ers 'Weekly, September 17, 1921, 100 : 780.
The historian finds in all commercial advertising a perfect
record of the conditions out of which it has grown . He is not
immediately concerned with the question whether competitive commercial advertising is beneficial or extravagant,108 _— it is a condition that he finds and he is concerned only in examining
the record it thereby presents. He finds in it a record of waste and extravagance everywhere tolerated by a wasteful, extravagant society. He finds a record of sordid influencesbehind the enormous
expansion of advertising during the war, both in its volume, and in its costliness, since it has been possible to deduct the sums ex pended for advertising from the profits on which income and excess
profits taxes were payable. He finds conversely a record of high minded business houses that have scorned to take advantage of this situation . He finds a record of the short- sighted business
policy that accepts questionable advertisements on the plea that it can not do without them , while he again finds conversely the record of an honorable press that can not be tempted, and of a
discerning press that has grown in wisdom .109 He finds a record of the primitive instincts towards conquest not held in check by
other higher primitive instincts towards mutual aid and co operation ; of economic conditions that have had as yet butsuper ficial examination . He finds in philanthropic calls for help made through adver tising an appeal to the emotions that records an all but universal
tendency to appeal to the feelings, - a tendency as yet little re strained by reasoned inquiry into conditions below the surface. In all advertising by governmentagencies ,he finds in the foreground theideas of loyalty and patriotism ,butno suggestion as to whether the patriotism is that defined by Dr. Johnson as being “ the last refuge of a scoundrel” or that described by Admiral Decatur in 108 J. R . Tinkham , in Advertising is Non-Essential, has fully considered the various forms of competitive commercial advertising.
109 A newspaper in the Middle West somewhat recently accepted the well-paying advertisements of an affluent firm putting a patent medicine on the market. Its other advertising at once fell off and it then banished
the advertisement of the patentmedicine, — to find that within a month it had more than recouped itself for the loss thereby entailed . “ You can never get circulation for the paper whose editorial policy is
run from
the business office .” — J. Daniels, cited by Wilmer Atkinson ,
Autobiography, p . 159.
