other article has been bought or that the inquirer has concluded not to buy at all has been received. In any case, courtesy and perfect good humor should be continued to the end. If you learn that another article has been chosen instead of yours it does no harm to express your satisfaction and say the buyer will no doubt be pleased with his purchase. If the conclusion is to not buy at all, submit gracefully, and express a hope to be able to do business with your correspondent some other time, assuring him

you will be glad to hear from him when. ever he has occasion to write to you, and drop him-until the next year. Then write him again and send him your catalogue and write him a letter. If an answer is received, keep up the correspondence as long as he wants to continue it.

A good form letter is a work of art, and a good personal letter is not always easy to write, even when a trained letterwriter is doing it; but much, very much, depends on the quality of the letters used in a systematic following up of inquiries

A

DVERTISING interests are to have a great clearing house, whatever that may be in the advertising business, if the object of the founders of the International Federation of Advertising interests is successfully carried out. It is to be international in its scope and so modeled and handled that it will serve anybody without regard to personal feelings of enmity or otherwise. Resident correspondent members in all the important cities is to be another feature.

The new society was launched at a meeting held in New York, March 18. E. F. Olmsted, of the Natural Food Company, Niagara Falls, N. Y., was chairman, and M. Lee Starke, secretary, to conclude some business requiring immediate attention.

The new organization may be so managed as to result in great good to the advertising fraternity everywhere. It is expected that branch organizations will be organized in European centers by a representative who will be sent Over next summer.

A number of letters and telegrams were read among which were invitations from President Francis, of the World's Fair, and Mayor Wells, of St. Louis, inviting the Federation to meet in St. Louis during the fair. John C. Whelan, representing the Advertising Men's League of St. Louis, seconded these invitations by inviting the Federation to meet in St. Louis on Advertising Men's Day.

A nominating committee was appointed and on its recommendation the

following board of officers was elected:

President, H. D. Perky, Natural Food Company; first vice-president, George H. Hazen, Century Company; second vicepresident, Don C. Seitz, New York World; third vice-president, Barney Link, president Billposters Association of the United States and Canada; treasurer, E. J. Ridgeway, Everybody's Magazine; secretary, Baron G. Collier, Street Car Advertising; assistant secretary, Edwin J. Seward, Royal Worcester Corset Company.

Directors: Above officers (except assistant secretary) and W. E. Haskell, Boston Herald; George H. Daniels, New York Central & Hudson River Railroad: William L. McClean, Philadelphia Bulletin: George M. McCampbell, Jr., Hall & Ruckel; R. J. Gunning, Gunning System of Outdoor Publicity; Albert A. Pope Manufacturing Company; Thomas Balmer, Butterick Publishing Company; Elmer J. Bliss, Regal Shoe Company: E. F. Olmsted, Natural Food Company; John B. McMahon, N. K. Fairbank Company; Paul E. Derrick, Paul E. Derrick Advertising Agency; A. L. Thomas, Lord & Thomas Advertising Agency; Henry Bright, Special Agent: M. Lee Starke, Special Agent; Oscar E. Binner, Lever Bros., London.

The next regular meeting will be held in St. Louis, October 4, 5 and 6, these being the days set apart by the Exposition management as Advertising Men's Days.

It is probable that a called meeting will be held in New York earlier.

The Traveling Man

JAN," says the poet, "is half divine," and half asinine,"

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plies the cynic. Now, I suppose the truth is that he is both of these and a lot of other unmentionable things besides. Of course the traveling man is only the average man away from home, and yet that somehow doesn't sound just true. He is a little more and less than that. Let's put it this way: He is the average man who has answered the wander call in his breast.

Were you ever a boy in a corn field on a hot June day, and just as you had come to the end of the row and were taking a long pull at the lukewarm water in the jug by the fence corner, did the afternoon train, westward bound at forty miles an hour, pass around the corner of the hill and go roaring and screaming off into the strange land that lay over and beyond Brownville?

Or

did this happen in the evening when you had washed the stains of the day's work from you and had gone down to the postoffice and then over to the depot to see the train go through? And did something give a savage tug at your heart so that it hurt, as with big hungry eyes you saw all of these people going so blandly and with such careless mien into that wonderful and enchanted land that lay east of Jasperville?

Oh! to

I know a fellow that has crept away by himself on many such a night and there, lying on his back amid the grass and looking at the stars, he had such a hungryness to get on that train that he thought he would die of it. step briskly along as did that little round man with grip in his hand! laugh and call by his first name the wonderful being with the brass buttons and the cap, and then to hear the bell ring, the snort of the engine and the plangent thump of the wheels upon the

rails.

To

This boy that I remember had the thing all dreamed out. He would visit many strange cities, he would see the rivers and the hills and the vessels lying at their docks by the sea. And then he would make his fortune, by going to Cairo, Ill., and shining shoes. I have never heard of a man making his fortune by shining shoes at Cairo, Ill. I

have heard it rumored, indeed, that the natives of those parts do not rise to the glories of polished shoes. But thus it was planned in the school map of his country and what cared he of the habits of the natives. In the barn there was even a box built to carry brushes and blacking, after the manner of the one slung so rakishly over the shoulder of orphan Harry in the Sunday-school leaflet. Cairo, land of promise, key of the golden west: Why welcomed you not this youth, why sat you there idle?

scout.

But to our fellows of the grip: Hungry, lonely, story telling, hustling wanderers, outriders in the march of commerce. Yours is the grim duty of the Well may you tell your stories. Well may you gather in crowds and with flaring song drink off your cup of fun. Loneliness sets on your heart and eats at the vitals of you, and you shall never inspan by the fire for the long days of home and home cooking.

Of course in this day all men travelthe manufacturer, the publisher, the professional man, the small merchant, the farmer, all have a grip stowed in the closet at home; all go forth to their schemes' ends. But what of then, what of the wife left three weeks in the year-only a vacation that, and good for the digestion, like an occasional physic. This is not the traveling man, nor is the son learning the business or the young genius working up the real thing. They are traveling incidentally. They don't sell a line"; they are "pushing a proposition." The real things knows the road and the trade first; he represents a business firm incidentally; he is doomed forever to uninteresting Saturday nights in lonely hotels a thousand miles from home. And he is a very loose, big, hearty, tired fellow, who loves his wife and babies madly and is not always true to them. But we will leave this matter of his morals alone. Enough has been said on the subject, and why need we talk of it-we who are so pure?

About the best thing that can be said here about the old dyed-in-the-wool, sixmonths-twice-a-year traveling man, com monly called "" one of the boys," is that he is passing. Modern methods, rapid transit, mails, electricity and advertising

man

who question.

As a rule the business man takes up the question of cost with the wrong factor. He usually fights it out with a commercial printer and the commercial printer is usually the last should be consulted on the Not that the average printer is not as honest as other men, nor as intelligent as other men; he may be all that and yet be, from the very nature of the situation, unable to appreciate the business man's position.

Why should he? That is not part of his business. He comes to you to sell printing, and like every other business man he wants to sell it at the highest possible price. As a rule he has no definite basis for making his charge. figures the cost and then adds as large a percentage of profit as he thinks you will stand.

He

Moreover, he wants to sell as large a "bill of goods" as possible, that the volume of his business may be increased. He is not especially concerned in finding a way to save you money; his business is to get you to spend as many dollars as he can persuade you into spending. For the final results he assumes no responsibility. His work is purely mechanical; he agrees to turn out for you so many books of such and such specifications for so much money. Whether the books ever sell you a dollars worth of goods or not, is no concern of his. And you have no right to ask him to make that his concern. You are not paying him for

that.

And so it has come about that between the average business man and the average printing house, there is not the utmost cordiality and good feeling. Each regards the other with more or less suspicion and neither is free from blame.

What to do, then?

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It seems to me that a third factor is needed in buying a Business Book-a factor to step between the printer who wants to sell at an exorbitant price and the business man who is so intent on saving a few dollars that he cannot judge the situation without prejudice.

As I have said, the printer has no conception of the results to be accomplished that is not a part of his business; the advertiser has no real knowledge of the cost of production-that is not a part of his business; and yet both of these things must be taken into consideration.

Your advertising man ought to be able to harmonize these two elements. If your advertising man knows his business and knows your business, he is vitally interested in your book. He has advised, perhaps, the expenditure of so many thousand dollars in a publicity campaign, and he is deeply concerned in its success. He must see to it that the message you send out into the country at large is a message that does justice to you and your goods. He ought to be able to advise with you as to matter and form. He ought to know how much money you can afford to spend on the proposition, and what the fair, legitimate cost should be. He may be no more honest than the commercial printers from whom you get "bids, " but there is this difference:

It is good business for the printer to get as much money as he possibly can for whatever he does for you, while it is

good business for your advertising agent to save you as much money as he can. Your printer rests his reputation solely upon appearances; your advertising man must give you results, and the more economically he produces them the better his standing with you.

I believe the average advertising agency would be glad to be relieved of booklet and catalogue work, but in recent years it has become owing to the conditions of the printing trade-an absolutely essential part of the service they render their clients. As a rule they charge more for their work than a printer would charge on a competitive basis, but their charges include a dozen things that the printer never dreams of, chief of which is or ought to be the protection of the client's interests at every point. Their knowledge of the printing trade; their familiarity with type and paper, and most of all the principle of self-interest, ought to enable them to give their customers an effective book at a fair price.

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If the Business Book is a part of a general campaign, the appropriation for

it should be in keeping with the other items of the campaign. Decide upon the size of the edition needed and upon the total amount of money you can expend. Then, with your message written, you can determine the best general style in keeping with the taste of your tradewithin the limits of your appropriation.

There are honest printers; do business with that kind, and don't hammer them down to the last notch. They'll play even-you can depend upon that.

Don't spoil the effect of a book in order to save a few dollars, but don't imagine that any amount of money will make an effective book without brains and judgment back of it,

Regard your book as a traveling salesman. No salary is too high, if it lands the orders, but an extravagant expense account. for "incidentals" is a detriment rather than a help.

Spend every cent needed, but not a cent more.