conceal

long personal doses of gas. Some writers use language to express thought; others use it to thought; most mail order literature seems to use it instead of thought. If one is trying to lead away from the real issue verbosity is used. Truth is best stated in simple form.

If form letters must be used there are two or three processes to be employed. All others should be avoided. Have the printer match the type, ink and spacing of the machine to be used in addressing. Then see that the typewriter does the rest properly.

Things to Avoid

The worst sinners in this respect are those who should know better. Among the hundreds that have come to me recently is one from one of the most progressive publishers in this country, one whose name is carried into more than 100,000 thousand homes each week. The publication advocates all that stands for progress and enlightenment, and it is supposed that its methods would be those held up as standards. A glance at the circular would seem to indicate that all departments are not working harmoniously. The body of the letter is in Remington of somewhat old date, and the color is deep blue. The address is pale green, of different type and unmatched in spacing. At first glance such letters go into the wastebin, as they proclaim in tones that would be the envy of Steutor, "I am a circular." With this circular letter, which by the way I have not read, comes a neat little six-page folder in two colors, on fine white enamel that is pleasing to the eye, easily and quickly read and a really acceptable thing. But its companionship kills it and I fancy few will read it, unless, like me, they were just then on the scent of "copy." Coming from a house of such standing, this sort of thing gives a feeling of insincerity and raises a question whether equally slipshod methods will not creep into its handling of advertisers' interests.

A second example comes from a leading agricultural paper, one which takes a leading position as a mail order medium. The letter is well printed, in light violet, the ribbon effect is well imitated, and the address is inserted about one-half inch too far to the right, in dark purple, with a

machine badly out of alignment, having nicked type and a general debility that is painfully apparent from its work. If such sins are committed, it will not be long before similar ones will be easy in matters of circulation, and looseness of method will be expected, or at least feared, in the paper's devotion to its patrons. Such methods do not inspire confidence in a careful ad man.

One more to show the depth of depravity to which some one will go. A large printing company solicits my patronage in a letter printed in the ordinary manner, without any attempt at imitation. The body of letter is light red. The address is deep purple, the signature and a p. s. are black. This is on a sheet of light m. f. book, with heading in three colors. This letter went through the press five times, and the typewriter once, six operations. A neat black head, and a good imitation typewriter type, would have cost half what this letter did, and would have influenced business which this will never do from any intelligent man. As a matter of curiosity I read this abortion. The company assures "results," but with no qualifying adjective. Unquestionably results would follow the use of their work, but I am certain that equally disastrous results would follow, although perhaps a little longer delayed, by the use of none. If the mail order correspondence is to accomplish results that tend towards its success, it must not partake of the nature of the examples cited. Such kind of letters (?) insult more than they interest, by a large and powerful majority.

abominaAdvertis

I referred to Collier's campaign a little way back, and I would commend to every mail order man a study of their circular letters as an indication of how good work should be done. Such work really costs no more than the cheap and worthless tions. Why not employ it? ing agencies should make it a part of their contract that the mail order literature must be such as to meet their approval. It is not enough to take the advertiser's money and use it economically, and permit him to upset the whole thing by wrong literature. Any failure, no matter from what cause, will reflect on the agency. They owe it to themselves to forestall

so far as possible any undue influences. And one of the most prolific breeders of disaster is the mail order literature. It becomes of vital importance that he to whom results are to be debited or credited should have a controlling vote in the preparation of such literature, and should even superintend the preparation, production and distribution, unless these matters are in the hands of a competent ad man whose ability and integrity may be safely trusted. It is not enough for the agency to say "we got your inquiries cheaply." They must also see to it that the advertiser gets sales cheaply.

An Agreeable Attitude

Once more I must mention the desirability of strict honesty in advertising, and in mail order literature. Deception will sometimes win trade but can never hold it. Sooner or later such methods will bring home a large brood of extremely troublesome chickens seeking a roosting place. No one can write honest and convincing mail order literature who does not himself believe his own story.

In the preparation of mail order literature the two characteristics of every human being most prominent should be remembered. Selfishness, and self-esteem. Some philosopher has said that every human act has selfishness for its motive. This is only another way of saying that every man should look out for No. 1. If one can show his customer the way to do this, and impress upon him that he is getting the best end of the game it appeals to the strong note in human character and can have but one result. If self-esteem be enlisted, also, the two make a strong team. We all like to feel that the other fellow has a good opinion of our ability. I have found too that often the surest way to interest a man in one's proposition is to impute to him the very qualities

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of mind and character which he does not possess. But careful use must be made of such methods. There is vast difference between tact and taffy. The one works silently and unseen; the other stops the game and gums up the cards.

One should never attempt to impress his superior knowledge. Rather lead the recipient to feel that the literature is a friendly chat upon matters equally familiar to both. Convey information as though it were simply calling to mind that which is of course known but perhaps overlooked in press of other matters. Let the reader feel that you consider his intelligence fully equal to your own. If you can so put it that he thinks himself a peg ahead, at the same time getting your point home, you have him. One of the rules formulated by a large house for the conduct of its salesmen reads, "never get a joke on a customer, unless you are dead certain he has a bigger one to spring on you." Remember this in mail order work. It is simply displaying the tact of the candidate for position of son-in-law who has the good sense to let the old man down him on the rubber and makes him think he is working hard for it.

In addition to all else, there remains one thing to do,-get close to your customer and cultivate friendly feelings. Skilfully lead him onto the ground where he feels confidence in the house and will himself grow confidential. Make him feel that while his order is what you are after, still there is some other motive save the mere money. That while, of course, you are after his money you do not want it unless you can give him good value for it. Who so enters upon a mail order campaign, and so prepares his literature as to convey this impression is already a long way on the road to success. It only remains to carefully follow up details to make success assured.

HERE were two of them

concerned in the matter, an old man, grown body-worn and watery about the eyes from hard service, and a young man not long out of the schools. The young man had the very best of chances for the place. He was a forceful young fellow with something clean and clear cut about him, and there wasn't a flaw in his business record. Bunker's big Monthly wanted a representative. The place offered a good salary and unusual chances for more in the future. Now, Bunker was not the kind of a man to take ahold of a thing and then let it go, and he had it figured out that this new Monthly was going to be the best thing he had ever floated.

"It seems to take ahold with its teeth, don't it?" he said to the advertising manager. "If we can only get the right man for the West, now, we are fixed." This question of the right man for the Western end had been hanging fire for three months, and Bunker felt that something ought to be done at once.

Young Cartwright's friends and he had a lot of them-bold, clearheaded men of affairs-were ready to go far to back him. These friends were pulling every wire to land him in the place, and it was about settled in Bunker's mind that he should have it when a letter came in from the old man. It was a simple straightforward document, that letter from the old man, and it was something more than a business letter. "It's literature, that's what it is," said Wright, the editor. "You see he don't stick to dollars and cents and he don't tell what he has done, but he touches a fellow's heart, don't he?" Better have him come up here, don't you think so?" "Have him up here? Well, I rather think so," said Bunker.

"Tell you what I'll do: I'll have both of them up here next Saturday afternoon. We'll go down to that back room over the Mailing Department, and sit around the table. There'll be Wright, here, and Sutherland and myself, and I'll rig in two dummies just to add to the general impression of ponderous thought. I hate to say it, but you fellows don't give much of an impression of weight. You are both so thin about the legs and you haven't any place in particular where the bosom of a man's size shirt would lay flat, but I have got the boys in mind. One is a barber over on Fifteenth street, and the other runs a tobacco store out in our suburb. I'll have them both put on their best black clothes and a strong, dignified expression, and then I'll lead these two men in and let them work out their own salvation. You fellows can do the talking, but I'll make them think the two broad-chested boys are the ones they must convince. haven't told you, have I, that the tobacconist out in our suburb is as deaf as a post."

It was Saturday afternoon, and five men sat by the table in the back room. Across from them sat the old man and young Cartwright. Wright, the editor, was talking, the old man apparently all unconscious of the weightiness of his words, was looking off across the housetops to where the lake lay, cool and green. with the cloud shadows fleeting across it. Cartwright sat up very straight and business-like in his chair. "You may consider it a bit unfair but this is rather an important thing to us-this choosing a Western representative," said Wright. "The West is getting the business, just now, and we want a man out there who can go in and nail down a contract on the spot. We figure that the man who can come in here, this afternoon, and land this job, can go

into other offices on other afternoons, and sell pages for The Herald. Mr. Cartwright, will you kindly arise and tell the gentlemen why you think you are the man for the place."

"And please speak right out, I'm a trifle deaf," said the tobacconist, who, born for director's duties, and compelled by fate to sell five-cent cigars to clerks having to catch morning trains, was feeling the importance of his newly acquired dignity. His silk hat lay before him on the table. His broad chest swelled with the importance of his mission. "Look at him," whispered Bunker to Wright. "He believes it himself. Looks a bit like the pictures of Napoleon at Austerlitz."

The young man's voice, rising to a feverish pitch, cut the afternoon stillness of the building. It floated

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out on the afternoon breeze and some boys, playing at baseball in a vacant lot near-by, dropped their game and climbed upon a convenient fence to hear the speech. "I am not going to waste words, he began; I am here for business, and I know you are. have had four papers since I broke into the game out in the West, and I have smashed a record every time." (Here he looked over at the old man.) "I am young too," he went on, "young enough to say to you gentlemen that I can bring the best years of my life to you and to your proposition. I will work for it; I will lay awake nights for it; I will give my brains and my strength and my love to it; and I will make it go. I know I will make it go. I won't think of any other possible result. believe I am the man for the place, and if you hire me I want you to know that I will be your man, body and soul."

I

He really said a lot more than this, but you have the meat of it. He grew excited, as he talked; he rose on his toes and pumped his arms up and down; he leaned far over the table toward the tobacconist, and looked deeply into his eyes. He was very much in earnest, was young Cartwright, and, as he talked, a smile played about the corners of the old man's mouth, but he kept his head resolutely turned to the open window.

"I am indeed sorry that one of you gentlemen cannot hear," said he in

his turn. But I am afraid I am a bit old to shout, and anyway I just rise to second this young gentleman's nomination. He says he will give his every pulse-beat to you and to your interests and you see I am a bit old to be so generous with my own blood and muscle. It's a good, long ways back to the time when I was a young man like that and hadn't made any failures and now you know I have made a lot of them, indeed I have, gentlemen. Nearly everything I have ever touched has slipped like water through my fingers, and then I couldn't possibly keep awake nights to think of you men and your business success. You're a very decent looking lot of men, but I don't know you and I hardly think I would ever get to know you so well but that I would want to forget you were alive in the evening when I got home and was sitting by my fireside. I wouldn't even want to realize that I had to work for you at all. When I wrote that letter I really thought I wanted this place and I came up here determined to go far to get it, but as I have been sitting here listening to this young man and thinking of the times when I have talked that way to men who were about to trust me with good places, something old and worn touched me on the arm, and out there and through the window and away over there by the lake I saw an empty bench by the park. I guess that is the place for me. But now I'm here and this young man has told you about himself, and what he is going to do for The Herald, I'm going to go over to the other side of the fence and tell you some things. I ought to be there, anyway. I ought to be sitting up there looking dignified and important and helping to hire a man for the place instead of standing over here on this side, an old man, asking for a chance to try again."

The tobacconist pushed his silk hat over to the side of his head, and caught his thumb in the arm-hole of his vest. Bunker leaned over the table and looked at the floor. Everyone else in the room was looking at the old man. "So here is my advice to you," he went on. "Hire this young man. You see that set look about the jaws, don't you? His hands you see grip the back of the chair."

Young Cartwright arose and, ramming his hands deep into his pockets, walked to the window. "He is ready to do all he says he will do for you. He has a wife, possibly, but he will walk the floor at night thinking of schemes to advance your business. He has memories of the quiet days when he was a fellow in school, and wandered out in the woods in the summer afternoons and feasted soul on a good book, but he has heard of other American hustlers who forewent everything pleasant and quiet and hammered through a long hot life on the trail of dollars and he is ready to do that for you.

his

Gentlemen, it would be very foolish of you not to take him on." The old man turned and went quietly out of the room. Young Cartwright followed as though he would speak to him. The barber and the tobacconist arose and put on their hats. "Here, you fellows stay and see this out," demanded Bunker, but they only shook their heads and went out without speaking.

"Well, what are you going to do?" asked Wright. "Which man gets the place?" "Neither of those two," growled Bunker, "one is too hot, and the other is too blame cold!"

T is hard to tell some times, but it is interesting to try in what way magazine readers are classified.

Frederick L. Colver, writing in Leslie's Monthly for August, says that not long ago he talked with a newsdealer who had settled this matter of classifying magazines to his own satisfaction. He handles the biggest railway news stand in Cleveland.

"Why," he said, "I can pretty nearly tell what kind of magazine any man will buy before he asks for it. Now that man," pointing to a man who had just departed with a copy of the Popular Magazine"there is no use trying to make him buy Leslie's Magazine or Scribner's or McClure's; he just buys that Popular Magazine or else Ainslee's or Argosy, and I can't sell him anything else. The man who comes for Leslie's Magazine-I can sell him Scribner's, too, or McClure's, and some

times the Century, and the people who come to buy Scribner's and the Century I know I can sell them Leslie's and McClure's, and that is the way it goes. There is no use trying to put one kind of magazine on the other kind of reader."

Commenting on this experience, Mr. Colver says, "It seems to me that this dealer has more or less answered some questions that constantly come up. It isn't so much a question of where a man went to school. It isn't so much a question of whether he has got money to spare. It is fundamentally a question of temperament and character. A man picks his magazine just as he picks his friends, because they are his kind. If we believed that Leslie's, or, for that matter, any magazine, did not have a distinct personality and, therefore, a distinct constituency, we should not be putting our best life work into Leslie's. What would be the use when any other magazine would do as well?"