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death in the newspapers serves to call forth a grotesque own sense of propriety, but by fear of offending the sense variety of circulars supposed to be adapted to the momentof propriety in their customers. of the recipient. Posters and placards in railway stations and upon aryInneeds concluding this review of methods of advertising, public vehicles still embarrass the traveller who desires to other than advertisements in periodical publications, we find the name of a station or the destination of a vehicle. may add that the most extraordinary attempt at advertIn respect of all these abuses it is a regrettable fact that isement which is known to exist is to be found at the unpopularity cannot be expected to deter the advertiser. churchyard at Godaiming, Surrey, where the following If a name has once been fixed in the memory, it remains epitaph was placed upon a tombstone :— there long after the method of its impression has been Sacred forgotten, and the purpose of advertisements of the class To the memory of under discussion is really no more than the fixing of a Nathaniel Godbold Esq. trade name in the mind. The average man or woman Inventor & Proprietor who goes into a shop to buy soap is more or less affected of that excellent medicine The Vegetable Balsam by a vague sense of antagonism toward the seller. There For the Cure of Consumptions & Asthmas. is a rudimentary feeling that even the most ordinary He departed this Life transaction of purchase brings into, contact two minds The 17th. day of Deer. 1799 actuated by diametrically opposed interests. The purAged 69 years. Hie Cineres, ubique Fama. chaser, who is not asking for a soap he has used before, has some hazy suspicion that the shopkeeper will try to The preparation of advertisements for the periodical sell, not the article best worth the price, but the article press has within the last twenty years or so become so which leaves the largest margin of profit 5 and the pur- important a task that a great number of writers Adver_ chaser imagines that he in some measure secures himself and artists—many of the latter possessing con- tising in against a bad bargain when he exercises his authority by siderable abilities—gain a livelihood from this periodical asking for some specific brand or make of the commodity pursuit. The ingenuity displayed in modern he seeks. If he has seen any one soap so persistently newspaper advertising is unquestionably due to advertised that his memory retains its name, he will ask American initiative. The English newspaper advertisefor it, not because he has any reason to believe it to be ment of twenty years ago consisted for the most part of better or cheaper than others, but simply because he the mere reiteration of a name. An advertiser who took baffles the shopkeeper, and assumes an authoritative a column’s space, supplied enough matter to fill an inch, attitude by exerting his own freedom of choice. This and ingenuously repeated his statement throughout the curious and obscure principle of action probably lies at column. Such departures from this childlike method as the root of all poster advertising, for the poster does not were made were for the most part eccentric to the point set forth an argument as does the newspaper advertise- of incoherence. It may, however, be said in defence of ment. It hardly attempts to reason with the reader, but English advertisers, that newspaper publishers for a long merely impresses a name upon his memory. It is possible, time sternly discountenanced any attempt to. render by lavish advertising, to go so far in this direction that advertisements attractive. So long, as an advertiser was the trade-mark of a certain manufacturer becomes synony- rigidly confined to the ordinary single-column measure, mous with the name of a commodity, so that .when the consumer thinks of soap or asks for soap, his concept and so long as he was forbidden to use anything but the inevitably couples the maker’s name with the word “ soap ” smallest sort of type, there was very little opportunity for to attract the reader’s attention. The newspaper itself. In order that the poster may leave any impression him must always remember that the public buy a upon his mind, it must of course first attract his atten- publisher newspaper for the sake of the news, not for the sake of tion. The assistance which the advertiser receives from advertisements, and that if the advertisements are the artist in this connexion is discussed in the article the relegated to a position and a scope, in respect of display, Posters The fact that the verb “ to circularize ” was first used so inferior that they may be overlooked, the advertiser in 1848, sufficiently indicates the very recent origin of cannot afford to bear his share of the cost of publication. the practice of plying possible purchasers with Of late The Times, followed by almost all newspapers in Advertise- printed letters and pamphlets. The penny the United Kingdom, has given the advertiser as great a degree of liberty as he really needs, and many experienced ™rc«/ar. postage was not established in England until advertisers in America incline to the belief that the larger 1840; the halfpenny post for circulars was not introduced until 1855. In the United States a uniform license accorded to American advertisers defeats its own rate of postage at two cents was not established until ends. The truth would seem to be that the advertiser 1883. In both countries cheap postage and cheap printing will always demand, and may fairly expect, the right to have so greatly encouraged the use of circulars that the make his space as fantastic in appearance as that allotted sort of people whom the advertiser desires to reach—those to the editor. When some American editors see fit to who have the most money to spend, and whose addresses, print a headline in letters as large as a man’s hand, and to published in directories, indicate their prosperous con- begin half-a-dozen different articles on the first page of a dition—are overwhelmed by tradesmen’s price-lists, appeals newspaper, continuing one on page 2, another on page 4, from charitable institutions, and other suggestions for the and another on page 6, to the bewilderment of the reader, spending of money. The addressing of envelopes and it can hardly be expected that the American advertiser enclosing of circulars is now a recognized industry, in should submit to any very strict code of decorum. The many large towns both in Great Britain and in the United subject of the relation between a newspaper proprietor States. It seems, however, to be the opinion of expert and his advertisers cannot be dismissed without reference advertisers that what is called “general circularizing ” is to the notable independence of advertisers’ influence, unprofitable, and that circulars should only be sent to which English and American newspaper proprietors persons who have peculiar reason to be interested by their authorize their editors to display. Whenever an insurance specific subject-matter. It may be noted, as an instance company or a bank goes wrong, the cry is raised that all of the assiduity with which specialized circularizing is the editors in Christendom had known for years that the pursued, that the announcement of a birth, marriage, or directors were imbeciles and rogues, but had conspired to