1085

Special position 25 per cent.
advertisement inserted on first page. Special
rates on standing professional and business
cards. Reasonable discount for long time and
space. Reading notices 10c per line. Special
rates on "write ups."

Entered at the postoffice at Indianapolls
Ind. as second class matter.

GEORBE L. KNOX.
PUBLISHER AND MANAGING EDITOR.
ELWOOD C. KNOX,
BUSINESS MANAGER.

All matter should be addressed to
THE FREEMAN PUBLISHING COMPANY
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA,
New Phone: 2880.

SATURDAY, JULY 24, 1915.

THE NEGRO EXPOSITION.

We are not so sure that generous
advertisement would have helped Glles
Jackson in his exposition undertaking.
We do know that it would have been
best to have speculated a little bit in
that direction. No general interest
has been aroused, notwithstanding the
management went through the form of
getting in readiness. It struck us that
there was an air of exclusiveness that
bode no good for the affair when it
was ready for the public. And we are
sorry, yet not surprised, to learn that
the exposition is not meeting with
anything like the success that was
expected. Of course, it is early yet.
and it may end gloriously, but there is
no indication of a big wind up. Long
since we suggested to Mr. Jackson
that he spend a few hundred dollars
among the Negro newspapers. His
reply was negative or evasive as
though he thought he needed time
only, when the people would come
affocking to him of their own accord
that is, without the help of the news-
papers.

He succeeded in borning his own
newspaper out of the prospects then,
or to be, saying that it was here to
stay, as if its birth was of a dubious
nature, and that some prefatory de-
fense was necessary. The exposition
was very generously boomed in his
organ, which, to say the least, did not
have a soothing effect on the editors
whose publications were not so
auspiciously born—whose publications
were not born with siiver spoons in
their mouths.

The advertisement of the exposition
at Richmond, Va., was seen in a few
of our publications, and these were
the more obscure ones, the object be-
ing, apparently, to keep down ex-
penses. In a way this was all right.
But here was a project, supported by
the government, and by the state, and
supposed to be in the interest of the
whole Negro race; and furthermore,
standing as a sign of progress of
Negro freedom for fifty years. Yet
it was so poorly managed that it came
near falling through the first week out
of sheer disgust.

The exposition management should
not have looked on the project as a
personal affair. It should have called
into their confidence every possible
Negro agency. Terms could have been
made with every Negro publication in
the land. All of this may not have
served to make the exposition a go,
but it would have been an evidence of
courting the goodwill of the editors
who are best able to the reach the public.
Instead of this the cry was we can't
do this and that, seemingly expecting
the generous support of the news-
papers gratis, when other bills of
every description had to be paid.

It was unfair, not that the small
amount of money that might have
gone to the publications would have
made much difference, but because of
the principle of trying to put one over
on us. Space can be bought in our
publications from ten cents an inch
up to fifty cents an inch. The man-
agement could have used its own
pleasure as to the number of inches;
it cared for none. We know of no
other way to make an exposition or
anything else go except by generous
booming. Giles Jackson et al. thought
to make it by some other gate than
the straight one, and had they suc-
ceeded they would have been just as
unfair to the newspapers whose busi-
ness is to give publicity.

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