The Golden Age

Here's a stumper you may not be able to answer: Which DM trade publication published the following story?

“The baby was born on a Tuesday and officially registered at once. On the following Monday came a letter addressed to the baby himself, name in full, and a sample bottle of food. The letter simply suggested that Baby should try it and told why it was good. A booklet was enclosed. Did the mother notice that the letter and package were addressed to her son? She did, and was pleased.”

You're wrong if you attributed this to any of the existing pubs. It appeared in 1919 in a long-dead journal called The Mailbag.

The article went on to note that the name came from a public-records clerk, a “little man busily at work, making entries on filing cards, tabulating figures, gathering statistics, comparing his findings with other statistics, arranging, cross filing. Give him his little pack of cards and he can tell you exactly how many youngsters have been born in the last month or the last year, whether they are boys or girls, white or black, what their names are, what their daddies' names are, their nationality and religion.

“He can tell you the name and address of every prospective bride at least a day or two before the big event, he can tell you about everyone who has died and why, everyone who has become bankrupt in business or is ‘going broke,’ as shown by unsatisfied judgments.”

How far we have come in 89 years. There was not even a hint in the story that anyone might be upset. And most people weren't.

Direct mail did have its detractors. As Homer Buckley once said, it was viewed as “an orphan medium of advertising abused and misused on all sides, and was more frequently termed ‘circularizing,’ with the stigma of cheapness attached to it.”

But consumers didn't get that much of it, and they knew little about the process.

Now a medium is suspect the moment it's invented. Nobody has to do anything wrong.

Those were the days.