position as the new business's director, claiming there were no other western abolitionists qualified to manage the enterprise. Reluctantly, he finally agreed to oversee the warehouse for five years, in which time he could train someone else to run it, and in 1847 Levi and Catherine Coffin moved to Ohio. Cincinnati Coffin moved to the Cincinnati area in 1847, where he took over the management of a wholesale warehouse of free-labor goods. With the intention of returning to Newport, Indiana, after fulfilling his obligation in Cincinnati, Coffin rented out his Newport business and made arrangements for his Indiana home to continue serving as an Underground Railroad stop. At Cincinnati his first task was working with the eastern organizations to set up a steady supply of free-labor goods for the business. The enterprise's ongoing problem was the poor quality of its goods. Coffin had difficulty procuring free goods, such as cotton, sugar, and spices, whose quality was competitive with the goods produced by slave labor. With inferior quality goods to sell, he had a difficult time finding purchasers for the goods. The problem plagued the business for years, causing the enterprise constant financial struggles. The problem of obtaining good-quality free-labor products forced Coffin to travel south to seek out plantations that did not use slave labor to produce their goods. He met with only limited success. Coffin located a cotton plantation in Mississippi, where the owner had freed all his slaves and hired them as free laborers. The plantation struggled financially because it had no equipment to automate cotton production. Coffin helped the owner purchase a cotton gin that greatly increased the plantation's productivity and provided a steady supply of cotton for Coffin's association. The cotton was shipped to Cincinnati, where it was spun into cloth and sold. Other trips to Tennessee and Virginia were less successful, although he did succeed in spreading the word about the free-labor goods movement. Despite his constant attention to the business, the poor supply and insufficient supply of free-labor products proved to be insurmountable, making it impossible for Coffin to find a replacement to run the company so that he could return to Indiana. The company remained in business primarily through the financial support of wealthy benefactors. Coffin sold the business in 1857, after deciding it would be impossible to maintain a profitable business. Cincinnati already had a large anti-slavery movement who had violent conflicts