It is a curious fact that, aside from the country weeklies, the papers most plentifully besprinkled with medical advertisements are the yellow journals, the religious weeklies, the socialistic and other propaganda organs, and in general those which preach most vociferously reform and the brotherhood of man.
The danger from the advertising columns is not, as I have said, that the advertisements misrepresent the goods, but that the terms on which they are solicited tend to commercialize the whole tone of the paper and make the editor afraid to say what he believes. The advertiser is coming more and more to look on his patronage as a favor, and he seldom hesitates to withdraw his advertisement if anything appears that may injure his business or interfere with his personal fad or political ambition.
Let me give you some examples of the withdrawal of advertisements to punish too daring and independent editors.
A few weeks ago the paper which, in my opinion, has the ablest editorial page in the country lost some very valuable musical advertising because it had published letters of a decidedly compromising nature, written by a man high in the musical world to a lady who was suing him for damages. Another paper, which many consider the brightest in America, discharged its dramatic critic after a theatrical firm had taken out all their advertising. But strange to say, as soon as a new critic was engaged, the advertising was forthwith resumed. I refrain from giving the name of this newspaper because one brave and witty little weekly published the story with names and dates, and is now being sued for libel.
"Life" states that in Cincinnati, lately, every theatrical advertisement in all other newspapers carried this line:—
"We do not advertise in 'The Times-Star.'"
The paralyzing power of advertising is again exemplified in the case of a New York evening paper which was so much interested in the popularization of bicycles that it organized the first bicycle parade ever held in the city. Just before the day of the parade, however, it printed an article telling the people that it cost only some fifteen or twenty dollars to manufacture bicycles that sold at from seventy-five to one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Instantly all the bicycle advertising was withdrawn, and the paper lost thousands of dollars.
The New York "Evening Post" some years ago offended the department stores by some utterance it made about the tariff, and they withdrew their advertising. The "Evening Post," instead of quietly backing down, started in to fight single-handed, calling on the public for aid. The personal friends of the editor, Mr. Godkin, and a few loyal readers rallied to its support, and threatened to boycott the stores. But the public as a whole and all the "Post's" esteemed contemporaries, as might have been anticipated, enjoyed the conflict from a safe distance and minded their own business. The department stores not only refused to make terms, but in some instances carried the war into the enemy's territory by stopping the credit accounts of those customers who took the "Post's" side. It was only after a very great financial loss and many years of estrangement, that most of the stores came back to the "Post," and it was long before the old relations of cordiality were entirely reëstablished.
The department stores are seldom or never referred to unfavorably by the New York papers. When an elevator falls down in an office-building and somebody is injured, the headlines ring to heaven. A similar catastrophe in a department store is considered of hardly sufficient human interest to publish. The name and shame of a woman caught shoplifting in a department store can seldom be kept out of the papers. A department store caught overworking and underpaying its sales-girls—well, that is of no public concern. One of the most striking articles I ever printed recounted the experiences of a sales-girl in one of New York's department stores, yet it was unnoticed by the New York papers, which are quick enough to republish and comment on such articles when we print them, as "Graft in Panama," "Peonage in Georgia," or "Race-Prejudice in California."
Four years ago, in our annual vacation number, we advised our readers to go back to their boyhood village, buy the old homestead, and take a vacation on the farm, abjuring the summer hotels with their temptations to spend money, their vapidities and artificialities, manufactured lovers' lanes, and old cats on the piazza. This so offended a few hotels that they have never since advertised in "The Independent." I will not tell you their names, but you can find out by noticing what hotels are not represented in our advertising pages.