CHAPTER III. ANCIENT FORMS OF ADVERTISING.

Though it would be quite impossible to give any exact idea as to the period when the identical first advertisement of any kind made its appearance, or what particular clime has the honour of introducing a system which now plays so important a part in all civilised countries, there need be no hesitation in ascribing the origin of advertising to the remotest possible times—to the earliest times when competition, caused by an increasing population, led each man to make efforts in that race for prominence which has in one way or other gone on ever since. As soon as the progress of events or the development of civilisation had cast communities together, each individual member naturally tried to do the best he could for himself, and as he, in the course of events, had naturally to encounter rivals in his way of life, it is not hard to understand that some means of preventing a particular light being hid under a bushel soon presented itself. That this means was an advertisement is almost certain; and so almost as long as there has been a world—or quite as long, using the term as it is best understood now—there have been advertisements. At this early stage of history, almost every trade and profession was still exercised by itinerants, who proclaimed their wares or their qualifications with more or less flowery encomiums, with, in fact, the advertisement verbal, which, under some circumstances, is still very useful. But the time came when the tradesman or professor settled down, and opened what, for argument’s sake, we will call a shop. Then another method of obtaining publicity became requisite, and the crier stepped forward to act as a medium between the provider and the consumer. This is, however, but another form of the same system, and, like its simpler congener, has still an existence, though not an ostentatious one.