Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/465



to discriminate between the technical error, consciously made, that results in truth and the deliberate error that results in falsehood.

The illustration is becoming more and more a feature of the

advertisement and hence is increasing in value as historical material. When it was first used as an accessory of the advertise ment, it was a simple conventional cut of a house, irrespective

of the actual house offered for sale, or whatever could be readily standardized in a printing impression ; while to -day the demand is for an illustration of the specific house or building offered for

sale.76 But it is noteworthy that the New England newspapers very early recorded the regional interest in shipping since specific forms of ships were indicated in connection with the sailing lists

printed.

The illustration as now used in connection with the advertise ment often purposely varies from the article nominally illustrated. The complaint is frequently made by business houses that rival firms copy their patterns that are unprotected by patent, adopt

their styles, or steal their fashions, and hence the illustration is used to suggest general lines rather than the specific details of the articles advertised, artistic sketches take the place of the too-accurate photograph, and picturesque hints that appeal to

the imagination are substituted for the matter-of-fact representa tions of articles advertised. Since the illustration is thus used in the advertising pages or columns of periodicals to give specific informa

tion intended to persuade readers to purchase the articles 76 J. Richard Beste describes the illustrated advertisements in the Daily Indiana State Sentinel and among others those " of the railroads that

preface their notices by little prints of smoking engines, which show, by the by , the driver, as everywhere on American lines, standing under a shade to protect him from the sun and the rain .” — The Wabash : or Adventures of an English Gentleman 's Family in the Interior of America, I, 284. That the illustrated advertisement has ever been quick to avail itself of whatever new interest is uppermost in the mind of the public is seen in the descriptions he gives of the illustrated advertisements in the Daily Indiana State Sentinel, including one “ of a great boot upon wheels, smoking like the

funnel of a steam engine, and followed by four shoes of different sizes racing after it on wheels, while 'Fairbanks' exclaims, 'Clear the track' and bids you 'call and examine for yourself' his supply of boots and shoes.” — The Wabash