Oregon's early newspapers. It will be recalled that the advertisements were characterized as lacking in life, originality, typographical attractiveness. As compared with the remainder of the paper, the ads were plain to the point of ugliness, abruptly bare of interesting detail, and not always up to reasonable ethical standards.
May we not stop here, for a moment, and make a bit of a comparison with what was going on journalistically elsewhere at that time? Let us look at the New York Herald, probably the best all-around American newspaper of the time. The issue of the Herald for Friday, April 11, 1851, four months after the founding of the Oregonian and one month after the launching of the Statesman, contained four pages of six 15-em (2½ inch) columns. The paper, of course, was a daily. Of the 24 columns, 10½ were filled with advertising, or about 40 per cent. The Weekly Oregonian was running more than 50 per cent advertising.
The advertising in the eastern papers, of which the Herald was fairly typical, was the same flat, label, classified-announcement type of publicity as was appearing in the western papers. For example:
SPRING CLOTHING.—Our Select and Extensive Stock of Clothing for the season is now ready, comprising all the latest styles of garments of the day, and everything that is new and chaste in goods to be found in this or European markets. D. & J. Devlin, 33 and 35 John street, corner of Nassau street.
The medical ads which appeared in the western papers merely echoed those of the eastern press. The only advertising, for instance, that appeared on page 4 of the Herald for April 11, 1841, was a column of 19 separate advertisements for varied remedies, most of them of a nature now long since barred from American newspapers. Here is what the column advertised:
- A cure for "worms."
- Watts' Nervous Antidote.
- Balsam of Wild Cherry
- German Medical and Surgical Institute.
- Paris and London Treatment of Private Diseases, in a few hours, by a vegetable application, without pain.
- Doctor yourself, for 25 cents—By means of the Pocket Aesculapius, or every one his own physician
- Plain Facts for the People (extolling the merits of "the only remedy that can be firmly relied on in curing this most loathsome affection, without injury to the constitution.")
- $500 Reward—Jeffries' Antidote . . . for the cure of private diseases.
