The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 98, July 1994 - April, 1995 Page: 571

                                
Godfrey Flury's Billboard Advertising Business

and more business firms. The only way to get them was to raise money and ad-
vertise.5
In such a spirit, Flury produced a large plaster-of-paris model of a bird's-
eye view of Austin in 1912. The newspaper article promoting Flury's
"contour map" also noted that "The idea has been suggested to the Busi-
ness League that copies, made from the same mold, be ordered, at a
probable expense of $50 each, and used as advertisements throughout
the country."6 The Austin Business League may not have taken up
Flury's offer at the time, but the town of Austin was growing and would
provide Flury with further advertising opportunities.
On the national level, the flourishing and expanding advertising in-
dustry had begun in the 191os to organize itself into trade associations
in an effort to have advertising recognized as a profession similar to
medicine or law.' Advertising practices had long been associated with
patent medicine fraud, carnival barkers, and promoters like P. T. Bar-
num of Barnum and Bailey circus fame. A reliance on outdoor advertis-
ing by patent medicine manufacturers and circuses in the mid to late
nineteenth century meant that billboards were closely associated with
hucksterism. However, as the demand for advertising grew, the quasi-il-
legal practice of bill-posting on any empty wall developed into organized
businesses hired to post and maintain the special structures, known as
"billboards," on which "bills" were posted. Bill-posting companies soon
devised methods for determining advertising rates based on the location
and duration of postings. In 1891, in a move to achieve business legiti-
macy, bill-posting companies formed the Associated Bill Posters' Associa-
tion to promote and facilitate outdoor advertising. By 1910 the
association had passed resolutions urging its members not to participate
in fraudulent advertising. The "truth in advertising" movement of
1911-1912 was an early attempt by national advertising trade organiza-
tions such as the Associated Advertising Clubs of America to implement
some sort of self-regulation. Trade organizations and self-regulation
were seen as routes to the professionalization of advertising.8 Flury care-
fully followed developments in the billboard trade organizations and
sought expanded venues for advertising.
5 Chalmers Lowell Pancoast, Trailblazers of Advertising (New York: F. H. Hitchcock, 1926), 139.
6 "Contour Map of Austin," Aug. 20, 1912, Flury Scrapbook (AHC). Many of the clippings col-
lected by Alvine Flury, Godfrey's wife, lack newspaper titles and/or dates.
' Darnel Pope, The Makzng of Modern Advertising (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 174.
8 Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 192o-1940
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 8; Phillip Tocker, "Standardized Outdoor Adver-
tising: History, Economics and Self-Regulation," in Outdoor Advertising: Hstory and Regulation, ed.
John W. Houck (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), 26 (1st and 2nd quota-
tions), 27, 31, 34; Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising, 202 (3rd quotation), 203-212.

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