Page:The Modern Writer.pdf/26

 demand for one kind of cigar, one kind of hat, one style of dress, one make of automobile.

Advertising as a force in our American life began to grow and here it is that the present day American writer came into flower.

As a natural result of the demand for standardization of taste and material desires came the modern magazine. The magazine with a circulation of a million or two million became not unusual. The real purpose, as everyone understands, was to create through advertising, a nation-wide demand for certain commodities. The magazines were business institutions run by business men with business ends in view. They have served the purpose for which they were created admirably and taken for what they are, that is to say at bottom merely as propaganda instruments for business expansion, no man can quarrel with them.