Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/103

 The intrinsic nature of the vastly-extended advertising of the new age will be influenced by the new growth of public intelligence. Once almost wholly, and now to a very great extent, addressed to the least intelligent faculties of the public—the faculties most liable to be influenced by large type and ad captandum phrasing—advertising will in the future world become gradually more and more intelligent in tone. It will seek to influence demand by argument instead of clamour, a tendency already more apparent every year. Cheap attention-calling tricks and clap-trap will be wholly replaced, as they are already being greatly replaced, by serious exposition; and advertisements, instead of being mere repetitions of stale catch-words, will be made interesting and informative, so that they will be welcomed instead of being shunned; and it will be just as suicidal for a manufacturer to publish silly or fallacious claims to notoriety as for a shopkeeper of the present day to seek custom by telling lies to his customers. Skilful writers will be employed upon the work, and skilful journalists will think it no derogation from their dignity to be employed in the writing of commercial advertisements. No doubt the methods of illustration employed in journalism proper will also be pressed into the service of the advertiser, and in this, as in other respects, our "divine discontent" will still look for improvements, and the newspaper of the future