Having sent appeals for information to colleagues in all parts of the country, Susan, as the contributions began to come in, struggled to decipher the often almost illegible, handwritten manuscripts, many of them careless and inexact about dates and facts. To their request for data about her, Lucy Stone curtly replied, "I have never kept a diary or any record of my work, and so am unable to furnish you the required dates.... You say 'I' must be referred to in the history you are writing.... I cannot furnish a biographical sketch and trust you will not try to make one. Yours with ceaseless regret that any 'wing' of suffragists should attempt to write the history of the other."[344] The greater part of the writing fell upon Mrs. Stanton, but Matilda Joslyn Gage contributed the chapters, "Preceding Causes," "Women in Newspapers," and "Women, Church, and State." Susan carefully selected the material and checked the facts. She helped with the copying of the handwritten manuscript and with the proofreading. Believing that pictures of the early workers were almost as important for the _History_ as the subject matter itself, she tried to provide them, but they presented a financial problem with which it was hard to cope, for each engraving cost $100.[345] When the first volume of the _History of Woman Suffrage_ came off the press in May 1881, she proudly and lovingly scanned its 878 pages which told the story of women's progress in the United States up to the Civil War. She was well aware that the _History_ was not a literary achievement, but the facts were there, as accurate as humanly possible; all the eloquent, stirring speeches were there, a proof of the caliber and high intelligence of the pioneers; and out of the otherwise dull record of meetings, conventions, and petitions, a spirit of independence and zeal for freedom shone forth, highlighted occasionally by dramatic episodes. As Mrs. Stanton so aptly expressed it, "We have furnished the bricks and mortar for some future architect to rear a beautiful edifice."[346] The distribution of the book was very much on Susan's mind, for she realized that it would not be in great demand because of its cost, bulk, and subject matter. Nor could she at this time present it to libraries, as she wished, for she had already spent her savings on the illustrations. "It ought to be in every school library," she wrote Amelia Bloomer, "where every boy and girl of the nation could see and read and learn what women have done to secure equality of rights and chances for girls and women...."[347]