"It was a strong business argument, and it may have been a wise and successful policy for us to have carried out. This advertising agent had no personal interest in the matter. He had no clients with that kind of business-he was interested in us.

"We let the opportunity pass, however, and right from the start we propose to have the advertising in Everybody's on a high plane, and as clean and respectable in every way as any magazine published. No fraudulent, no patent medicine, no Miller Syndicate, or other objectionable advertising will be permitted to appear.

"We shall decline all such business, notwithstanding the advertising income to a ten-cent magazine is a very important item with the publishers.

"And we could use the money."

JOHN ADAMS THAYER, Sec., The Ridgway-Thayer Co.

Woman's Home Companion. The elimination of objectionable advertisements from the columns of Magazines is a subject which has attracted a great deal of attention during the past few years.

The publishers of Woman's Home Companion, in common with a number of other publishers, have done much to create public sentiment regarding this matter, as we have excluded medical and all objectionable advertisements for over six years.

Here is the way we look at it. We recognize our obligation to protect the homes of our subscribers against anything appearing in our columns which might offend the highest sense of propriety established by those who are careful as to the reading placed before the rising generation. We take the ground that the advertising columns of such a

publication as ours should be as carefully edited as the reading columns.

Many publishers have been slow to recognize their responsibility in this regard, but it is one of the encouraging signs of the times that within the past year or two a number of them have been brought to view their responsibility in the right light.

Aside from the fact that subscribers of the class to whom we cater are particular in this regard, the admission of medical, unreliable or objectionable advertisements, places a severe handicap upon the editors of a publication who have high ideals as to the character of the reading columns of a publication. Every self-respecting Editor and Contributor strenuously object to having their productions placed alongside, or even in the same publication with advertisements that are not in keeping with the standards they are striving for.

Publishers of the leading magazines recognize the fact that the best advertisers of the country discriminate against publications which are not careful to exclude the objectionable and unreliable from their advertising columns.

Farm & Fireside, another publication of the Crowell Publishing Company, is also careful to exclude objectionable advertisements, and they certainly are not losers thereby.

It is a great temptation for publishers to admit advertisements of the 'shady' order, as great pressure is brought to bear by advertisers of this class to get into the columns of the best publications, and their eagerness to do so is measured by the desire of publishers to keep their columns clean.

All publishers taking the stand that we do have thousands of dollars' worth of business presented to them every month, that they are obliged to refuse. Nevertheless, the fact remains that magazines which exclude objectionable advertisements are carrying a larger volume

of business to-day than those that admit whatever is offered.

H. L. SIMMONS, Vice-Pres., Crowell Publishing Co.

Munsey's Magazine.

I recently sent out a notice to all advertisers saying:

"No more advertising contracts for whisky, beer or wine, and no more objectionable medical advertising, or objectionable anything, in fact, will be accepted for Munsey's Magazine."

The contracts on our books must be carried out where it is not possible to have them discontinued. But no new contracts of the sort to which the notice refers will be taken. The present issue of this Magazine, February, 1905, shows

FRANK A. MUNSEY

a remarkable improvement, as compared with past issues, and it will be but a few more numbers before all advertising to which the most fastidious could object will have disappeared forever from Munsey's Magazine. I think I am right in saying that this is the last number in which our contracts compel us to carry any advertisement of whisky and beer.

Moreover, a good deal of advertising of the type that is not altogether pleas

ant to the eye, has been edited out of the magazine this month. This exclusion act means the loss of, say, one hundred and fifty pages of advertising during 1905, or an average of twelve and a half pages an issue. At five hundred dollars a page, the loss of revenue from this particular source will amount to seventy-five thousand dollars during the year.

FRANK A. MUNSEY, Publisher.

Country Life in America.

Some birds that have just completed a journey of two thousand miles will best illustrate what we mean by honest advertising. A subscriber of Country Life in one of the Southern States recently bought some birds that had been advertised in the Poultry Department of the Magazine. Upon receiving them, he at once wrote to us saying they were not as represented. We immediately forwarded the letter to the advertiser and asked for a statement of his side of the case. His reply stoutly maintained that the birds sent were, in every point, as advertised. As an issue was thus squarely joined between the subscriber and the advertiser, we wrote to both that since the sale had been made through Country Life, we should have to decide the question ourselves. We had the birds sent to us in New York, and we turned them over, together with the advertisement through which they had been sold, to the most expert judge of the particular breed in America. He decided that the birds, although ordinary specimens, were not as advertised, so we returned them to the advertiser and sent our check to the subscriber, covering the purchase price. The very essence of advertising worthy the name, is square dealing. No publication worthy of the support and confidence of decent people can carry dishonest or disreputable advertising. If it does so knowingly, it becomes an accomplice in a doubtful transaction; if it does so innocently, it should do all in its power to compel a square deal, the very moment it

finds out that it has been imposed upon. In no other way can it maintain its own respect and that of its readers.

HERBERT S. HOUSTON, Advertising Mgr., Doubleday-Page Co.

Good Housekeeping.

When Good Housekeeping came under the management of the Phelps Publishing Company with the issue of October, 1900, we notified advertising agents, as well as advertisers, that all forms of objectionable advertising would be refused, and from that time up to the present, this policy has been rigidly maintained. In many instances we have gone so far as to procure the article advertised in order to satisfy ourselves that it was what it claimed to be.

In the second issue of the magazine under our management, we stated: 'Only reliable firms or individuals are allowed to advertise in Good Housekeeping. The reader can deal with them in confidence that he will be fairly and liberally treated.' We felt that if we could afford to make this statement we could afford to back it up in every possible way. So in an early issue following, we came out with our Ironclad Guarantee, which has appeared in each and every issue since, and will continue to appear as long as the magazine is published under our management.

W. A. WHITNEY, Advertising Manager.

tionable; profanity is objectionable; drunkenness is objectionable; even lying about circulation is open to some criticism. But you cannot say that an advertisement of beer is an objectionable advertisement simply because some people don't like beer; neither can you say that all patent medicine advertisements are objectionable simply because some of them don't cure what they promise to cure. If evidence goes for anything, hundreds of thousands of people have been benefited in health by what are commonly classed as patent medicines, or by their faith in them, which is the same

thing. To my way of thinking, a corset advertisement showing how to cramp a two-hundred-pound girl into a six-inch waist circumference is a blamed sight more harmful in its influence than whole acres of champagne or catarrh announcements. Don't let us strain at gnats and swallow humped-back dromedaries. The Booklovers' Magazine stands for good, wholesome intellectual life and entertainment. It will advertise anything which good, wholesome people want. That is its standard. Each applicant for space in its pages will have to stand or fall upon merit, not upon precedent.

SEYMOUR EATON.

Solved At Last.

Special to Agricultural Advertising, Cleveland, Ohio, Jan. 11th :-A walk along the cold, wind-swept shores of Lake Erie, yesterday afternoon, provoked an entire change in his advertising policy, announced Mr. M. Lee Starke, of New York City, at the Monthly Meeting of the Manufacturers' Club, at the Hollenden Hotel last night.

"I have wired to my home office to hold all ads written by me," said Mr. Starke, "until I can get this new policy of mine in working order and apply it. I have even cabled to London to stop all our foreign advertisements until this new policy, which is destined to revolutionize the world's advertising, is put into effect.

"As I was walking along the lake shore today, with the thermometer hovering around the zero point, suddenly the idea came to me in a flash that common sense should govern advertising. Think of that, gentlemen, think of that -common sense. I immediately fixed on these subheads:

"An advertisement should suggest something-should arouse curiosity, also enthusiasm. Some reason should be given for the purchase of the goods, and, last of all, the advertisement should inspire confidence.

"I have heretofore been working along a scientific line, working by theoryusing catch words, fancy ads, etc.

"Be friendly, be frank and fearless." Mr. Starke's remarks created a furore of excitement among those present, and the wildest enthusiasm was aroused among advertisers who realized that the problem they had been grappling with for years had been solved by means of a cold breeze from off Lake Erie. Advertising men, however, turned pale, for they saw that like Othello their occupation was gone, for certainly with such highly original ideas Mr. Starke cannot do other than monopolize the world's advertising business.