Page:The Science of Advertising (1910).djvu/59

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The Science of Advertising
55

the purity, cleanliness and uniformity which they desire and obtain in most advertised articles, should properly cost the small excess over the adulteration, dirt, and uncertain quality of the competing article which costs less. When the price of the superior advertised article is greater, it is inconsistently laid to the cost of the advertising rather than to the superiority.

Indeed, even when the superior advertised product costs no more than the other, and even when it is cheaper, because we see the advertisement which sold us the article and know that it cost money, we persist in thinking we must be "paying for advertising."

All of us will agree, I think, that the great shoe manufacturers who depend upon the advertising appeal to the wearers of shoes as the basis of their sales methods—that is, such firms as the Regal Shoe Company, Sorosis, and so on—and the great clothing makers who depend upon education in cloth values, rather than in popular ignorance, for their sales—that is, Hart, Schaffner and Marx, Stein-Bloch, and others—give us year in and year out a constantly higher grade of shoes and clothing at a low price than do the suppliers of similar goods unadvertised.

We all know that the advertising of these houses has enormously increased their distribution, so that the manufacturers can count upon a steady consumption and can manufacture with