First Steps in Business and Politics

“First Steps in Business and Politics” portrays Bottomley’s apprenticeship in the secularist press, and his attempts to build a relationship with Bradlaugh, while the latter was being prosecuted for promoting birth control. Then, Bottomley’s first independent moves: the launching of a newspaper, the Hackney Hansard, to report on the local Parliament movement. And Bottomley’s growing sense that he was capable of launching his own independent career in business, with a view not merely to copying Bradlaugh but reaching past him.