purer "colonial": Boston marks the extremest modification possible to the Puritan who is still a Puritan. It cannot compound any farther with the non-Puritan world without losing its own heritage. More cosmopolitan, more mundane, more eclectic than this, it would not be safe to be. Boston may yet be changed by the foreigner; by the dominant Irishman, the invading Pole. An Iberian, or a Semitic, or a Slavic breath may yet blow hot destruction over Beacon Hill. One does not forget that Old Hadley has lapsed to the foreigner, and that its colonial houses, its double avenue of elms, are now a living anachronism. But, so far, Boston is still New England, going strong.

The old cities of the South, they say, are losing all that made them homes of romance. Too dependent on a state of things that was highly artificial and bound to pass-having no prescience, you may say, of the Shaw Monument-they have sunk slowly as the props were withdrawn. Boston never was, like Charleston and New Orleans, a home of romance: the New England conscience did not see life that way. As I hinted before, it is as much its early renunciations as its acceptances that have given it a kind of Indian summer. The people who live within its gates have much the same qualities as the gates within which they dwell. They are complicated folk, to whom inhibitions are the law of life. Not here lie the great Philistine adventures—not here the splendid riot of physical life. Nor can they permit themselves to be true romantics, following "the light that never was on sea or land." But there is a quiet inclusiveness of reference, an implied recognition of the many things needed for happiness even though happiness be not

easily come by, a rather long list of essentials prevailingly intangible. Souls much lived in, you would say. Not feasted in; still less, shut up with cedarn doors against moth and rust.

Indian summer sometimes prolongs itself incredibly. Those of us who do not feel that New England in the Mississippi Valley is quite the same as New England at home, will pray for winter to be belated. It is not all pleasure, this perception of Boston's beauty; for to perceive it one must enter the land where the free spirit still feels curbed by a rigidity that, strictly speaking, is relaxed, an austerity that no longer holds. Original sin, I think, is the name of the prison we enter when we cross the line into our own New England. New England may have thrown over the dogma-I do not know

but what does that matter if you keep the state of mind? I am convinced that the genuine New Englander, wherever he goes, is still imprisoned in that sense, and "drags a lengthening chain." For myself, I can get rid of it only by crossing the Great Divide and staring at the Golden Gate. And even that shock of liberation would probably not last. Robert Frost's searching words,

"Home is the place where, when you have to go,

They have to take you in."

seem to me to define, better than any others, the escaped New Englander's feeling about New English soil. He may have been happier elsewhere, but elsewhere he has no right. Only there is he at home. To this, at the end of life, whether he die beneath palm or pine, his spirit must inevitably return. And so it shall be, as "Fair Harvard" has it,

"Till the stock of the Puritans die."

F

Much has been written about its effect upon the advertisee. It has made him a better customer. It has changed his habits and enlarged his vocabulary. And it has equally given him better goods, more easily obtained, at lower prices.

But advertising has one of the qualities of Portia's celebrated brand of mercy. It works both ways. It lays the advertiser under the necessity of living up to his advertising. And the advertising up to which he must live is always a shade ahead of his business. The manufacturer who invokes publicity has given a hostage to the public. He has joined Gideon's band, broken his pitcher, and let his lamp shine. He cannot thereafter hide his light and creep back into comfortable obscurity. He must abide by his conspicuousness and all its consequences.

Twenty-five years ago I was a cub copy-writer on the staff of an advertising agency. One day my boss came into my cubicle and brought me a job.

"I have a friend," he said, "who owns a hotel."

He dropped on my desk a photograph of the wooden summer-resort hotel of that period.

"He wants a booklet written to send to prospective guests. I know nothing about the place-never saw it. I want you to write three thousand words about the kind of hotel you would like to spend your vacation at.

I did just that. I described a hotel where the service anticipated the wants of the guests, where the clerk was human and approachable, and the proprietor a sort of good angel hovering in the background.

My employer duly submitted my copy to his customer friend, along with a dummy of the proposed booklet.

The hotel man read it.

"This is bully!" he exclaimed, “but— you see that isn't exactly the kind of hotel I keep.'

"Maybe not," retorted the advertising man, "but it is the kind of hotel you ought to keep."

I wish I could go on and round out my anecdote by telling you how that hotel man, waiving the advertiser's vested right to edit and blue-pencil all copy, edited and blue-pencilled his hotel-keeping instead, until it resembled somewhat the thing I had imagined. Maybe he did. It is enough for my purpose that there is to-day at least one chain of great hotels whose advertised motto is "The guest is always right," and these hotels are in a way one result of the advertising man's laconic "It is the kind you ought to keep.

The kind you ought to keep, the goods you ought to make, the service you ought to render, have been displayed temptingly and suggestfully before the manufacturer's eyes by his own advertising until they have had with him something the result that Jacob's peeled wands had with the ring-straked lambs. They have made him over, unconsciously, but none the less effectively.

He has been changed by the very effort of making a worth-while appeal to the public. He cannot say one thing and do another, and since the thing he says, or permits his advertising man to say for him, is that more nearly ideal thing which he always meant his business to be, it is that thing which under the influence of the advertising urge his business gradually becomes. An actor sometimes plays one part so long and so earnestly that he comes to resemble the character he impersonates. Did not Joe Jefferson acquire some of the genial and lovable qualities of Rip Van Winkle?

There is nothing insincere about the advertising of the manufacturer I am describing. He does not talk himself into believing he is something he is not. But the total of all advertising produces a sort

of atmosphere of good-will, to which all advertisers contribute and by which all are affected. Let us see if an instance will not make that clearer.

Go into almost any shop to-day and you will find the prices of the goods plainly marked. This was not true fifty years ago. Then goods bore tags covered with mysterious symbols intelligible only to the proprietor and his salesmen. These symbols (each store had its own code) recorded the lowest price at which the article could be sold. But that was not often the selling price. The selling price was whatever the salesman could get over and above that bed-rock upset price, which was presumably the fair retail price for that article. The higher the price, the better the salesman. Every sale was a haggle, and it must be confessed that frequently the customer entered the game with as much gusto as the salesman. But the time and ability of the salesman were wasted-wasted trying to get as high a price as the customer could be made to pay. Instead, he might have been building good-will. He might have been turning a casual purchaser into a permanent customer. Neither the salesman nor his employer realized the potentialities of future business a casual purchaser represented. The modern idea that a sale that cost the store a customer's future business was a loss, no matter what the profit on that sale, was then unknown.

The secret price worked injury to the store. It was also an injustice to most customers. Only the good bargainers could beat the salesman at his own game. Most paid too much, and the same article was seldom sold at the same price to different individuals.

The condition was more or less true of all lines, but it was especially true of men's clothing. Men were (and are) poor judges of the value of the clothes they wear. When a man needed a suit he went to the store, picked it out, and then the bargaining commenced. The word "cheapening" was much used in those days for "marketing" or "shopping." "He was cheapening a suit" meaning he was beating down the seller. It was all well understood. No one but an easy mark accepted the first price asked. No one but the seller knew how little he would accept to make a sale. Now and then a

shrewd buyer carried the price below the hieroglyphics marked on the tag. But the odds were always in favor of the bank. Along came advertising. It is true that clothiers had advertised before. Newspapers carried the stereotyped cards: "Ezra Hemphill, Clothing, Hats, Boots and Shoes. 102 Main Street, opposite the Public Square." (How long, I wonder, after boots ceased to be worn did stores advertise boots and shoes?) But real advertising involved something more than a mere directory. Some clothier, feeling around for a message, a story that would give him the individuality at which all advertising aims, abolished the secret price, with all its attendant evils, and announced the fixed price: "All garments plainly marked."

How well I remember one such pioneer! On the flat rails of the fences around my native town was lettered in yellow paint the legend: "N. Boishall, the One-Priced Clothier." What Mr. Boishall meant was not that all his suits were the same price, but that the same suit was one price to all. But he did not need to explain it. The public of that day knew, though today the phrase is meaningless.

Changes

There was no revolution. came slowly. Secret price marks are not yet entirely extinct. But they are confined to the smaller and more exclusive shops where the tradition still prevails that there is something vulgar about a price. I do not believe a secret price to-day means a fluctuating price, but perhaps Baedeker's familiar phrase will serve: "Bargaining suggested."

The buying of clothing was taken out of the category of games of chance by advertising. Few who made this change in their merchandising methods saw where it would eventually lead them. A new morale in selling had begun which was to continue until the purchaser, instead of marshalling all his faculties to buy a suit without being stung, was to become so pampered and coddled that not even his own mistakes would count against him, let alone the shortcomings of the store itself. What would N. Boishall, the OnePriced Clothier, have thought of men's furnishing stores where goods could be returned if unsatisfactory, money cheerfully refunded, without pressure to take other goods in exchange? Where the

seller's solicitude extended over the period of wearing the article, and where the customer's continued and lasting satisfaction was placed far higher than the profits on any sale. One such retailer in New York City advertised a few years ago urging all who had bought certain suits to bring them back, anxious to warn the until-now-unsuspicious purchasers that the suits were badly dyed and would not hold their color.

The sheer advertising value of this incident is great. It gave at once an attention-compelling story and a telling instance of the store's desire to keep faith with its customers. The loss on the suits -if there was loss, for probably this was passed back to the manufacturer-was a small price to pay for such constructive advertising.

An experience of my own stands out. I bought an overcoat of a salesman who had made himself so necessary to some of us that we always waited for him when he was busy, like a favorite barber. Going to that store a month later for another purchase, my salesman said:

"Is that the coat I sold you?"
I said it was.

"Let me have it a minute, please. The surface of the cloth seems to be wearing off."

I had no complaint, but he took the coat to one of the store experts, and when he came back he said:

"The management wants you to return this coat, and either select a new coat or let them return your money."

And it was so.

Was that good business? In the years since this happened I have told that story hundreds of times, in conversation, in advertising talks, and in things I have written, as I am telling it here.

Both these instances are about the same house, perhaps a more shining example of what I am trying to show than the average, but the house is on record that the losses from such a policy are negligible.

It is only within memory of men now living that it has been believed that both parties to a bargain could be satisfied. One of the textile houses has an amusing trade-mark, a survival of those early days. An old-time merchant stands with lips pursed, hands thrust deep into breeches

pockets, staring at vacancy. The motto is "Sell and repent." It was more apt to be buy and repent, for caveat emptor had a real as well as a legal meaning. For thousands of years barter and sale had been one of the outdoor sports, as it is to-day in many countries, and as it is in all countries in some lines. Take the ethics of a horse trade, for instance, as told by David Harum.

Roy S. Durstine, in his book "Making Advertisements and Making Them Pay,' observes: "The appalling fact about advertising is that it can and does change the character of an establishment. Just when you decide that the sort of quality copy used by a merchant is entirely out of keeping with a business, you wake up to find that it has completely changed the class of his trade and that he is moving his shop to a better neighborhood where his customers prefer to shop. The history of many leading merchants in our large cities is the strongest proof of advertising power as a democratic force. It has lifted countless struggling merchants out of the side streets and on to the boulevards. atmosphere can crystallize the ideal of a business more than many spoken words." It must be confessed that advertising itself needed considerable regeneration before it could become an uplifter.

Its

In the days before manufacturers had accepted it as the great right arm of selling, it was looked upon with justifiable suspicion, for those who used it most were exploiting the credulity of those who believed in it. Chief among them were the patent-medicine men. Advertising is the one essential ingredient of a proprietary remedy. Legitimate businesses have thrived without advertising, but no patent medicine could exist without it. The least harmful of these quacksalvers were those who merely took the victim's money and gave him nothing. Remedies costing one cent to manufacture were sold for a dollar. Habit-forming drugs disguised as tonics produced their own re-orders. It became tragic when hopeless people suffering from chronic diseases were led to depend year after year on worthless remedies until all help was too late. Testimonials of victims who had in the meantime died while depending on the remedy advertised to cure them were used in the advertising.

To the patent-medicine people must be added the out-and-out swindlers. Their schemes were ingenious and their defense impudent. They gave a touch of comedy to the prostitution of advertising. They bore heavily on the universal desire to get something for nothing. Two instances will suffice. One advertised a "complete sewing-machine for 25 cents." Another offered a "steel-engraving of General Grant for 25 cents.' Those who sent their quarters to the first advertiser received a cambric needle. The steel-engraving was a one-cent postage-stamp. The amounts were so small that few took legal steps. Written complaints were merely ignored. When legal action was taken, the suits failed. The advertisers had done exactly what they promised. A cambric needle was a complete sewingmachine. All postage-stamps were steelengravings. The government had only one recourse. The naïve process, "fraud order," was invoked. The advertiser's mail was stopped and the money returned to the senders, which gave an opportunity to learn the vast profits from this form of advertising. The advertiser changed his name and address and put out a new offer. The Post-Office Department could not keep up with such versatility.

Publications were issued solely to carry this sort of business. They were called mail-order journals, and the traffic mailorder advertising, thus bringing reproach on the name of what has since become a legitimate and beneficial form of selling goods. The only way of stopping this was to cut off publicity.

Then there was the advertising of worthless securities, technically known as "blue-sky" or "wildcat" stocks. These had no market other than that made by advertising to weak-minded individuals who believed everything they read in the papers and magazines. They contributed their share to discrediting publicity as a means of selling goods. The itinerary circus, far more common in those days, was a symbol of amusingly mendacious advertising. While few took seriously the orgy of adjectives and superlatives which were thought necessary to bring the crowd to the big tent, it helped to uphold the impression that sober, restrained, sincere advertising would accomplish nothing.

In all this the mediums which accepted

such business complacently were aiders and abettors. Many publishers looked with equal favor upon the money of the patent-medicine man and the legitimate manufacturer. The idea they owed anything to their subscribers was then too far in advance of their primitive and shortsighted business instincts. The professional advertising man was the first to feel the handicap under which his clients were laboring. The better agencies of those days were beginning to refuse the accounts of proprietary remedies. The agencies used the weight of their legitimate accounts as a club. They refused to O. K. bills when their advertisements were run on the same page with patent medicines. It was obvious that advertising would never come into its own until the Augean stable was thoroughly cleansed.

A Hercules was in training. The publishers began to see that they were fouling their own nests in accepting business that destroyed the confidence that is the lifeblood of advertising. Edward Bok, from his seat of power as editor of The Ladies' Home Journal, launched a crusade that stirred the patent-medicine world to its depth. There is no need to tell that story here. Mr. Bok has already told it, and told it well, in his book "The Americanization of Edward Bok." The Journal crusade was followed by one in Collier's. The magazines cleaned house. They were followed, more slowly and less completely, by the newspapers. It is possible to-day to advertise patent medicines, but only in a restricted way. The important thing is that the traffic has been placed under a ban. It is no longer an important source of advertising revenue, and many of the most offensive proprietaries, deprived of their essential ingredient, have followed their victims to the grave.

The attack of powerful magazines was only one of the forces at work to regenerate advertising. The magazines, brought to realize the real value of their columns, and the possibilities of advertising for industries that had never dreamed of using it, and never would while it was the chosen method of every disreputable swindler, took other steps to build up the integrity of their advertising pages. They began the creation of what is known as reader confidence. The first step was the guaranteeing of the advertising. Readers