six-year period. These sums came in handy for petty cash and to pay small bills but could not be used for any long-term investment. Griffith was therefore forced to make the daily newspaper as attractive as possible for the greatest number of readers, what might be called "tabloidisation" today. In contrast with the austerity of Griffith's previous publications, the Sinn Féin Daily was abundantly illustrated with cartoons, photographs and maps. We find large tables of national statistics, articles on industry or the language movement, and extracts from the Resurrection of Hungary side by side with descriptions of the latest Paris fashions, serialised novels and sensational news gleaned from the international press. It is a measure of Griffith's understanding of the market and his skill as an editor that the circulation of the two newspapers reached 64,515 during the month which followed the launch of the daily. Readership Conventionally, the SFPP is considered a failure. Virginia Glandon, one of the historians who have most researched the company describes the falling circulation of Sinn Féin in the following way: Sinn Féin’s circulation grew, then dropped steadily during the years 1909 through 1911. The number of copies distributed during the week of 3 September 1909 totalled 64,515; with 25,515 copies going to various agents throughout Ireland, 32,482 to Eason’s, a major Dublin outlet, 5,472 to cash sales, and 1,044 to subscribers. During the week of 16 January 1910, the daily circulated 29, 961 copies and the weekly only 3,463. In financial difficulty from the outset, the daily collapsed during that same month, but with its failure, the weekly raised its circulation to 6,307 during March of that year. […] As of 3 March 1911, Sinn Féin circulated only 4,452 copies a week. This approach (also adopted by Michael Laffan and Kevin Rafter) does not take readership into account. Mathew Staunton has argued that the core business of the SFPP was propaganda and that in spite of falling sales and financial difficulties Griffith and his colleagues were very successful in achieving their aims: A conservative estimate would put readership at five or six times the number of newspapers sold, somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 and, if we consider these impressive figures, it is clear that in terms of propaganda the operation was a success Unfortunately for the SFPP, this success did not translate into a large sum of money and would not have generated