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VOL. XI

CHICAGO AND NEW YORK, APRIL, 1904

The Editor's Horizon

No 4

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To the uninitiated it seems that the sure and short road to unlimited wealth leads through the advertising columns of the public press.

The public is getting the benefit of this great volume of business in more ways than one.

It is coming into a knowledge of where to buy and what the price is in a way that would be impossible without advertising.

It is getting papers and magazines that could not possibly be furnished at the price, were it not for the great amount of money spent by advertisers.

What this amount is no man can tell. The estimates vary so greatly that we are constrained to believe that no one can make even a fair guess at it.

Not every man who advertises makes

money.

Not every ad that appears produces results.

This may seem a discouraging note to sound at this time when advertising is acknowledged to be the only way to build un a big business. Discouraging as it may seem it is but the truth. Those who should be good judges claim that at least half the money spent in advertising is lost.

We are inclined to think this is true, because more than half the advertising that appears is experimental. The man who experiments with advertising should understand what he must do to succeed.

He must have something the people want, to begin with. Or else, he must have something the people need, and his advertising must be so constructed as to show this need and breed a desire for it. This may not be done with a simple announcement. The first ad for a new article will never make a large demand for it no matter how useful or cheap it may be. Neither will the second nor the third.

Not long ago a man who has built up a great business selling the plain things

that are needed every day enunciated this great truth:

"Most advertising fails because the advertiser gets 'cold feet.' A good many advertisers quit just about the time things are coming their way."

Here is the dictum of a man who knows what he is talking about. A few years ago he was selling cheap watches by mail and now he does a business amounting to millions every year. Don't make the mistake of thinking his success is accidental. He started in with faith in advertising. He had a purpose in view. He kept telling the public what he had to sell, until to-day his name to an ad attracts attention and creates business.

When your hear a man say advertising does not pay, you may set it down that he has had no experience or that he got "cold feet." The money that is thrown away in advertising is the money of the man who starts out on too large a scale and is obliged to quit, or the one who has not tenacity enough to go on until he wins success by breeding confidence in himself and his goods.

Fortunes have been built up through advertising, but not by the spasmodic kind of advertising that runs a while and then stops, to start again a little later. Such advertising keeps the public mystified. It does not know whether the business is still going or not.

The advertiser who stops advertising is dead to the public. No business under the sun that has been built up by advertising will ever get big enough to be its own best advertisement and continue to grow after advertising ceases.

Let any of our big mail order house's cease to advertise, stop publishing catalogues, and wait for the public to buy as it has been accustomed to.

Under such a line of action the larg est house in the country would be out of business within three years.

One time a manufacturer told the writer that his particular farm imple

ment had got to the point where it did not need advertising to make sales of it. He believed this so thoroughly that he stopped advertising. In a year or two he began to see where he had lost out and began to advertise again. Privately he has said since that that he came very near going to the wall before he gave up; that he must advertise in order to do business. Since that time he has retired on a competence.

The man who starts advertising expecting to fail is very likely to fail. Behind every ad must be a determination to succeed, an energy that is vital, forceful and dominant. It is these things that make for success in advertising. When an advertiser can sit down and absolutely believe that his goods are the best of their kind and that he is giving the public good value for its money he has gone more than half way toward success.

It is the continuous advertiser who makes a fortune. It is the one who quits too soon who piles up the great that represents the losses of advertising.

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Business Outlook Good.

That agriculture is on the decline in New England the publishers of the New England Farmer deny most emphatically. They claim that there is a decided and persistent upward tendency in the agricultural conditions of that section such as has not been seen for years. They say (quoting from a recent letter): "The farmers of New England have at last awakened and are adopting all new methods and machinery, purchasing pure-bred stock in largs numbers, and in many other ways showing new life and enterprise which is rapidly bringing this section to the front in the production of agricultural and dairy products. There is no longer talk of abandoned farms, as practically all have gone into the hands of a new and enterprising class of farmers.

The

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An equally glowing report comes from the West, and the prospects are that the 1903 crop of wheat, corn and oats will be duplicated. Last year they alone amounted to $1,295,634,675. President F. A. Chamberlain, of the Security Bank of Minnesota, in an authorized statemest is quoted as follows:

"The foundation for prosperity in the West is agriculture. As long as we can continue to raise good crops which we can sell at fair prices we can be sure of prosperity.

"Admitting that this year's crop is as good as last year's, the money value this year will be a handsome increase. As for the manufacturing interests, which are now of large proportions, I know of none that are not on a safe and profitable basis. Our wealth finds profitable employment at home, and I believe that our people have been interested less in so-called stock exchange securities than in any other section of the country."

Of conditions in the South, Editor Poe, of the Prairie Farmer, Raleigh N. C., writes: "The wave of prosperity has reached flood tide in the rural South. Not only are the staple farm crops bringing higher prices than at any time for thirty years past, but the farmers are using better methods than ever before are farming more scientifically, diversifying their crops to a greater extent, raising more live stock, and buying more and better machinery, implements, vehicles and farm and household supplies.

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When American Gardening was purchased by the present owners, special arrangements were made to cover Park News each week and the advisability of combining American Gardening and Park and Cemetery was under consideration.

An advertisement prepared in this office for American Gardening to be inserted in AGRICULTURAL ADVERTISING stated that the lists of Park and Cemetery had been purchased. This, however, proved to be premature, but the corrected proof of the advertisement was not received in time to make the correction before going to press.

The result was an embarrassing situation for all three papers, of which Park and Cemetery was perhaps the most injured.

R. J. Haight, 324 Dearborn St., Chicago, is still the publisher, and Park and Cemetery continues to do good work in the line of improvements of parks, cemeteries, schools and other public grounds and home surroundings.

The Stamp Problem

Getting rid of surplus stamps is sometimes one of the troublesome problems of the mail order house. J. A. Everitt, the Indianapolis seedsman, claims to have solved the difficulty, and his way is not to get them in the first place. He avoids this, he says, by sending with his catalogue a heavy manila envelope which permits coin enclosures. Money so sent is at his risk.

As to results, he says: "Out of 40,000 orders sent us, only two losses oc

By adopting this method we got rid of the stamp nuisance to a large extent. Instead of having a great surplus of stamps on our hands at the end of our season, as was usual before, we

curred. They are reading farm papers more largely, and are spending more money with farm advertisers than ever before. The change from 5-cent to 15cent cotton means for Southern agri

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Upper Ohio Valley as an Advertising Field

It has not been many generations since the term "Western" meant beyond the Allegheny Mountains from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and all other Eastern points, writes T. D. Harman, of The National Stockman and Farmer, in Profitable Advertising.

After the Revolutionary War, when the original thirteen States began to be thickly populated on the borders of the Atlantic, the more enterprising people began to emigrate to the West. The modes of travel were so crude at this time that a trip of three or four hundred miles west of the Delaware required more heroism and courage than it would to cross the continent to-day.

The result was the settlement of the Upper Ohio Valley with the most courageous, enterprising class of people that ever settled any portion of the United States. The heavily timbered country discouraged the idea of large holding of land. The soil was fertile and rewarded those who were not afraid to work. The shiftless were forced to wander farther west, or return to the places from which they came. This left the garden spot of the American continent in the hands of a most thrifty, industrious, and prosperous people. The influence of these sturdy settlers has been felt in the political, industrial, and commercial upbuilding of our nation. agricultural and livestock interests of

The

the United States found its greatest impetus in this section. The influence of these pioneer breeders and importers of pure-bred stock is seen to-day on every hand.

Advanced methods in agriculture found here, their most ardent friends. The mineral wealth has contributed to the prosperity of the farmer. Within the past few years a large percentage of the land owners have sold the coal from under their lands at prices ranging from fifty dollars to one thousand dollars per acre, reserving the surface. Is there a more inviting field for the advertiser than that within a radius of two hundred miles from the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers?

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After Sixty-Five Years

HE other day while killing time in a second hand book store in New York we found and purchased a rare volume. It consisted of two volumes of "The Cultivator," published in Albany, N. Y., by J. Buel. These two volumes were bound in one and this contained the numbers from March, 1838, to December, 1839, being volumes V and VI of the publication. The reason for making the volume for 1839 end with December was that the volumes might begin with the year. To do this the two mid-month numbers were published in November and December of this year. The Cultivator was a sixteenpage monthly, each page with three columns, 24 inches wide and 11 inches long.

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offers for sale 550 acres of land near Saratoga Springs, on which is situated the Mansion house and "ten mineral springs, the superiority of the waters of which are too well known to require particular description." The Mansion house is described as being "a large, commodious edifice, recently fitted up as a genteel boarding establishment, having sixty feet front. In the same ad other lots of land are offered, W. L. F. Warren, "Esq.,'' being the advertiser.

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W. Thorburn, "Market street, corner Maiden Lane, "" Albany, offers garden seed in a 36-line ad in which he offers imported English seeds as well as American grown.

Reynolds & Bateham, Rochester, use 32 lines for their seed ad in which they offer a 42-page catalogue for the asking.

Ellis & Bosson, Boston, offer seeds and tools and say: "A list of the whole with directions for the culture of imported varieties of seeds and a description of the implements named, is given in a book catalogue of 80 pages, which will be furnished to applicant, gratis.

Messrs. C. & A. J. Downing offer "genuine Brussa mulberry trees" in a seven-line ad. This is perhaps the first essay of the late Charles Downing as an advertiser.

Shaker seeds are advertised by Wight & Gibson, "under the American House, Boston, and Ruggles, Nourse & Mason, Worcester, Mass., offer "seven sizes of their celebrated Long Worked Cast Iron Plough; expanding Cultivator or Horse Hoes; three kinds of Seed Sowers; Hay and Straw Cutters," and other tools and implements.

Hall, Packard & Cushman, Albany, use four lines to announce their business of bank note engraving and printing; Lemuel Steel & Son, Albany, advertise themselves as paper hangers and promise on the opening of navigation" to show some imported wall paper, border and fire board covers.

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William A. S. North, Duanesburgh, N. Y., offers the short horn Durham bull, Superior, calved in August, 1831. Superior," the ad says, "was got by Frederick, by Wye Comet. His dam was Yellow Rose, by Young Denton, grand dam Arabella, imported."

This finishes the list of ads in this

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