Pine Bluff daily graphic. (Pine Bluff, Ark.) 1893-1942, 1916-05-27
A Private View.

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If any. of you retail dealers OF lum-
Der or if any other person in this as
sembly desires to know just about
what the editorial mind of Arkansas
thinks Of the retail lumber business
as individuals will give him private
view into the mysteries of that brown
pile of literature which contains
copies Of over so of the leading daily
and weekly newspapers of Arkansas.
Once on a time I INDUCED in the
rare indoor sport of reading aloud
from a pile of papers of about that
size just the things the editors had
to say of the lumber retailers and in
doing so without any volition on my
own part that act abolished the rest
Of the program at that meeting for
that day.
Jones wanted to know what Smiths
editor thought of him, and in one case
I remember that Smiths editor did
not think much of Smith, and pointed
out that when Smith had started into
business in his town, Is years before
he had put a little dirty-faced inch
advertisement into the editors paper,
and that now it looked like a piece of
star plug tobacco locked up in the
form, and the editor allowed further
that Smith was Gas an advertiser)
simply a dead jimpson weed in the
fence corner AS compared to CEN
fury old oak when considering Smiths
enterprise in connection with the en-
terprise Of the local undertaker-for
the local undertaken took his adver-
Using in half-page doses and even
changed his copy now and then.
No, cannot reveal in public way
hn NF f1,ic de- tl,A A1,Jyn
sas editors, l can only give you as |
ions and their hopes and their crit
icisms, but l can say to you retail
lumbermen of Arkansas, few things
that may have said before once on
time. It doesn't matter if they were
said before, the truth never hurts and
the truth never dies, and SO | want to
tell you that the proper application of
advertising methods to the retail lum-
Der trade would in itself, if it could be
made national dissipate the national
feeling that there is lumber trust
that is-they can surely patronize in
an advertising way their local news
papers.
Yes, and it does not matter either
how local those papers are, how small
they are or how few people take them,
not one of them should again be
printed in any town where retail
lumber yard exists without carrying in
it's columns some big, bold, black
faced type statement of few bar
gains that the local retail lumberman
desires to have brought to the atten-
ton of his public.
Your country paper, your county
weekly, is just as much a part of your
civilization as are your railroad facil
tiles, the paving of your streets, the
making of your good roads or the
buildino Of your churches or attend
ance at the same.
No newspaper, magazine, or any
kind of periodical has ever been able
to stand I'D and do things for its sub
scribers, for its community, and for
it's general clientele without generous
advertising patronage as the sinews
of war.
/ If lumber advertisement to the ex-
tent of a quarter or half page could
paper in the United States, tomor-
row morning, and kept there with
frequent changes of copy for the next
six months, that would be the begin
ming of change Of sentiment and
mental attitude of the people in the
{ United States concerning the lumber
business, which could not be pur-
chased in any other known wa.
Il The little Washington-pressed, sub
scri,tions- paid-in-vegetables country
newspaper has it's place in the up
buildin~ of communities, which cannot
be taken from it, and which the retail
lumbermen of the country have, am
glad to note, begun to appreciate in a
very substantial manner, and which
they have got to appreciate vastly
more before we are ever altogether
set right as business in the eyes of
the great neople of this country, who
think the unutterable things of us,
which they now do think, and which
they have been induced to think, very
; largely because we have been lacking
in the art of the proper advertising
of what we had to sell.
And thus endeth one little lesson in
"Selling Things"
William Graves Sharp, the Ameri
can ambassador at Paris, is GONZALES