Civilization in the United States: An inquiry by thirty Americans

by Unknown

First of all, I submit the fact that advertising has kept many artists alive—not that I am thoroughly convinced that artists should be kept alive, any more than poets or any other un-American breed; but for all that I appeal to your humanitarian instincts when I offer this fact in support of advertising, and I trust you will remember it when considering the evidence.

In the second place, advertising is largely responsible for the remarkable strides we have taken in the art of typography. If you will examine much of the literature produced by advertising, you will find there many excellent examples of what can be done with type. To-day no country in the world is producing more artistic and authentic specimens of typography than America, and this, I repeat, is largely due to the influence of advertising.

We can also advance as an argument in favour of advertising that it has contributed materially to a greater use of the tooth-brush and a more diligent application of soap. Advertising has preached cleanliness, preached frantically, selfishly and for its own ends, no doubt, but nevertheless it has preached convincingly. It matters little what means are used to achieve the end of cleanliness as long as the end is achieved. This, advertising has helped to accomplish. The cleanliness of the body and the cleanliness of the home as desirable virtues are constantly being held up before the readers of papers and magazines. As has been said, there are altogether too many different makes of soap and other sanitary articles, but in this case permit us to modify the statement by adding that it is much better to have too many of such articles than too few. This third point in favour of advertising is no small point to consider. The profession cannot be wholly useless, if it has helped to make teeth white, faces clean, bodies healthy, homes fresh and sanitary, and people more concerned with their bodies and the way they treat them.

The fourth point in favour of advertising is that through the medium of paid space in the papers and magazines certain deserving movements have been able to reach a larger public and thus recruit from it new and valuable members. This example illustrates the value of advertising when applied to worthy ends. In all fairness we are forced to conclude, that, after all, there is much in advertising that is not totally depraved.

Now that we are about to rest the case, let us gaze once more through the magic portals of the advertising world and refresh our eyes with its beauty. On second glance we find there is something strangely pathetic and wistfully human about this World That Never Was. It is a world very much after our own creation, peopled and arranged after our own yearnings and desires. It is a world of well regulated bowels, cornless feet, and unblemished complexions, a world of perfectly fitting clothes, completely equipped kitchens, and always upright and smiling husbands. To this world of splendid country homes, humming motors, and agreeable companions, prisoners on our own poor weary world of reality may escape for a while to live a few short moments of unqualified comfort and happiness. Even if they do return from their flight with pockets empty and arms laden with a number of useless purchases, they have had at least some small reward for their folly. They have dwelt and sported with fascinating people in surroundings of unsurpassed beauty. True, it is not such a world as Rembrandt would have created, but he was a grim old realist, who, when he wanted to paint a picture of a person cutting the nails, selected for his model an old and unscrupulous woman, and cast around her such an atmosphere of reality that one can almost hear the snip of the scissors as it proceeds on its revolting business. How much better it would be done in the advertising world! Here we would be shown a young and beautiful girl sitting gracefully before her mirror and displaying just enough of her body to convince the beholder that she was neither crippled nor chicken-breasted, and all day long for ever and for ever she would sit thus smiling tenderly as she clipped the pink little moon-flecked nails from her pink little pointed fingers.

Yes, I fear it is a world of our own creation. Only a few persons would stand long before Rembrandt’s crude example, while many would dwell with delight on the curves and allurements of the maid in the advertising world. Of course one might forget or never even discover what she was doing, and assuming that one did, one would hardly dwell upon such an unromantic occupation in connection with a creature so fair and refined as this ideal young woman; but for all that, one would at least have had the pleasure of contemplating her loveliness.

So many of us are poor and ill-favoured in this world of ours, so many girls are not honestly able to purchase more than one frock or one hat a year, that the occasion of the purchase takes on an importance far beyond the appreciation of the average well-to-do person. It is fun, therefore, to dwell upon the lines and features of a perfectly gowned woman and to imagine that even though poor and ill-favoured, one might possibly resemble in a modified way, the splendid model, if one could only get an extra fifteen minutes off at lunch-time in order to attend the bargain sale. There are some of us who are so very poor that from a great distance we can enjoy without hope of participation the glory and triumph of others. The advertising world supplies us with just this sort of vicarious enjoyment, and, like all other kinds of fiction, enables us to play for a moment an altogether pleasing rôle in a world of high adventure.

Therefore let us not be too uncharitable to the advertising world. While not forgetting its faults, let us also strive to remember its virtues. Some things we cannot forgive it, some things we would prefer to forget, but there are others which require less toleration and fortitude to accept when once they have been understood.

As long as the printed word is utilized and goods are bought and sold, there will be a place and a reason for advertising—not advertising as we know it to-day, but of a saner and more useful nature. He would be a doughty champion of the limitation of free speech who would deny a man the right to tell the world that he is the manufacturer of monkey-wrenches, and that he has several thousands of these same wrenches on hand, all of which he is extremely anxious to sell.

Advertising, although a precocious child, is but in its infancy. In spite of its rapid development and its robust constitution, it has not yet advanced beyond the savage and bragging age. It will appeal to our instincts of greed as quickly as to our instincts of home-building. It will make friends with the snob that is in us, as readily as it will avail itself of the companionship of our desire to be generous and well-liked. It will frighten and bulldoze us into all sorts of extravagant purchases with the same singleness of purpose that it will plead with our self-respect in urging us to live cleaner and better lives. It will use our pride and vanity for its own ends as coolly as it will use our good nature or community spirit. It will run through the whole gamut of human emotions, selecting therefrom those best suited to its immediate ends. Education alone will make the child behave—not the education of the child so much as the education of the reader.