Page:The Science of Advertising (1910).djvu/64

60 defines today's tendencies—direct nomination, direct primaries, direct voting.

We call our present political system inherently weak, because voters have little or no direct choice of candidates for office. While politicians are necessary, originally intended to serve the people by selecting the best men for public office, yet they have come to dominate and make selection for their own interests rather than the interests of those whom they are supposed to serve. We must usually have inferior men so long as we are merely willing to endorse the selection of others for us.

Likewise, we must recognize that our present commercial system has the same inherent weakness, as we, the buyers, have little or no direct choice of commodities. We must inevitably have inferior products so long as we are willing to merely endorse those selected for us by others. Before the advent of advertising our commercial system suffered from precisely the same condition as the political. The middleman chose our products for us on the basis of his own interest in profits rather than the consumer's interests in the goods.

In the day of primitive politics we might have met together in the town meeting, each directly nominating a candidate. In primitive commerce, also, each consumer might have selected the goods he wanted. But as society became complex