THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



'To business that we love we rise betime 

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



A FEW REMARKS ABOUT SPRING 



and DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO. 



The advent of spring is generally hailed 

 with joy by all the world for reasons fully 

 explained by every poet who ever lived, but 

 we have a few private reasons for acclaiming 

 it which we would like to set down. 



To Doubleday, Page & Co., the spring of 

 iqii has been looked forward to with special 

 keenness and many have been the preparations 

 made for. its arrival. Among other things 

 it is our first spring in the country and while 

 we have enjoyed the winter and things have 

 gone well with the Country Life Press in 

 Garden City, we are naturally eager to get 

 at our planting and complete our plans for 

 beautifying our forty acres. 



There are other reasons, and, we suppose, 

 from a business point of view, better ones. 

 For instance: 



It is the season when the advertiser gets 

 cheerful and grows optimistic. The real 

 estate man combines with us to lure the city 

 people from town and he has done it with 

 wonderful success in Country Life in America. 

 We have been able to trace sales aggregating 

 several millions of dollars to these attractive 

 advertisements. We would like to give our- 

 selves the pleasure of printing paragraphs 

 from letters received on this subject — a 

 few taken from a drawerful. 



Dear Sir: 



I feel it my duty to write you that had I had the 

 stock the two one inch Ads. in Country Life would 

 have sold about $1,200.00 worth of Great Danes. 

 The results were simply astounding and I have been 

 selling Great Danes for a good dozen years. 



Dear Sir: 



I have your letter of the nth inst. relative to the 

 advertisement for Country Life in America. I have 

 this to say regarding the advertisement in your mag- 

 azine, that even if I did not want to run the Ad. I 

 would have to or lose, say on the average of twenty 

 inquiries a month. You know as well as I do what 

 inquiries lead to. Truthfully speaking, it would be 

 hard to do without Country Life. 



The two one-inch ads. above referred to 

 cost $7 each. 



The nurserymen and the seedsmen come 

 from their winter hiding places and tell the 

 readers about their great catalogues of 

 magnificent floral splendors, and these cata- 



logues are increasingly fine. Each year they 

 become more elaborate and less gaudy, more 

 useful and practical and less extravagant. 



The man who deals in every sort of thing 

 that grows or is used in or connected with 

 the garden and the country home, begins to 

 send in his copy and makes glad the heart 

 of the Advertising Department, if a depart- 

 ment can be said to have a heart — and it 

 has. 



For the March numbers the composing 

 room was called upon to set up nearly one 

 hundred and twenty thousand lines of ad- 

 vertising for all our magazines, a figure 

 which may mean more to the layman when 

 we say that this is the equivalent of more than 

 five hundred pages of the regular magazine 

 size. The quantity is, of course, only part 

 of the success of the month's business; it 

 is the quality of the things advertised that 

 pleases us. Among these hundreds and 

 hundreds of announcements are put forth 



— in most wonderfully attractive shape 



— the articles that first-class people want 

 and ought to want, and we think there is not 

 a degrading line among the lot, no patent 

 medicines, no gambling games, no financial 

 fakes — at least, so we honestly believe. If 

 we are wrong tell us of a bad advertiser and 

 we will gladly go after him. 



A SUGGESTION DEPARTMENT EOR ADVERTISERS 



If a man spends his good money in adver- 

 tising and he loses money on his investment, 

 the results are not only bad for the advertiser 

 but very bad for the publication. We have 

 noted a great difference between the merits 

 of the "copy" supplied by advertisers. 



For our mutual benefit we have started a 

 suggestion department at the head of which 

 is an experienced man whose business it is 

 to help advertisers now with us and people 

 who have goods to sell to our readers, but who 

 are not yet represented in our columns, and 

 to prepare "copy" which we think will help 

 to bring success. 



The announcement of the starting of this 

 department brought so many requests for 

 suggestions that for the first few weeks the 

 work of the office was overwhelming, but 

 we have added to the staff and are pre- 

 pared for more letters from those who are 



studying the question of copy. We may 

 say that behind the experts is a collection 

 of nearly one hundred thousand photographs 

 owned and being constantly added to by 

 Doubleday, Page & Co., and a photo- 

 engraving department, all on the ground at 

 Garden City, waiting to help. 



If you are interested, write to "Suggestion 

 Department," Doubleday, Page & Co., Gar- 

 den City, L. I. The service is absolutely 

 free and you place yourself under no embar- 

 rassing — or any other kind — of obligation 

 in consulting us. 



EGOTISM AND LETTERS 



As it has been frequently said in these 

 pages we receive a good many letters which 

 we should like to reprint for our own gratifi- 

 cation (and some which we are willing to 

 grieve over in silence and in private) and we 

 realize that they cannot be as interesting to 

 our readers as they are to us, but here are two, 

 one of which fairly offsets the other and they 

 will go to show what an interesting sort of 

 a letter box is ours. We would like to add 

 that the World's Work Financial Department 

 is constantly receiving letters from subscribers 

 who have saved money by information given 

 by the financial editor. For example, a 

 Superintendent of Public Schools in Ohio 

 writes: 



Dear Sir: 



Please send the World's Work to . He is a 



former pupil of mine and I have advised him to read 

 your articles on investment closely for some years and 

 then he will be safeguarded. 



As a result of reading these articles I have not mad s 

 a bad investment for seien years. 



The best of all my investments, therefore, is the 

 World's Work. 



But the World's Work has harder problems 

 than the answering of financial questions. 

 Its editorial staff was called upon the other 

 day to reply by mail to the following question : 



" If a squirrel is on the side of a tree and I go around 

 the tree and the squirrel keeps on the opposite side of 

 the tree from me, when I have gone around the tree 

 have I gone around the squirrel?" 



Mid-Month Country Life for March 15th, 

 which is now just ready on the newstands, 

 is the " Back to the Land " number, Liberty 

 H. Bailey, consulting editor. 20 cts.; $4.00 

 a year. 



