310 



R O R T I (J L T U H E 



October 11. 1919 



ABOUT BILLBOARDS. 



A Strong Letter from J. Horace Mac- 



Farland. 



September 30, 1919. 

 Dear Sir: 



To the inquiry in the September 

 L'Ttli number as to how I will "view the 

 project of the Society of American 

 Florists to put up billboards all over 

 the country for advertising flowers," 

 you need be in no uncertainty. 



The project is an evidence, and a 

 sad evidence at thai, of the lack of 

 business acumen within the controll- 

 ing councils of the Society of Ameri- 

 can Florists at a lime when the 

 Shrewdest and ablest advertisers are 

 quitting the billboards. Because the 

 billboards are no good for advertising- 

 purposes, good salesmenship on the 

 part of the billboard concerns pulls 

 over the "easy marks" who can be 

 fooled by noise and spread and do not 

 require to be "shown." 



The idea of spending this money will 

 be, of course, to improve the business 

 situation of the florists who contrib- 

 ute it. Every other form of advertis- 

 ing known to man, even including that 

 involved when the young doctor has 

 himself called out of church in the 

 middle of the sermon, is operated on 

 the basis of tracing results, save only 

 the billboard. A careful inquiry among 

 large advertisers several years ago 

 brought out the clear-cut statement 

 that no one had ever been able to 

 trace good results to billboards as ad- 

 vertising media save Burrowes, the 

 fly screen man, and he only while his 

 billboards had been maintained a 

 quarter of a mile away from all other 

 billboards. Most of the other adver- 

 tisers who replied to this inquiry ad- 

 mitted they were getting out of that 

 relationship and using other methods 

 which were more profitable. 



The theaters have quit mostly, and 

 nearly all good business men have 

 quit. Articles of which the advertising 

 is not admitted in decent magazines 

 are seen on billboards. "Say it with 

 Flowers" gets into very dirty and un- 

 pleasant company when it joins with 

 the fraternity who can't make a noise 

 anywhere else than on the billboards. 



I believe that there is less possible 

 return for each dollar expended in 

 billboard advertising by at least 50 

 per cent than for any other method of 

 attaining publicity. If the Florists have 

 scads of money and do not care w-ho 

 gets it, they are from the standpoint 

 of the acute advertising expert of to- 

 day, quite in line in blowing it on bill- 

 boards. 



But there is another side to this 

 matter. The billboard is primarily an 

 insult, and it is being so regarded by 

 whole cities and by the courts. For 



NEW IMPROVED IRIS 



Single root* 

 per |mt 

 100 12 



(AI'IIKB, silky purple J6.00 $ .»5 



HER MAJESTY, brat clear pink 6.00 .85 



MONnIGNOK, velvety purple 10.00 1.10 



LOHENGBIN, silvery mauve 10.00 1 .10 



QUEEN ALEXANDRA, new lavender 10.00 1.40 

 HIIKIN NIXK, white anil raspberry 10.00 1.10 



lsdi.INK, opalocent lilac 20.00 3.00 



I'AKIMANA, mottled lavender 20.00 3.00 



No order accepted lor less t hit n .S2.no. Not 

 less than of one kind at the 12 rate or Less 

 than 25 at the 100 rate. No charge for pack- 

 ing. 



Send for catalogue of Peonies and Iris. 



PETERSON NURSERY 



30 N. LaSalle St., Chicago, 111. 



example, there has just been put into 

 effect in Cincinnati an ordinance 

 which permits the utter exclusion of 

 billboards from residence districts by 

 a majority vote of the populace. This 

 follows similar action in Chicago. 

 From that city the billboard interests 

 appealed their case to the State Su- 

 preme Court and then to the United 

 States Supreme Court, and they got 

 what was coming to them in the high- 

 est court in the United States, which 

 declares the billboard to be under the 

 police power, to be subject to regula- 

 tion in just the same fashion as the 

 saloons were subject to regulation, 

 and easily to fall under the designa- 

 tion of a public nuisance. 



St. Louis has within the last ten 

 years reduced its billboard area, by 

 fighting through the courts a controll- 

 ing ordinance, to less than one-fourth 

 the announcements that used to line 

 the streets of that active city. Here 

 again the billboard humbugs fought 

 clear to the United States Supreme 

 Court, and their stupidity was success- 

 ful in having that great law-construing 

 body put the billboard in the nuisance 

 class. 



Los Angeles has recently taken a 

 fall out of the billboard, and so has 

 Milwaukee. All over the country 

 cities are legislating against bill- 

 boards. 



Why is this? The answer is plain: 

 Because the billboard is a nuisance, 

 an annoyance, a damage to property, 

 an insult to a beautiful land, an un- 

 fair and unpleasant twisting of a pre- 

 sumed constitutional privilege to do 

 as one pleases with anything one can 

 reach. 



The billboard sells the eyes of the 

 public, or thinks it does. Evidence is 

 not wanting that at present the tide is 

 turning so that the sort of publicity 



secured on the billboard is the same 

 sort of unpleasant publicity that the 

 booze-makers and booze-sellers got by 

 combatting the movement against the 

 saloon. 



The gentlemen who are guiding the 

 advertising campaign of the Society of 

 American Florists have evidently mis- 

 taken notoriety for publicity and are 

 running chances for reverse action in 

 their efforts. Flowers must be sold 

 to women more than to men. It is 

 the women's clubs all over the land 

 that are usually found in the lead 

 against billboard intrusions, though 

 latterly chambers of commerce and 

 business bodies have had to fight 

 against their activities. To be effective 

 the billboard must be placed in a 

 prominent position. It frequently shuts 

 out a beautiful scene. In these days of 

 community sanitation the old cry that 

 the billboard hid objectionable con- 

 ditions does not count, for we now 

 know that no community dares, if it 

 is to be a decent community, permit 

 hogpens in the public eye or under the 

 public nose. In fact, in the Chicago 

 case the adverse decision to the bill- 

 board largely resulted because of the 

 known capacity of the billboard for 

 hiding filth, for promoting criminality, 

 by affording opportunity to do illegal 

 things, for bringing about fire danger, 

 and for introducing another danger 

 from storm. In every advanced com- 

 munity in these days the billboard is 

 forced to keep at least three feet clear 

 of the ground so that the stink back of 

 it may be as easily noticed as the 

 stink on it. To place "Say it with 

 Flowers" in this association is quite as 

 logical as it would be for the Society 

 of American Florists to start a cam- 

 paign to decorate every manure heap 

 in the country with posters "Say it 

 with Flowers!" 



