The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1919-06-04

ct is well that we understand these funda-
mental facts; that we comprehend how ideas have
changed the world over; that we sense and study !
the new human environment which exists today I
and which transcends academic formulas or doc
trinaire notions. For there is greater need to-
day than ever in the past for scientific knowledge
of commerce, distribution, trade conditions, I'm
ance, economics, psychology, and art-in brief, ]
all human knowledge-in the advertising profess !
sion.
"All that we need to do is to buy now, build
now-and advertising can do more than any
other one element to impress that fact upon the
American public and to stir it to action The de-
partment of labor is cooperating with business
in promoting buy now campaign. That depart
ment is advocating advertising because it saves
money and reduces prices to the consumer; it pre-
vents profiteering; it nsures honest profits and
makes them permanent.
Emerson once observed that if man can
write a better book, preach better sermon or
make better mouse-trap than his neighbor,
though he build his house in the woods, the world
will make beaten path to his door, That would
unquestionably be true if the author, or the
preacher, or the mouse-trap maker could live and
wait long enough for the world to discover the
virtue of his product. But both he and the world
would profit the sooner if advertising brought
them together. And that is somewhat analogous
to the situation which exists today regarding
many businesses in this country and the purchas-
ing public.
There are thousands of products of unques-
toned merit of which the general public knows
little or nothing because the manufacturers of
such products are content to practice principles
of more or less primitive barter, apparently un-
conscious of the fact that by educating the gen.
eral public to an appreciation of the worth of
their particular products they would not only
profit themselves but would perform distinctly
valuable economic service to the country. In
other words they lack the vision which is the es-
pecial genius of this nation.
| Advertising is on the threshold of its golden
age. It will increasingly attract better brains,
and it will increasingly offer fuller scope to the
creative geniuses of business, science, art, and
literature. It's possibilities for service, in fact,
challenge the boldest and most far-reaching i'm
agination.
There lie before advertising and advertising
men not only the opportunity for service and
profit, but the clear call to duty. There rests
upon our business and industrial leaders the dis
tnct responsibility of stating and explaining the
facts and principles upon which national business
progress must be built, through the printed and
/ the spoken word so clearly that he who runs may
read, and that the oft-quoted man in the street
may understand. Never have our great journals
and periodicals enjoyed such enormous circula-
tons or been SO widely read. A large and con-
stantly increasing reading public seeks eagerly
to know, and it is the mission of the pubcist to
inform and advise them through all the mediums
at his command. To fulfill that mission we must
call to the vision of the promoter the cour-
age of the explorer, the keenness of the trader,
and the wisdom of the student. They must all be
conscripted to this great service and contribute
their part to the common cause, and they are all
the proper attributes of the efficient advertising
! man of today.
THAT time has long passed, if indeed it ever
existed when advertising, under proper condi-
tons, could be considered as an experiment or a
Speculation. It has long since become demon
strated economic factor as business builder and
a clearly proven educational force. That it may
not always, in all hands, operate with 100 per
, cent efficiency is no more proof of its failure
than an unsuccessful operation on the human
body by horse doctor would be proof of the
failure of surgery. It's call is for skilled men,
broad men, who have thoroughly mastered the
: tools with which they must work, whose sense of
public psychology is sure and true and whose
vision of national opportunity is as broad as the
! world.
To-day particularly invites the advertiser to
lay up stores Of good will and prestige for future
markets. Now is the time particularly for adver-
: Using to be informative and educational, to help
create standards of living, to stabilize mar
bots 70 10 IA