The underlying cause of this advance, however, is the fact that the untiring search for improvement has not been confined to the printing industry; other lines of commercial activity, scoring their triumphs, turned to the printer for exploitations by combinations of types, cuts, and paper so original and artistic as to compel attention and merit preservation. To this demand the printer was quick to respond. He became in many cases a designer, and firms were organized, with and without plants, to make a specialty of designing artistic combinations of types and material. This class of designing printers was practically a product of the late years.

Leaping beyond the narrow limits of the modest and ugly circulars, leaflets, and handbills of two generations ago, the business community thus educated itself, through the activity of the period, to demand, for advertising purposes, the most beautiful products of the press.

In the realm of bookmaking no striking changes were recorded, but the advance in good taste and artistic beauty of product was a marked characteristic of this branch of the industry. Fashions in bindings changed annually, but a widening range of materials and patterns, more daring use of designs and inks, and the invention and general use of automatic binding machinery supplemented improvements in printing, permitting lower prices for books and promoting phenomenal sales. It is a significant coincidence that the years which witnessed extraordinary advance in all details of mechanical production in this industry should be characterized also by the most noteworthy advance in the good taste and appreciation of the general public.

AMERICAN ADVERTISING.

BY A. L. THOMAS.

[Ambrose L. Thomas, late president Lord & Thomas advertising_agency; born Thomaston, Me., January 10, 1851; educated in public schools of Boston, Mass.; began business career as a boy in the office of the Boston Traveler; he then engaged with an advertising agency in Boston with which he remained ten years; in 1881 with Mr. Lord started the advertising firm of Lord & Thomas, in Chicago, which has become the largest concern of the kind in the world.]

Any notice, verbal, written or printed, intended to convey information to the public, is an advertisement. The literal interpretation, from the French advertissement or the Latin ad verto, is to turn (the mind or attention) toward; to make known; to give notice. By popular use the word usually means a paid notice or an announcement in a printed publication, or posted for public view; although a circular, privately published and publicly distributed, for the purpose of making a business, legal, or other announcement, is an advertisement. Social announcements, as of weddings, are advertisements; but advertising for the purpose of promoting business is the popular meaning of the word and has, in itself, become an important and profitable enterprise. Advertising is the term applied to the act of promoting business by public announcement, and the extent to which this has been carried, as the result of successful efforts, has created the advertising business, with its advertising managers, solicitors, writers, experts and agents. The man or company whose business is promoted by advertising is termed an advertiser. Publications in which advertisements appear are called advertising mediums, or media. Paid advertising did not exist, so far as is known, until the sixteenth century, having originated, probably, in Germany. In less than three centuries it has come to be a business of such importance as to be classed among the great industries of the world, and has surpassed many, as old as civilization. This youngest of great enterprises has attained its highest development in the youngest of great nations— the United States of America. A very conservative estimate

places the amount expended for advertising in the United States during 1904 at $600,000,000. Necessities and luxuries of life to the amount of over one hundred and fifty millions of dollars are usually purchased through advertisements in the Chicago daily papers, alone. It is impossible to estimate the number of advertisements issued in a year in American publications, but they would be numbered in the billions.

To know the superiority of American over European advertising, as to quality of illustration, taste and impressiveness in display and convincing force in argument, one has but to open, side by side, magazines published, respectively, in the different countries. In spite of the older civilization enjoyed by European nations, America has outstripped them all in the quality of work which can be produced in a very limited time, and in nearly all work which is the result of mechanical processes. Some European art has never been excelled or equalled by Americans; but in all essential phases and processes of advertising, America has so far outstripped every other country as to make comparison almost impossible, except to show foreign advertising and methods to be very crude in comparison with American.

That other nations recognize the superiority of United States methods of advertising is evidenced by the investigations of American advertising methods by foreign countries, several consuls having been instructed to study the subject and make full reports. Vice-Consul Thomas Erksine, of the British consulate in Chicago, recently reported impressively to his government that American methods must be studied and adopted if Great Britain was to hold its own trade, particularly in its colonies, where American competition bids fair to become keen. The Spanish consul has also made full report on American advertising methods, saying that there is as much advertising done in Chicago, alone, as in an average European country. Governments of Europe have discovered the value of scientific advertising in business and are endeavoring to awaken the people to the adoption of American methods. Marked improvement is noted in English methods during the past two years in particular.

Advertising, in the literal sense of the word, dates from God's first proclamation to Adam, "Behold, I have given you," and it has been done by kings to their subjects, generals to their armies, lords to their vassals and vendors to their trade, since creation. Advertising by word of mouth, by cries and heralds, is recognized as the earliest method of proclamation. Next came the parchments of Israel, giving the utterances of kings. Early Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks and Romans inscribed signs which told of battle victories. Signs over shops and trading stalls seem to have been the first advertisements in the nature of business promotion. Street advertising by sign was done in Rome and the practice of a distinguishing sign grew until, in the middle ages, each place of business had its emblem. Houses in similar lines of business were often grouped in the same street, hence the need of a different sign for each shop, as a hand over the door of every glover, for instance, was little aid to a patron seeking his favorite shop. With the demand for distinguishing signs came the sign painter, whose announcements upon walls were seen long before the printing press existed. In fact, the bill board may be said to be a relic of those publicity methods necessitated by the absence of other mediums until the invention of the printing press and the discovery that it could be utilized to the mutual advantage of advertiser and reader, for placing the business announcement in the hands of the latter, attractively and explicitly. It is therefore difficult to separate the history of advertising from that of the press, for advertising and printing have aided and promoted each other.

The first newspaper was, supposedly, the English Mercurie, published in Elizabeth's time and bearing the date of 1583. The oldest known newspaper paragraph approaching an advertisement appeared in 1591, in an old German news book. The paragraph relates to a book and concludes: "Magister Cunan has published it and Matthew Welback has printed it, in Wittemberg. Let whoever does not know the meaning of this (portent) buy the book at once and read it with all possible zeal."

There is good reason to think the French have the honor of first finding the way to newspaper advertising as a profitable

business. The Journal Général d' Affiches, better known as the Petites Affiches, was first published, 14th October, 1612. Judging from its title it would appear to have been, as it still was in 1890, an advertising medium, for announcing public or private sales of property or for making known any domestic or personal events, including advertisements for servants and helpers, and for positions by those in search of employment. Hence the want ad. is as old as advertising.

In England, the following advertisement appeared in the form here given, in the January number of the Mercurius Politicus, 1652:

REDONIA GRATULATORIA, an Heroick Poem; being a congratulatory paneTo be sold by John Holden, in the New Exchange, London. Printed by Tho. Newcourt, 1652. Notices for thieves and runaway apprentices soon became common, but these and advertisements of books and some quack medicines were the only important advertisements until, in the issue of Sept. 30, 1658, appeared the following first advertisement of a food product, also the first authentic notice of the fact that tea was publicly sold in England:

TH

HAT Excellent and by all Physitians approved China Drink called by the Chineans Tcha, by other Nations Tay alias Tee, is sold at the Sultaness Head Cophee House, in Sweetings Rents, by the Royal Exchange, London.

Numerous advertisements in this Mercurius Politicus bring us face to face with one of England's brightest poets, John Milton, the advertisements of whose books were modestly signed J. M.

Up to this time italics are the only display noticed; but on the 28th of June, 1660, in the Mercurius Publicus, appears the pointing hand in an advertisement, proclaiming the loss of a dog from the kennels of King Charles. On the following day appeared the similar display with text said to have been by King Charles himself:

We must call upon you again for a Black Dog, between a Grey hund and a Spaniel, no white about him, onely a streak on his Brest, and Tayl a little bobbed. It is His Majestie's own Dog, and doubtless was stoln, for the Dog was not born nor bred in England, and would never forsake his master. Whosoever finds him may acquaint any at Whitehal, for the dog was better known at Court than those who stole him. Will they never leave robbing His Majesty? must he not keep a Dog? This Dog's place (though better than some imagine) is the only place which nobody offers to beg.

It was nearly two hundred years after this before advertising and the press came to their own, owing to the heavy