The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-04-24
TESTIMONIALS OF CURE.
THE CONFESSIONS OF ONE WHOSE
 BUSINESS WAS TO GET THEM.

They Must All be Genuine, and Neve Purchased--But Sometimes Tact | Required for Securing the Righ
 Thing.
 | I worked once for a big proprietary medicine concern in an eastern state ! They paid me fat salary, gave me . room that looked as though it had beer 1 fitted up for the president of a trust | company, and sent a good-looking stem l ographer to do my bidding. Admission | to my den" was strictly by card 1 which gave me great advantage over 1 the laundry people and the tailor. For something like year and a half l be-
 longed to the plutocracy. The concern 1 had plant that occupied a block of ground. It took thirty-three steno- Sraphers to attend to it's correspond- ence and it's yearly sales were consider ably in excess of q million dollars. Ev- cry year the advertising manager put more than five million dollars back into | the newspapers, and during the heat of | the spring and fall campaigns the con- cern carried advertising in eleven thou sand publications
 l was the advertising writer and the
 boss testimonial gather. A boss testi- nonial gatherer is man who induces governors, judges and bishops and others of the elect to put their names to foe ,i,1-. .l,. 4
 medicine. Testimonials from the cmall-
 CT fry are usually sent in gratuitously,
 or are picked up by the regular travel
 ing men of the firm. In cases where di-
 plomacy, suavity, geniality and perse-
 Verance are required to land a man the
 expert is sent out and told to take his
 time. He is not expected to account
 strictly for the money entrusted to his
 keeping. What the concern wants is a
 testimonial; it doesn't care for expense.
 1 didn't know living thing about
 writing advertising when I went to
 work for the JiIes Restorative Heroine
 company. I got the job on fine exhi-
 bition of nerve, which was superinduced
 by the fact that I needed the money.
 The Jlles people manufactured seven
 different remedies although the Restor-
 ative Heroine was their piece de resis-
 tance. I figured it out once that the
 seven different remedies which the firm
 manufactured were, taken collectively,
 a cur for one hundred and siXty-six fa-
 tai diseases. Reduced to it's simplest form their proposition was that you simply couldn't die if you had bottle
 of each of their seven remedies in the
 house.
 There is a mistaken idea about patent medicine testimonials It is believed by many that they are bought and paid for the same as any other commodity. There's nothing in this theory They are all genuine-at least l never knew of one that wasn't. They are not pur- chased outright, nor indirectly, for that matter. It may cost considerable mon- ey to secure one, but the man who gives the testimonial receives no didect fee
 Practically, every person takes pa tent medicine at some period of his eX- istence, A great many persons receive either lasting or temporary benefit-or, at least. they think they do, which amounts to the same thing to the house Many persons feel so grateful that they give a testimonial gladly. Others have to be handled carefully, but in the end nearly all sign their names to state ment if the right man hands them the pencil The trick in the testimonial trade is this: the smart testimonial gatherer doesn't allow the victim to write his own testimonial. He inter- views him in newspaper style and writes the testimonial himself, after which the victim signs his name to it. There are weak spots in nearly every mans story of how he was saved from the grave. The testimonial gatherer knows how to conceal these weak spots without mangling the truth, He knows how to bring out the strong points Withaut apparent exaggeration. That's all there is to it. During my career in the interest of better health and more of it I landed a United States senator, a governor, several congressman and judges of greater and lesser degree, bishop and smaller fry, world without end I spent a barrel of money doing it. But 1 never paid a dollar directly for a testimonial The best they ever got from me in the way of direct fee was an order on the local photographer for eleven dozen pictures, I paid the pie ture man for a dozen, and sent one of them to the house to be used in making l cut for the testimonial.
 Judge Ozias Strong was a parsonage If great candle power in one of the IT. inois river counties. The travelling man in that territory tipped it off to the house that the judge had derived much benefit from Heroine and I was sent down to get his signature to the usual document. l made friends with he local druggist and assured myself .hat the travelling mans 'hunch" was 10 pipe" Then I went to see the judge. He was a pompous, dignified gentleman, who habitually wore silk nat with a sack coat. l broached the Heroine business gently and diplonati- ally and the judge shut up like clam. He denied that he hadever been sick in lis life He assured me that he had l never heard of my medicine until l | mentioned it myself, and he expressed | II vigorous language his opinion of any nan who would allow himself to be car catured in the newspapers in the man. ! Ter in which I suggested l was but not dsheartened. I had , ,een against that game before. So l |