To those advertisers who still think of the farm paper as an uncertain business venture conducted up-stairs over a hay and feed store, we suggest a visit to some such plant as that of the Phelps Publishing Co., at Springfield, Mass., or this remarkable new plant of Successful Farming at Des Moines, Ia.

a-man" writer, who could produce volumes around the fine upstanding, modern figure of Ed. Meredith.

But what particularly interests the advertising man is the mark Ed. Meredith and his kind are setting up for the agricultural advertising and agricultural publishing world. And it is proof of the genuine stability of the business of publishing farm papers that such institutions and such organizations as this of Successful Farming have come into existence.

The Successful Farming plant - a picture of which is shown in this issue, has been built by a farm paper as yet but ten years of age. It is located on one end of a two-acre tract, extending from the Water Works Park

on the east to the 18th Street Bridge

across the Raccoon River on the west.

In locating and laying out the build

ing, provision has

been made to insure an abundance of air and sunlight, and no other building can be built within 25 feet of this structure.

In its construction there were used Over 2,800

tons of crushed

stone, 3,400 tons of sand, 6,000 barrels of cement, 500,000 pieces of tile, 235 tons of steel, 2 cars of steel sash, 2 cars of window glass and 2 tons of putty. All main partitions are fireproof. No wood is used throughout the building, except for the frame work of the nine-foot partitions between the offices on the main floor, the floors in the offices and for trimming in various parts of the building.

The main floor extends 153 feet from the sidewalk to the rear of the building and 75 feet in width from east to west, with an exten

sion 25 feet wide by 56 feet deep to accommodate loading platform, freight elevator and extra stairways. All shipments in or out that may be delivered or called for by team or automobile are delivered or received on the main floor slightly above the street level. Heavy freight is delivered by gravity from the switch tracks in the rear to the heavy storage room, slightly below the railroad level and two floors below the street level.

Outgoing shipments consisting largely of printed copies of the magazine and circulars and other mail matter are made from the second floor above the street level where they are put into mail sacks, marked with the route and town and carried by gravity down a spira! chute to the waiting mail wagons below.

The waste paper and sweepings from each floor are dropped through a fireproof chute into fireproof bins in the basement. All this waste could burn at any time without the least danger to the building. A fire could destroy everything on any one floor without in any way affecting any other floor.

Four-fifths of the entire wall space of this remarkable building is glass, providing ample light and ventilation. The building is provided throughout with modern sanitary toilets finished in marble and with shower baths for employees.

On the press room floor there is a Goss perfection color press with direct motor drive, weighing 75 tons, with a complete battery of Kidder auxiliary presses.

On the second floor there are two complete

dining rooms for both men and women employees serving meals at cost.

If this beautiful modern building were merely a monument to a man or an industry. its story would not be told in the pages of this publication. It is more than that, it is an indication of the grip the clean truthfully edited farm papers have taken upon a large class of our people. And it is a sign, a mark indicating that a great industry is coming into its own, and no class of men are today more pleased and encouraged by the success of Successful Farming than Ed. Meredith's brothers and friends among the farm paper publishers of America.

A Pilgrimage

On May 2nd Ed. Meredith, assisted by fifty Des Moines bankers, manufacturers and business men entertained a group of Chicago and Milwaukee advertising men who had left Chicago by special train on the night of May 1st to spend the day seeing the city of Des Moines and the beautiful new building in which Successful Farming is now housed. The trip was unique in that among the party were a dozen or more rival farm paper publishers who had dropped their work for the day and gone to Des Moines to help Meredith show the Chicago and Milwaukee agency men a great farm paper plant and incidently a ripping good time.

The party was met at the station in Des Moines by automobiles, driven to the Des Moines Club for breakfast and entertained during the day with golf, rides through the manufac

turing and residence sections of the city and in the afternoon by a trip tarough Meredith's new work shop.

In the evening a twelve course tanquet was served in the huge ball room on the top floor of the Successful Farming building, a banquet without speeches, but touched and colored by good Iowa hospitality-what more need be said. The list of guests follows:

Mr. Watson, National Advertising Agency, Chicago; Hugh Brennan, Clague Agency; C. V. Dugan, E. H. Clarke Agency; T. Carver, Cramer-Krasselt Company; F. G. Cramer, Cramer-Krasselt Company; S. M. Davis, Stewart Davis Agency; H. B. Snyder, Charles H. Fuller Company; Otto Guenther, Guenther Bradford Agency; S. A. Peterson, Guenther Bradford Agency; E. E. Bullis, Lord & Thomas; P. V. Troup, Lord & Thomas; H. H. Mallory, Mallory & Mitchell; E. I. Mitchell, Mallory & Mitchell; J. H. Snitzler, Snitzler Advertising Agency; P. R. Finlay, Stack Advertising Agency; C. E. Raymond, J. Walter Thompson Company; P. W. Fowler, Taylor-Critchfield Company; Albert G. Wade, Albert G. Wade Agency; A. G. Wade, Jr., Albert G. Wade Agency; B. B. Ayres, American Steel & Wire Company; L. G. Suscipj, Union Carbide Company; John Andrews, Kimball's Dairy Farmer, Waterloo, Ia.; W. G. Campbell, The Fruit Grower and Farmer, St. Joseph, Mo.; William Galloway, Waterloo. Ia.; A. H. Billingslea, representative of Successful Farming, New York; J. C. Billingslea, representative of Successful Farming, Chicago; O. G. Davies, representative of Successful Farming. Kansas City; R. R. Ring, rep

Company; S. Anderson, Taylor-Critchfield Company; Charles Porter, Taylor-Critchfield Company; Fred Mann, Ladies' World, Chicago; Mr. Beck, Universal Portland Cement Company; Charles Taylor, Agricultural Epitomist; James O'Shaughnessy. O'Shaughnessy Agency; F. E. M. Cole, McClure's Magazine; W. E. McAvoy, Dunlap-Ward Agency; Mr. Morris, Woman's Home Companion; C. M. Williams, Williams & Cunningham; W. S. Jordan, Gundlach Advertising Company; H. E. Morgan, Lee-Jones Agency; W. M. Smith, Taylor-Critchfield Company; Mr. Wells, Lee-Jones Agency; L. H. McCormick, Rock Island & Pacific Railway Company, Chicago: Matt Young, Family, Chicago; P. Vroom, Chicago Tribune: Hal Ray, Assistant General Passenger Agent, Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway Company.

A Publisher

Ed. Meredith is an unusual publisher only because he would be an unusual man in any walk of life. Coming up to Des Moines, twenty years ago a big, healthy country boy of nineteen, he took over and built to success the old Farmers' Tribune. Ten years ago he started Successful Farming and has built it into

an institution. With a circulation of more than 600,000 it has become a nower in the agricultural field.

And Meredith is a power. Modest, clean and wholesome, like the publication for which he is best known, he has succeeded in building up an organization that in sheer loyalty outstrips the imagination. And it is a loyalty that counts, a loyalty not to a man nor a personality, but to the work that man is trying to do which, we take it, is about the best kind of loyalty extant.

In Des Moines they will talk to you of Meredith if you keep holding them up to it. They all know him. He is a part of the city and the state like Henry Wallace and Holden, the corn man. The banker knows him and the school children. Before the Chicago Advertising Men made the recent journey to Des Moines more than eight hundred manufacturers and

business men visited him in his new workshop in one day and on the following evening more than fifteen hundred of the rank and file cf Des Moines citizenship came to the plant to see the great presses and the great organization turning out hourly the thousands of copies of Successful Farming.

I said that these men and women would talk to you of Meredith if you hold them up to it. They prefer to talk of his work, of what he has done for his city and for his employees and most of all they like to talk of the things he will yet do.

It is an unusual and difficult thing to get a big body of men to drop their work and spend a day looking at the work of another man. The recent advertising men's trip to Des Moines was a difficult thing to do well. Meredith and his helpers did it well. When the thing was done and over with, an impression

had been created, an impression of bigness and earnestness. Two attributes, it seems to us,

that are about as gcod assets as the publisher of a big farm paper can have.

M

AY 23rd George W. Coleman, Natioral President of Associated Advertising Clubs of America, and W. R. Emery, President of the Central Division of the association, started on a record-breaking journey.

This trip was concluded in three days, and included a lively reception, addresses and executive meetings making two towns every day. Every town welcomed the two presidents heartily. They were at South Bend and Grand

Rapids the 23rd, Toledo and Detroit the 24th, Indianapolis and Cleveland the 25th.

At Indianapolis there was forced to be held an overflow meeting. At both sessions standing room was at a premium.

In Cincinnati both Mr. Coleman and Mr. Emery were presented with loving cups.

The entire tour unquestionably awakened a great amount of enthusiasm and we may expect President Emery's Division to be well represented at the Convention.