ADVERTISEMENT:
Some wag once parodied the famous saying great are the uses of adversity. "I thus great the uses of advertisement." And they certainly are both to the producer and consumer. Of course, there is a great deal of truth in the saying that good quality and honest workmanship are the best advertisement and Thomas Carlyle makes merry with a London hatter who made huge model hats seven feet high and sent them round the London streets as an advertisement by saying that he would have done better if he had sued the money he thus wasted. In making better hats to sell. But in these days of far extended trade, there is no doubt that advertisement is necessary to make the existence of even first class goods known. And even goods that are already well known must still be advertised as Cman, the well known mustard manufacture found to his cost when he tried to save money by stopping his advertisement: for his sales went down at once. In this age of cut throat competition it is the man who shouts the loudest that attracts attention. And the consumer would not know of the existences of many good things, if they were not advertised. So even well established businesses have to spend thousands of pounds a year in advertising or they will not sell their goods.
It is really advertisements that make newspaper possible. Great journalists draw the greatest part of their profits from advertisement and many smaller paper could not appear at all but for the income they derive from this source.
Advertisement has now become an art and there are business entirely devoted to supplying firms with striking advertisement.
But advertisement has its abuses. Many advertisement are meant to deceive., and do for a time deceive the public by puffing worthless goods, or glossy exaggerating the quality of inferior articles. There is only one consolation this connection that a lying advertisement cannot sell worthless stuff a long: for the people who buy it will not buy it will not buy it a second time. As Abraham Lincoln said, " you can take in all people part of time and you can take in some people all the time but you cannot take in all the people all the time."
Advertisement also are often an eyesore. The craze for huge advertisement vulgarises many pretty country places and disfigures the streets to the towns....
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