The Great Second Advent Movement: Its Rise and Progress

In Our First Printing Office

The first number of the Review published in Battle Creek in an office owned by Seventh-day Adventists was dated Dec. 4, 1855. The price of the paper was then established at $1.00 per volume of twenty-six numbers; but donations were solicited to send the paper free to the worthy poor. From this time forward Elders Waggoner and Cottrell were almost constant contributors to the columns of the Advent Review. GSAM 288.2

In the Review of Dec. 18, 1855, the publishing committee made a statement which to the present workers in the office may sound strange. It read thus: “We do not see why those who labor in the office should not receive a reasonable compensation for their services. The editor only receives one half what he could get elsewhere.” It may be well to mention that common wages then were not one half what they are at the present time, and that half pay then was not more than one third or one fourth what the office pays for similar labor now. The workers in the office at that time made the gift of half the worth of their services that the gospel of present truth might be published. GSAM 288.3