Advertising in The Sutton Register March 24, 1881

Newspaper ads are a fine source of information about businesses in town. There were two Sutton newspapers at this time, so advertising was split, though prudent businesses tried to appear in both papers. The division in the nature of each papers, and likely in the readership, was that each paper was associated with a political party.

One source of revenue for local newspapers was to run ads from way beyond the local geography. These ads often offered miracle medical cures and treatments, and make for interesting (fun?) reading. Others are national ads that apparently targeted small town papers, and there were thousands of those.

It would be interesting to learn the economics of these ads. How much did Deere & Co. and the snake oil salesmen pay for their ads in The Sutton Register. And did these ads actually generate business responses to support this advertising. It must have, or they wouldn't have continued over the decades.