We began to push Cloverdale hard. There wasn't an advertising scheme that Perkins did not know, and he used them all. People would open their morning mail, and a circular would tell them that Cloverdale had an ennobling religious atmosphere. Their morning paper thrust a view of the Cloverdale Club-house on them. As they rode down-town in the street-cars, they read that Cloverdale was refined and exclusive. The bill-boards announced that Cloverdale lots were sold on the easy payment plan. The magazines asked them why they paid rent when Cloverdale land was to be had for little more than the asking. Round-trip tickets from Chicago to Cloverdale were furnished any one who wanted to look at the lots. Occasionally, we had a free open-air vaudeville entertainment.
Our advertising campaign made a big hit. There were a few visitors who kicked because we did not serve beer with the free lunches we gave, but Perkins was unyielding on that point. Cloverdale was to be a temperance town, and he held that it would be inconsistent to give free beer. But the trump card was our guarantee that the lots would advance twenty per cent, within twelve months. We could do that well enough, for we made the price ourselves; but it made a fine impression, and the lots began to sell like hot cakes.
There were ten streets in Cloverdale (on paper) and ten avenues (also on paper); and Perkins used to walk up and down them (not on the paper, but between the stakes that showed their future location), and admire the town of Cloverdale as it was to be. He would stand in front of the plot of weeds that was the site of the opera-house, and get all enrapt and enthusiastic just thinking how fine that opera-house would be some day; and then he would imagine he was on our street-car line going down to the library. But the thing Perkins liked best was to go to church. Whenever he passed one of the corner lots that we had set aside for a church, he would take off his hat and look sober, as a man ought when he has suddenly run into an ennobling religious atmosphere.
One day a man came out from Chicago, and, after looking over our ground, told us he wanted to take ten lots; but none suited him but the ten facing on First Avenue at the corner of First Street. Perkins tried to argue him into taking some other lots, but he wouldn't. Perkins and I talked it over, and, as the man wanted to build ten houses, we decided to sell him the lots.
We thought a town ought to have a few houses, and so far Cloverdale had nothing but the Club-house. As we had previously sold all the other lots on First Street, we had no place on that street to put the First Street Church, so Perkins rubbed it off the map, and marked it at the corner of First Avenue and Fifth Street.
The next day a man came down who wanted a site for a grocery. We were glad to see him, for every first-class town ought to have a grocery; but Perkins balked when he insisted on having the lot at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Sixth Street that we had set aside for the First Methodist Church. Perkins said he would never feel quite himself again if he had to think that he had been taking off his hat to a grocery every time he passed that lot. It would lower his self-respect. I was afraid we were going to lose the grocer to save Perkins's self-respect. Then we saw we could move the church to the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fifth Street.
When we once got those churches on the move, there seemed to be no stopping. We doubled the price, but still people wanted those lots, and in the end they got them; and as soon as we sold out a church lot, we moved the church up to Fifth Street, and in a bit Perkins got enthusiastic over the idea, and moved the rest of the churches there on his own accord. He said it would be a great “ad.”—a street of churches; and it would concentrate the ennobling religious atmosphere, and make it more powerful.