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Show BY CHARLES B. ROTH ) UUclgB ffisXDl The 160 Million . COME years ago there was group of citizens in New York City referred to at "The Four Hundred." They were the rich, the socially prominent and, in a vast city of several million, they numbered num-bered only four hundred. Then came a bright and wise and witty writer by the name of O. Henry who said that there were not Just four hundred Important Im-portant people In New York City, there were fot't million. That was the population of America's first city then, about half a century ago. So he wrote a book with the title of "The Four Million." Nowadays we place Be sock limits ea Important Americans, Amer-icans, because, thanks te advertising, ad-vertising, all Americans are Important, and taere are IN million ef as. Thanks to advertising? You ask. Yes, for It was advertising that welded us into a common nation, na-tion, that gave us prosperity, that gave us solidarity, that gave us union. In America there are no underprivileged under-privileged classes, in the sense of other lands, where a few persons are well-educated and Informed and the masses ignorant. To be sure, there are some Americans with more money than others, but there are no vast areas of ignorance ignor-ance as exist elsewhere. And there is no stagnation here, as there is In other lands. And there can never be stagnation as long as there Is dissatisfaction with the way of life. By forever setting up new goals for us to strive for, by forever showing us new products we want in our lives, advertising acts as a gadfly to prevent our lapsing into a state of complacency. It keeps us striving. striv-ing. Yes, it keeps us dissatisfied. The late F. G. Bonfils, whose Denver POST made history for many years, used to say In his paper: "There Is no hope for the satisfied man." Then' there will always be hope for 160 million Americans, Amer-icans, for the power known as advertising will never permit a to be satisfied. Each year " we will greet new Ideas, new prod acta, new Improvements In eld Ideas and prod acta. And we will want them m ear lives. There have never been 160 million mil-lion persons on earth who had as much as we Americans Give advertising ad-vertising thanks |