The paper was issued originally without a single subscriber.  At the end of the first volume the subscription list numbered five hundred names.  In the course of the next two volumes this number was more than doubled, almost tripled, in fact.  The subscription price was two dollars.  The property would have begun from this point to make returns to its owners had they possessed the business training and instinct requisite to its successful management.  But they were reformers, not money-getters, and instead of enjoying the profits they proceeded to use them up incontinently in their first enlargement of the paper.  But while they had added to the cost of publication, they took no thought to augment the cost of subscription.  The publishers gave more and the subscribers received more for the sum of two dollars.  The pecuniary embarrassments of the Liberator increased, and so the partners’ “bondage to penury” increased also.  This growing pressure was finally relieved by “several generous donations,” made for the support of the paper.  At the beginning of the fourth volume, the publishers wisely or other-wisely, again enlarged their darling, and again neglected to raise the subscription rates at the same time.

Misfortunes never come without company, but alight in flocks, and a whole flock of misfortunes it was to the Liberator when Joshua Coffin, “that huge personification of good humor,” was appointed canvassing agent for the paper.  He was as wanting in business methods as his employers were.  Confusion now gathered upon confusion around the devoted heads of the partners, was accelerated and became daily more and more portentous and inextricable.  The delinquencies of subscribers grew more and more grave.  On the three first volumes they were two thousand dollars in arrears to the paper.  This was a large, a disastrous loss, but traceable, to no inconsiderable extent, doubtless, to the loose business methods of the reformer and his partner.  The Liberator at the beginning of its fourth year was struggling in a deep hole of financial helplessness and chaos.  Would it ever get out alive, or “SHALL THE LIBERATOR DIE?” burst in a cry of anguish, almost despair, from its editor, so weak in thought of self, so supreme in thought of others.

This carelessness of what appertained to the things which concerned self, and devotion to the things which concerned his cause, finds apt and pathetic illustration in this letter to Samuel J. May in the summer of 1834, when his pecuniary embarrassments and burdens were never harder to carry: 

“In reply to your favor of the 24th [July], my partner joins with me in consenting to print an edition of Miss Crandall’s [defence] as large as the one proposed by you, at our own risk.  As to the profits that may arise from the sale of the pamphlet, we do not expect to make any; on the contrary, we shall probably suffer some loss, in consequence of the difficulty of disposing of any publication, however interesting or valuable in itself.  But a trial so important as Miss C.’s, involving such momentous consequences to a large portion of our countrymen, implicating so deeply the character of this great nation, ought not to go unpublished, and shall not while we have the necessary materials for printing it.”