Jane Stanford stepped up to keep the school afloat during this period of economic uncertainty, ignoring business managers who recommended that she allow the school to shutter until she could regain her financial footing. 25 Instead, she convinced the judge presiding over the claims against her husband’s estate to allow her to maintain the usual household expenses—$ 10,000 a month to operate three large homes with seventeen servants. She then petitioned the court to consider the Stanford faculty as her “servants.” By reducing her household staff to three, and expenses to just $ 350 a month, she was then able to direct $ 9,650 a month toward university salaries. In letters letters to President Jordan, Stanford made clear the depths of her suffering: “I have curtailed all expenses in the way of household affairs and personal indulgencies. Have given up all luxuries and confined myself to actual necessities.” Her visits to New York City, where the Stanford estate was being litigated, were an ordeal as well: “It is no pleasure to be on the fifth floor of the Fifth Avenue Hotel in a small bedroom opening on a court, economizing almost to meanness, when I have a sweet beautiful home to go to.”