Rock Island Plow Co., Rock Island, Ill. [cover title of trade catalog]

Cincinnati: Achert Litho. [c.early 1900s]. [56]pp. Trade Catalog. 6 x 3 inches. Chromolithographic stiff paper wrappers, rear wrapper with fold-out panel; stapled. Illustrated. Text printed in blue ink. Near fine.

A humorous and quirky trade catalog with chromolithographic covers for agricultural plows manufactured by the Rock Island Plow Co. of Rock Island, Illinois:

"This memorandum book is a handy thing, and you will find a hundred uses for it during the next twelve months, but there is practically no advertising value in the mere act of giving it to you. We might just as well give you a bundle of blank paper. All the advertising value there is about this memorandum book is the opportunity it gives to create an impression favorable to our goods. That's the unvarnished truth given to you straight because we've searched the records in vain for a single instance where the truth ever hurt a legitimate business proposition...[p(2)]"

Issued in the form of a memorandum book, the trade catalog is essentially a blank book, but with advertisements for the company's plows at the foot of every other page. The plows have such names as the "Little High-Low Sulky," "Columbia Foot-Lift Gang," "Texas Special Gang," "Pickaninny Planter," ("Pleasing as a Coon Chorus"), and "Bully Boy Cultivator."

"We manufacture a full line of agricultural machinery, known to the world as the "Red, White and Blue Line," but in a little book like this we can only hint at a very few of the good things we have. If you wake up some morning with a burning desire for some new implement. and this memorandum book causes the name of the Rock Island Plow Co. to pop into your head, it's a good advertisement, otherwise we've lost out. Write to us for full information about any machine that interests you. We have stenographers to burn...[p(3)]"

The covers of this colorful advertising piece are printed in the red, white, and blue colors of the famed Rock Island Line Railroad and are additionally highlighted in bronze metallic ink.

IB100