through the newspapers, so why should anyone look there for the new?
Have you seen the newspapers of any American city after any large fire? The pages are filled with notices of the new locations and restorations of business. As a more remarkable example, I have received the statement upon excellent authority that one of the Philadelphia newspapers, which had published Wanamaker's advertisements for years, lost 20,000 circulation when the advertisements were withdrawn and regained it again after the department store's patronage returned. The shoppers of Philadelphia had depended upon newspaper advertisements for their information so greatly that they changed to strange newspapers rather than miss the store information. It is true that a hundred years after the great fire, or in 1759, Dr. Johnson wrote that "Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused" and "the trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement." Yet a careful perusal of the so-called advertising of that day discovered very little or nothing of the advertising as we understand it today. There are plenty of typographic hawking of books, quack lotions and remedies; and plenty of printed peddling of a hundred honest trinkets and notices of ships sailing and cargoes received. But that was all.
