The record-union., 1896-02-12
ART OF ADVERTISING.
Great Skill Now Required to Make 1t
Successful.

Great Skill Now Required to Make 1t
Successful.
The development of the art of adver-
tising during the last four or five years
has been very remarkable. The news
paper advertisement has changed rad
ically both in form and character 1t
is no longer bald and dry announce
ment of private business, to which a
great part of newspaper readers gave
no particular attention, but has become
an interesting feature of the journal
and compels everybody's observation.
This is because the advertisements of
all extensive advertisers are now pre-
pared more carefully and skillfully with
regard toboth their literary construction
and their typographical display. They
are better written and they are more
artistic in appearance. They present
more attractively and strikingly the Pc
culiar features and advantages of the
business or articles advertised. They
give information valuable to the public
in a form and a manner that make it
readable also Advertising space is
costly in all newspapers in which it is
worth while to advertise, and conse-
quently such business announcements
contain only the words necessary to
produce the desired impression. There
is no redundancy in them. Every word
is made to tell, and therein is the secret
of the most effective writing. The ex-
preston of many of these advertise
ments nowadays is so far picturesque
that they attract the reader simply by
their literary art In typographical
form, too, they are made to command
attention. No reader of a newspaper
can pass them by. They force them
selves on his notice, and he is as likely
to read them as any other Of the con-
tents of the paper.
The result is that the names and
situation of New York business houses
which are large and regular advertisers
in the leading journals are better known
to the people than many of the most i'm
portant of the public buildings. and their
fame extends throughout the Union and
even reaches to foreign countries. So
far as mere publicity goes, they are the
equals of the statesmen and Generals
of the widest distinction. Everybody
knows of them and of the departments
of trade and manufacture in which they
are engaged. Strangers in town visit
their establishments from curiosity, if
rot also with the original purpose of
making purchases Residents here who
formerly gave little or no heed to busi-
ness advertisements are now guided al
most wholly by those announcements in
buying supplies.
AT present there is much complaint
among small dealers with a merely
neighborhood trade that these great es-
tablishments are drawing away their
business. OF course, it is so; but the
reason why such concerns are monopo
lizing trade is not that they are using
unfair means to absorb the patronage
of their petty rivals. They have no
monopoly of the method by which they
draw to themselves the trade formerly
distributed among great numbers of
little shops. There is no secret about the
cause of their vastly large volume of
business. The way to it is open to
everybody else. The profitable distinc-
ton they enjoy was secured by adver-
tising. Except for it, every one of them
would now be doing a comparatively
and even an actual petty trade. Their
names would be unknown beyond linn
tied neighborhood and by a small num-
Der of customers. Their gain, also, thus
obtained, has been for the public advan-
tage. for the concentration of business
brought about because of the distinc-
tian secured by advertising has tended
directly to the lowering Of prices. They
are able to conduct their vastly in