Auto line o' type

Front matter

C OFVRIGHT DEPOSm

Auto Line o’Type

These lines written by the Studebaker“ad” writer. Will make the burdens of your life seem lighter . Well you may think it is very, very funny.

Preface

T HE inspiration for the making of this book finds expres¬ sion in these thoughts from a speech by Elsbery W. Reynolds to automobile dealers of the Southwest:

"Business! What is business? The buying and selling of merchandise in some form or other, the greatest, the most interesting occupation in all the world. The most wicked and merciless power for destruction, the most gigantic in its re¬ sources for success. * * * What is success in business? Is it merely the making of money? We say ‘no* a thousand times. Is the man who makes the most money the most successful business man? Not necessarily so. If he makes the most money in addition to the highest attainment in other things that make for success, well and good. * * * In desiring to take place in our local community business life in the auto¬ mobile industry, we laid down for ourselves two alternatives— Studebaker or stay out. Our conception of business is that of a ministry, and had we not already known the policies, ideals and business standards of The Studebaker Corporation, long since traditional, we should have sought other channels in business rather than the automobile industry, for service. That word ‘service* is the keynote in business and the ministry of business. Without that you have no excuse for a business existence. Wretched is the man to whom business is a bread and butter proposition, only. * * * As said before, we know nothing of automobiles, but out of life’s school of hard experi¬ ence we have learned some of the cardinal principles of business which we doubt not will apply to automobiles as to other lines. We have learned the value of ideals, right policies and high standards, and have come to understand more fully the brother¬ hood of man. As the years roll on, our faith in human nature holds fast and takes unto itself the increase * * * If we ran leave with that group of half a hundred gathered about us strong purposes for high ideals, social and business life stand¬ ards of the highest order and policies, founded on pure motives, for service to our fellows, in other words, leave with them a full understanding of ministry in business, our contribution to the automobile industry, though it be small, will not have been in vain.”

Introductory

E LSBERY W. REYNOLDS has been my friend for nearly thirty years. In that time I have come to know his resolute, enduring devotion to any cause to which he turns his purposeful mind. Every real publisher of books recog¬ nizes a debt to Mr. Reynolds for his achievement in making book-readers of millions of American citizens, who were strangers to books when he began his unique exploitation of an unheralded writer, whose name and works he made familiar the country over.

Mr. Reynolds was born on a Missouri farm in 1868. He received the education and had the farm experience of the aver¬ age country boy. Then followed some schooling in the nearby town. Early in life he heard the call of the city and in 1890 he came to Chicago. After desultory employment in various capacities, Mr. Reynolds founded, in 1895, The Book Supply Company. For more than a quarter of a century he has suc¬ cessfully directed its policies, maintained its high standards and ideals, and he remains its President.

While The Book Supply Company does an enormous busi¬ ness throughout the country, Mr. Reynolds is best known as the publisher of the novels of Harold Bell Wright.

It was in the winter of 1901-2, while Mr. Wright was preach¬ ing at a revival meeting in Chicago, that Mr. Reynolds first met the young minister who was later to become the world’s best known novelist. The acquaintance grew into what many news¬ paper writers have termed “a David and Jonathan friendship.” Mr. Wright’s dedication of one of his books (1910) was as follows: “To Mr. Elsbery W. Reynolds, my publisher and friend, whose belief in my work has made my work possible, I gratefully dedicate this tale.”

In the publishing of the books of his friend Elsbery Reynolds disclosed a marvelous genius for advertising, an almost un¬ limited capacity for hard work, tremendous energy, dauntless courage, dogged persistency and a clairvoyant vision—combined with absolute faith in the writing ability of Harold Bell Wright. The result was the sale of more than eight million copies of Mr. Wright’s books—from “That Printer of Udell’s” (1903) to “The Re-Creation of Brian Kent” (1919). This enormous sale was unprecedented in the history of publishing and has not since been equaled.

Mr. Reynolds’ advertising campaigns npset all traditions and electrified the book world. He believed with all his heart and soul in his author and his work; he conceived that his author’s work and his own was a real service to humanity. These beliefs he was able to put into convincing advertising copy— every line of which he himself wrote—and he “sold” Harold Bell Wright to the book readers of the world.

He keeps these publishing years bright in memory but with a tinge of sadness that some queer turn of fate denied him further service in this chosen field. Chiefest among his treas¬ ures are the author’s original manuscripts of each of the several books on which manuscripts the publisher labored many hours in editing and correcting.

Rlsbery W. Reynolds is a man who seeks and will not be denied channels of service. He makes his business and work a ministry; the impelling impulse, service. Hence this present volume, with its message of hope and faith and courage. His health impaired from overexertion, Mr. Reynolds sought the semi-tropical climate of Southern California. There he has interested himself with a group of red-blooded, upstanding, young men in the distribution of Studebaker automobiles, and his influence through Elsbery Reynolds, Jr., Inc., Pomona, California, is of tremendous value in raising this branch of the automobile industry in Southern California to higher standards and ideals.

The Corporation’s buildings and plant, in sturdy stability and character, reflect this man. The publisher-automobile dealer, writing the corporation’s daily advertising, devotes a goodly portion of his space to prose editorials or verse, from which the contents of this volume are selected, representative, in some measure, of his doctrine of service and understanding of the brotherhood of man.

Chicago, May, 1924.

Frank Kennicott Reilly.