This is probably an early example of co-op advertising. The House of Kuppenheimer, a Chicago clothing manufacturer would have shipped the cards along with its new fall line, and the clerks at the Benua Co. would have addressed them to their customer list. In 1908, when this card was mailed, The Benua Co. occupied the ground floor of the Knights of Pythias Building. The owner, Louis P. Benua, had previously kept his store at #7, The Lyon Block, in the northwest corner of the square. His new store filled a two-story-high, glass-fronted space at the southwest corner of the square and South Main Street. It's the Knights of Pythias building, one of three built by fraternal organizations on the square, and it still occupies Lot #1 in the City of Salem. By 1919 it had been taken over by E. F. Boggs, who had been a clerk with Benua before starting his own store on the north side of the square in 1905. The name Boggs can be made out over the door in the large version of the 1925 view of the Southwest side of the square. By the time that photograph was taken E. F.'s son Reed was running the store: E. F. Boggs had suffered a stroke in 1921 and Reed, just graduated from Salem High School, took over the business. Reed Boggs operated E. F. Boggs Sons and later Boggs & Justi (with a partner, Charles Justi, who had also been a clerk for Benua), in the same space for the next 51 years, until he retired in 1972. In the early '50s the staff consisted of Paul Judy, Bob Arnold, and Katherine Hoke, with some seasonal augmentation. The store was the kind of men's haberdashery you don't see any more: rack up rack of suits behind glass doors, glass display cases of shirts and furnishings, and, to be sure, counters piled with overalls and work pants. Shoes, hats -- if men or boys wore it, you could buy it at Boggs. This card was mailed from Salem on Oct. 26, 1908, to Earl Elrod of Pekin, Ind. (3/29/03)

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