iend who
advertisement signed and copyrighted by its author, or copy
righted by the business advertised ; the publication of a mass of technical, scientific , and popular books, on the subject of ad
vertising; the enormous development of advertising agencies, the formation everywhere of advertising clubs, the organization of national advertising associations; the erection of buildings for their accomodation ; the holding of national conventionsaddressed
by the leadingmen of the country , including its President,77and the establishment of a National Newspaper Window Display Week .78
To this extraordinary development the student of history can not be indifferent. How is he to regard the advertisement as
historical material? His first feeling is one of lack of confidence growing out of what writers of advertisements have written in
regard to their own methods and their own conception of the relative importance of the advertisement and the other parts of the paper.79 He sees the charge that “ As is well known , instead of papers controlling their advertisers, practically all the news had sent him a periodical from which all the advertisements had been cut, “ I can write stories myself;" to the tribute said to have been paid by Gladstone, — “ that he bought American rather than English magazines
because he liked to read the advertisements they published ;" and to the opinion expressed , apropos of the commendation of American advertising
by an English visitor, “ Not for nothing have our schools of advertisement writing and our advertising agencies wrestled with the English language.
The delight that the Elizabethans found in experimenting with the sonnet and other forms of verse, we obtain by inventing novel and catchy advertis
ing phrases .” — New York Evening Post, October 15 , 1913.
77 President Wilson addressed the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World at their annual meeting in Philadelphia , June 29, 1916. 78 Daily press , October , 1914.
79 “ Not even the publisher will openly acknowledge that he is publishing a magazine for the advertisers, even though he is perfectly well aware of the fact that he couldn 't pay for raw paper and literary talent without them . The reader must be flim - flammed with the idea that the publisher is really printing the magazine or newspaper for him .” — T . A . De Weese , Book on Advertising, p . 18 . “ The owner or editor of a paper may maintain the beautiful and impres sive bluff of running a journal to influence public opinion , to purify politics,
to elevate public morals, and to reorganize the social structure in general. If he is in earnest he may soon sink a million . If he is using the editorial
page as a cloak for a legitimate commercial enterprise and not to put politi cians in office or to tell the people how to think and how to vote he will not have to issue bonds to meet his obligations.” — Ib ., p . 62 .
80 Frederick Dwight, “ The Significance of Advertising, " Yale Review , August, 1909 , 18 : 197 – 205 .
