The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1921-12-15
PRINTERS INK IS
MAG|C|AN'S WAND
SOUTH TRANSFORMED THROUGH
REVIVAL BROUGHT BY
ADVERTISING
ADVERTISING EXPERT TELLS THE STORY
St. Elmo MassengaIe Says Dixie Has
Doomed and Grown on Ac-
count of Publicity.
BY st. Elmo Massengale

lEulCOr S NOIe-SC. Elmo MdSSenSalo
is the leading fgure'in advertising cir.
cles in the South. AS most people
know, the big advertising expert of to-
day'is a man of wide knowledge, great
executive ability and in constant and
close touch with the economic condi-
tons of the territory wherein his work
lies. Whatever the head of the Mas
sengale agency says will be accepted as
absorbing facts by the merchants and
leaders of the South, and can be ac-
copied by those of the North as the
note of authority
Up to a few years ago capital was
not sought in or did it hurry to the
South. Dixie was considered as a
pretty section of the country about
which one should - and often did -
write songs, novels and dramas main
ly remarkable for an impossible negro
dialect and the number of roses that
intruded upon every scene and setting.
Cash, as the country considered it's
use in Dixie, was a pretty contrivance
used strictly as a medium of exchange
and not as a power of development.
With blind allegiance the South chung
to cotton as its great and only staple
and the shifting market on that single
staple spelled relative poverty or affiu-
ence for the territory south of Mason
Dixon.
A change has come to Dixie. 1t still
has it's roses and it's negro population,
but added to that has come a great
outpouring of industrial blood through
the veins of southern progress and in
instant response the South has devel-
oped until from a weak and pretty sis
ter in a cotton gown it stands today
an industrial power to be reckoned
with in the Offices of the worlds great
est banking, transportation, develop
ment and commercial units.
Figures may weary the average
reader, but beneath them lies a ro-
nance greater than any f%ictionist eve
drew with swift running pen If one
has but the ability to see and under
stand. OF the entire output of the
United States in corn the South gives
54h per cent, of tobacco "a 7/10, pota-
toes 80 per cent, peanuts SO 9/10,
apples 16 9/10, rice IS per cent and
sorghum syrup IS per cent. The an
nual peach crop is nearly $44 900 900,
sugar cane syrup 500, 00O, 900, oats
SITS, 900, 900, wheat, $500, 900, 900 and
cotton 50, 600, 0OO, 900, with a live stock
value in the South of $4,000, 900.
The South's development as an agri-
cultural, dairy and live stock country
is due to one cause more than all
others. Advertising was the force that
changed the South from a one-crop to
a varied crop and livestock section.
1t was not until the southern news
paper and farm paper publications had
given the widest publicity to the bene-
fits to be derived from varied crops
and livestock raising that southern
farmers could be induced to dethrone
king Cotton" 1t took years of con-
tinuous advertising OF the part of these
f~ar-seeing southern publications to sell
the southern farmers on the idea that
prosperity depended not upon one
kind of a crop, but upon many kinds
of crops.
While the southern newspaper and
farm paper publications were never
directly paid for such advertising, the
resultant prosperity of the South has
repaid them many fold for the space
so generously donated for the upbuild-
ing of the southern states agricultural
interests.
But advertising has been not only
the means of building up the South
agriculturally. 1t has built up the
South industrially from practically a
minus quantity, so far as manufacture
ing industries were concerned, to a
point where southern industries rival
the industries of the other sections of
our country.
1t was only a quarter of a century
or so ago when southern people had
to obtain even the simplest Of manu-
featured commodities from the North.
1t was this condition which inspired
the late Henry w. Grady, the beloved
publicist of the South, to write in one
of his editorials, as follows:
at was a one-galloused fellow, whose
breeches struck him underneath his
armpits and hit him at the other end
about the knees. He did not believe
in d%ecollette clothes. They buried him
in the midst of a marble quarry. They
ont throuph solid marble to make his
grave and yet, the little tombstone that
they placed above him was from Yer
mont. They buried him in the heart
of a pine forest and yet. the pine coffin
was imported from Cincinnati. They
buried him within touch of an iron
mine and yet, the nails in the coffin
and the iron in the shovel that dug