Morning journal and courier., 1891-02-09

n anne Of the trustees or the Zion A. M. E. | church He decamped with the money. the remaining $1O the court has decided | that Mrs. Aston must pay
 BILLING THE TOWN. Ono Days Operations Showing the |
 Method of Hill Posters.
 Theatrical contracts are usually made in August and last until the season ends. | The general price per week for ordinary stands is five cents sheet for stand work, three cents sheet for small work, and special prices for special stands, says a writer on bill posting in the New York Herald. For each stand the theater gives every month slip of four billboard" tickets containing four admission tickets, one for each week. The bill posters mail these to the persons from whom they rent the stand privileges as part payment. They receive the theatrical bills direct from the printers on Wednesday of each week. These bills are distributed and are then prepared for posting.
 This is artistic work. Some of the posters cannot be read readily, and many of the bills contain great deal of printed matter. The bills are each divided into three or more strips, forty-two by twenty eight inches in size. These are so folded that when the poster unfolds them the first.sheet he takes off goes to the top of the board, the second follows it and so on until the bottom is reached. The men start out every morning when they have posting to do at seven o'clock, under the direction of their foremen. They have regular routes to cover, and they know them perfectly. Where the stands are on fences there is usually a ladder behind the fence that can be used. On some stands two men are required, as is the case with the boards at South Fifth avenue and Blocker street, the highest stand in the city. One steadies the ladder while the other does the posting. The work is usu- ally finished in the afternoon and the working day ends at six. For this work the poster gets twelve dollars week and the foreman from twenty to twenty-five dollars. When the paper is destroyed by storm the posters do the work over again for nothing, provided new paper is sup piled.
 The most interesting part of the bill posters work, however, is done at night. There are many business concerns that want to get their paper in all sorts of places, such as on ash barrels, coal boxes and other movable objects along the side walks. To do this work requires nerve and agility. The men must run chances, and desperate chances they are, some times. The portion of the city that is to be billed is divided into routes and the posters start out at nine o'clock, armed for business. They go down one street and up another, pasting the "snipes" on whatever surface presents itself. Often a policeman interrupts their work, and still more frequently an irate merchant comes out of his store and protects his property from defacement by blows and kicks. For this night work extra pay is given.
 "We have done some rather peculiar work since we have been in business" l continued my friend, the managing part ner. Several years ago, during the excite ment in Congress about southern outrages, we got an order from a merchant to send out squad of men and put up "snipe'' that attracted about as much attention in New York the next day as anything of the sort l have ever seen. It was white pos ter with u red shirt in the center. Across the shirt was printed The Bloody Shirt; that was all. We started out at ten o'clock, and by morning there was not an ash barrel or coal box, or vacant fence up town, that didn't have one of these bills on it. No one knew what it meant until a | few days later, when it was explained in the newspapers in the advertising columns.
 "A somewhat similar thing was done by Barnum when he had his show in the American Institute building We put out in one night one hundred and fifty thou sand snipes with the single word 'Zazel
 printed on them. Some persons the next day thought it was the name of new l book. Others thought it was patent
 medicine ad. At the end of week Bar mum explained in his advertisements that
 Zazel was the name Of a woman who was
 shot out of 8 cannon in his show.
 "We have had some big contracts
 Several years ago 8 weekly story paper
 paid us seventeen thousand dollars fol
 billing one story all over this country
 When certain patent medicine that is not
 being pushed just now was being worked
 for all it was worth we got ten thousand
 dollars year for work done in this towr
 alone. Since the cigarette mapufacturers
 have combined that branch of the bushes.
 has fallen off to nothing. Once there was
 mint of money in it. The excursion steamboat companies and summer resor people pay us lot of money, but the bes customers we have are the circus and out
 door show people. They buy our spac
 and do their own work, and the only linn
 to their space is the length of the boards They want it all and they have ts pay fo
 it."
 "How about distributing Autograph and such paper?'
 stWe don't do much with it. There i
 very little money and no satisfaction in it A few years ago when distributor took handsome Autograph into a store the mer chant begged an extra one to be framed
 Now you could take an oil painting in, an, the first question asked would be, 'Hoy many tickets do I get for this?' The the } aters have spoiled that kind of work fo anybody else. One thing more. Do yo
 know what one of our biggest losses is
 No. We'll, it comes about election tim , and the boys make it. The loss is in tn , billboards and fences that are used t.
 build street fires with, and you have n
 idea how it foots up."