Business: Arch-Service

In San Francisco the western office of Doremus & Co., advertising agency, was a "madhouse." The Western Power Corp. had entrusted its advertising of a $10,000,000 bond issue to this office, for simultaneous publication in Manhattan, Chicago and Boston. That was not unusual. Doremus & Co. are the largest financial advertising agency in the country. They have 324 accounts, practically every one a potent banking or investment house, such as Morgan & Co., Speyer & Co., Guaranty Trust Co., Kuhn, Loeb & Co., General Motors Acceptance Corp. One does not hold such customers by ordinary service. They want arch-service.

That day in San Francisco, just a few hours before the power corporation advertisement was to appear, certain facts developed that demanded changes in it. Normal telegraph instruction to the newspapers that were to carry the advertisement would have been too complicated and slow. It was impossible to see.

In this emergency a fertile-minded office man bethought him of telephotography. This is the process of sending pictures by way of electric wires, and the Bell System had just recently installed the needed apparatus in San Francisco and other major cities. If Doremus & Co.'s revised advertisements were set up and a clean proof photographed, the Bell Co. would deliver exact reproductions where wanted. This was done, and the advertisement appeared according to original schedule. Doremus & Co.'s president, Economist Clarence Walker Barren, was pleased, advertised on his own account the arch-service of his office. C. W. Barron is the head of his profession—financial journalism— the biggest man in it, anywhere. Wherever there are bankers, investment salesmen and alert businessmen, there he is known. Few keep business secrets from him.

Dozens of important men in finance have worked on Mr. Barren's staffs. When they first take a walk with him they feel like Falstaff's page. But he is no antic master, rather always the teacher. Brokerage houses hunt his men, offer them salaries even larger than they get from Mr. Barron.

He works hard himself, is always traveling. In his home he has 18 telephones, including one in the bathroom. A secretary sleeps close to his bed. By such means he furnishes a faster, more accurate, more authentic financial news service than any other organization can yet duplicate.