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Show I TRUTH about ADVERTISING By CHARLES B. ROTH $2 EGGS WHEN my mother went overland over-land in a covered wagon to a new home in the West, the country was just settling up. Transportation Transporta-tion was slow, was expensive. Prices of everything were high. She preserved a newspaper of her girlhood on the frontier, and it interests in-terests me occasion-ally occasion-ally to read the cur- f 1 rent prices of things you buy every day i9f' "J now for a few cents. g. Eggs were $2 a f dozen in those days. ; r!f Sugar brought 40 cents a pound. Kero- 'V V sene was $3 a gal- ' Ion. Candles cost 25 : cents apiece. w' Compare these ' Jj j, j prices with the , L j Charles Roth prices you see advertised ad-vertised in your newspaper today and you will see that, although much talk is bandied back and forth concerning con-cerning the increased cost of living, the fact is that the cost has gone downward consistently since frontier fron-tier times. One of the reasons for high prices then was undoubtedly the difficulty with which the supply was obtained the hazards and expense of transporting trans-porting goods. But the chief reason was that the cost of these necessaries could not be spread out over enough customers custom-ers to bring them at lower cost to all. The merchant had to pay the cost of his business out of sales to a comparatively few customers. Costs had to be high. Prices on everything you buy today, to-day, regardless of whether you live in a village or a large city, would be higher now if it were not for the service of advertising in lowering them to your advantage. As soon as a manufacturer or a merchant begins to advertise he begins be-gins to sell more. As he sells more it costs him less to sell to each customer. cus-tomer. He cuts the price. More customers cus-tomers come. Again he is able to cut the price. Pretty soon you have the situation of improved quality and lower prices, brought about through the creative service of advertising to the consumer. Advertising and high prices do not go together at all. They are extremely ex-tremely incompatible to each other. It is only the product which is un-advertised, un-advertised, which has no established market, that costs more than you can afford to pay. Whenever you go into a store and buy an item of advertised merchandise, merchan-dise, it doesn't make any difference what, you are getting more for your money more in quality and service serv-ice than you would get if you spent the same amount for something which was not advertised. The man who builds a business on advertising can give you more for your money because advertising enables him to give more for less. See how advertising pays you every day. Charles B. Roth. |