A recent writer thus refers to Mr. Bonner’s early experience advertising:—­

“His mode of advertising was new, and it excited both astonishment and ridicule.  His ruin was predicted over and over again.  But as he paid as he went along, he alone would be the sufferer.  He was assailed in various ways.  Men sneered at his writers, as well as at the method in which he made them known.  He had no competition.  Just then it was announced that the Harpers were to put a first-class weekly into the field.  The announcement was hailed with delight by many classes.  Men who had been predicting Bonner’s ruin from the start were anxious to see it accomplished.  He had agents in all the leading cities in the land.  These held a monopoly of the ‘Ledger.’  The book men and newspaper men, who were left out, were quite willing to have the ‘Ledger’ go under.  The respectability and wealth of the house, its enterprise, with the class of writers it could secure, made the new paper a dangerous rival.  Mr. Bonner concluded to make the first issue serviceable to himself.  His paragraph advertising was considered sensational, and smacking of the charlatan.  He resolved to make it respectable.  He wrote half a column in sensational style:  ’Buy Harper’s Weekly!’—­’Buy Harper’s Weekly!’—­’Buy Harper’s Weekly!’—­’Buy Harper’s Weekly!’—­and so on through the half column.  Through his advertising agent he sent this advertisement to the ‘Herald,’ ‘Tribune,’ and ‘Times,’ and paid for its insertion.  Among the astonished readers of this ‘Ledger’ style of advertising were the quiet gentlemen who do business on Franklin Square.  The community were astonished.  ‘The Harpers are waking up!’ ‘This is the Bonner style!’ ‘This is the way the Ledger man does it!’ were heard on all sides.  The young Harpers were congratulated by the book men every-where on the enterprise with which they were pushing the new publication.  They said nothing, and took the joke in good part.  But it settled the respectability of the ‘Ledger’ style of advertising.  It is now imitated by the leading publishers, insurance men, and most eminent dry goods men in the country.  The sums spent by Mr. Bonner in advertising are perfectly marvelous.  He never advertises unless he has something new to present to the public.  He pays from five to twenty-five thousand dollars a week when he advertises.”

Mr. Bonner well knew that all his advertising would be worth nothing in the end unless he made the “Ledger” worthy of the public patronage, and he exerted himself from the first to secure the services of a corps of able and popular writers.  In his arrangements with his contributors, he inaugurated a system of liberality and justness which might well put his rivals to shame.