April, 19 9 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



141 



i • 



"To business that we love we rise betime 

 And go to 't with delight." — Antony and Cleopatra 



THE STORY OF THE SERVICE DEPARTMENT 



The Readers' Service of the Doubleday- 

 Page magazines was started to meet a demand 

 for first-hand information about horticulture, 

 office appliances, and other more or less 

 simple matters of pleasure and business. 



These functions have continued steadily in 

 play. To them, within the past two years, 

 have been added two big recruits — the financial 

 and the insurance departments. The former 

 has grown to be much the biggest of all the 

 sections. In 1908 it received and answered 

 nearly three thousand letters, involving answers 

 to more than eight thousand specific questions 

 about financial matters. 



The range of information is astonishing. A 

 merchant in Berlin, Germany, holding $30,000 

 of maturing Government bonds, writes to ask 

 questions about standard American railroad 

 bonds as a long-time investment. A Senator 

 from the West, preparing to take a part in the 

 debate on the Aldrich bill, wants "bullets of 

 fact" about the banking situation in New 

 York during the panic. A woman in Holyoke, 

 Mass., whose dividends have ceased, seeks 

 comfort concerning her holdings of copper 

 stock. 



Our mail-bag makes queer companionships. 

 In the same mail came a letter from the repre- 

 sentative of a foreign Power at Washington, 

 D. C, asking about an investment of some 

 thousands in bonds, and a letter from a factory- 

 girl in Passaic, N. J., contemplating an invest- 

 ment of twenty-five dollars in a new invention. 

 And the reply to the letter from Passaic takes 

 longer to prepare and more work in investigation 

 than the other. 



Roughly, one hundred and fifty letters from 

 bank officers have been answered within the 

 past year. One president was advised to' 

 cut down the amount he had invested in stan- 

 dard railroad bonds, as it seemed out of all 

 proportion to the amount of his deposits. 

 Another, in Arkansas, was urged to curtail his 

 credits to a particular group of capitalists 

 engaged in semi-speculative undertakings. 

 Many merely asked specific questions concern- 

 ing the character of bonds offered to them by 

 salesmen from bond houses in New York, 

 Chicago, Boston, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and 

 Philadelphia. They tried us out, to see if 

 at last they had discovered someone who 



would give them a really disinterested opinion 

 concerning securities offered to them by in- 

 terested parties. Judging solely by the number 

 of times some of them have come back, they 

 found what they wanted. 



Of course, not all the of writers mention the 

 amount of money that they intend to invest; 

 and some seek information about the securities 

 they now own, rather than about purchases. 

 Based upon the amount named in the letters 

 that do go into figure's, the financial service 

 would seem, directly or indirectly, to reach an 

 investment fund of more than $5,000,000 a 

 year. 



The Insurance Department, established last 

 summer to meet what seemed a pressing de- 

 mand for information about companies, poli- 

 cies, problems, and troubles, has grown faster 

 than the financial during the same period. 

 Nearly a thousand people have asked direct 

 questions concerning insurance, and they have 

 received replies as promptly and as directly as 

 they could be furnished. This department 

 grows steadily in size and in influence. 



The general departments, led by the horti- 

 cultural division, maintain their volume, and 

 in some instances, have greatly increased during 

 1908. To them, as to all the sections, letters 

 come from all over the world. If any one thing 

 is apparent above others, as a result of our ex- 

 perience with these departments, it is that 

 the foreign readers of the magazines miss 

 nothing that lies between the covers. They 

 devour the advertising pages just the same 

 as the editorial. 



The information retailed through this depart- 

 ment covers a range as wide as the world. The 

 building of a house, the establishment of a 

 factory, the preparation of a lawn, the planting 

 of a tree, the pruning of a shrub, the culture 

 of a flower — nothing is too big, apparently, 

 and nothing is too little to make it worth while 

 to ask about. What to wear, what to eat, what 

 to do, whether to go to law and take arms 

 against a sea of troubles, or to abide in peace 

 and suffer it — all these and a thousand other 

 questions pour in from every state and every 

 country where English is read or spoken. 



And so the Readers' Service men have come 

 to call themselves "brokers of information," 

 middlemen, as it were, through whom the 

 world at large may obtain the latest-known 



facts concerning anything in the world of busi-^ 

 ness, or finance,. or insurance, or mere human 

 life. We are not prophets, nor market sharps, 

 either in cabbages or bonds. We do not know 

 whether, if you plant a certain sort of shrub 

 in your garden, it will produce one hundred 

 blossoms next year, or ten; nor do we know 

 what the stock market is going to do next 

 month. We can but give you facts, and let 

 you do your guessing for yourself. 



The expense of maintaining this service de- 

 partment we feel is more than justified by the 

 feeling of friendly intimacy it engenders be- 

 tween the subscribers to our magazines and 

 ourselves. May it increase and grow in im- 

 portance. 



A NEW SERVICE DEPARTMENT 



For some time we have been considering the 

 best and most satisfactory solution to a grow- 

 ing problem: the disposal of the numerous in- 

 quiries continually received about agricultural 1 

 and horticultural books not on our list- 

 In response to the increasing demand for in- 

 formation about such books, and for the con- 

 venience of our friends and customers, we have 

 created a new department enabling us to fur- 

 nish direct, at regular prices, any and all works 

 pertaining to agriculture and horticulture and 

 their various branches. We have prepared 

 a comprehensive classified catalogue contain- 

 ing the titles of practically all works on these 

 subjects — convenient in size, so as to be filed 

 for ready reference. We invite your corre- 

 spondence and will be glad to answer any ques- 

 tions as to the scope of this new department. 

 A postal addressed to the Horticultural De- 

 partment, 133 East Sixteenth Street, New York, 

 will bring you a copy of the new catalogue. 



NOTICE 

 We have for a long time been de- 

 veloping an organization consisting 

 of a reliable representative in every 

 town in the United States. If you 

 want to develop a mail-order busi- 

 ness of your own write to Double- 

 day, Page & Co., 133-137 East 16th 

 Street, New York. 



