At the end of our modern newspapers are the classified ads. The ads suggesting rental properties, dates, and roommates. I am used to seeing these today, but it never occurred to me that these have probably been around as long as newspapers and magazines have. I expected as much from advertisements; the same kind of outlandish suggestions of product functions and nutritional information that we see and scoff at today were probably scoffed at then as well. (Although I wonder if perhaps with less advertisements bombarding them on a daily basis, were advertisements mostly ignored? Or did people pay more attention to them because they saw less of them? Even then could people find the humor in the falsities of advertising? Did New Age readers find ads as hilarious as I do?) But of course without Craigslist and other modern resources, newspapers and magazines were the place to find something like a room to rent, or a place to sell your things.
In Volume 7, Number 6, June 9th 1910 issue of The New Age I came across a small ad that read "Lady (speaking also French, German, and Italian) offers to share her artistic home. Terms moderate. Convenient and pleasant situation." One can almost hear the words "nonsmoker, no pets" coming after it. Time and time again when going through these magazines I have been reminded that they are really not different from what we read today. Assuming that The New Age could serve as a microcosm for society at that time in the same way that the Village Voice does for us, we are really not that different. Obviously today most people placing an ad would not describe their home as "artistic," but one may list the languages they know. The words "convenient and pleasant" seem rather ominous to me, but I am jaded by the modern world and it is probably just word choice that made more sense at the time rather than a warning that this multi lingual lady is going to do very strange things in her home. The words we use may be slightly different, but ignoring the parlance of our times, the basis of the ads is familiar. The next ad I saw in the same issue, just a few lines below the first ad, is one of a different nature, though equally recognizable. "Old false teeth- We give the highest prices for above. Offers made; if unacceptable teeth returned. Dealers in Gold or Silver in any form. Bankers’ references ; straightforward dealing." Just place your broken or unwanted jewelry in our safe, secure envelop and we'll ship it straight to our refinery. The first thing that comes to mind is Cash4gold.com. Granted, this is teeth for gold, but it is the same idea. Selling personal items with little return because of desperate times.
The date may have changed, the product may have changed, but we have not changed. We are still looking for miracle cures for our ailments. We are still looking for kitchen products. We are still looking for money in exchange for our stuff. We are still looking for synthetic vitamins. We are still looking for roommates. And we are still looking at the back pages of our newspapers to find these things.
Interesting questions you
Interesting questions you raise about how readers of The New Age would have responded to the more ludicrous or shady advertisements. Have you noticed any discussion of the advertisements in the readers' letters section?
Btw, it would be great if you could link to the page-images of the ads you mention, so we can see them for ourselves.