Page:The Great American Fraud (Adams).djvu/73

 well to advertising purposes. I have looked over the originals of hundreds of letters, and more than 90 per cent. of them - that is a very conservative estimate - are from illiterate and obviously ignorant people. Even those few that can be used are rendered suitable for publication only by careful editing. The geographical distribution is suggestive. Out of 100 specimens selected at random from the Pierce testimonials book, eighty-seven are from small, remote hamlets, whose very names are unfamiliar to the average man of intelligence. ONly five are from cities of more than 50,000 inhabitants. Now, Garden City, Kas; North Yamhill, Ore.; Theresa, Jefferson County N. Y.; Parkland, Ky., and Forest Hill, W. Va., may produce an excellent brand of Americanism, but one does not for a very high average of intelligence in such communities. Is it only a coincidence that the mountain districts of Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee, recognized as being the least civilized parts of the country, should furnish a number of testimonials, not only to Pierce, but to Peruna, Pain's Celery Compound and other brands, out of all proportion to their population? On page 61 is a group of Pierce enthusiasts and a group of Peruna witnesses. Should you, on the face of the exhibit, accept their advice on a matter wholly affecting your physical welfare? This is what the advertiser is asking you to do.

Secure as is the present control of the Proprietary Association over the newspapers, there is one point in which I believe almost any journal may be made to feel the force of public opinion, and that is the matter of common decency. Newspapers pride themselves on preserving a respectable moral standard in their news columns, and it would require no great pressure on the part of the reading public (which is surely immediately interested) to extend this standard to the advertising columns. I am referring now not only to the unclean sexual, venereal and abortion advertisements which deface the columns of a majority of papers, but also to the exploitation of several prominent proprietaries.

Recently a prominent Chicago physician was dining en famille with a friend who is the publisher of a rather important paper in a Western city. The publisher was boasting that he had so established the editorial and news policy of his paper that every line of it could be read without shame in the presence of any adult gathering.

"never anything gets in," he declared, " that I couldn't read at this table before my wife, son and daughter."

The visitor, a militant member of his profession, snuffed battle from afar. "Have the morning's issue brought," he said. Turning to the second page he began on Swift's Sure Specific, which was headed in large black type with the engaging caption, "Vile, Contagious Blood Poison." Before he had gone far the 19-year-old daughter of the family, obedient to a glance from the mother, had gone to answer the opportune ring at the telephone, and the publisher had grown very red in the face.

"I didn't mean the advertisements," he said.

"I did," said the visitor, curtly, and passed on to one of the extremely intimate, confidential and highly corporeal letters to the ghost of Lydia E. Pinkham, which are a constant ornament of the press. The publisher's son interrupted:

"I don't believe that was written for me to hear," he observed. "I'm too young - only 25, you know. Call me when you're through.  I'll be out looking at the moon."

Relentlessly the physician turned the sheet and began on one of the Chattanooga Medical Company's physiological editorials, entitled "What