Читать книгу One Thousand Ways to Make a Living; or, An Encyclopædia of Plans to Make Money - Harold Morse Dunphy - Страница 168

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A middle-aged man in a western city, who had practiced law for some years in the middle west, but later drifted into the newspaper business, for the double reason that he liked it better and was more adapted to it, finally took up general publicity work as a profession and soon became recognized as a leader in his line.

Although he wrote a great many advertisements for commercial houses, medical specialists, dentists, etc., all of which were rendered usually attractive through their originality of design and their concise and forceful style, he later began to specialize on booklets, prospectuses, etc. He was engaged to prepare the matter for a number of books about to be published, in which field his ability to extract all the salient points from subjects that are often laboriously and voluminously treated, and to condense a long tiresome story into a short and interesting one, found full scope.

One day a lawyer friend of his suggested to him that he could find a fertile field for his talents in re-writing the long and tedious briefs which most attorneys submit to the supreme court for review when taking cases before that tribunal on appeal; that lawyers, as a rule, are poor writers and waste much time and effort in the preparation of their briefs, with the result that they are not apt to receive the consideration from supreme court justices that would be accorded a condensed yet accurate statement of the facts, with properly arranged citations of authorities, etc.

Profiting by this suggestion, the publicity man called upon many of the lawyers in the city and, after explaining why he believed he could greatly improve their briefs, was given a number to remodel and prepare according to his own ideas both as a lawyer and as a newspaper man. These proved so satisfactory, that he was given much work in that line by several of the leading law firms, and found his time profitably occupied.

Several rising young lawyers with political aspirations also engaged his services in the writing of newspaper articles through which their names were brought and kept prominently before the public, with the result that their progress toward a coveted goal was rendered much more rapid, and a number of them are now holding important public positions as a consequence of this well-directed publicity.