- 150 casks and bbls. molasses;
- 450 bags sugar, etc., etc., for sale at reduced prices for cash, by
F. W. PETTYGROVE
At the Red House, Oregon City, and at Portland, 12 miles below this city. Jan. 29, 1846—2 wk.[1]
Present-day students of advertising will notice, in this typical pioneer advertisement a fundamental difference from the content of a twentieth century advertisement. There is nowhere any mention of price in these merchandise ads. Not that price was unimportant; but the big question, in those early days of slow and irregular transportation, was not so much What will the thing cost? but Is it in stock? Merchants would at once reassure their prospective customers with a long list of just how many hand-axes and boxes of soap had come, in and a notation of what vessel had brought the goods. Item pricing was in the future; Pettygrove, for instance, contented himself with the single inconspicuous line "for sale at reduced prices for cash." Here again, incidentally, is perhaps an indication of how hard it was to get hold of actual cash. Everyone was hopeful, most of the time; all had prospects; but as for cash . . . .
An advertisement in the first number of the Spectator carried an echo of an event which, perhaps as much as any other, brought about the organization of a government for the Oregon country—the death of Ewing Young, carrying the necessity for the settlement of his estate, the first one settled in the new country. The event brought the Spectator, in its first number, the following bit of legal advertising, a little belated, perhaps, for Young's death occurred in 1843:
Administrator's Notice
All Persons indebted to the estate of Ewing Young, late of Yam Hill, deceased, are hereby notified to make immediate payment, and thereby save cost, as this is the last call, said estate having been ordered to be immediately closed up. February 2, 1846. A. Lawrence Lovejoy, Adm'r.
Three of the eight columns of advertising in the Spectator of a typical issue (May 23, 1851), or three-sixteenths of the whole paper (close to 20 per cent) was devoted to what newspaper men call "patent medicine ads", ballyhooing various cure-alls. Such advertis ing, of course, was finally banned by law. Here is what "Sand's Sarsaparilla, in Quart Bottles," was permitted to tell the more or less trusting public of those days:
- ↑ Mr. Pettygrove soon moved to Portland, the new village "12 miles below this city."
