The surest and quickest way for the American people to precipitate hard times is to keep up an incessant and eternal chatter about the probability of its appearance.

Because Capital-both the savings of the people, and the inflated stock of the high financiers-keeps out a weather eye for squalls. For all its boasted enterprise and daring, Capital, the boasted creator of our country's greatness, is in reality, about the most cowardly jade that ever came down the pike. She turns tail and runs with a boo-hoo if she chances to see her shadow in the mellow moonlight. She's a gambler, who insists upon a "sure thing."

And of all ghosts that get upon her nerves, the croak of hard times is the most terrifying.

Therefore a truce to talk of evil days. Prudence is well, but not the prudence of unfounded fears.

spend a lot of money in advertising on "hunches."

A piece of copy "sounds good" to them

A publication "looks good" to themAn advertising man impresses them as a "good fellow"

And they back up their "hunch" with their good money. Which might be all right if advertising were a gamble-but it isn't.

Advertising, as has been remarked before at divers times and in sundry places, is not an exact science, but neither is it a game of chance.

Results depend upon methods.

An advertiser may occasionally hit the bull's eye by chance-if his money holds out-but the man who makes every dollar he spends for advertising count for results, is the man who has the ability to analyze his proposition and to plan his campaign to meet the conditions that confront him.

As well try to treat disease without a diagnosis as to advertise without the most careful and closest preliminary analysis.

There is no other way.

A cut-and-dried plan, a cure-all, is as dangerous as a haphazard, hit-or-miss lack of plan.

Unfortunately, in advertising, all roads do not lead to Rome. Many of them go in the opposite direction, and the advertiser who hops aboard any old train, that happens to be at hand, without a study of schedules and time-tables, is very likely to land in the outer darkness of Failure.

Know where you want to go, and why you take this road in preference to that.

Make every word used, every cent spent, every medium employed, give a good reason for its being.

A

RECENT critic of advertising journals takes editors to task because they seem to think it necessary to touch now and again upon the abstract idea of the value of advertising as a business creator and a selling force.

It is safe to assume that the critic never solicited advertising; else he would know that while the business world at large has been compelled to acknowledge and recognize the potency

of advertising as an economic factor in modern distribution, there are still hundreds and thousands of good business men, who insist that their particular business is "just a little different," and while advertising is good for most other lines, they, personally, cannot very well utilize it in their own.

The publisher, the advertising solicitor, the advertising agency, and the advertising editor, still have missionary work to do.

E

AVER notice these slack-handed merchants? Careless about everything. Had rather give a customer a little too much sugar than to carry it back to the barrel. Are not very particular about anything. Forget to charge items in many instances; put the proceeds of a sale in their pockets, rather than cross the room to the cash register.

In addition to being a good business man, Solomon must have been an expert fisherman. His slack-hand proverb is essentially a fishing term. You can

not catch fish with a slack line. You must have it taut.

Solomon had seen fellows sitting on the bank fishing with a slack line, the ends of their poles dipping in the water -half asleep, perhaps. He knew they couldn't catch any fish that way, and when he wanted to tell the business men about him that they must be alive and alert, he just summed up the whole sit

uation in the remark, "he becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand."

He that dealeth with a slack hand is never certain of anything. He "guesses" that he doesn't need anything when the representative calls. He "reckons" he can get along for a time without making any improvements. He "supposes" a new device is all right, but he "believes" he can do without it. He "thinks" he will sell more goods next season.

Oh, Mr. Slack-handed Merchant! Gather up the lines and drive. Grit your teeth-don't let your jaw hang down. Get a grip on your business. Hammer the hoops on tighter to stop the leaks. Clinch your fists with determination to win. Buckle up the belly-band another notch. Take up another link of two in the trace chain. Let out your reason a loop or two. Tighten up all around and instead of reckoning and guessing, know.