IN AMERICA 153and could not resume his editorial functions until the very end
of the year. For a part of 1853, Leopold Alberti acted as editor,
thus enabling the founder to devote more time to the Bund and
the colony in Iowa. In addition to other duties, Weitling wrote
an average of eighteen letters a day. To add to his mounting diffi
culties, his early disciple and agent, Franz Arnold, broke with his
organization, organized co-operatives of his own, and founded a
paper in Baltimore, which expired after three weeks.
Weitling tried the familiar devices of circulation managers to
boost circulation. Copies of the Garantieen and of Andreas
Dietsch's Das tausendjährige Reich were offered as a bonus for
new subscribers. From time to time he sold copies of his major
works to raise badly needed funds. In August, 1851, he was forced
to move the office of Die Republik der Arbeiter to 107 Cliff Street.
A year later, it was back at Arbeiterbund headquarters at 73
Beekman Street. April 8, 1854, the paper moved again to 6 Center
Market Place, the next month to 27 James Street, six months later,
to 75 Bowery and in April, 1855, to 126 Allen Street. No doubt
inability to pay the rent and desperate efforts to retrench were the
main reasons for these many migrations. Yet rumors continued to
circulate that Weitling was getting rich from the profits of Die
Republik der Arbeiter. Beginning January 1, 1852, the paper was
sent only to subscribers who paid for a year in advance. By No
vember, 1854, the paper became a monthly again, and the editor
announced that he might find it necessary to omit issues occa
sionally because of other demands on his time and energy, and that
the substance of his message was available in "The Library for the
Workers," small pocket-size, paperback editions, which he sold
for from ten to eighty cents a volume. The series consisted almost
entirely of reprints of his earlier publications.
By the end of 1854, the publisher no longer could afford to
employ carriers, and advertising, because of the sharp decline in
circulation, reached the vanishing point. The last number of Die
Republik der Arbeiter appeared July 21, 1855. In it Weitling
thanked his exchanges and expressed his intention of sending them