The Penn's Grove record., 1914-03-20
their fellow citizens before your press day
comes around.

their fellow citizens before your press day
comes around.
Besides, as | have said, old man Ayers
can't afford. to waste much time chasing
news. He has to get a living for himself
as well as for the democrat" and keep
ing both his family and the paper alive is
a distinct feat performed weekly. His
pay roll for a foreman and two girls must
amount to over fifteen dollars q week,
and that means cold solid cash which
must be wrnng from a reluctant public.
Seems to me | never go into a store that
don't see old man Ayers trying to collect
a little cash on an advertising account or
w~leedling a subscriber into coming out oil
the misty past and creeping cautiously
down q few years toward the present on
his subscription account. II there is any
thing which we can't do without and for
which we positively object to paying real
money, it is our home newspaper. Sim
Bone has a roaring shoe business and pays
cash for his automobiles, but he has often
told me that payingg good money for paper
advertising would be as wasteful as eat
ing it. He carries Ri ad in the "Demo-
crat" all the year and changes it about
every six months. It's July now and he is
still advertising bargains in overshoes-
but he won't pay any money. Ayres has
to trade the account out, as he has to do
with every other advertiser in the town.
People pity the poor ministers families
who have to live on the scrambled pro-
ceeds of donation parties, but an editors
family in our parts has sven harder luck.
| have seen Ayres order two suits of
clothes from the clothier who owed him
a big bill and was getting wabbly, and
then pass by the meat market empty
handed because his advertising account
there was traded out. He told me once
that he has taken disk plows, Haxseed,
magazines, encyclopedias and a new back
porch in trade for advertising and SUBJ
scriptions, but that he has been wearing
All obsolete pair of s~pectacles, to his great
discomfort, for ten years because our local
ieweler will not advertise. The doctors in
town carry cards in the paper and W
him large amounts because his family is
too healthy to catch up with them; but it
will be two years before either OF u
local dentists accumulates a big enough
bill to allow Mrs. Ayers to have some
very necessary construction and better
ment work, as the railroad folks say, done
to her teeth.
If it weren't for the patent medicine
ads, Ayres tells me he wouldn't be able
to keep afoat for want OF ready cash. He
says a patent medicine man may be an
a~bomination before the Lord, but that a
patent medicine advertising agent looks
to him like a very present help in time of
trouble. The agent comes in and beats
him down until he agrees to publish
several hundred yards of notices rex to
pure reading matter on all sides for FL
teen dollars. But the fifteen dollars il
cash-he doesn't have to take the stuff
in trade. And so we are forever running
into such thrilling headlines as Horrible
Wreck, !" "Her escape was simply mar
velous," "Worse than the Titantic Dis.
aster," in the Democrats local page.
And then we exclaim, "Hurray | Real
news at last" and prowl eagerly down
the items only to find that the horrible
wreck was a citizen of Swamp Hollow
upon whom a wonderful cure was affect
ed; that "HIer escape was from iniama-
tory rheumatism by the aid Of Gettem's
Dead Shot Specific, and the Titantic
Disaster is eclipsed annually by the sad
ends OF thousands Of people who neglect
to take Palaver's Punk Pills. II always
makes us mad, but we can't kick. If ii
weren't for tile patent medicine people
we would have to pay for the "Demo-
craft all by ourselves.
70 20 continued