PLAN No. 156. BRIEFING THE BRIEFS
A middle-aged man in a western city, who had practiced law for some years in the middle west, but later drifted into the newspaper business, for the double reason that he liked it better and was more adapted to it, finally took up general publicity work as a profession and soon became recognized as a leader in his line.
Although he wrote a great many advertisements for commercial houses, medical specialists, dentists, etc., all of which were rendered usually attractive through their originality of design and their concise and forceful style, he later began to specialize on booklets, prospectuses, etc. He was engaged to prepare the matter for a number of books about to be published, in which field his ability to extract all the salient points from subjects that are often laboriously and voluminously treated, and to condense a long tiresome story into a short and interesting one, found full scope.
One day a lawyer friend of his suggested to him that he could find a fertile field for his talents in re-writing the long and tedious briefs which most attorneys submit to the supreme court for review when taking cases before that tribunal on appeal; that lawyers, as a rule, are poor writers and waste much time and effort in the preparation of their briefs, with the result that they are not apt to receive the consideration from supreme court justices that would be accorded a condensed yet accurate statement of the facts, with properly arranged citations of authorities, etc.
Profiting by this suggestion, the publicity man called upon many of the lawyers in the city and, after explaining why he believed he could greatly improve their briefs, was given a number to remodel and prepare according to his own ideas both as a lawyer and as a newspaper man. These proved so satisfactory, that he was given much work in that line by several of the leading law firms, and found his time profitably occupied.
Several rising young lawyers with political aspirations also engaged his services in the writing of newspaper articles through which their names were brought and kept prominently before the public, with the result that their progress toward a coveted goal was rendered much more rapid, and a number of them are now holding important public positions as a consequence of this well-directed publicity.
PLAN No. 157. MAGAZINE CIRCULATING LIBRARY
A lady in a western state who had considerable literary ability, yet who had not been successful in having very many of her magazine articles accepted for publication on a cash basis, concluded to try another way of making a little money out of these same periodicals.
She offered several of her manuscripts to various publishers in payment for subscription to their magazines, and these offers were as a rule gladly accepted, so that she was constantly in receipt of the latest publications. She had many neighbors who also liked to read magazines, but did not feel able to subscribe for as many as they wanted, and most of them would not borrow them from her.
This afforded her an opening to launch her pet scheme of starting a circulating library with her surplus stock of magazines. So she had a number of circular letters typewritten, announcing that for a small monthly rate she would loan all her periodicals to the members, rotating them so that each would have an opportunity to read them all during the month. As the charge was very reasonable, and the benefits to be derived from the plan so great, practically every family within a radius of twenty miles promptly subscribed.