Page:The Science of Advertising (1910).djvu/51

Rh it is important and undeniably true—as investigation after investigation has shown us pitilessly—that whenever and wherever we begin turning out our products with the greatest facility and begin piling up our greatest surpluses to sell, there is almost a sure tendency toward deterioration of the product in the making of it.

Now the encouraging feature, not the discouraging one, about this confessed tendency is that it seems to strike almost every line of production which is naturally most efficient industrially—that is, which is most able to produce the greatest amount of surplus products.

The very increase in efficiency and facility with which an article could be produced, had often had the apparently anomalous effect of lowering the standard of the article.

Without citing any special illustration of this, the notorious condition of our food industries before the passage of the national food laws two years ago followed hard upon the heels of the very perfections in packing, preparing and proper preserving which made the industries most efficient and enabled them to turn out easily and cheaply far greater quantities of goods.

The reason is obvious—and here enters the action of the third characteristic change in modern industry. For the perfected power machines