The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1922-05-24
If We Want Better
Business We Must
Make 1t Better
By Charles Henry Macintosh,
President Associated Adver-

Using Clubs of the World.
Advertising, as an ethical force, is
not yet fully appreciated by many of
those who employ it constantly even
in it's higher manifestations. The
misunderstanding power of honest
advertising has long been recognized
by forward-looking merchants and
manufactures, but not all have
come to see advertising as the
creator of a new sense of the es-
sentiality for honesty in business. It
was seen some years ago that adj
vertising must be true if it is to be
trusted, and that it must be trusted
if it is to be productive of profitable
results-and from that thought-seed
has sprung the present tree Of truth
in-advertising. Advertising, how
ever, is merely the reflection of the
thing advertised in terms of the
sense and morality of the advertiser.
Back of honest advertising there
must be honest business, and so the
truth-in- advertising movement was,
N reality, fore shadowing, or mir
foring of new conception of
nesty-in-business based upon a
scale of ethical values never before
generally applied in the processes of
trade.
"Caveat emptor!" let the buyer
beware, has been the rule Of trade
throughout the centuries. It might
continue to be the rule today, were
it not that advertising, with it's in
definite multiplication of the power
and responsibility of the individual
trade, acted as a mental microscope
on the relations between buyer and
seller; revealing the fact that the
continuity of these relations, under
conditions of aggressive competition
for the purchasing power of the
buyer, must always rest upon the
determining factor of his good will.
Wherever his good will goes, there
will his trade go also; and the good
will of the buyer waits upon the
service and truthfulness of the seller.
Men do not continue to trade with
those who have tried to cheat them
if there are others whose desire is
to give honest and friendly service,
and who make that desire known
through the medium of advertising.
Advertising has not created the need
for honesty in business; it has merely
brought more people to realize the in
evitable nature of that need. Now it
is fundamental fact in human nature
that people do not take important ac-
ton except upon personal conviction
of the need for such action. Philo-
sophers and teachers may recite the
rules of ethics indefinitely, and we
may nod our heads and murmur
That's SOP; but it takes the shock of
personal experience before most of us
will change the emphasis upon that
phrase of acquiescence and say in
stead That's sol" with the force of
absolute conviction.
Personal experience with the de-
structive force of misused advertis-
ing and with the constructive force
of advertising intelligently employ
ed perhaps by competitors, has
brought thousands to believe what
has hitherto been only copybook
maxim to them-that, in business,
and in advertising, which is the re-
Election of business, absolute hon
esty is the only successful policy. And
SO we are entitled to recognize ini
advertising perhaps the greatest
modern force making towards pract-
ical and applied ethics.
During the past ten months / have
travelled over greater part of these
United States and into Canada and
have addressed a total audience of
nearly $4,000 business men and
women, talking on advertising as
an Ethical Force" and Better Bush
ness and I have told these men and
women that if they want business to
be better they must make it better;
that if they sit with folded hands,
waiting for conditions to improve
and for business to get better OF its
own accord, conditions will not I'M
prove and business will not get bet
ter; that the responsibility for the