OCR Text |
Show I TRUTH about ADVERTISING By CHARLES B. ROTH OH, FOR THE GOOD OLD DAYS GRANDPA BUTLER was 84 when he died, but he held out to the very last for what he affectionately affec-tionately called "the good old days." He liked to tell about them. Life was simpler then, said he. We didn't hurry so fast. We had more time to read and to enjoy our friends. And the cost of living say, you could live for a third of what it costs a fellow these days. Where Grandpa Butler's logic fell down was in confusing confus-ing the standards of living when he was a if boy and when he was charIes Koth an octogenarian. When he was young you could live for less but you had less in your life. You put up with discomforts discom-forts which would be unthinkable today. to-day. You ate unbalanced meals, lived in uncomfortable homes, had no radio sets, automobiles or electric elec-tric servants. As a matter of fact but we were never able to convince Grandpa Butler But-ler of it the cost of living today, dollar for dollar of value consid-; consid-; ered, is far less than it was in his young days. Your dollar actually buys more, brings you more value, than any other dollar in history. Anyone who understands simple economics will tell you why. Two words will do it. The words are mass production. Mass production is impossible without mass distribution, which is just another way of saying that when a larger number of things are made a large number of people must be made to buy them. There wasn't any mass distribution distribu-tion until advertising was developed, and there wasn't any of the things in our lives we call modern until advertising ad-vertising put them there. In many foreign countries even today you have to spend weeks scouring the markets for what you want. Farmers bring their cattle and produce to market. They stay in town two or three weeks disposing dispos-ing of it. Consumers have to go from stall to stall and dicker for everything they want. If you have the time and enjoy trading, that sort of thing is fine, is fun; but most of us have other things to do. We find it simpler to do our trading by reading the newspaper news-paper advertisements, decide what we will buy and then go down to the store or telephone. It saves time. It saves more. It saves money. Without advertising to smooth the route of goods from seller to buyer, the cost of everything every-thing is higher than when advertising advertis-ing is in the picture. Charles B. Roth. |