Long Firm, about whom they know so much that it seems to be understood that "Catesbys' is too dangerous game."

While on the subject of the country post, perhaps I might as well say here that there is every inducement held out to people in the provinces to buy by post, as Messrs. Catesby keep a special staff who attend solely to country orders. By experience and intuition they usually know the customer's wishes, but should the goods fail

for nearly forty years in a quiet, steady-going kind of way. They were making about £500 a year net profit, spending about a couple of hundred pounds in advertising. A very small beginning, it must be admitted; and on that account their example is all the more interesting and instructive, for there are thousands of men in a small way of business for every one of the leviathans of modern commerce. Mr. Catesby, senior, summoned his sons about him, and gave them an inkling of what he had seen

at Chicago. It was there and then decided to make the experiment. They took the whole of the year's profits, and added it to the advertising fund; and then they launched out upon the system of credit which they have since developed with such success.

I told Mr. Catesby frankly that I had heard this system of credit very much spoken against, and that imaginative persons had drawn pictures of the credit system as a kind of vampire octopus, whose tentacles were thrown into every humble home in the land, in order to encourage extravagance and then to drain the resources of poor men. "It looks very much like the old story of the universal Jew of which we hear continually from the Continent. The traveller goes out, smoothtongued and subtle as the serpent in Paradise, insinuates his way into every home, and tempts the good wife or the good man, as the case may be, to buy goods for which they cannot afford to pay ready money by giving them plausible assurances that they will purchase on the hire system. When you have got the poor wretch into your toils, you wring out his heart's blood month after month if the instalments are not paid. And when you have sucked him dry you fling him into gaol. That is what I am told is done with the hire system and the credit system."

"In the first place," said Mr. Catesby, "it may be news to your imaginative friend that we have not a single traveller, or tempter, as you call him, in any part of the three kingdoms. Customers come to us-we never go to them. In the next place we charge no interest whatever upon our goods, and in the third place, so far from ruining our customers and flinging them into gaol, I have already given you figures as to the number of County Court summonses and all commitments to gaol in the last eight years. I do not say that there are not some firms who deserve all that your friend has been saying about ours. Nothing that can be said or written is too bad for them. But his censures leave us unmoved." "But is not this method of seeking business a little unworthy of a firm of first-class standing?"

"Oh," he said, "everyone does it now! Such firms as Maple and Co., for instance." And, summoning his secretary, he asked for Maple's circular of July, 1901. This document, issued from the Secretary's office, 149, Tottenham Court Road, announces that the directors have now decided to inaugurate a department where goods may be obtained at their usual marked prices, but with deferred payments. It is a rather curious circular, for it goes on to say that although the goods can be obtained at their usual marked prices, a premium of 5 per cent. will be charged upon the total volume of the goods supplied. The hire purchase department of Messrs. Maple is limited to orders of £50 and upwards. Credit is given for three years, and interest charged at 5 per cent. per annum. Twenty-five per cent. of the total value of the goods must be paid down at the time of purchase. “Other firms, including Whiteley's, Westbourne Grove," Messrs. Catesby declare, "have either followed or preceded Messrs. Maple in adopting the system which only the other day was described as altogether unworthy of firms of such standing as ours."

"Well," said I, "this brings me to another interesting phase of the question. If you have no travellers and you seek no custom, how do you get your business ?"

'We get it," said Mr. Catesby, "by advertising. The newspaper is our commercial traveller. The daily paper is the best medium for business in our line-that is to say, furniture, clothing, and especially Cork Lino, of which we sell more than any other firm in London.

Our business is built up on advertising. The more you advertise the more business you do. Of course you must advertise intelligently, and intelligence is based upon experience. We do not 'go it blind' in affairs of advertising. If you won't publish it," said Mr. Catesby, “I will show you a book in which we have the result of the advertising in the various mediums in which we advertise."

It was a very interesting book, and I confess I wish I could have borrowed it and copied the long, tabulated statements and percentages and statistics, and the general information it contained. But this was forbidden. What the internal mechanism is to the control and direction of a submarine this book is to Messrs. Catesbys' business; and what Government supplies Beefeaters to take the public over its submarines ?

If

It is extremely interesting to notice the fluctuation of the value of advertising in some papers at different times, and also the contrast between the value of advertisements in different papers. Messrs. Catesby would lend me that book, I think a very interesting article-nay, a treatise -might be written upon the various values of advertisements in different papers. Of course, everything depends ultimately upon the article sold. Messrs. Catesby do not advertise in the Times; they are distinctly of the Democracy, and appeal to the million. A comparison of the cash value of an advertisement in each of the halfpenny morning papers in London would be interesting matter for examination. This, however, I am not permitted to give.

What

I am permitted to say is this, that the war brought no grist to their mill, and it disastrously impaired the value of capital invested in advertising.

The

have laid themselves out for popular advertising. goods in which they deal are in universal request; and in floor-coverings they have made such a speciality that they sell 20,000 yards of Cork Lino every week.

Messrs. Catesby are the first firm of London tradesmen who have boldly taken a leaf from the Americans in the art of advertising, and have avowedly set themselves to work to make their advertisements attractive. They have not yet reached the position of Mr. Wanamaker of Philadelphia and New York, who has a whole editorial page filled full every day with news of the great store; neither have they yet ventured to keep a poet; but they have humourists and artists constantly employed in drawing up a fresh advertisement every day. Perhaps on this point I need do no more than mention the following artists' names :-H. R. Millar, Louis Weierter, John

Duncan, J. James Proctor, Thomas Downey, E. Dolman. To the man who keeps an eye on the development of modern pictorial art, and watches the rise of its most recent exponents, this list will have a deep significance. They are pioneers in the art of making advertisements interesting. Anything more dull than the conventional advertisement favoured by most English firms can hardly be conceived--a stereotyped statement announcing that certain goods are for sale at a certain shop, set up in type and allowed to Occupy SO much space in the newspaper every day. The result is that nobody reads trade advertisements; they are the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Messrs. Catesby boldly introduced the American innovation of dropping all standing advertisements, and writing a new advertisement every day. They set to work also to make them interesting. Their latest innovation, "Catesbys' Drolleries," as their name implies, are brief, humorous articles, each of which endeavours by a quaint turn to exploit well-known stories for the purpose of advertising Messrs. Catesbys' goods. They have published series after series of these drolleries there is the " English History revised series,” in which Catesby of the Gunpowder Plot, the great original Catesby of all, naturally holds a conspicuous place. The legend about Sir Walter Raleigh spreading his cloak before Queen Elizabeth naturally suggests a variant upon the original version, that it was not a cloak, but some Catesbys"! "Cork Lino" that was spread over the muddy puddle. By the way, the use of the word "Cork Lino" aptly illustrates the care that is taken by Messrs. Catesby to remove obstacles out of the way of possible customers. They found that the word linoleum was unpopular with.

Every pound spent in advertising, whether in pro-Boer or in Jingo papers, yielded fewer orders, and of less value, during the war than ever before the war broke out. In the case of some papers it required an expenditure of twice, thrice, and even sometimes four times as much money to produce the same number of orders as it did before the war. That is to say, the advertising value of the newspapers, from a business point of view, was distinctly depreciated by the war in South Africa.

I remember long ago, when I was editing the Pall Mall Gazette, declaring to our manager that there would never be any hope of establishing a successful Democratic daily paper in London until we could democratise the advertiser. Messrs. Catesby and Sons are conspicuous as being the first men of business in London who have democratised their advertisements. They

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An Advertisement for Clothes.

"

many people; they did not know whereon the accent was to be, and whether the pronunciation was linoleum, linòleum, or linoleum, and not wishing to put their foot into it by displaying their ignorance, they did not ask for it. Messrs. Catesby therefore invented the term Cork Lino," cork being the principal ingredient, and lino" being the first two syllables of linoleum. They have used in turn most of the humorous characters of English literature; their "Dickens Series was very successful, and their "Esop's Fables" -which were illustrated by Louis Wain --stood them in good stead. They invented a comic series representing the trial of Robinson Crusoe. Sherlock Holmes, Mrs. Caudle, Swiss Family Robinson-all were pressed into the service. They also used portraits of British statesmen for the same end. Lord Rosebery, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. Chamberlain all gave their consent to the use of their caricatures in Catesbys' advertisements. They flew at even higher game-they proposed to use the King and the Prince of Wales in the same series; but on submitting the illustrations to His Majesty, with the request for permission, they received a very kind letter from Lord Knollys saying that the King was much amused by the picture, but that, on the whole, he thought he would rather they did not use it in their series, and it was accordingly withdrawn. It is, of course, no easy matter to make a new

joke every day; but Messrs. Catesby have kept it up with great spirit, and have set an example which, if followed by others, would make the advertisement sheets the liveliest reading in the morning paper. They have appreciated the fundamental fact that the best shop window for the display of your goods is the newspaper broadsheet. Those who can look into a shop window are numbered by hundreds, whereas the newspaper shop window comes before the notice of hundreds of thousands.

Messrs. Catesby have realised that the cheapness of transport rendered it possible for them to ignore space as a feature in cost. They will undertake to deliver any of their goods in any part of the three kingdoms at the door of their customers free of any charge for carriage. It does not cost a man in Aberdeen any more to buy Cork Lino than it does Mr. Catesby's next-door neighbour in Tottenham Court Road. And as they thus abolish space so they triumph over time by their system of deferred payments. In all their publications-and their number is legion-they impress upon the reader that their one object is to make it easy for him to get what he wants. If he has not the money in his pocket they will give him credit, with the confident belief that he will have the money next week or next month. One of the most effective booklets that they issue is called "The Book of Trust," one page of which I reproduce here, although I cannot, alas! print it in its original colours. In this little book the customer is told "not to wait until you have the money;" "be comfortable now;" "don't have a cheerless home just because the money is not ready." "You don't have employers' references to give, nor security to find; we take your word, you take our goods." Nothing is more dreary as a rule than the trade catalogue, but the Catesbys study the art of making their catalogues amusing, persuasive, and entertaining. In the "Boot Catalogue," for instance, they have a very

Portion of General Office.