more than £100, which represents only half of what was necessary to run the newspaper. On top of that, unlike Eason & Son who paid their bills promptly every month, the smaller agents who were dotted all over the country seem to have been far less diligent and it was sometimes necessary to send a representative of the SFPP to collect overdue payments in person. Financial problems As a result, the board did everything in its power to reduce general costs and maximise revenues. Representatives were sent to the United States to collect funds, and readers were encouraged to continue buying debentures and pay what was due on those they had already applied for. At the same time it refused to pay certain invoices and entered into litigation with many of its suppliers to delay as many payments as possible. It was the performance of the advertising department, however, that most concerned the board during the difficult period which followed the launching of the daily newspaper. When sales of the newspaper reached 60,000 and advertising sales amounted to more than £80, the SFPP could just about subsist. Unfortunately, after the sales record of the first weeks of the daily, probably due to the curiosity of the public, the figures dropped steadily and by Christmas had decreased by half. The Board eventually resorted to lending itself money via the Sinn Féin People's Bank and canvassing for emergency funds from wealthy Dublin businessmen sympathetic to the cause. Although the loans were recorded in all transparency, it is impossible to estimate how much money was received from friends. In his autobiography, Ó Ceallaigh names some of the anonymous benefactors he visited during this difficult period. The most important and most generous of them were the city councillor Pat Corrigan, the jeweller Myles Hopkins, and the furniture manufacturer Mac Uí Dheá. According to Ó Ceallaigh, they each gave him hundreds of pounds on a regular basis and more than once saved the SFPP from closing down. Republican challenge Such was the volume and impact of Griffith's propaganda that hardcore republicans were reluctant to leave him a clear field to spread his unorthodox message. From the outset they challenged the SFPP for the spokesmanship of the Sinn Féin movement and on 13 December 1906, only seven months after the first publication of Sinn Féin, Bulmer Hobson launched his own weekly propaganda newspaper called The Republic.