Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/430

 1915.

With the development of advertising in the directions now opening up, the chasm between the advertising pages and the editorial columns must be bridged and the newspaper acquire a new sense of unity and harmony it has heretofore entirely lacked. The great business corporations, especially those controlling

industry and transportation, have heretofore not taken the public into their confidence and hence have laid themselves open to censure. If this censure has been administered by the press and the corporations have been " pounded ,” the result has been to intensify, not to ameliorate, an unfortunate situation. If, on the other hand , the press has been silent, it has thereby brought odium

upon itself through the charge so easily made, so wearisomely disproved, that it is “ owned by capital.” Within an almost

has been changing, apparently in large part through the efforts of the press itself. In its campaigns for honest advertising and in weeding out a large part of the objectionable advertising pre viously carried, the press has raised the whole standard of ad

vertising. Advertisers have been quick to note the change and

have been ready to meet the press more than half way. Cam paigns of“ good will” advertising on the part of great corporations now explain in great detail their methods of conducting their

business and in thus enlightening the public they have done

much to change hostility into sympathetic interest. The student of history therefore finds in the very processes of advertising valuable records of the changing business standards of the press as well as a raising of general business standards. What records he finds in the advertisements themselves must

be considered elsewhere. Meantime it must be remembered

that the temper of the advertiser always differs from the temper of the editor, as the function of each differs with reference to its

relation to the press. Optimist and pessimist are both honorable gentlemen yet neither is nor can be the other. The impassable

chasm that often is found between advertising pages and editorial columns is felicitously expressed by the New York Evening Post,

when it says:

“ The hypothetical and somewhat overworked visitor from Mars, who should pick up a copy of one of our magazines, could