Red River prospector. (Red River, Taos County, N.M.) 1900-190?, 1904-09-15
MAILING CIRCULARS
1T HAS BECOME AN IMPORTANT
BUSINESS.

Sent to Two Million Farmers-One
Firm May Send That Many to Re-
tail Dealers in One Week-Two
Hundred Employees Prepare Them
for the Mails-List Of Six Hundred
Thousand Names-Many Circulars
Sent With TWO Cent stamps-Mil-
lions Mailed for Political Parties.
Occasionally do you get a circular
letter. brazenly open, with only a one
cent stamp on it. or sealed in a neat,
plain envelope, bearing a two-cent
stamp?
II you don't. there are 100000 farm
ers in the United States who do, and
perhaps as many men i'm a score of
line of business who do. For one Of
the great developments of the last
twenty years is the circular mailing
business, through which one house
send out 100000 circular letters in a
week for one wholesale firm, reaching
dealers in a certain line of business in
every city and town in forty-five states.
Each of these letters viii be addressed
to the dealer in person, signed in ink
by the letter writer for the wholesale
firm, and sealed in an envelope with a
two-cent stamp on It. Yet only the
signature will have come from the
house sending it out, and this fact will
make the cost of such wholesale letter
writing seVenty-hve per cent less than
any method possible to such a firm.
Such wholesale letter writing and
such a percentage Of saving ON the
cost of it indicate the status Of the
afpntr1ou 1affof. a1Hrpagfnu npnpppn in
the business world, and hat the bust
ness is increasing steadily every year
is an indication of its future.
Twenty years ago it began in Chi
cagO. The typewriter just then was
displaclng pen and ink, and blotting
pads and penmanship were coming to
be classed with labor. Somebody dis
covered that n circular letter could be
printed in imitation of typewriter
print, that the date and name of adj
dressee could be written into 1t from
a typewriter. and n signature append
I'd in a most c~onvincingly personal way.
That was the beginning. To-day there
is a circular addressing firm in Clark
street, near Randolph, which can send
out 100000 such letters in ten days,
putting 200 employees to work on the
IOD IL ltttNNdl " anu AHohAAAS hAI
merchant fCf whom the work is done
that every letter sent out will reach n
man who has a creditable rating in
Dun's or Bradstreet's. If some mail
order house wishes to reach farmers,
the firm has a list of 100000 in the
United States. of which 100000 are in
the state of Iowa. If some wholesale
firm in almost any line of goods wishes
" ....I ...,a,afIIA -IAa1aVu In afffng
and towns under 100000 population,
this circular distributing house can put
the wholesale dealer in touch with tens
of thousands of them in a week.
The general store in the small city
or town is by all odds the most writ
ten-at business in the country. Its mail
box in the country p%ostoftice always is
stuffed full of mail from the circular
writing agencies. But even political
campaigns are aided by these agencies.
Last spring in Chicago both parties to
the municipal contest were served by
this Clark street agency and 100000
circular letters were rushed out for
them in ten days.
In this circular writing business Chi
cago has a disposition to leave off the
personal address TO the letter and to
use the Olt-Cenl pOSldSe Sltlup' Now
York, on the other hand, finds bust
ness methods in using plain white en-
velOpes, sealing them, and putting on
a two-cent stamp.
"'There is 4 certain letter that 1 can
always spot as coming from n New
York ~agency,5' said a well known ply
stefan the other day. Here's II Of
them" and t9aring open the plain, neat
envelope he disclosed only printed mat
ter, dealing with the national question
of the sugar tax. o
MANY an envelope carried by a one
cent stamp is tossed away without be-
ing opened" said a circular writing
agent. still there is such a sharp diff
ference IN the cost of the two kinds
of mail matter that one-cent stamps
are most generally used. The neces-
sity Of the addressed letter and the
two-cent stamp, Of course, depends
largely on the thing advertised and the
class of persons to whom it is au-
dressed"