After a year, business grew dull, and he was without a place. For some months he worked on various papers, when a printer friend, Mr. Story, suggested that they start in business, their combined capital being one hundred and fifty dollars. They did so, and their first work was the printing of a penny "Morning Post," which suspended in three weeks, they losing sixty dollars. The partner was drowned shortly after, and his brother-in-law took his place.
Young Greeley, now twenty-three, and deeply interested in politics, determined to start a weekly paper. Fifteen of his friends promised to subscribe for it. The "New Yorker" was begun, and so well conducted was it that three hundred papers throughout the country gave it complimentary notices. It grew to a subscription list of nine thousand persons; but much of the business was done on trust, times were hard, and, after seven years, the enterprise had to be abandoned. This was a severe trial to the hard-working printer, who had known nothing but struggles all his life. Years after this he wrote, "Through most of this time I was very poor, and for four years really bankrupt, though always paying my notes, and keeping my word, but living as poorly as possible. My embarrassments were sometimes dreadful; not that I feared destitution, but the fear of involving my friends in my misfortunes was very bitter.... I would rather be a convict in a State prison, a slave in a rice-swamp, than to pass through life under the harrow of debt. Hunger, cold, rags, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable, but debt is infinitely worse than them all. Avoid pecuniary obligation as you would pestilence or famine. If you have but fifty cents, and can get no more for a week, buy a peck of corn, parch it, and live on it, rather than owe any man a dollar."
Meantime the young editor had married Miss Mary Y. Cheney, a schoolteacher of unusual mind and strength of character. It was, of course, a comfort to have some one to share his sorrows; but it pained his tender heart to make another help bear his burdens. Beside editing the "New Yorker," he had also taken charge of the "Jeffersonian," a weekly campaign paper published at Albany, and the "Log-Cabin," established to aid in the election of General Harrison to the Presidency. The latter paper was a great success, the circulation running up to ninety thousand, though very little money was made; but it gave Mr. Greeley a reputation in all parts of the country for journalistic ability.
