If that fellow doesn't ride in an automobile it is because he hates the smell of gasoline.

A stump on a dark night is sometimes an awful looking thing, but just as soon as you find out for sure what you are up against you get chesty.

Before now you have had trouble strike you SO hard that you didn't see how you were going to stand it. As soon, though, as you got courage, sat down and looked the situation squarely in the face, the difficulties began to fade away.

Catalogue houses will always compete with you for a certain class of trade.

You can no more prevent this kind of competition than you can stop a stranger from starting another store in your town.

Sit down and look the situation in the face.

Catalogue houses do a very small per cent of the total business done in your territory.

Perhaps not one man in the whole county buys all his stuff of a catalogue house.

Catalogue houses do not control the trade of anybody. If you can get some of a man's trade, why can't you get more of it? Now get busy.

You are on the ground.

You know the people personally.

You have the goods to show.

You have a certain class of goods that catalogue houses cannot obtain.

You have the power of personal salesmanship behind you-and that is the most persuasive force known. You can give the people a service they cannot obtain anywhere else. But you have got to tell them about it. They will pass you up if you don't. You must have something for them to put with the Big Catalogue to lay alongside the Family

Most of us, from the manager down, are young men, just enough gray hairs to hold us level. Every man in

core

the bunch is loyal to the and strictly under bond to make good. We have been schooled in the idea that Our success depends on your prosperity. We know that goods are never really sold until they are working in the hands of the man who is to wear

them out. We realize that you may buy goods today-but you will be out of the mar ket after that until those goods are sold to the farmer. If one of us should get it into his head that responsibility is over the minute you sign up an order, that individual is in grave danger of stepping on the slippery plank and sliding out into the cold, cold world.

We would like to know you personally.

If you have been successful in business, we would like to hear you tell how you did the trick. If you are not getting as much business as you think you ought to have, we should like to help you figure out some plan to get more. We want you to find out for yourself that we are good folks to know. We want you to make up your mind of your own accord that we have good, warm blood in us and that no decent man can possibly catch cold by leaning up against any of our fellows.

character of his associates, so will advertising be known by the company it keeps and the reason why honest advertising does not produce results, that are fifty, yes, one hundred, times greater than at present, is because our newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, booklets, circulars, and bill boards, display a mass of falsehoods, exaggerations and fraudulent or misleading statements, printed in the form of advertisements.

And this, too, is the reason why sixty per cent of advertisers fail to succeed, and it is a reason which should no longer prevail.

Glance over the pages of many publications and what do we find? That the honest banker is given a space in the newspaper adjacent to that of the getrich-quick scheme financier. The truthful presentation of an honest remedy for the slighter ills of mankind is placed next to a frightful and pernicious lie, lauding the virtues of some noxious compound guaranteed to cure every disease under the sun.

The honest department store advertisement is outclassed by the stupendous bargains offered in that of a competitor -bargains that exist only in imagination-merchandise that is never there when called for by the deceived reader.

The honest coffee merchant is harmed by the glaring advertisement of a coffee substitute, its claims bolstered by a mass of unprovable "truths" and improbable arguments. Food is turned into a "brain" factory or phosphorus is discovered in out of the way places by the ingenious but distinctly misleading and deceptive advertiser.

Millions of dollars are drawn from the savings of the wage earner through fraudulent "financial" schemes made possible of success through advertising.

The publishers of daily papers, of the weeklies, of the magazines and the bill board companies and distributors of advertising generally, exercise practically no consorship over their customers' copy. Nearly any one who has the money to

pay for it can secure their space for promoting his "game." There are a few exceptions of course; there are a few publications which are careful of the character of the advertisements which find space on their pages, but there are altogether too few.

The honest advertiser who pays for space has a right to demand that the character of all other advertising in the same publication be equal in honesty to his own. He has the right to insist that his honest advertisement be placed in honest company.

But he can demand in the usual way until he grows hoarse with demanding, without result. There is only one way to enforce the righteous demand of the honest advertiser, and that is by the enactment of a penal law, regulating advertising. To secure general co-operation for the betterment of advertising conditions, through educational processes, is an impossible feat.

For every one advertiser converted to truth by "educational" means, two would spring into existence on the side of falsehood. The world would be still unconvinced and advertising as a whole yet remain under the ban of distrust.

But pass a law with a penalty for its violation; stamp false advertising as a crime and the existing desire to purify their sheets, now vaguely expressed by some publishers, would become an accomplished deed. They would not merely express a wish to bar unwholesome advertising, they would do it.

I here press strongly on the publishers, because I believe that they of all others can prevent the crime of false advertising with its lamentable results, by exercising a little care in accepting copy.

But the law presses with equal force upon the advertiser, "For conscience makes cowards of us all," and we may be sure that the business man with available assets will not risk his position and property through violation of the law in the preparation of advertising

copy.