Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 272, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1916 — BIRSKY and ZAPP [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BIRSKY and ZAPP

By MONTAGUE GLASS

Author of “Potash and Perlmutter " As on interpreter of the shrewd and humorous immigrant Jew in American business life, Mr, Glass is delightful His characters in this series of sketches are representative of a eery numerous type in our cities, especially New York « Get acquainted with Birsky and Zapp l

£ ->-|-\HERE is no more pleasure In •• I reading advertisements nowadays,” sqhl Barnett Zapp, the waiit manufacturer, to Louis Blrsky, the real estater. ‘‘Why not?” Birsky said. “Well,” Zapp said, “what fun is It to read in a paper:

“And who would go to work add pay money to put in a paper an advertisement like that?” Birsky inquired. “Everybody nowadays,” Zapp said. “They dassen’t'do otherwise, because what with the Federal and State pure food laws and newspapers which is paying fellers fifty thousand dollars a year to show up advertisers so that no advertiser would take a chance on advertising, Birsky, if you want to advertise your merchandise, y’understand, you’ve got to tell the truth or the least that happens you is SIO,OOO ball on a certificate of reasonable doubts. So that’s the way it goes, Birsky. Former times a lady reads in the paper

y’understand, and right away she forgets that she Is going to take dinner Friday night with her husband’s folks out in Borough Park; that the doctor says that people with her trouble could live for years already. “But what is it nowadays for such a woman? She reads

and not only does all her troubles come back on her, but she thinks she is also developing a peculiar pain in her side.” “Maybe the advertisement give it to her,” Birsky suggested. “Sure it did,” Zapp replied. “This here first-to-last-the-truth advertiseIng is driving women to moving pictures, Birsky. Another thing is the way drygoods stores is acting nowadays. Former times a woman buys a dress at a drygoods store oh April 2nd and wears it up to and including July 15th, when she brings it back'with symptoms of a beefsteak supper, two weddings and a chocolate nut sundae on the front panel, Birsky, and for the next six months she has the time of her life trying to get a credit check for it. It gives her a fresh interest in things. Her eyes get bright and her cheeks is got fresh color in them the same like an advertisement for a complexion cream before the enactment of Section 31416, Subsection A, of the Penal Code in relations to False and Misleading Advertising. What is it nowadays, Birsky? A crepe de chine dress could have enough soup spilled on it to make it look like moire velour, Birsky, and when a woman refurnsitwith the pleasant expectations of never being so insulted in her life, Birsky, before she could even open her mouth to say ‘Listen!’ y’understand, the floor walker pulls a credit check on her.” “And I suppose," Birsky commented, “for the next few days she walks around looking so downhearted that whenever her lady-friends see her they go home and practically throw the meals at their husbands and gives as an explanation that they’d like to see themselves * worrying themselves to death over any man.” “Well, I’ll tell you,” Zapp said, “maybe the drygoods stores Is getting done on their money back guarantees, Birsky, but that’s because they are suffering from the fact that people ain’t acquainted with up-to-date advertising idees. Their customers still thinks that when a drygoods store says: If anything you buy here proves unsatisfactory it will be- exchanged or your money will be refunded— Birsky, it must bo understood that such a guarantee means:, If anything you buy here proves unsatisfactory by tho evidence of six uninteresting witnesses which a cracker Jack A-number-one trial lawyer couldn’t rattle on cross-examination, it will be exchanged or your money will be refunded when so ordered fey the Supreme -Court-, of the United States or a Justice thereof after the last appeal gets taken and Judgment

is confirmed in an action brought for that nurpose, it being understood and agreed <that nothing ib this guarantee shall apply to or bind the party malting the same, his heirs, executors, administrators and assigns.

“Before a newspaper accepts an advertisement nowadays, it is censured the same as an interview with General Joffer, and if an advertisement comes in from a shoe manufacturer with his picture on it, they send a reporter to make sure that the feller is bald like his photograph claims he is, and if he isn’t they wouldn’t print the advertisement till the manufacturer comes down and signs his name In the presence of the managing editor, the art editor, two prominent clergymen and a handwriting expert. “Aber what I couldn’t understand Is: Why should a manufacturer suppose it helps the sale of his shoes to advertise ’em mit a picture of a bald-headed man, even supposing he does look that way?” Zapp said. “For that matter, Zapp, my wife’s brother Sig as a young feller used to rub talcum powder on lip, because be thought it would make grow for him a mustache like the feller on the box,” Birsky said. “Was there any such claim on the box besides the picture?” Zapp asked. “No,” Birsky said, “but Sig had just come over from the old country and couldn’t read English.” “Well, all I could say is he is lucky he didn’t want to raise a bald head in-

stead of a mustache,” Zapp replied, “because he would of been set back at least $3.50 for shoes instead of twenty cents for talcum powder.” “A feller who thinks he could get bald headed by wearing any particular brand of shoes should ought to get stuck for $3.50,” Birsky said, “never mind he couldn’t read English.” “Well, that only goes to show how careful a newspaper should be If it doesn’t want its readers to be swindled,” Zapp said. “Some people which is too foxy to believe anything they read in the news section of a newspaper gets fooled very easy by advertisements. They could read it in the paper how seals has become so scarce that if all the seals in existence was divided up among the inhabitants of the State of Kansas there would be only .00062 seals to an inhabitant. Also they could see in a Sunday paper how the Secretary of Commerce and Labor gives out an Interview that the United States is keeping a line of battleships in Alaska to prevent poachers from killing seals, Birsky,"but that owing to the high price of sealskins in New York, the poachers takes a chance on getting shot, starved, frozen and drowned and sometimes catches as many as twentyeight and a half seals in a -season, y’understand, and yet, Birsky, when a concern by the name of the Paris and 'San Francisco Fur Importing Company advertises fur overcoats with Baffin Bay Seal lining and genwine Prussian Lamb collars at from $19.99 to $21.50 apiece, them newspaper readers figure what does a Secretary of Commerce and Labor know about seals anyway.” “Maybe they figure that way, and maybe they figure that the feller which is running the Paris and San Francisco Fur Importing Company is just some poor goose that has got ahold of a line of seal overcoats and don’t know their real value, Zapp, and never mind If the feller WOULD have a wife and family depending on him, Zapp, that’s HIS lookout If he is fool enough to let them seal-lined overcoats go from $19.99 to $21.50, he shouldn’t be in the fur business if he don’t know no more about furs than that; so they buy an overcoat oft of him, Zapp, just to teach him a lesson as it were.” “Sometimes they also figure that the reason why the Paris and San Francisco Fur Importing Company could sell genwine sealskins at $19.99 Is that the overcoats was stolen, Birsky,” Zapp said, “so they go to work and buy ’em on the principle of what the eye don’t see it, what is It the heart's business?" “Then what is the use of newspapers protecting them crooks by not printing fake advertisements?” ' “I don’t know, Birsky,” Zapp said. “In fact, Birsky, I ain’t got no sym-

pathy for a bargain hunter anyway. “And quite right too,” Birsky said. “It’s always a joke to stick a bargain hunter, Zapp, because if he wasn’t out to stick somebody himself a bargain hunter wouldn’t be a bargain hunter. There Is fellers in this town, Zapp,— millionaires and college gradgewates —which when they talk about quack stores gets so red in the face that you’d think they was discussing labor unions, Zapp, and in the very next breath, y’understand, they’ll tell how they was motoring in the mountains of West Virginia and how they come across a log cabin where an old feller and his wife was raising a little corn for a living and eating it off a brokendown mahogany table mit bandy legs, club feet and all the other deformities which turns a human being into a helpless cripple and a table into a sl,000 antique, Zapp. Then they’ll tell you how they bought the table from the poor mountaineer for $2.35 and brought It back to New York and had it polished for $J.,03 and sold it to an antique dealer for $1,275.60; and they never stop to consider that while a quack store proprietor may sell a fur overcoat for $21.50 by representing that the lining is genwine seal, the garment probably stands him In as much as $10.50, reckoning what he paid th« tailor for manufacturing and the S. P. O. A. for the skins.” “At the same time, Birsky,” Zapp said, “if I would be a reputable mer-

chant, and zoltenly I TRY to be, Birsky, I wouldn’t advertise my goods in a paper which also accepts advertisements from quack stores, because I figure that if a bargain hunter wouldn’t know of an advertised store where he THINKS he could get a SIOO overcoat for s2l, he would go to ah advertised store where he really and truly could buy a SIOO overcoat for SIOO, or anyhow $110.50. So you see, Birsky, censuring advertisements is really for the benefit of the advertiser and not for the feller who reads ’em.” “Maybe you’re right, Zapp,” Birsky agreed, “aber it don’t rnatfe no difference how small- its circulation would be, a newspaper couldn’t overestimate the foolishness of people that read advertisements.”

“I believe you,” Zapp said. “Now you take me for instance, and I am a pretty hard proposition. If I see in a newspaper that I am recommended to drink sparkling Graperina made f>om the Juicfe of the ripest Illinois graphs, I take it for granted that on the bottle it says: "The contents of this package is composed from grape skins, grape stalks, grape boxes and grape barrels, sweetened with sakkareeno and artificially colored and carbonated, contains 8-10 of 30% Benzo-boracid acid and 6-11 of 70% somethingate of soda and 4% alcohol by weight and 38% by volume.’ Also I never fall for advertisements of cheap clothing, cheap straw hats, cut price furniture or specials In watches and jewelry, but when I see in a newspaper:

y’understand, it’s all I can do to nold myself back from ringing np the New York agent and asking him would he prefer cash Oder a certified check.” “Yes, Zapp,” Birsky commented, “there’s Just enough of the rube in each and every feller so that sooner or later, mit kidney pills or oltermobiles, the fake advertiser will get him If he don’t- look out.” “Or if the newspaper proprietor don’t look for him,” Zapp concluded. • (Copyright, Nsw York Tribunal

“Signs His Name in the Presence of the Managing Editor, the Art Editor, Two Prominent Clergymen and a Handwriting Expert”