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Saved By A Picture!

Many waste baskets are daily filled with advertising literature that has cost much in both time and money, and which the senders fondly hope will be carefully read and preserved.

It is safe to state that most of the booklets, catalogs, etc., that are saved from an untimely end have carried attractive cover designs and illustrations. If you use Barnes-Crosby Company designs and illustrations, your advertising matter will have character-your proposition will have the attention it deserves.

-Address our nearest establishment

BARNES-CROSBY COMPANY, E. W. Houser, Pres.

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"Nothing astonishes

men so much as
common sense and
plain dealing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

THE EDITORS HORIZON

I

Are Advertising Rates Too High?

N the past year there has been much discussion among publishers and by officials of the Post Office Department as to what constitutes a journal published "primarily for advertising purposes."

Theoretically, all periodical literature is published "to fill a long felt want;" the newspaper for the dissemination of news, the magazine for the discussion of literature and art, technical journals to give news and information relative to trades, political papers for advocating political principles, religious papers to upbuild the church and spread the gospel -all with some ostensible object. But under modern conditions, with the exception of a few publications which almost could be enumerated on the fingers of a full-handed man, all modern publications are in reality published primarily for advertising purposes; that is, the advertiser bears the bulk of the expense of production and the first consideration of the publisher is how to increase his advertising patronage.

Occasionally an advertiser makes a perfunctory analysis of subscription rates and advertising rates and draws the conclusion that the advertiser is bearing too great a share of the expense of publication. He argues that a subscriber ought to be willing to pay a fair price for his newspaper and magazine, and that if subscribers were compelled to do that, advertising rates might be lower.

All of which is logical, with two minor exceptions:

First-The subscriber will not and could not pay a higher price for his periodical literature;

Second-If the subscriber did pay

more, advertising rates still would not be lower.

The publisher's profits would simply be increased.

The penny newspaper, the popular magazine, and the cheap mail-order weekly and monthly have increased the numbers of the reading public ten fold, and have made possible the vast volume of business directly dependent upon advertising.

Had daily papers maintained the old price of 5 cents; had magazines been kept at 35 cents and 50 cents per copy; had weekly journals remained at $2.00 and $3.00 per year, certainly the number of persons reached by newspapers and periodicals would be but a mere fraction of what it is today, and the time is not yet ripe even in this era of prosperity for any great advance in the price of periodical literature.

Increase of circulation is unquestionably to the advantage of the advertiser. He can buy a 100,000 circulation in one block for much less money than he could buy 100,000 circulation in ten publications, and certainly it is much better for him to reach every home or every office in a given territory than to reach a few scattering customers here and there.

That the increase in subscription income would not decrease advertising rates is equally self-apparent. In the millennium, perhaps, the business man with a commodity or newspaper space to sell will base his price upon the cost of production, but until the millennium arrives, he will continue as he has in the past, to base it upon what he can get.

Advertising rates today are based and estimated on what the advertiser can afford to pay. If a publication brings

uniformly good results, advertisers crowd into its columns and a slight advance in rates is justifiable. If, on the other hand, advertisers do not get results, they drop from the periodical's pages and the publisher finds it necessary either to increase his circulation or in some other way make his paper more effective or decrease his advertising rates.

The protesting advertiser looks at the proposition from the wrong point of view. It is worth to him a dollar, we will say, to talk to 1,000 farmers who are readers of a certain publication. If it is not worth a dollar he does not use that publication very long, but if it is worth the dollar and he continues to

use it, instead of bemoaning that a percentage of that dollar goes to produce a better magazine, a better paper, he should rejoice and be glad that the publisher expends part of the money he receives from his advertisers for better illustrations, better paper, better articles and to increase the circulation of the publication.

All this is not saying that individual publishers here and there do not demand a higher advertising rate than results justify, but their subscription price and their cost of production have nothing to do with the case. It is entirely a question of "making good." The advertising column is a salesman. If it cannot produce results, it loses its job.

Index of Advertising Rates

The advertisements of nearly all the publications appearing in this issue of AGRICULTURAL ADVERTISING contain their advertising rates. Advertisers are requested to preserve this number, as it will be found valuable as a Rate Book.

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