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Upon Susan fell the task of building up subscriptions, soliciting advertisements, and getting copy to the printer. As her office in the New York _World_ building, 37 Park Row, was on the fourth floor and the printer was several blocks away on the fifth floor of a building without an elevator, her job proved to be a test of physical endurance. To this was added an ever-increasing financial burden, for Train had sailed for England when the first number was issued, had been arrested because of his Irish sympathies, and had spent months in a Dublin jail, from which he sent them his thoughts on every conceivable subject but no money for the paper. He had left $600 with Susan and had instructed Melliss to make payments as needed, but this soon became impossible, and she had to face the alarming fact that, if the paper were to continue, she must raise the necessary money herself. Because the circulation was small, it was hard to get advertisers, particularly as she was firm in her determination to accept only advertisements of products she could recommend. Patent medicines and any questionable products were ruled out. Subscriptions came in encouragingly but in no sense met the deficit which piled up unrelentingly. Her goal was 100,000 subscribers.
She had gone to Washington at once to solicit subscriptions personally from the President and members of Congress. Ben Wade of Ohio headed the list of Senators who subscribed, and loyal as always to woman suffrage, encouraged her to go ahead and push her cause. "It has got to come," he added, "but Congress is too busy now to take it up." Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts greeted her gruffly, telling her that she and Mrs. Stanton had done more to block reconstruction in the last two years than all others in the land, but he subscribed because he wanted to know what they were up to. Although Senator Pomeroy was "sore about Kansas" and her alliance with the Democrats, he nevertheless subscribed, but Senator Sumner was not to be seen. The first member of the House to put his name on her list was her dependable understanding friend, George Julian of Indiana, and many others followed his lead. For two hours she waited to see President Johnson, in an anteroom "among the huge half-bushel-measure spittoons and terrible filth ... where the smell of tobacco and whiskey was powerful." When she finally reached him, he immediately refused her request, explaining that he had a thousand such solicitations every day. Not easily put off, she countered at once by remarking that he had never before had such a request in his life. "You recognize, Mr. Johnson," she continued, "that Mrs. Stanton and myself for two years have boldly told the Republican party that they must give ballots to women as well as to Negroes, and by means of _The Revolution_ we are bound to drive the party to this logical conclusion or break it into a thousand pieces as was the old Whig party, unless we get our rights." This "brought him to his pocketbook," she triumphantly reported, and in a bold hand he signed his name, Andrew Johnson, as much as to say, "Anything to get rid of this woman and break the radical party."[209]
She was proud of her paper, proud of its typography which was far more readable than the average news sheets of the day with their miserably small print. The larger type and less crowded pages were inviting, the articles stimulating.
Parker Pillsbury, covering Congressional and political developments and the impeachment trial of President Johnson with which he was not in sympathy, was fearless in his denunciations of politicians, their ruthless intrigue and disregard of the public. During the turbulent days when the impeachment trial was front-page news everywhere, _The Revolution_ proclaimed it as a political maneuver of the Republicans to confuse the people and divert their attention from more important issues, such as corruption in government, high prices, taxation, and the fabulous wealth being amassed by the few. This of course roused the intense disapproval of Wendell Phillips, Theodore Tilton, and Horace Greeley, all of whom regarded Johnson as a traitor and shouted for impeachment. It ran counter to the views of Susan's brother Daniel, who telegraphed Senator Ross of Kansas demanding his vote for impeachment. Although no supporter of President Johnson, Susan was now completely awake to the political manipulations of the radical Republicans and what seemed to her their readiness to sacrifice the good of the nation for the success of their party. She repudiated them all--all but the rugged Ben Wade, always true to woman suffrage, and the tall handsome Chief Justice, Salmon P. Chase, who, she believed, stood for justice and equality.
Both of these men Susan regarded as far better qualified for the Presidency than General Grant, who now was the obvious choice of the Republicans for 1868. "Why go pell-mell for Grant," asked _The Revolution_, "when all admit that he is unfit for the position? It is not too late, if true men and women will do their duty, to make an honest man like Ben Wade, President. Let us save the Nation. As to the Republican party the sooner it is scattered to the four winds of Heaven the better."[210] Later when Chase was out of the running among Republicans and not averse to overtures from the Democrats, _The Revolution_ urged him as the Democratic candidate with universal suffrage as his slogan.
Susan demanded civil rights, suffrage, education, and farms for the Negroes as did the Republicans, but she could not overlook the political corruption which was flourishing under the military control of the South, and she recognized that the Republicans' insistence on Negro suffrage in the South did not stem solely from devotion to a noble principle, but also from an overwhelming desire to insure victory for their party in the coming election. These views were reflected editorially in _The Revolution_, which, calling attention to the fact that Connecticut, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania had refused to enfranchise their Negroes, asked why Negro suffrage should be forced on the South before it was accepted in the North.
The Fourteenth Amendment was having hard sledding and _The Revolution_ repudiated it, calling instead for an amendment granting universal suffrage, or in other words, suffrage for women and Negroes. _The Revolution_ also discussed in editorials by Mrs. Stanton other subjects of interest to women, such as marriage, divorce, prostitution, and infanticide, all of which Susan agreed needed frank thoughtful consideration, but which other papers handled with kid gloves.
In still another unpopular field, that of labor and capital, _The Revolution_ also pioneered fearlessly, asking for shorter hours and lower wages for workers, as it pointed out labor's valuable contribution to the development of the country. It also called attention to the vicious contrasts in large cities, where many lived in tumbledown tenements in abject poverty while the few, with more wealth than they knew what to do with, spent lavishly and built themselves palaces.
Sentiments such as these increased the indignation of Susan's critics, but she gloried in the output of her two courageous editors just as she had gloried in the evangelistic zeal of the antislavery crusaders. Wisely, however, she added to her list of contributors some of the popular women writers of the day, among them Alice and Phoebe Cary. She ran a series of articles on women as farmers, machinists, inventors, and dentists, secured news from foreign correspondents, mostly from England, and published a Washington letter and woman's rights news from the states. Believing that women should become acquainted with the great women of the past, especially those who fought for their freedom and advancement, she printed an article on Frances Wright and serialized Mary Wollstonecraft's _A Vindication of the Rights of Women_.
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Eagerly Susan looked for favorable notices of her new paper in the press. Much to her sorrow, Horace Greeley's New York _Tribune_ completely ignored its existence, as did her old standby, the _Antislavery Standard_. The New York _Times_ ridiculed as usual anything connected with woman's rights or woman suffrage. The New York _Home Journal_ called it "plucky, keen, and wide awake, although some of its ways are not at all to our taste." Theodore Tilton in the Congregationalist paper, _The Independent_, commented in his usual facetious style, which pinned him down neither to praise nor unfriendliness, but Susan was grateful to read, "_The Revolution_ from the start will arouse, thrill, edify, amuse, vex, and non-plus its friends. But it will command attention: it will conquer a hearing." Newspapers were generally friendly. "Miss Anthony's woman's rights paper," declared the Troy (New York) _Times_, "is a realistic, well-edited, instructive journal ... and its beautiful mechanical execution renders its appearance very attractive." The Chicago _Workingman's Advocate_ observed, "We have no doubt it will prove an able ally of the labor reform movement." Nellie Hutchinson of the Cincinnati _Commercial_, one of the few women journalists, described sympathetically for her readers the neat comfortable _Revolution_ office and Susan with her "rare" but "genial smile," Susan, "the determined--the invincible ... destined to be Vice-President or Secretary of State...," adding, "The world is better for thee, Susan."[211]