the next strongest appeal, the advertisers of beauty producers followed hard after quack doctors.” But anaesthetics and science
have found " a better way ” for the relief of suffering, while the balance has been shifted from interest in personalbeauty to the more vital things in life . Conditions of life have greatly changed since that day and advertisements with them . Under the in fluence of experimental psychology they developed enormously in extent and in effectiveness, and their appeal was centered on the
product, the nature of the finished article to be sold . But to-day the commercial advertisement in its appeal reverts to first prin ciples and more and more it runs its roots far back into a remote past. Greece and Rome, banished from the editorial columns of the periodical press, live on in perpetual youth in the adver
tising pages. Classical mythology advertises automobile tires, cement, horseshoes, lead pencils, stoves, hats,and mineral waters ;
ancient geography and history advertise rubber companies, shoes , and cigarettes ; the Greek and Latin languages advertise special brandsof soap , oil, and ready-made clothing. The Sphinx, the Pyramids, and notable Egyptian columns form the back ground of illustrated advertisements. Caravans from India and
argosies from Venice , the streets of Cairo and of Constantinople,
and tales from the Arabian Nights advertise modern products. Even a representation of a man of the stone age advertises a variety of chewing-gum , and the tower of Babel a history of the world . Historical structures , portraits ofmen eminent in the past , buildings and bridges erected by famous architects, accounts of historic events,8.and descriptions of historic scenes allmake their contribution to the commercial advertising of to - day. One of its strongest appeals is thus found in this universal, though probably
unconscious, desire to connect the immediate present with a
remote antiquity . The newer is the commodity to be put on the market themore insistent is the appeal to the past. Themore an industry realizes that a large part of the community holds it in
disfavor, themore it associates with its advertisements the names 7 A .Hayward , “ The Advertising System ,” Edinburgh Review , February , 1843, 77: 1 - 43. 8 An important automobile company carried as an advertisement in the
daily press of November 27, 1918, two double columns of the history of the Pilgrim Fathers.
