nationalist novelist, already had a flourishing reputation on both sides of the Atlantic. From April 1906 onwards, this group actively sought a return on this social investment from their friends, family, neighbours, colleagues, and former classmates. Financing the New Company Clearly not convinced of the viability of the venture, the public were not enthusiastic about investing in the new company and the response to the share offer was poor: in 2 years only 167 of the 1,000 shares were purchased. Thanks to a handful of wealthy sympathisers, the sale of debentures was more successful but the identity of some of the debenture holders suggests that many of these were donations rather than true investments. The first 20 debentures were bought by Edward Martyn, president of Sinn Féin from 1905 to 1908 and patron of many of Griffith's enterprises. John Sweetman, second president of Sinn Féin bought debentures 21 to 70, and the third most important investor, holder of 50 debentures, was Roger Casement, also a patron of many nationalist organisations until his execution in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising. In spite of this generosity, the ambition of the board to make the SFPP, as its name indicates, a printing company as well as a newspaper publishing company, could not yet be satisfied. The cost of fitting out a printshop was too high and therefore, after a call for tenders, the printing of Sinn Féin was subcontracted to Fowler & Co., a neighbour of the SFPP, which handled the printing of the newspaper until May 1908. From then until the autumn of 1910, the contract was given to An Cló Chumann, a Dublin company specialised in Irish language printing which Seumas McManus had helped to set up several years previously. The Sinn Féin Daily The first step towards the internalisation of the printing of the newspaper was taken on 5 October 1908, approximately two years after the setting up of the company, when the board launched a subscription for a daily edition of Sinn Féin. In spite of the reluctance of his friends to take such a financial risk, the astute Griffith was aware of a shift in Irish reading habits and was convinced that there was a market for a new daily newspaper. At the same time, the weekly Sinn Féin was finding it difficult to defend itself against attacks from its daily competitors. During the campaign for the