not been at all of a pecuniary cast thus far. Probably we lack the essential elements of that very desirable kind of success.
There have been errors, mismanagement and losses in the conduct of our business.
We mean that we lack, or do not take kindly to, the arts which contribute to a newspaper sensation.
When our journal first appeared, a hundred copies marked the extent to which the public curiosity claimed its perusal.
Others establish new papers, (the New World and Brother Jonathan Mr. Greeley might have instanced) even without literary reputation, as we were, and five or ten thousand copies are taken at once—just to see what the new thing is. And thence they career onward on the crest of a towering wave.
Since the New Yorker was first issued, seven copartners in its publication have successively withdrawn from the concern, generally, we regret to say, without having improved their fortunes by the connection, and most of them with the conviction that the work, however valuable, was not calculated to prove lucrative to its proprietors.
“You don't humbug enough,” has been the complaint of more than one of our retiring associates; “you ought to ”
