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WHY THEY

USE FARM JOURNAL

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"ALL THE TIME.'

The two following letters are samples of many received by The Farm Journal, Philadelphia, and explain, in part, why the available advertising space of this publication is usually all sold in advance:

"Up To Date Mfg. Co., Terre Haute, Ind., April 21, 1905.

Farm Journal, Philadelphia.

Gents: When we receive orders of which we cannot trace the source any
other way, we write the customer asking him where he saw our ad. The enclosed
card will explain itself and show you what your "Fair Play" Notice does. The
Farm Journal is the only paper we use all the time.
Yours respectfully, J. H. Srofe, Pres."

Up To Date Mfg. Co., Terre Haute, Ind.

"April 1st, 1905.

Gentlemen: I saw your advertisement in the Farm Journal in the latter part
of 1904. I take much interest in this paper's advertisements on account of their
"Fair Play Business Methods. I would not buy from any paper's advertisements,
unless I would know the firm to be all right, with the exception of the Farm
Journal.
V. D. D. Kuhns, Allentown, Pa.

The "Fair Play" Notice referred to is a standing card which appears on the first page of each issue of the Farm Journal. It has appeared there for 25 years, and will remain there. It reads:

"FAIR PLAY"

"We believe, through careful inquiry, that all the advertisements in this paper are signed by trustworthy persons, and to prove our faith by works, we will make good to actual subscribers any loss sustained by trusting advertisers who prove to be deliberate swindlers. Rogues shall not ply their trade at the expense of our subscribers who are our friends, through the medium of these columns; but we shall not attempt to adjust trifling disputes between subscribers and honorable business men who advertise, nor pay the debts of honest bankrupts. This offer holds good one month after the transaction causing the complaint; that is, we must have notice within that time. Medical advertisements positively refused. In all cases in writing to advertisers say, "I saw your advertisement in the Farm Journal."

On account of this Notice and the policy of “Fair Play” back of it, not one of the 500,000 Farmers, regular readers of The Farm Journal, hesitates to deal with the advertisers who use its columns. This, coupled with the practical and helpful Editorial Policy of the paper, constitutes a medium that, for gaining the trade of Farmers,

HEADS EVERY LIST.

Three more months, August, September, October at $2.50 a line. Copy must be in hand by 10th of month previous to date.

WILMER ATKINSON COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

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Take this as the vital part of the whole great
mass of advertising maxims: Get "in the spirit"
as to your subject and hold up before your mind's
There are
eye the man you are trying to move.

a hundred things to say, a thousand ways to say
them. You'll be most likely to strike the keynote
if you yourself feel that the reader will be benefit-
ed by buying the article you are trying to sell.

THE EDITORS HORIZON

THE MANUFACTURER AND THE DEALER.

S the retailer doomed to extinction? Will rapid transportation and increased facilities of communication eliminate the dealer from

business in the future?

Certainly the tendency of the times is toward direct dealing between the producer and the consumer, in every line in which such dealing is possible. Certainly the smaller retailer-especially in the country and country towns-gives every indication of a mortal fear of being wiped out of existence by the juggernaut of mail-order business. A constantly increasing number of manufacturers are endeavoring to get their business upon a direct-to-the-consumer basis, and yet if the dealer has a real function in modern distribution-if he meets an economic necessity-if there really is a place for him, and he fills it— he need have no fear of the future.

* * *

We believe there is a permanent place for the retail dealer in the business world of today and of the next century. Whether he holds that place or not does not depend upon the vigor of his howls against the mail-order houses, nor upon his success in co-operating with that Honorable man Platt of New York and Washington in blocking the Parcel post system.

His permanency depends rather upon how well he fills his place.

And how well he fills his place depends almost entirely upon the manufacturers, the jobbers, and the importers who seek to reach the consumer through the retailer.

* * *

Ability to damn the dealer seems to

be the first requisite for a position in most manufacturing concerns. From the new drummer, on his first trip, up to the Old Man himself when he passes on credits, the country dealer is consigned by everyone to the nether regions. He is unenterprising; he lacks push; he has no get-up; he is slovenly in his business habits; he is careless and lazy and everything else that goes to make a man an utter failure.

Too often he is. But it's hardly reasonable to expect a Stewart, a Wannamaker or a Field to give thirty years of his life to a little $10,000 a year business in a four corners town. If he begins to develop the push and get-up that would make a howling success of a cross-roads business, the temptation to seek a larger field of operation is too great to be resisted and he moves to some larger town, gets into a jobbing or manufacturing business and joins in the chorus of anathema against the less enterprising brethren he left behind him.

And in the meantime the country dealer lets more cobwebs and dust accumulate about his mental apparatus and his store-front.

* * *

Isn't it time-that is if we intend to utilize the dealer at all in the distribution of our products-to give him a few more boosts and a few less knocks?

A little less cussing and a little more help of the right sort, would go a long way toward solving the difficulty.

Here and there, there are dealers who need no help. Alert and wide-awake, they create trade. They are real business men; and they make money. But the average retailer is merely an orderfiller, who gets the trade that comes to

him and keeps his store open only until the sheriff swoops down upon him.

A little ginger injected into his system at the right spot, would do wonders for him.

One trouble is in the class of representatives the manufacturer and jobber has been sending on the road. They, too, are to a great extent merely ordertakers and not salesmen. They think that if they get the goods on the man's shelves or in his warehouse their work is done, and they have imbibed this idea from the business house for which they work.

That's the truth.

When you find a manufacturer who fully realizes that his future business depends upon the consumption of his goods and not merely upon his present sales, you are pretty apt to find a wideawake bunch of salesmen representing him on the road, and a wide-awake set of dealers handling his products.

Size up the business houses you know, and see.

* * *

And there is where the case is up to the manufacturer. It's a question whether he is a business man or a mechanic; a man working for a profit or a wage.

The man who makes a machine or a tooth-powder or a breakfast food for someone else to sell is a wage worker. He has nothing to do with merchandising. He is not a business man in the mercantile sense. He is just as dependent upon his jobbers or his dealers as his own day-laborers are dependent upon him.

The man who makes an article and sells it—and it is not really sold until it reaches the consumer-is the real business man, the man who owns his own trade. He is not content to get his goods into dealers' hands and get some money on them; he sees that they move, and he impregnates his whole institution from the salesmanager at the home office

to the smallest dealer who handles his article with this moving spirit.

* * *

Advertise? Of course he advertises. There is no other way to reach the consumer, but he knows that advertising is not the whole of business. He doesn't advertise with the idea that he can club the dealer into overloading his shelves with goods. He doesn't advertise with the idea of belittling the dealer or the dealer's usefulness.

On the contrary he advertises to help the dealer. He creates a demand; he awakens an enthusiasm among the consumers and he shoots out from the house another current and the dealer is caught between two double metallic live-wires of wideawakeness with a profit in sight, and he gets up out of his grave and goes to work.

A prominent manufacturer in the agricultural line who had just closed a general publicity campaign recently said: "I don't know whether that $15,000 spent in agricultural papers directly produced a single sale or not, but I know its moral effect upon our dealers was worth $25,000 to us."

You can depend upon it, though, that he didn't leave his dealers to discover by accident the fact that he was advertising.

The dealer-problem is up to the manufacturer.

* * *

A BAS THE FAKERS

If the reading public could be perfectly sure that every statement in your advertising matter is literally and absolutely true, your returns for every dollar spent would doubtless be doubled.

Of course every statement you make is true, but the public is a burnt child.

Probably Time alone-and the millenium-can solve the problem of evolving a plan by which the honest, honorable business man can put his proposition before the buying public in a way

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