While doing research for another story, I ran across some interesting advertisements. Can looking back at what happened in the 1930s depression predict what is to come for us in 2009?
The newspaper industry is facing serious shortfalls across the nation. Local and regional papers have gotten thinner and some are publishing less times per week while faced with rising costs for publishing. Subscriptions may be something that people have to omit when facing tight budgets or confronted with job losses and lowered income. Budgets for advertising in business are the backbone of the industry so when advertising is cut, a paper has to try to keep its subscribers to stay afloat. Certainly the times we live in today are likened to that of the 1930s by many.
On Oct. 19, 1934, a small notice on the front page of The Springfield Herald read: “TO OUR SUBSCRIBERS –
We will take any kind of produce you have for sale on subscriptions to the Herald. Next week we will quote prices for various items. (Signed) Editor.”
The advertisements of 1934 and 1939 shown here reflect the spirit of bartering to keep the Herald afloat. The Herald turned around and sold the items received to get its payment for the subscription. Evidently the editor did not proofread the ad too well. The “$1.50 Weather Goat” was certainly not a weather forecasting animal. It should have read “wether” goat which is an altered billy goat, the goat version of a cattle steer. You know that back in those days there were no satellites to predict the weather and there were no goats who forecasted it either.
Perhaps bartering was the answer for the 1930s. Since 1908, the Springfield Herald, now Effingham Herald, is still in business. Who knows what is ahead for any of us? Although bartering would not work today in the newspaper industry, each business has to be creative to survive and I wish them the best. Would you do yard work for a homemade cake? Perhaps in our daily lives we should get back to good old bartering and solve some of our world’s financial crisis.
This article was written by Susan Exley of Historic Effingham Society. If you have comments, photos or information to share contact her at 754-6681 or email: susanexley@historiceffinghamsociety.org
