Civilization in the United States: An inquiry by thirty Americans

by Unknown

This speech, as I have said, would soon appear in the principal papers of the country. It would be published in installments, each one bearing its message of peace on earth, good-will to men, and the public—always preferring Pollyanna to Blue Beard—would be given an altogether false impression of Dreadnought Hams, and the conditions under which they were produced. But this particular speech would be only a small part of the idealism you would be permitted to absorb. There would also be a patriotic speech about Old Glory, which would somehow become entangled with the necessity for creating a wider demand for a certain brand of socks. There would perhaps be a speech on the sacredness of the home, linked cunningly with the ability of a certain type of talking-machine to keep the family in at nights and thus make the home even more sacred. There would be speeches without end, and idealism without stint, and at last every one would shake hands with every one else and the glorious occasion would come to an end only to be repeated with renewed vigour and replenished optimism on the following Friday.

But the actual work of creating advertisements is seldom done in this rarefied and rose-tinted atmosphere; it is done in the more prosaic atmosphere of the advertising agency. (And let it be said at once that although, even in the case of agencies engaging in “Honest Advertising” campaigns, many such firms indulge in the unscrupulous competitive practice of splitting their regular commission with their clients in order to keep and secure accounts, there are still honest advertising agencies.)

Now there are two important classes of workers in most agencies—the copy-writer and the solicitor—the man who writes the advertisements and the man who gets the business. This latter class contains the wolves of advertising, the restless stalkers through the forests of industry and the fields of trade. They are leather-lunged and full-throated; death alone can save their victims from hearing their stories out. Copywriters, on the other hand, are really not bad at heart; sometimes they even possess a small saving spark of humour, and frequently they attempt to read something other than Printer’s Ink. But the full-fledged solicitor is beyond all hope. Coming in close touch with the client who usually is an industrialist, capitalist, stand-patter, and high-tariff enthusiast, the solicitor gradually becomes a small edition of the man he serves, and reflects his ideas in an even more brutal and unenlightened manner. In their minds there is no room for change, unless it be change to a new kind of automobile they are advertising, for new furniture, unless it be the collapsible table of their latest client, for spring cleaning, unless thereby one is introduced to the virtues of Germ-Destroying Soap. Things must remain as they are and the leaders of commerce and industry must be protected at all costs. To them there are no under-paid workers, no social evil, no subsidized press, no restraint of free speech, no insanitary plants, no child-labour, no infant mortality due to an absence of maternity legislation, no good strikers, and no questionable public utility corporations. Everything is as it should be, and any one who attempts to effect a change is a socialist, and that ends it all.

Advertising is very largely controlled by men of this type. Is it any wonder that it is of a reactionary and artificial nature, and that any irresponsible promoter with money to spend and an article to sell, will find a sympathetic and wily minister to execute his plans for him, regardless of their effect on the economic or social life of the nation?

Turning, for the moment, from the people who create advertisements to advertising as an institution, what is there to be said for or against it? What is there to advance in justification of its existence, or in favour of its suppression? Not knowing on which side the devil’s advocate pleads his case, I shall take the liberty of representing both sides, presenting as impartially as possible the cases for the prosecution and defence and allowing the reader to bring in the verdict in accordance with the evidence.

The first charge—that the low state of the press and the magazine world is due solely to advertising—is not, I believe, wholly fair. There is no use denying that advertising is responsible for the limitation of free utterance and the nonexistence of various independent and amusing publications. However, assuming that advertising were utterly banished from the face of the earth, would the murky atmosphere be cleared thereby? Would the press become free and unafraid, and would the ideal magazine at last draw breath in the full light of day? I think not. Years before advertising had attained the importance it now enjoys, public service corporations and other powerful vested interests had found other and equally effective methods of shaping the news and controlling editorial policies. The fact remains however, and it is a sufficiently black one, that advertising is responsible for much of the corruption of our papers and other publications, as well as for the absence of the type of periodicals that make for the culture of a people and the enjoyment of good literature. When a profiteering owner of a large department store can succeed in keeping the fact of his conviction from appearing in the news, while a number of smaller offenders are held up as horrid examples, it is not difficult to decide whether or not it pays to advertise. When any number of large but loosely conducted corporations upon which the people and the nation depend, can prevent from appearing in the press any information concerning their mismanagement, inefficiency, and extravagance, or any editorial advocating government control, one does not have to ponder deeply to determine the efficacy of advertising. When articles or stories dealing with the unholy conditions existing in certain industries, or touching on the risks of motoring, the dangers of eating canned goods, or the impossibility of receiving a dollar’s value for a dollar spent in a modern department store, are rejected by many publications, regardless of their merit, one does not have to turn to the back pages of the magazine in order to discover the names and products of the advertisers paying for the space. Indeed, one of the most regrettable features of advertising is that it makes so many things possible for editors who will be good, and so many things impossible for editors who are too honest and too independent to tolerate dictation.

Another charge against advertising is that it promotes and encourages the production of a vast quantity of costly articles many of which duplicate themselves, and that this over-production of commodities, many of them of highly questionable value, is injurious to the country and economically unsound. This charge seems to be well founded in fact, and illustrated only too convincingly in the list of our daily purchases. Admitting that a certain amount of competition creates a stimulating and healthy reaction, it still seems hardly reasonable that a nation, to appear with a clean face each morning, should require the services of a dozen producers of safety razors, and several hundred producers of soap, and that the producers of razors and soap should spend millions of dollars each year in advertising in order to remind people to wash and shave. Nor does it seem to be a well-balanced system of production when such commodities as automobiles, sewing machines, face powders, toilet accessories, food products, wearing apparel, candy, paint, furniture, rugs, tonics, machinery, and so on ad infinitum can exist in such lavish abundance. With so many things of the same kind to choose from, there is scarcely any reason to wonder that the purchasing public becomes addle-brained and fickle. The over-production of both the essentials and non-essentials of life is indubitably stimulated by advertising, with the result that whenever business depression threatens the country, much unnecessary unemployment and hardship arises because of an over-burdened market and an industrial world crowded with moribund manufacturing plants. “Give me a strong enough motor and I will make that table fly,” an aviator once remarked. It could be said with equal truth, “Give me money enough to spend in advertising and I will make any product sell.” Flying tables, however, are not nearly so objectionable as a market glutted with useless and over-priced wares, and an army of labour dependent for its existence upon an artificially stimulated demand.

The claim that advertising undermines the habits of thrift of a nation requires no defence. Products are made to be sold and it is the principal function of advertising to sell them regardless of their merits or the requirements of the people. Men and women purchase articles to-day that would have no place in any socially and economically safe civilization. As long as this condition continues, money will be drawn out of the savings accounts of the many and deposited in the commercial accounts of the few—a situation which hardly makes for happy and healthy families.

It has been asserted by many that advertising is injurious to literary style. I am far from convinced that this charge is true. In my belief it has been neither an injurious nor helpful influence. If anything, it has forced a number of writers to say a great deal in a few words, which is not in itself an undesirable accomplishment. Nor do I believe that advertising has recruited to its ranks a number of writers or potential writers who might otherwise have given pearls of faith to the world. However, if it has attracted any first-calibre writers, they have only themselves to blame and there is still an opportunity for them to scale the heights of literary eminence.

The worst has been said of advertising, I feel, when we agree that it has contributed to the corruption of the press, that it does help to endanger the economic safety of the nation, and that, to a great extent, it appeals to the public in a false and unhealthy manner. These charges certainly are sufficiently damaging. For the rest, let us admit that advertising is more or less like all other businesses, subject to the same criticisms and guilty of the same mistakes. Having admitted this, let us assume the rôle of the attorney for the defence and see what we can marshal in favour of our client.