312 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
turn to making "shop vests" because custom tailoring no longer
yielded sufficient income. He and his family moved to what he
called the "New Jerusalem," an area which he disliked, and he
expected to be evicted momentarily even from this new location
because of his inability to pay the monthly rent of $2 6. Completely
discouraged, he listed the names and addresses of a half-dozen
persons who were to be notified in the event of his death. The list
included old friends like Toaspern, the piano maker, Ahrends, and
the tailoring firm, Müller and Brother. Apparently his relations
with his father-in-law were strained also, for just before Christmas,
1869, Weitling made special note of the fact that for "the first time
again in 4 years" the family had received a gift of meat from the
upstate farmer. He was inclined to blame his mother-in-law as
much as his wife's father for the strained relations and he claimed
that once he had loaned the latter $600 and had been repaid in
depreciated greenbacks. Yet the next year the mercurial tempera
ment of the bankrupt tailor had rebounded sufficiently from its
depression that he could write to a friend that several sewing-
machine companies were seriously interested in his inventions and
that another group was ready to prosecute his patent suit for him.
When he wrote these lines during the winter of 1870, his earnings
actually were about one sixth of what they had been six months
earlier, there was no coal, flour, or potatoes in the house, and the
tailors' union had found it necessary to excuse him temporarily
from paying his dues. Some allowance always must be made for
Weitling's flair for the dramatic, but such evidence clearly shows
how near the brink of disaster he and his family were. That the
group held together so valiantly must be credited largely to the
character of the wife and the aunt, and to the sterling qualities of
the children and the training which they had received from their
parents.
Meantime, Weitling's health was beginning to fail. He had
driven himself hard all his life, he had felt the pangs of hunger and
deprivation in his earlier years, and now, at the close of a turbulent
career, he was bedeviled with financial worries and depressed with