So you see, our University of Jabbergrab has discovered advertising to be a “profession”; it takes its place alongside chiropody, palmistry and fox-trotting. If you want to know what these new “professors” are doing to American journalism, I invite you to read Chapters XLIII-XLVII of “The Brass Check”; I invite you to study the samples of advertising there quoted—one of which occupied a full page in all the most popular and respectable American magazines—and then come back to Chancellor Brown’s pamphlet and read his statement: “Many advertising men, I am told, were formerly teachers. The two professions seem to me to have a great deal in common.”
I should be sorry indeed to believe that about all American teachers, but I know it is true of some of the teachers who have been selected by the University of Jabbergrab. For example, consider Professor William E. Aughinbaugh, an editor of the New York “Commercial,” a director in sixteen corporations, and for seven years “Professor of Foreign Trade” in New York University. He boasts of having crossed the equator thirty-six times on commercial missions, and he publishes through one of our most esteemed publishing houses, the Century Company, an elaborately got up book, entitled, “Advertising for Trade in Latin America.” The price of this book is three dollars, and if you will study its maxims and apply them, you will find it worth all that. For example:
Latin-American advertisements are replete with the nude female form, which appeals strongly to all classes of readers. Due to the fact that a majority of the inhabitants are brunettes, or have Negro or Indian blood in their veins, the blonde exerts a stronger appeal to their imagination and for that reason should be employed when necessary or advisable to use such an illustration.
And so we know what the Chancellor of Jabbergrab means when he writes:
Advertising men have it in their power to educate millions of people not only in an intelligent use of commodities but in well-considered habits of thought and action.
Let us hear Professor Aughinbaugh again:
Reproductions of famous holy or religious paintings or scenes from the Bible may also be profitably used.... It occurred to me that if a saint could be found whose special duty was to prevent loss of life during seismic disturbances, much might be done through his aid to bring calm into these regions of terror. I selected my second name, “Edmund,” as the cognomen for the new assistant deity, added the prefix “Saint” to it, and wrote an appropriate earthquake prayer which was printed beneath the picture of the home-made saint. Of course each card contained our advertisement (of a patent medicine) which the supplicant for protection must have seen as he prayed.
And so we learned what the Chancellor of Jabbergrab means when he writes:
I can appreciate the reasons that impel any manufacturer to spread abroad through the columns of our newspapers and magazines the information about his worthy products. I can believe, too, that this information is often of real service to the public in guiding them to wise decisions regarding their expenditures and investments.
And again let us hear Professor Aughinbaugh on the subject of how to deal with the custom-laws of the countries with which you trade: