Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-09-20
FOR PRINTERS INK
Business Men Of the United States
Spend $114,0O0,00O a Year.
ADVERTISING Is NOW A SCIENCE.
The Middlemen OF Agents Are Making ANY
Amount of Money.
ODD FACTS ABOUT THEIR BUSINESS
rcoHRrsrosprScn OF THE D1spArcz.l

tne country newspaper VINO gets NC"
York advertisement set in pearl or agate
type and an offer of so much job type at com.
mercial rates, or gross of patent medicine
in payment for a certain number of inser-
tions at the top of column next to reading
matter; and who must set the same .mattel
in nonpareil taking twice the space and
finds at settlement day that more than hall
the time checked off against him by reason
of the 'ad" not being set or inserted 40.
cording to contract, knows what q New
York advertising agency is. A good many
other people do not Yet the advertising
agent is now one of the most important fac
tors of all spectators in printers ink.
Upwards Of S114, 200, 900 are now en-
pended in the United States every year for
advertising in periodicals and newspapers.
That Is very large sum, and if the cash
laid out in hand-bil poster, billboard ink
and rock and fence paint were added the ag-
gregate would be much larger. Advertising
expenses are now estimated by every busi-
ness man as one Of the primary and neces-
sary items in conducting a successful busi-
ness, the same as rent, clerk hire, etc.
Oh1G1N Op OOLOoo<Ab pOh1 ON11os
Yet modern advertising is quite as far in
advance of what it was quarter of a Gen.
tury ago, as is the general character Of CON-
mercial life itself. The shrewd busines.
men who have been quickest to recognize
this have made colossal fortunes; those who
have not caught the spirit of the times have
been left stranded and broken upon the
shifting sands of competition.
The extraordinary growth Of advertising
systems in this country is an index of the
modern commercial spirit and prosperity.
The fundamental principle was never bette,
expressed than to me day or two ago by
one of the greatest and most successful ad-
vertisers in the United States: 'There is
more money in an indifferently good article
well advertised than in the best thing kept
in q corner"
There are now a dozen large advertising
agencies in New York besides numerous
lower grades, with an aggregate invested
capital of about 81 ZOO, 900. Thirty years
ago the advertising agent as such was un-
known. From spasmodic and uncertain
ventures advertising has
BECOME AN EXACT SCIENCE
in the sense employed in commercial trans
actions. There are quite number of New
to $50, 900 a year for advertising expenses.
A. T. Stewart, in his day the most success
full dry goods merchant in New York, used
to spend 500, year in letting people
know what he had to sell. A score of the
best New York houses lay out about S25, 900
each year in the newspapers alone and
rightly consider the amount well invested.
A new store of prominence goes consider
ably over that amount and from $40, 900 to
$50, 900 in advertising the first year is not
considered extravagant.
Among the many liberal advertisers In
the metropolitan press their efforts at s., 900
or So, 900 month would probably not ex-
cite remark. The competition of merchants
for space Is what makes the immense
Sunday issues possible and
proftabie-the subscription price scarcely
covering more than the cost of the white
paper. Two hundred dollars per column in
these issues is not thought too much for the
returns on the expenditure On evening
papers the prices run from $50 to 500 per
column.
ADVERTISING CONTINUOUSLY.
This newspaper space is mostly taken by
local merchants and business men ofall kinds.
But there are certain men and business
firms and articles advertised that are familiar
to every householder in the civilized world,
and these can be found in almost every
in the world, every periodical,
and on the rocks and fences wherever civil
lied people can be found. They are so COM
mon that they even disarm the hostility of
the blue pencil of the editor, great and
small who has constitutional objections to
advertising anybody or anything except
through the commercial channels Of the
business office.
Mark the morali Do these great adver-
tisers act on the narrow principle OF many
merchants and cease or curtail these
vast expenditures on the ground that every
body knows them and what they sell, and
that therefore continued efforts in this line
is q waste of money! Not bit of it They
know better. They not only keep at it, but
increase their advertising bills They re-
double their efforts and invent new schemes
with the dull season and thus stimulate
trade. By doing so they add to
their fortunes.
ARTICLES THAT NEVER DROP OUT.
What man, woman OF child .of inte11i-
gence but knows of Pears Soap, Hoods
Sarsaparilla, Hop Bitters, Carter's Little
Liver Pills, Pyle's Pearline, Sapolio,
Beecham's Pills, Douglas So shoe, Mrs.
Winslow, Mrs. Harriet Hubbard Aver,
Lydia Pinkham, and scores of other similar
people and things that are launted in the
face at every turn? Do they drop out of
the list? Not at all. Yet 100000 a year
seems very tidy sum. A man can get lots
of fun out of 800, 900, and why put it in
printers ink every year? Because expert
ence shows the money thus paid out yields
q rich harvest and that to withdraw the e1-
penditure is to withdraw from the CONNER
cial race.
The newspapers who preach advertising
have made money by practicing
what they preach. From From the Is first
who advertised the New York Ledger
BY columns and pages in his scoPtemporaries,
70 the rival daily newspapers of this city
who use each others pages for the same
purpose every week, there have been con-
,picuous examples of the newspaper faith
IN newspaper advertising. When a metro
politan newspaper pays 81 900 over
THE COUNTER OF A RIVAL
Tor single insertion of display advertise
nent it is about the highest testimonial of
belief in the efficacy of ink. Bonner used
20 place the opening chapters of his Ledger
stories in the most widely circulated pa
oers and pay reading-matter prices. He
paid out thus systematically all the money
received over expenses, and the result was
he founding Of a great story paper, and
inally fortune that enabled him to pay
300, 900 for one of his pleasure horses.
Other story paper publishers subsequent
y outdid Bonner, and one spent 200 on
! single issue of his paper to be given away
on the street corners in every city of the
Union simultaneously. The result was i'm
mediate, and the new paper became at
,nce one of the most widely read in the
United States. This is but an example
Illustrative of newspaper faith in the adver-
Using doctrine. Every successful newspa-
Der in New York to-day owes that success
IS much to its enterprise in letting the pub
ic know it existed and exists as in its en-
erprise in printing a good newspaper.