92 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTLRfc:. 



Feb. 



hive Co. are entirely at fault. If they per- 

 mitted the advertisement to run through 

 neglect, or even through absence from home, 

 there was no one at fault at all except them- 

 selves, therefore they should pay the bill. 

 Very likely tlie above course Avould be jus- 

 tice ; but you know, dear friends, I have been 

 talking to >ou a good deal, not only for 

 months, but even years back, in regard to 

 doing a little more tlian justice by our fellow- 

 men. " If a man compel thee to go with him 

 a mile, go with him twain." T lead a little 

 more carefully the letter of protest made by 

 our friend when he received a bill for $4.00 

 for advertising, and in it I found the follow- 

 ing: 



The queens were offered for $HJKJ, and you send 

 bill in for $4.U()! Not much profit. Besides, the 

 queens remain unsold. 1 did not geto/ie offer; we did 

 certainly not expect t<j advertise them to their full 

 value, or else we might as well have sold you the 

 queens for tivu dollars. Besides, it looks bad to ad- 

 vertise 6' queens -^ times. It does not look as if we 

 were sellinji- queens fast. I think common sense or 

 judgment would have told you, or any one else, that 

 we could not offer queens so low. and then spend- 

 ing' all the amount for advertising them, to sell 

 them. MODEr. FJee-Hive Co. 



West Phil'a., Pa., Oct. S7, 1886. 



Now, there may be differences of opinion 

 here. A good many will say, " Although it 

 does look very bad to pay out $4.00 for adver- 

 tising $6.00 worth of queens, it was eutirely 

 the fault of the advertiser for not saying liow 

 many times he wished the advertisement put 

 in.'' It was mainly his fault. I agree; but I 

 think, dear friends, he is right in saying that 

 common sense or ordinary good judgment 

 ought to have decided that no man in his 

 senses would wish to pay $4.00 for the chance 

 of selling $6.00 worth of goods. Who is at 

 fault, then ? The editor of Gleanings ? 

 You may say, "The editor of Gleanings, 

 with his multitude of cares, can not go into 

 every little matter like this, without break- 

 ing himself down, mentally and physically."' 

 The advertising clerk is also burdened with 

 so many cares and so much business that it 

 is pretty hard for iier to stop to inquire 

 whether a man knows what lie is talking 

 about or not, when he sends in an advertise- 

 ment. To avoid similar cases I have asked 

 F]rnest to examine every advertisement, and 

 be sure that it makes good sense before it is 

 allowed to go into print, and I think he has 

 done his work pretty faithfully. In review- 

 ing the above advertisement of late, he 

 would say at once that it was all straight and 

 consisteiit. If somebody had asked him, 

 however, if it was probable that this man 

 wished such an advertisement continued, he 

 would at once have decided not ; but he is 

 already pretty severely burdened with a mul- 

 titude of cares in his work on Gleanings. 

 The proof-reader made sure it read accord- 

 ing to copy, and that ended his part of it. 



Let us now consider the latter half of com- 

 munication No. 8. He says, in substance, 

 that the advertisements he has put in Glean- 

 ings never brought him athirdoi the money 

 he paid to have them inserted. This is a 

 pretty bad showing for Gleanings, dear 

 friends. 1 am well aware, that a good many 



advertisements do not pay the friends who 

 send them. Quite a number have refused to 

 pay for advertising, on the ground that it did 

 not do them any good, and I have been ask- 

 ed to excuse them from paying an advertis- 

 ing bill because the advertisement profited 

 them nothing. I have refused to excuse, on 

 the ground that it was no fault of mine. 

 Sometimes, it is true, I am asked if I think a 

 certain advertisement will pay ; and I re- 

 member that I have, a good many times, re- 

 plied back that I felt pretty sure that it 

 woidd not pay. Yes, I have sometimes writ- 

 ten to friends who wanted certain things ad- 

 vertised, that I felt sure it would not pay. 

 even before my opinion was asked. I have 

 been pretty roundly abused once or twice for 

 making similar suggestions. Knowing the 

 supply of queens there was in the market in 

 September, I could have told the Model Bee- 

 hive Co. beforehand, that their advertisement 

 would protiably do them no good — had my 

 opinion been asked. Now the question be- 

 gins to assume something of this shape — 

 " Am I my brother's keeper '?" To which I 

 reply, '• Yes, sir. 1. for one. am my brother's 

 keeper." I want (iod to hold me responsible, 

 not only for my brother's spiritual welfare, 

 but for his financial welfare ; and my de- 

 cision is, that, under the circumstances, we 

 ought not to ask pay for the three last inser- 

 tions. If my mental strength does not per- 

 mit me to take a brotherly review of all the 

 advertisements sent in to us, it is mj; busi- 

 ness to employ somebody who can intelli- 

 gently advise our bee-friends in regard to in- 

 serting advertisements. And the moral to 

 this whole long story is, to ask you all,* in 

 sending in advertisements, //' you feel inclin- 

 ed, to ask our opinion in regard to the ad- 

 visabilit.N of inserting said advertisement. 

 We will advise the best we know how, and 

 without charge. This advice. 1 presume, 

 will cut down part of our advertising patron- 

 age, but I shall be glad to cut it down, be- 

 cause I know that agoodh part of it has not 

 been profitable to our hard-working and 

 close-scraping bee-friends, many of them. 

 After having given this advice, you are to 

 act as you see proper, and we can" not be re- 

 sponsible for tlie profitableness of the trans- 

 action any further. 



TEASELS, AGAIN. 



SOME (;<>OU ONES FROM THE PACIFIC CO.\ST. 



§INCE the appearance of a series of articles on 

 the teasel-plant and its culture in one of our 

 local papers, and two or three short articles 

 in Gi.,EANiNGS from which extracts were 

 made by the N. Y. Tribune and other leading 

 papers, it has been ascertained that teasels of good 

 quality are grown in Oregon. That fact alone has 

 set our dealers at work, and the result is, that sev- 

 eral carloads have already been shipped here and 

 held at our railroad station for inspection and i-e- 

 shipment to factories. That they are of good size 

 and good quality, there is no mistake; and, for 



*0f course, the veterans in advertising, who have 

 had sufficient experience to know whether it is im- 

 portant for them to advertise or not, and how much, 

 would hnrdly care for my opinion in the matter. 



