The past few weeks I’ve been telling you stories about lightning rods and lightning rod men, who had a shady reputation in the late 1800s and early 1900s. At the same time, there was the emergence of respectable science affirming the protective merit of lightning rods and advising people how best to deploy them. Eventually farmers bought in, and most every farm exhibited spikes and cables. How did that happen?
Begin with an understanding why country editors were so antagonistic to lightning rod men. These salesmen came from out of town, representing distant companies. They neither cut local dealers in on the action nor purchased advertising in newspapers. They rented rooms and rigs, but otherwise were seen as an economic drain on the community.
That changed when lightning rod companies sensed the demise of the direct market and linked up with local dealers, various chaps in town who had mechanical skills. Such as Andrew Norberg, of Bowbells, who in 1906 announced that, as an addendum to his bicycle sales and repair business, he had become an agent for “Dodd & Struthers Famous Copper Cable Lightning Rods.” He bought a display ad in the Bowbells Tribune announcing his agency and his possession of a certificate saying he was “thoroughly schooled in the science of putting up lightning rods.”
And then the advertising swelled. Some was sober, even historical, such as the ad in the Bismarck Tribune, 1909, listing “facts about lightning and the lightning rod,” asserting (falsely) the invention of the device by Ben Franklin in 1763 and noting the installation of protective rods on both the Washington Monument and the Statue of Liberty.
Other advertisers appealed to logic and prudency, as did Thompson Hardware in the Washburn Leader in 1909. “You may never have lost a barn,” Thompson warned, “but your neighbor did.” That same year Hope Implement Company, pitching its “Shinn’s Copper Cable Lightning Rod,” asked, “Why Take Chances?” and offered the assurance of the “Shinn guarantee.”
An ad in the Ward County Independent in 1909 went so far as to assert that lightning rods were free, inasmuch as the reduction in insurance rates for properties fitted with protection would repay the cost of installation.
Purchase of advertising turned country editors from antagonism to boosterism. A newsy item in the Griggs County Courier Democrat in 1909 urged readers to take in a demonstration by Dodd & Struthers at the fairgrounds. This item ran two columns over from a large display ad purchased by Plummer & McNiven, local agents for Dodd & Struthers.
My favorite example of such promotion: the note in the Dickinson Press of 17 July 1915 reporting, “The sisters and their patients in St. Joseph’s hospital are feeling much safer since the place was equipped with the Dodd system of lightning rods. J. W. Molloy, local agent, did the work.” And on the same page find the paid announcement, “J. W. Molloy has taken the agency for the Dodd & Struthers lightning rods. . . . This system is the best in the United States and the local agent will be glad to give anyone estimates on equipping any building against lightning.”
Lest the point be obscure, this notice in the Nonpartisan Leader, 26 April 1920: “Lightning Rods - Big profits and quick sales to live dealers selling Diddie’s Universal Rods. . . . Get our agency.”
Submitted for your consideration: historically, as in contemporary life, it may appear righteous and efficacious to claim public authority, grounded in the morals or science or whatever, but in time, under attentive observation, the dollar signs will be discernible on the palimpsest.
-Tom Isern
