The Abounding American

by T. W. H. Crosland

The tone of these announcements is typical. Every American advertiser insists that he is the greatest man of business alive, and that the article he is so anxious to get rid of is the only fine thing in the world. You note, too, with a certain restrained joy, that every second advertisement appearing in an American paper or magazine starts off with the magical words: “It Will Pay You.” Thus if we are to believe the veracious publicity-monger it will pay you to wear So and So’s Collegian clothes which “are the only garments made in this entire country with real dash to them”; it will pay you to buy Thingamy Suspenders because they will make your boy “comfortable and good-natured”; it will pay you to go about in Thingamy Shoes because when you pay three dollars for the Thingamy Shoe “you can know that all of your money goes to the purchase of protection for your feet”; and it will pay you “to keep step with nature and tempt the fussy appetite with ‘Ten Liberal Breakfasts for Ten Cents.’” The authors of these touching suggestions evidently understand the public with whom they have to deal. They have learnt the sublime lesson that the American has but a single inducement in his nightmare of a life, namely—the inducement of money or noise.

I shall now consider the advertising feats of that class of American persons who advertise not for financial gain, but for the sweet sake of notoriety. A great lady of American birth is said to have advised her sons that if they were to succeed in life they must make a point of getting their names into the papers at least once a day. The sons of the lady appear to have taken the hint, with the result that they have made themselves fairly snug out of very small beginnings.

In the United States the bare getting of one’s name into the papers is a comparatively easy matter. Pretty well any American reporter will arrange that much for you in return for a ten cent drink, while for two such drinks he will run to a photo-block and a description of yourself as “a prominent society and club man who made his pile in Wall Street.”

You must always remember, however, that the accomplished American private advertiser has a soul vastly above the mere elements of the game. Usually he is rich and often his life has contained episodes which an ingenious press can work up into scandals with half a column of sensational headlines—pin new and piping hot—on the shortest notice. Most wealthy advertising Americans, and indeed many of those who do not advertise, have been treated to this beautiful brand of publicity.

As a matter of fact it is an ancient and over-worn fetich, and as the newspaper-reading American is no longer to be excited by it, there is little or nothing in it for anybody. Consequently the American who is thirsty for advertisement is compelled to have resource to what are called “stunts.” So far as one is able to make out you are considered by American society to achieve a “stunt” when you do something that nobody but a lunatic could possibly have thought of doing. For example, if you give a dinner party at a big New York hotel and let it be known that the guests were all of them chimpanzees you have done a “stunt.” And the reporters of every paper in the city will rush to you as one man to find out the facts. They will describe you as a multi-millionaire and a high-life club man whose existence is a sort of perennial grand slam. They will assert that your notion of bringing together a company of chimpanzees for dinner is wildly and unprecedentedly clever. They will go on to explain that the number of chimpanzees present was 47, that they turned up in the very smartest evening dress, that they ate and drank off plate of solid gold and that the champagne bottles were studded with rubies. And they will wind up by announcing that one of the most distinguished of the chimpanzees, who made his entrance to the dinner party out of a balloon made of fifty dollar bills, has just found a $500,000,000 gold-brick mine in a remote district of Omaha, where he was “raised,” and is as a consequence about to be elected President of the National Bank.

Result: your dinner becomes the talk of America for at least a few hours, and you consider yourself a fortunate and public man. That is, if you are an ambitious American. Of course, this sort of advertising requires a good deal of coin to keep up the pace. And while there is not an hotel keeper in the Union who cannot supply you with a steady succession of idiotic freak ideas, the cost is a trifle heavy, and you soon find yourself growing rather tired.

But the American is nothing if not clever. For a change, perhaps, he acquires an affinity or elopes with another man’s wife in a series of gorgeous motor cars and specially reserved steamships. He writes letters to his own wife explaining in ecstatic language what he has done; and she, good soul, serves them out to the reporters like so many doughnuts. Again, he gets his boosting—his roaring, rolling advertisement. Two months later the whole affair may turn out to have been a merry little “plant”; but your bright American has had his glad columns in the papers, and nothing in the world can take them from him.

Of course, the “stunts” I have here indicated are really of a rather out-of-the-way sort. The common or garden “stunt” usually takes the shape of an appendicitis dinner, pies with girls in them, fountains running champagne, or Adam and Eve suppers.

American women’s “stunts” are generally giddier still. One lady compassed social distinction by having her sunshade heavily embroidered with diamonds, another has tiny musical boxes fitted into the heels of her shoes that play when ever she puts her feet up—which is often—and a third wears a live newt in her hair, and has a boudoir full of snakes and lucky bears.