Los Angeles herald., 1910-01-23
The English Elections
II-PONitics ON BiHlboards
Bv Frederic j. IEaskin

| ticle published during the Boer war
about Mr.. Lloyd George. The present
chancellor of the excheqAer was not 81
supporter of the war; and he was billed
TO speak at a pro- Boer meeting in Bir-
mingham. He got to the hall, but was
not permitted to speak by the crowd.
The article alleges that he escaped bod
lily injury only by leaving the hall dis
guised as a policeman.
The Tory poster is divided into two
parts and bears the command: Look
on this picture and then on that!" one
half shows LloW1-George in a police
mans uniform sneaking away from the
birmingham hall, and the other half
shows a South African kopje with the
graves of the titled soldiers who gave
UP their lives for England in the strug-
gle with the Beers. No poster issued
during the whole campaign so much de-
lighted the Tories as this one. A little
/ later the Conservatives issued poster
showing a peer at the telephone, con-
nected with the British voter, saying
| Hello! Are you there? We will put
the budget up to the people for their
verdict
Each party issued about FIVE hundred
different posters, each one being sent
out in different sizes. There was much
rivalry-to obtain positions on the board
ings, and the English landscape has
been marred by flaming posters in
many places heretofore sacred from
the intrusion of the man with the paste
bucket. The lords did their part by
giving up their walls.
The poster campaign was very eX-
pensive. Series after series was issued
and new posters were put UP almost
daily. 1t is impossible to estimate the
total cost of the work in advance of
the publication on the election ex-
penses, but it will amount to several
hundred thousand dollars.
If an American politician who has
been actively connected with the
national headquarters of either the
Republican or Democratic party should
walk into the national headquarters
of either the Liberals or the ConserVa-
tiyes, and should inquire into the
poster business. he probably would
fall dead at the first reply. For the
national headquarters do not send out
these posters. They are prepared and
printed for the national association
which corresponds to the American
national committee, and then they are
sold to the public at profit! What
would Mr. Frank H. Hitchcock or Mr.
Norman E. Mack think of that? And
not only is this true of the posters, but
of the thousands of different pamph-
let's, leaflets, speeches and other COM
paign literature.
Each candidate for parliament buys
the literature for his own constituency
and pays for it. In the United States
each candidate for congress. demands
the literature from the committee and
asks for money besides. Not only the
candidates but the people generally
buy the posters. The newspapers pub
lish price lists, and the people are in
vited to purchase and post the pictorial
a fInfr lid
voters buy one, two or three posters at
cost of from to 10 cents, and post
them at their respective homes.
One Liberal newspaper solicited sub
scriptions to a Gladstone centenary
fund. The subscription was begun De-
cember 29, the hundredth anniversary
of the birth of the Grand Old Man, for
the purpose of buying and putting up
posters. over $4,000 was contributed
to this one poster fund in less than
two weeks time. The national head
quarters permit the individual candi-
dates and the party at large to do all
the worrying about the campaign
funds. How would Mr. Hitchcock and
Mr. Mack like that?
The English people are proud of
their conservatism, and they are equal
ly proud of their up-to-dateness. The
chief director of campaign publications
of the Liberal party sat at his desk in
an underground room opposite the
parliament house and explained the
psychology of the poster in politics.
No man could be more progressive,
more modern, more abreast of the
times. He decanted on the powerful
appeal of the picture to the human
mind, carefully pointing out the intro
duction of the aeroplane and the new
est type of Dreadnaught as back
grounds for party preachments. But
he did not note the anachronism when
he recorded an order for two thousand
flying machine posters with a qufll pen!
This progressive Radicals desk boast
ed no fewer than three dozen old
fashioned goose-quill pens.
The Conservative First Lord of the
Posters" deplored the modern tendency
to the bizarre in billboard art, but he
wrote with a fountain pen made in the
United States Old England will be
Old England still in spite of every mod
ern contrivance, and in spite of a dozen
such Battles of the Billboards as she
has just witnessed.
TOmOrrOw-The English Elections;
III: The LlOyd-GeOrge Budget