ABSTRACT
Enthusiastic newspaper men who seek a short paragraph to fill a column sometimes set up the copy book phrase, “Advertising always pays.” Advertising means to proclaim, to make known, and surely no one can do business unless he causes some others to know what he can do to serve them. Still, it is true enough that much good money is paid for advertising, that so far as the advertiser can see, is wholly barren of result. There was at one time a child’s magazine, published by a firm named Hurd & Houghton, and I had been led to buy the space on the outside cover page for the period of a year, hoping to sell it at a profit. A day for forwarding copy had arrived and no copy was in hand. We had an electrotyped picture representing the counting room of our agency; and taking this, and adding a few lines to tell what an advertising agency was good for, we dispatched it, to save our space from going to waste, and that was the last we heard of it or ever expected to hear.
