within the reach of a bright person, male or female, that offers equal promise of money return. There must be fish or you can not catch them. There must be a field to sow, or there can be no harvest. A glance at conditions will prove that there is a great and multiplying opportunity for the competent advertiser.

I estimate that fully $4,000,000 is paid out annually in New York and Brooklyn for department and specialty store advertising. Philadelphia and Chicago put out at least $4,000,000; Boston, Baltimore, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Washington, Cleveland, and New Orleans expend a total of not less than $5,000,000. It is probable that the other cities of this country with stores large enough to warrant the employment of advertising writers or managers put out as much and probably more. All of this counts to upward of $18,000,000 paid out for this class of advertising alone in the United States in one year.

Patent medicines, food products, drinks, and tobacco in various forms are articles on which a great amount of advertising money is annually expended. One concern has made an advertising appropriation of not less than $750,000 for the current year. Several others rise to $500,000 each, and the number that expend anywhere from $150,000 to $350,000 is surprisingly large. Then there is a wilderness of others, many experimental, some struggling to the front, and others well established, that devote from $10,000 to $100,000 a year to advertising. I would not be surprised if more than $12,000,000 annually was put out in this country on those lines.

Another class of advertising that at times occupies large space in the papers, and is always in evidence to some degree, is that devoted to financial propositions ers, reorganizations, bond issues, mining ventures, properties, and the like. It is the most impulsive and

mergoil

erratic advertising of all, and its amount is very difficult to estimate, even approximately, but my guess would be that it equals the total of the preceding group; or, say, $12,000,000.

Here we have a grand total of more than $42,000,000 paid each year for advertising, practically all of which is prepared by hired talent. My belief is that more than $50,000,000 worth of advertising in the United States is put out every year by individuals or concerns, for the preparation or placing of which salaries are paid.

This amount will increase rather than decrease as the years go on. There will steadily be more advertising and better advertising. And there seems to be little prospect that the ranks of the strictly first-class advertisers will ever be overcrowded.

I have been in the very storm center of departmentstore advertising for more than eighteen years. I have seen the entire development of modern methods in such publicity, and to-day if I were asked to recommend a man for a leading store I should not know where to turn to find a competent man out of a job. I do not know of ten advertising managers who are strictly first class. Yet there are salaries of from $10,000 to $15,000 or more at the command of such people.

The writing facility is only one of the equipments a department-store advertising manager should possess. He must have the mercantile instinct or he can never be a great advertiser. It is not necessary for him to know merchandise familiarly, but he must have such a commanding sense of conditions that he will instinctively realize what presentation of the case will be wise for the seller and attractive to the buyer. Such a man has the capacity to be at the head of a big business. One without that capacity could not rise to the necessary level as

an advertiser. In the few instances where men of that grade are at the head of advertising departments, they are exceedingly significant factors in the outfit.

Coming down to the mass of advertisement writers, it will be found that a certain command of language and a superficial knowledge of type faces are their principal equipment. For such people it is not at all difficult to make a fair showing as advertisers. Stock phrases abound in the advertising of the day, and with eyes open they can see good models in all branches of the work. They can command from $15 and $25 to $50, $75, or even $100 a week according to the size of the house and the advertisers' skill in adopting and adapting.

Several years ago an advertiser of country-wide fame said to me, "When I was preparing to go into the advertising business I took a copy of a Philadelphia paper every day and cut from it your Wanamaker work. This I clipped and pasted in scrapbooks according to the general subject. In the course of four years I gathered matter in this way to make half a dozen fat scrapbooks. Then, when I went into business and got an order for a series of ads, on clothing or boots and shoes or carpets or jewelry or dress goods, or any one of sixty or seventy titles, I took down a volume of Gillam and dictated to a stenographer the matter I required." Lots of business men do it.

What is most needed in the advertising business to-day is men or women of originality of method and expression, and with the trading instinct as well-minds that are impatient of precedent, that see nothing attractive in mossgrown methods, that can grasp conditions as they exist and say the right thing instinctively. The late Charles B. Rouss of New York afforded an instance of the advertising strength of earnestness, even although tied to

ragged, peculiar, and ungrammatical language. His advertising was simply a setting forth of his business talk odd, quaint, jerky, but stuffed full of hard common sense. His business methods and his business talk went hand in hand to great success.

I know of no training better for a young man who wishes to get a clear view of business conditions and possibilities than would come from experience as an advertiser.

There are great opportunities for the ambitious, wideawake young man or young woman. To any such who feel that they have a call to the advertising business, and who do not know where or how to begin, I would say: "Take any advertising in your vicinity that you think you can improve. Write the improved version. Write other advertisements that will hold up new phases of the business, or hold the familiar ones up in a better way. Study the enterprise. Try to know why one method of presentation is better than another, and why this or that particular idea should be put forward. Then go to the management. You will be sure of a hearing, at least, and if your ideas are valuable, rest assured that the chances are they will be appreciated. In any case, don't be discouraged. Keep pressing against the crust, and sooner or later you will surely break through — upward."

BY C. L. CHAMBERLIN

HEN a young man has decided to enter the commercial field as a traveling salesman there are many things for him to learn before he can hope to attain any pronounced success. He may have been a retail salesman, he may have made house-to-house canvasses in the old-time way, but, before he can hope to be a success from the point of view of his house as well as of himself, there are many things which he must have studied carefully and seriously.

The first thing, perhaps, is a personal study, a study of his own characteristics, his lines of strength as well as his limitations. Not every one is endowed with the faculties which go to make up a successful salesman on the road. He may be pleasant, a good talker in a social way, may possess a vast fund of general knowledge and a good education in the schools, and yet be a failure as a traveling salesman.

The best preparation which the young man can possess is a good, sound physique and a pleasant disposition. He must be able to take a rebuff without taking offense. An over-sensitive man never yet made a good salesman. He must possess plenty of determination to hang on in spite of opposition. Of course a good education is a necessity these days as it is to one engaged in any calling or occupation in order that one may use good English in conversation with those who are able to judge along this line. 1 From "The Book-Keeper." Copyright, 1910, by the Business Man's Publishing Company, Detroit.