High Art In Advertisements

The very high class of art ivnrl; noticeable in advertising matter calU atlention to the fact that alniost ll;e very best artists are now euiployed by advertisers (at the higbest prices tliey couiinand for any work) to draw pictures for circulara, paniphiets. guide books, the advertising pages of the magazines, and for the public columns of the uewspapers The artists have taken warning frona the fate of a bright young fellow who allowed his signature to appear too often in pictures in railway advertising books, and all these fine pieces of work they now turn out are copied without their signatures; indeed, they contract that their uames shall ueither appear nor be mentioned In connection with their work. Not long ago a large tirm of manufacturers was so pleased with the pictures a very famous artist drew for one of the pamphlets that they scattered broadcast the statement that the head of the house c ffered to pay the artist his original price over again if he would sign the picture he had made, in order that they tnay hang in the manufacturer's parlor The artist said he could not do so for any price within the means of the rich man. The same companies that make use of these high grade pictures also employ excellent talent for the writing of the reading matter that accompanies the pictures, and great advertisers now have privata arrangements with literary or at least semi-literary men, whose work in the back columns of the papers attracts almost as rnuch attention as the uews itself. Here, again, the high prices are paid and seerecy is maintained One natural effect of this is that which led an enterprisin" member of a small Srm to complain to the writer the other day that it was no longer possible for hún to advertise in Bueh a way as to make his calis upon the public attraetive to the general eye. He said that small business firms in all the cities are uow at their wits' end because they have uot got the money to pay for ingenious writing or for displaying it at the proper length in the papers.