146 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
the workers face to face. His enemies tried to block his new ven
ture by circulating false tales that he was a spy—how else could
he have escaped so often the clutches of the police in Europe?
They charged also that he was not the editor of his paper but re
ceived payment from some mysterious unnamed source for the
use of his name. According to Weitling's own account, he lost 200
subscribers after the first issue but gained 250 new readers im
mediately.
Die Republik der Arbeiter had a circulation during the first two
months of less than 1,000. Most of the subscriptions had been
solicited by the dauntless editor himself, in a house-to-house can
vass. With the third issue the circulation jumped to 2,000, and by
the end of the first year it reached 4 ,000. Copies were mailed to
Germany, France, and Switzerland, and letters from abroad in
dicated that the paper was being read by some of Weitling's old
followers. The first business office was located at 77 Chatham
Street above the offices of the Schnellpost and the Demokrat, and
in the same building the Bund maintained a co-operative boarding
house. Weitling, however, seems to have received most of his per
sonal mail at the Shakespeare Hotel.
The new paper got a mixed reception from the German press
of the country. The New York Demokrat spoke favorably of
Weitling's general objectives, but deplored the editor's indiffer
ence to other reforms, such as free homesteads, an issue which he
had dismissed with the comment that it was merely a "stereo
typed" slogan for politicians. Others referred to him as an un
balanced and impatient "zealot" who was unwilling to accept a
more practical piecemeal program,^7 and a few pictured him as a
paid propagandist and a selfish exploiter of the workers. The
Belleviller Zeitung, which was the mouthpiece of the more con
servative, older German immigration of the 1830's, commended
the tone, style, honesty, and courage of Die Republik der Arbeiter,
(^7) Belleviller Zeitung, October 24, 1850. See also Columbus Der Westbote,
December 13, 1850, which cites the Buffalo Weltbürger, the New Yorker Staats¬
zeitung, and the Cincinnati Volksblatt.