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392 The ethical advance extended to other advertising columns. The copy for fire and bankruptcy sales were among those to be revised. Even department stores were urged to do away with the evils of comparative prices. At about the time the editorial columns were conducting a national campaign of "Swat the Fly! "advertising clubs all over the country were demanding that the newspapers "Swat the Lie!" whenever it occurred in any form of advertisement. A few newspapers positively guaranteed the reliability of assertions in the advertising columns. The Tribune, of New York, went so far as to offer to refund to its readers in case of dissatisfaction whatever had been paid for purchase of products advertised in its columns. It did so whether the purchase was of a pair of stockings or of an automobile. The amount that it had to refund, however, was very small when compared with the total amount of purchases made.

Whether the efforts on the part of newspapers to reach women readers were due to commercial reasons or to a sincere desire to be of social service, may be a debatable question about which to make a specific generalization. The Tribune, of Chicago, accepted the view that the modern newspaper "must not only help in the fight for a clean city, but must aid the clergy and others to fight for a clean home, and in entering the everyday life of its readers, it must, like the parish priest, be guide, counselor, and friend." It was while speaking on this point that the general manager of The Tribune said: "I have often thought that a newspaper can most closely realize its real mission the nearer it comes to attaining the ideals of the parish priest and the clergyman in his ministrations to his flock. And the newspaper's flock is often numbered in the hundreds of thousands."

Academic and pedantic critics have made no end of fun of newspaper departments conducted under such headlines as " Advice to the Lovelorn" or "First Aid to Wounded Hearts." Positive proof exists, however, that such departments conducted by Dorothy Dix, Laura Jean Libbey, etc., in spite of protests over the modern desecration and decadence of the American newspaper, have played no mean part in the social service of the