The local paper believed strongly in the power of advertising. It often exhorted local businesses to support the paper, the town, and their own trade by advertising, but some still didn’t see the need. Here’s an argument in favor of advertising from the May 12, 1899 Skidmore Standard:
Prof. Cooper Sampson, the balloonist, was in town Monday evening. He said the crowd that witnessed his ascension in Maitland, last Saturday, wasn’t so large by half as the one that was in Skidmore the week before. He says our extraordinarily large crowd was the result of the systematic and extensive advertising which the Standard gave him. Yet in the face of it all, some merchants claim that they have no faith in persistent advertising.
