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Show bTcHARLES rllH)lI-i jtelil What Do You Know? YOU have heard it many times. Two persons will meet One will say: "What do you know?" It is a common everyday American greeting. It would be a good Idea it each of us would ask ourselves the question, "What do you know . . ." and add to it this phrase, "because "be-cause you have advertising to help you?" ... Too would be astonished If you were to check on your store of knowledge to find out what much of what you know does trace to the ads you read In the newspapers. For the newspaper has become the treat fountain of knowledge. ... For example, how far would "new" things like radio and TV, - vacuum cleaners, ammonlated tooth paste, chlorophyll, vitamins, hormones, wonder drugs, popular best sellers, modem furniture, and whatever else you might want to name, have gone without the power of advertising? Before advertising entered our lives so strongly, so frequently it took years for a new Idea to "take hold." Now new Ideas are taking hold almost every night There has never been a limit to the capacity of the American public to absorb new ideas. There was, until advertising developed fullness, full-ness, a limit to the number of new ideas which could be presented pre-sented to the American public. Of late years there has been a craze for European cars, and a new breed of Americans who spurn anything made in America and term it "Detroit iron." While there is unquestioned merit mer-it in many of these Imported automobiles, their design or lines somawhat resemble the lines of cars which Americans were exclaiming ex-claiming about In 1933. One of the reasons for the continued con-tinued acceptance of these old lines, to take only one example," by Europeans is that they haven't had advertising to teach them what's new. ... But bere In America, with the force of advertising prodding prod-ding us to seek the new, always al-ways the new, we have no chance to become statlo or content ... Argue as much as you like about whether that's good or bad, the fact remains America is ahead of the world In practically every thlngl |