We Come of Age (1915)

Five years ago this month the first number of The Crisis was issued. It was a very modest little edition consisting of one thousand copies with twenty pages each. The total cost was fifty dollars. This issue of The Crisis consists of 35,000 copies of fifty-two pages each and will cost about two thousand dollars. Between these two boundaries lies, as one may well believe, a history of struggle, of hope and fear, of apprehension and triumph. From the beginning The Crisis has borne all of its expenses of publication and paid all salaries except that of the editor. Last year, when the stringency due to the war put the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in serious difficulties, The Crisis assumed half the salary of the editor who had hitherto been paid wholly by the Association. Today, on our Fifth Birthday, we are able to announce with some pride and with genuine satisfaction that at the beginning of our fiscal year, January 1, 1916, The Crisis will become a self-supporting business institution, paying not only all expenses of publication but the full salary of the editor. This is no small accomplishment for the comparatively short period of time and we have to thank first of all not ourselves, but our readers in every state in this Union and in the lands oversea.

---

Citation: Du Bois, W.E.B. 1915. “We Come of Age.” The Crisis. 11(1):25.