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 in the course of one year, and that a year not characterized by any great war to swell the ordinary volume of cable despatches.

In the case of daily papers sold at the minimum price, it is not less obvious that the costliness of news service renders advertising revenue indispensable, for although these less important journals spend less money, the price at which they are supplied to the news agents is very small in proportion to the cost of their production. If, however, this thought be pursued to its logical conclusion, the advertiser must admit that he in turn receives, from those among newspaper readers who purchase his wares, prices sufficiently high to cover the cost of his advertising. So that the reader is in the curious position of directly paying a certain price for his newspaper, receiving a newspaper fairly worth more than that price, while this price is supplemented by the indirect incidence of a sort of tax upon many of the commodities he consumes. On the other hand, a great part of the advertisements in a daily newspaper have themselves an interest and utility not less than that possessed by the news. The man who desires to hire a house turns to the classified lists which the newspaper publishes day after day, and servants and employers find one another by the same means. The theatrical announcements are so much a part of the news that even if a journal were not paid for their insertion they could not be altogether omitted without inconvenience to the reader. In the main, however, it is the advertiser who seeks the reader, not the reader who seeks the advertiser, and the care with which advertisements are prepared, and the certainty with which the success or failure of a trader may be traced to his skill or want of skill as an advertiser, show that the proper use of advertising is one of the most indispensable branches of commercial training.

Before discussing in detail the methods of advertising in periodical publications it may be well to complete, for the use of the general reader, a brief survey of the whole subject by examining the two other classes of advertisement. The most enthusiastic partisan of advertising will admit that posters and similar devices are very generally regarded by the public as sources of annoyance. A bold headline or a conspicuous illustration in a newspaper advertisement may for a moment force itself upon the reader’s attention. In the French, and in some English newspapers, where an advertisement is often given the form of an item of news, the reader is distressed by the constant fear of being hoodwinked. He begins to read an account of a street accident, and finds at the end of the paragraph a puff of a panacea for bruises. The best English and American journals have refused to lend themselves to this sort of trickery, and in no one of the best journals printed in the English language will there be found an advertisement which is not so plainly differentiated from news matter that the reader may avoid it if he sees fit to do so. On the whole, then, newspaper advertisements ask, but do not compel attention. The whole theory of poster advertising is, on the other hand, one of tyranny. The advertiser who pays for space upon a hoarding or wall, although he may encourage a form of art, deliberately violates the wayfarer’s mind. A trade-mark or a catch-word presents itself when eye and thought are occupied with other subjects. Those who object to this class of advertisement assert, with some show of reason, that an advertisement has no more right to assault the eye in this fashion than to storm the ear by an inordinate din; and a man who came up behind another man in the street, placed his mouth close to the other’s ear, and bawled a recommendation of some brand of soap or tobacco, would be regarded as an intolerable disturber of public peace and comfort. Yet if the owner of a house sees fit to paint advertisements upon his walls, his exercise of the jealously guarded rights of private property may not lightly be disturbed. For the most part, both law and public opinion content themselves with restraining the worst excesses of the advertiser, leaving many sensitive persons to suffer. The National Society for Checking the Abuses of Public Advertising (known as ), founded in 1893 in London, was organized for purposes which it describes as follows:—

The influence of this society is to be seen in many of the restrictions which have been imposed upon advertisers since its work began. About a year after its foundation the London County Council abolished (under statutory powers obtained from Parliament) advertisements coming within the definition of sky-signs in the London Building Act of 1894. These specifications are as follows:—

The act proceeds to exclude from its restrictions flagstaffs, weathercocks and any solid signs not rising more than 3 feet above the roof.

Another by-law of the London County Council, in great measure due to the observations made at coroners’ inquests, protects the public against the annoyances and the perils to