The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1914-07-16
LOCAL PAPER AS
HOME CHAMPION
Great Aid In Fighting Mail
Order Houses.
THE POWER OF THE PRESS

Printing Press Can Do For Home
Merchants-How to Make the Best
Use of a Very Efficient Weapon In
Fight For the Home Market.
copyrighted, 1914, by Thomas ]. ,Sullivan.1
In former days superstitious rites
were used to exercise evil spirits, but
in our times the same effect is attain
ed and beyond comparison more eff
fectually by the newspapers. Before
the talisman ghosts, vampires, witches
and all their kindred tribes are driven
from the land. never to return. Moth
ing is so intolerable to them as the
smell of printing ink.
New Element of Power.
What gunpowder did for war the
printing press can do for the local mer-
chants who are competing with the re-
tail mail order houses, but the first
step toward enlisting the aid and
friendship of the editor is to Under
SCdAu LudL nc Is iSduy W DOOSt Ills
home town all the time and that every
dollar expended with him for advertis-
ing will return dollars worth of ben
eft or more. He asks no favors of
any one; he has dollars worth to sell.
and he can deliver the goods every
time.
The invention of printing added
new element of power to the race.
From that hour the brain and not the
arm, the thinker and not the soldier,
books and not kings, were to rule the
world; the weapons forged in the mind.
keen edged and brighter than the sun
beam, were to supplant the sword and
the battleax.
Power of the Press.
The press is not only free; it is
powerful. That power is ours. 1t is
the greatest that man can enjoy. It
was not granted by monarchs; it was
not gained for us by aristocracies. but
it sprang from the people, and with no
immortal instinct it has always worked
for the people.
Not infrequently are the editors
themselves to blame for the general
impression that the chief value of a
local paper is an evidence that the
town is fully alive and fully up to
date.
White Space His Stock In Trade.
The publishers stock in trade is the
white space in his paper which he
has to sell. the value of which the
merchant can determine by his efforts
to make good use of it, not by a little
four or six inch adj once a month, but
by good, large, well prepared ad. run
ming week after week.
The local merchants and towns
people who are fighting the retail mail
order houses can find no more valuable
all than the local editor
The local merchant can do business
on smaller margin of profit than the
mail order house, as his expenses are
less. He does not need to carry such
a large stock, as he knows his people
and their desires, and he knows and
can prove that he can sell better goods
for the money than the other fellow.
How to Get Results.
No doubt the principle reason why
few merchants say that advertising in
local papers does not pay is because
they themselves make small use of the
space they buy. This is the day of
bargains, and consequently the space
in the paper attracts attention. Give a
little time and thought to the prepare
ton of your ads. The merchant who
will do this will get results and will
no longer have cause to complain of
the local press being no good as
drawing medium.
!. - .. ~ sssf
How MANY of them employ modern