Adventure Magazine Cover — page 21: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

My Adventures with Your Money the Bradford-Guenther Advertising Agency, or that place their advertising with Rudolph Guenther of New York, a brother of Louis Guenther, are absolutely immune from attacks in the Financial World, but that scores of similar companies operating along the same lines which do not contribute to the Guenther advertising outfit are made targets for the abuse and vituperation of this human vulture.’ The Eye Opener continues: The Guenthers also handled the advertising busi- ness of the E. S. Dean ‘“‘blind-pool” swindle that robbed other dupes of nearly a million dollars. Mem- bers of that gang charged the Guenthers with hav- ing cheated the syndicate out of tens of thousands of dollars in carrying on the advertising campaign, that they paid in advance for the advertising, and that when the concern was put out of business by the police the Guenthers had about $23,000 of their money which had been paid for advertising, which advertising was never inserted. As the Guenthers have never been able to prove anything to the con- trary, the charge is undoubtedly correct. The Guenthers also handled the advertising for three or four other similar get-rich-quick swindles in New York until they were closed up by the authorities, when Louis evidently thought the climate of New York was becoming most too hot for his operations and he moved to Chicago. Soon after going there he took up the sale of Texas oil shares and disposed of a large amount of the stock. The stock proved absolutely worthless, and the suckers who believed the Guenther tales about it lost every dollar they invested. Shortly afterward it was shown that Guenther was connected with a mining company which was a fake and a swindle, and the stock of which was worthless, and that numerous victims Jost all of their money by taking Guenther’s advice. How about the insidious character of the kind of publicity I treat of heree Whom would you blame, dear reader—yourself or the World’s Work—if you happened to fall for some “‘skin” game that was advertised or boosted in the Financial World? My experience with the Guenther outfit was short and quick. They were doing the advertising for a San Francisco promoter. The Goldfield-Tonopah Advertising Agency, of which I was owner and manager for a period, secured the account. The first move of the Guenthers to get the business back was this: They wrote the advertiser that they would charge only 25 cents a line for advertising on the financial page of the New York Herald. At that time the flat rate was 30 cents and there was no deviation. The advertiser promptly inquired of me whether my agency was overcharging him. I wrote the New York Herald and asked that the Guenthers be called to account. 777 The Herald people acknowledged my letter, said they deprecated such methods and also remarked that they had cautioned the Guenther outfit. I sent the Herald’s. correspondence to the advertiser and showed up the trick, which was palpably to lose 5 cents a line on the Herald business and make it up in other directions. From that day on, the Financial World began to attack me and my associates. My scrap-book holds by actual count clippings containing 230 libelous statements made in the pages of the Financial World regarding me and the enterprises with which I have been identified. The World’s Work has “fallen” for the Financial World and, like the Saturday Evening Post, which “fell” for the New York Times, has been used to beguile the invest- ing public. THE purpose here has been to show the imposition on the American public which is being practised every day in the news columns of daily newspapers and other publications, but I have been able to convey to the reader only the barest kind of suggestion:as to the depths to which this deception is practised. Limitations of space prohibit further en- croachment, or I would fain extend my list of examples indefinitely. We hear much these days about the abuses of journalism. Much of the criticism is leveled at publishers who lend the use of their columns for “boosting” that is cal- culated to help their advertisers. But little attention is paid to that other evil, namely, the use of the news columns for the purpose of destroying business rivals, polit- ical rivals and enemies generally of men who wield sufficient influence to employ the method. This ramification of the subject appeals to me as of at least as much consequence to citizens as is the one of inspired puffery. I believe the public is going to hear much more of this feature of newspaper abuse in the future than it hasin the past. The com- munity is waking up and is manifesting a de- sire to learn more about the heinous practise. RAWHIDE O RETURN to Rawhide. Asa result of the “‘scientific” press-agenting which the camp received, a frenzied stampede en- C© cloO@OkKS 5}