the researches, fostered by the Board, are seen in a greater regularity of supply, in a more precise standard of quality, and in all the benefits that follow better grading, better packing, better transport, and better means of identification-then, but not till then, will the Board's advertising achieve its maximum force in selling the Empire's produce.

It is, however, proper to inquire whether the Government was justified in agreeing that some part, even though not a large part, of the Empire Marketing Board's annual grant of a million should be expended on advertising. Some people find virtue and comfort in the theory that 'Good wine needs no bush.' It is the pet proverb of those business men who persist in believing that advertisement is a waste of money. This theory has a respectable historical origin, but it must be rejected as being wholly misleading in the light of modern experience.

England was the first country in the world to develop the industrial mind. Our leadership in mechanical invention, our coal, our traditions of mercantile adventure, our pre-eminence in shipping, and our Free Trade system, gave to British manufacturers the first place in the world's favour. If the foreigner wanted things within a large range of variety, he was driven to buy them here or to go without. Experience in manufacture and the habit of quality gave to our goods a reputation which enabled us for a century to ignore the increasing foreign competition. For a long time it was true that good wine needed no bush. The goods sold themselves. Deliberate education as to their merits would have been a work of supererogation. But times changed. First Germany, and then, gradually, the other European countries, developed a special skill in some line of manufacture. They could scarcely hope, without our corps of skilled workmen, and without our pride of quality, to compete on equal terms with us. They cut the price by cutting the quality, and had lower standards of wages to help them. There followed the new competition which came from the inventiveness of America and their development of mass production.

With these new industrial powers in the United States a fresh force in industry came into being. Intelli

gent and persuasive advertising was used on a large scale, to support highly organised salesmanship. Our tradition was to ignore salesmanship. When first Germany became a serious competitor, she backed up her manufacturing effort by a distributing effort no less vigorous. When the new menace was first felt in this country, it was a common thing to relate German success to persistence in salesmanship, to readiness to print catalogues in the language of their buyers, and to elastic credit. English manufacturers long replied that if Germans liked to do that sort of thing, why not? They believed that English quality would tell in the long run, and that good English money ought not to be spent in sending abroad travellers authorised to give terms which appeared to lead to bad debts. Salesmanship was thought to be a device for increasing overhead expenses without any commensurate advantage. Time and bitter experience have done something to change all that; but even now our Commercial Attachés abroad have much, and with reason, to say about improving British salesmanship.

Advertising was in the same category, but seemed a good deal lower in the scale of commercial decency. Regarded as a costly way of telling lies about patent medicines, it seemed unworthy the attention of serious business men. In part that was true. In part that was true. The people who wrote advertisements fifty years ago exaggerated even when they were sincere; and often they were not sincere. The successful advertisement was that which most easily touched the gullibility of the public. The phrase 'truth in advertising,' now adopted in that solid sincerity which rests on the knowledge that it pays to be truthful, was not yet invented. Had any preacher of advertising morality suggested it as a working principle, it would have seemed to the Greek foolishness and to the Jew a stumbling-block.' Intelligent people tried to ignore the power of a commercial weapon which they had no good reason to respect. The technique of the business was not very convincing. The mere repetition of the name of a soap in gigantic letters did not encourage the reasoned belief that it was better in quality or in money value than an unbranded soap. At that embryonic stage of advertising, when its volume was

small and its appeal novel, its effect in the limited field to which its methods were applied was real. But the serious manufacturer in a majority of the staple trades could not be blamed for believing that such a weapon would do no good in his own hand. Advertising was disrespectable for many years, and long after much of it had become wholly respectable, the earlier taint clung to it.

The case for modern advertising practice was put simply and with abundant truth by H.R.H. the Duke of York when, visiting the Advertising Exhibition at Olympia last July, he said, ' Advertising is really a form of education.' At the opening of that show, Mr Amery, speaking as a Secretary of State and the active Chairman of the Empire Marketing Board, expanded the definition as follows:

'Advertising was in the nature of an intelligence service. It informed the public where and how they could get the things they needed, and it also gave a very useful indication, both to the producer and to the middleman, of how much the public needed of any particular article. On the other hand, advertising constituted a very important element of social service. It enabled new ideas, new comforts, new reforms in the whole manner of living to be equally spread throughout the country. Under modern conditions of industry advertising was an absolutely essential element in efficiency and cheapness of production. Its value lay in the fact that it could subserve efficiency and economy of distribution, it could speed up distribution, and, in certain cases, at any rate, it could short-circuit unnecessary channels of distribution, and in those ways lead directly to cheapness to the consumer and better profits to the producer.'

How comes it that a responsible Minister of the Crown is able to attribute to modern advertising qualities that proclaim it an essential element in successful trading?

Probably the simplest and most truthful answer isexperience. The success obtained by the vendors of muchadvertised pills caused the makers of more serious things than pills to follow their example. A new type of advertising-specialist emerged, who began to build up a technique of presentation by word and design, and to study the psychology of public response to the stimulus of advertisement. It seems unwise to speak of advertising as a science. It is doubtful whether any activity

into which so many personal factors enter can be developed with the exactness that the word 'science' suggests. It seems truer to describe it as an art which can be better practised after a close study of a large body of ascertained fact.

Advertising is no affair for the hit-or-miss methods of the amateur. The fantastic idea that success in advertisement must necessarily follow the invention of some catchy slogan is out of date. The practice of advertising is strenuous. It demands clarity of thought, wide experience of trading, grim persistence in research, and a facility in presentation which require of its practitioners as large a mental and personal equipment as may be required in any of the professions. It is necessary that this industry should have its corps d'elite, for the interests involved, both industrial and financial, are great and increasing. Mr McCurdy, the distinguished and active President of the Advertising Association, does not put the case too high when he claims :

1. That Advertising is an essential force in marketing and selling, at least as important as any other factor of modern trade.

2. That Advertising and Salesmanship constitute the advance guard of British trade for the opening up and development of new markets.

It is estimated that in this country alone the expenditure on Advertising amounts to a hundred millions of pounds sterling annually, and this figure tends to grow markedly. Whatever may be the individual view as to current methods of advertising, no one can be blind to its power or can doubt that it will increase. Some inquiries are pertinent. Who are the people and what are the organisations that control or influence its practice, and are its tendencies sound and improving?

The label advertising men' is applied to people in many departments of business life, organised in a rather inchoate but steadily improving way. The Advertising Association was recently incorporated under the licence of the Board of Trade as a non-commercial body for the purpose of safeguarding and subserving the interests of advertising in this country. It affords a common centre for the discussion of the many problems which so new an

industry has to face, and is concerned, first and last, to improve the status, reputation, and prosperity of every one in the world of advertising. Included on its Council are representatives of the newspapers, of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (a cumbrous name for 'advertising agents'), the Master Printers, the Poster Advertising Associations, and kindred bodies. It embraces the Publicity Clubs that have sprung up in all the great commercial centres; it organises the annual Advertising Conventions; and it was responsible for the successful exhibition held in July at Olympia.

Not the least of its functions is that performed by its Vigilance Committee. The public can hardly realise with what persistent zeal this Committee hunts down any advertiser who makes improper or manifestly misleading claims for his wares. In America the law helps the advertising organisations to punish people who bring advertising into disrepute. Penal action is justified in the case of any one who in his advertisements claims to cure cancer and epilepsy, or invites the purchase of goods with intent to defraud, although often this fraudulent person has such ingenuity that 'false pretences' cannot always be successfully pleaded against him. We do not need special legislation to this end. With closer safeguards contrived in concert by newspapers, advertising agents, and printers, it will be possible to stamp out the roguery that smirches an industry run in the main with honesty.

The difficulty of organising advertising with any completeness is consequent to the infinite variety of its activities. The Advertising Agent is the broker standing between the business man with goods to advertise, and the newspapers and poster advertising contractors. His function is professional, in that he has technical knowledge of a mechanism and a practice which need common sense, acumen, and a good deal of general knowledge. He employs a staff of writers and artists who present to the public more or less attractively and effectively the commodities or service of the advertiser. He has, if properly equipped, a department of research qualified to examine into the problems not only of advertising itself, but of distribution, marketing, salesmanship, and even production. He inhabits, what may be called, the