CHAPTER VII
Advertisement
“The man who would in business rise must either bust or advertise” is the American’s article of faith. In civilised countries advertising is confined to its proper limits, that is to say, it is part of the business of a tradesman. In America everybody advertises, and advertises through a megaphone.
The United States appears to have been created for the pure purpose of advertising itself and everything that occurs in it. In England of late we have been a little overtroubled with the persistent and flamboyant advertiser. His flaring posters, his disconcerting circulars, and particularly his promises of fabulous prizes if one will but buy his soap or his half-penny paper or his gaspipe bicycles have jarred upon most of us. The London hoardings blaze with all sorts of invitations to drink cocoa, swallow pills, go to the theatre, and demand bottled trouble of one label or another.
The plague is upon England, and probably we shall not get rid of it for a couple of generations or so. In the meantime, however, we may console ourselves with the knowledge that gaudy and excruciating as London advertising may be, it is a mere tea-party compared to the orgie of announcement that is always in progress in every bright American city. Furthermore, while the English advertiser has admittedly done his best to destroy for us the mild delights of a railway journey by erecting in every second meadow funereal signs with the names of liver pills and cattle foods upon them he has not yet attained to the audacities of his American confrère who, in his delirium of publicity, paints the names of nostrums on the sides of innocuous cows and adorns the scenery with purple and yellow posters that are positively zoo-like in their noise.
The rocks and hills of America are daubed over with wild entreaties to the passer-by to fix up his liver with some newly invented mixture, or to sow someone’s invaluable hair seed on his bald head. Each country barn is decorated with huge signs bearing disinterested advice as to what sort of medicine a wayfarer should use in the spring. In no part of any State can one escape the huge advertisement. If you penetrate into the recesses of the highest mountain and find there the hut of a bewhiskered hermit, the chances are that when you approach him he will give you some handbills containing details of the marvellous cures effected by So-and-So’s sarsaparilla. The sails of yachts are adorned with statements as to medicines. Landscapes serve but to promulgate the claims of the quack. If a man plants a bed of geraniums the chances are that the flowers are arranged in such a way that they immortalise the fame of somebody’s ipecachuana. The gardener is induced to do this by a present of free seeds.
In the trolley cars of New York one is always in danger of finding a seat under some such notice as, “The gentleman sitting beneath this sign is wearing a pair of our inimitable three dollar pants. They fit him beautifully. Don’t you think they do?” Or, “The gentleman sitting below has a very yellow complexion this morning. He looks as if he had drunk too much last night. If he had had proper advice he would have taken a dose of Green Jackdaw Effervescent before breakfast, then he would feel very much better than he does now.”
Pills, potions, pick-me-ups, blood purifiers, liver mixtures, lung tonics, corn cures, and preparations for tender feet appear to be the only articles of commerce that half the population of the United States trade in and manufacture. You cannot move in America without having these nostrums cast violently into your teeth and shoved down your throat by every species of reminder that printers’ ink and the ingenuity of the devil are capable of compassing.
With a view to the maintenance and upkeep of this extraordinary jumble of publicity the country is patrolled year in and year out by thousands of advertising vans, each accompanied by a considerable staff of “old hands.” American papers commonly contain paragraphs like the following: “Advertising car No 2 of Pawnee Bill’s Wild West has the following people: Al Osborn, manager; Doc Ingram, boss billposter; A. Clarkson, lithographer; J. Dees, banners; N. C. Murray, J. Judge and twelve other billposters; B. Balke, paste-maker; and R. Richardson, chef.” That the boss billposter should rank after the manager and the chef after the paste-maker is a choice American touch.
When you turn to the question of newspaper advertising you encounter pretty much the same characteristics, supplemented by a great deal of top-speed bellowing. In a high-class paper that lies before me as I write, a gentleman in the wholesale way announces in indecently tall black type that he is the “only live hardware man on earth,” and that he has “figured out a way to boost the business of his customers as well as build a good foundation.” Another dweller in the land of brotherly love—an artiste this time, if you please—announces himself as “The Death Defying Daredevil King of the High Wire” and assures us not only that he has been “the Feature Attraction for Three Seasons in Succession at Luna Park, Coney Island,” but that his “Reputation Talks for Itself.”