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an explanation of my conduct. He wanted half a dozen explanations, beginning with some certified proof that 'I am I and you are you.' Poor Dudley was like the Spanish madman trying to mix a salad. It was in vain that I presented to him the true story of the tragedy of my political glory. He was too old a fox to be caught by such talk, and never, so long as he lived, would he admit that I was telling him the raw truth about the events of that day. Thenceforward he treated me less as a friend and more as one to be placated. I think he really believed I made the political slate of the diocese. He even came to me a few days later with a proposition that I should let him announce me as a candidate for alderman of the city. He was sure that he could effect the nomination. It was too absurd even to be humorous. I told him so, but his Indian-agent sagacity merely detected in this simple. truth-telling another proof of my political guile. He could not descend to the level of my stupidity. So we played 'Puss in the Corner' for a while longer. I told him that it would all be clear if only he would believe my story of the convention. 'Yes,' he said, "but no sane man can believe such a combination of absurdities.' And he never believed it.

Few words will suffice to tell the results of the campaign that followed. We joined with the Republicans in the effort to reëlect Augustus P. Martin as mayor. The Cunniff-Maguire combination, controlling the Boston Democracy, defeated us. However, acting independently, we induced General Francis A. Walker and Dr. Samuel Eliot to accept nominations for the School Committee, and we brought these names forward before either party had made up its slate. We succeeded in getting both of these candidates accepted by the Republicans,

and one of them by the Democrats. Both were elected, and each one in a letter the day after election gave to our organization the credit for the result. It is doubtful if either the Republicans or the Democrats would have troubled to seek out men of this calibre for nomination. To that extent we might reasonably claim to have effected their election. Undoubtedly we modified the plans of both parties as to school-committee candidates, and on the whole we accomplished much for municipal betterment.

One last catastrophe remains to be told. When I called the various committees together, I succeeded in persuading Mr. Kidder to become chairman of the finance committee, but I could not shake off so easily my other ill-gotten honors. I did practically nothing until the election but manage the Citizens' campaign. After election we found ourselves short of funds. As secretary of the finance committee I finally was compelled to call a meeting and report the inability to pay all our bills until we could collect about eight hundred dollars.

I can shut my eyes now and see the whole scene. I can see Mr. Kidder rise and say in his pleasant voice, 'It's a little late to ask our friends for subscriptions; here we are, four gentlemen together; I think the best plan will be for us each to draw our check for two hundred dollars and hand it to the treasurer. Let us settle it that way, and so save the need of further meetings of the committee. We are all busy men.'

I will not set down in cold type my emotions at that moment, nor reveal the amount of money I then had at my command. If this were a work of fiction there would be a row of stars here to indicate the omission of something on the part of the narrator. I could use those stars even now without vio

lating the truth. For there surely was an omission. I had omitted many days of legitimate toil for daily bread; I had lost the regard of my friend Dudley; now I had to take two hundred dollars from my small store and pay for all this glory! Yes, there was an omission.

Somewhere in this curious experience there should be a moral for young men. Of course if I had not walked up Tremont Street it never would have happened. If I had not met Dudley it never would have happened. But I pass over both these innocent happenings and fasten instead upon that wretched Public School Question,' about which I was to talk for twenty

minutes. Here is the danger, and I warn all young men to beware of the public schools. Know just as little about them as you can, for they are fraught with terrible 'questions' that may spring upon you from ambush at any moment and can only be appeased by your talking for twenty minutes.

Sometimes in sleepless nights I have wondered just what I should have said to that audience if my twenty-minute speech had once got started. In the absence of adequate police protection, I suspect that I escaped easily with no greater punishment than the carrying away of the entire movement.

A REVOLUTION IN ADVERTISING

BY ELIZABETH C. BILLINGS

To make advertising interesting, we need a sensation; and advertising forms so large a part of our daily intellectual diet, that it seems not too grasping to ask for a change of mental food.

'Kosy Kumfurt Karamels' have lost their taste. 'Sharp Snappy Styles for Serious Students' have wearied eye and mind. Mannish togs of dainty model' tug at the feminine purse-strings in vain.

'We could not improve the picture but look what we have done to the frame!' won us by its complacent satisfaction, but now tires us by its constant repetition.

'A prominent manufacturer who is going out of business' has placed at the advertiser's disposal his entire stock, which is being offered to us at 'merely

nominal prices'- but for us he has retired once too often, his magnanimity no longer touches us, and we wearily thrust aside the lists of his misplaced philanthropies.

That combination of Time and Eternity, 'Watch the clock! Our goods reduced every half hour,' has in it that element of chance whose fascination draws eager throngs, just as do those games of hazard which come under the ban of the law. $1.98 and $7.95 no longer delude us. We have learned nationally to add and subtract, and other devices are needed to catch our wandering attention.

Why are we invited, at such vast expense to our hosts, to attend 'Anniversary Sales'? Has the foundation of these great business houses been to us

such a boon that we must accept, rather than bestow, gifts at their birthday parties? Why must we aid great storekeepers in the distribution of charity? They 'challenge' each other in a contest for the greater benevolence- their kindness is unbounded.

In serving the public, the department stores everywhere seem bent upon cutting one another's throats as well as their own. In their generous offers there is no indication that they are in business for profit. Smoke, fire, and water, the traditional godsends of the trade, are left to the lesser brethren. An absorbing impulse to make 'more room for new goods'; the uselessness of 'broken lots'; the unexpected changes of the seasons; the earnest desire to supply to all, clothing which has 'that distinctive look'; the things which 'Dame Fashion' decrees as necessary for 'Milady's Wardrobe'; these are the obvious motives which make so kindly a spirit of giving, so large a generosity, and such willingness to spend of their hard earnings to tell us about it. The situation is not unlike universal armament, and remedies as revolutionary as the Hague Tribunal seem necessary.

The clever, shrewd, and interesting men who are at the helm in our great retail business must know that we see through their devices, and can hear, underneath their smooth phrases, the fierce beat of the engines, the driving of the factory wheels, the weary homeward march of the toilers, and, saddest of all, the pitiful struggle of the workers at seasonal trades.

We are asked to spend, spend, spend without reason, and without thought, and as the ultimate goal of our spending we are given cheapness instead of worth.

An attempt, at least, has been made to absorb the waste of the business world through Scientific Management; but Scientific Management has not yet

framed its simple economic message for our daily lives. It would be ludicrous, were it not tragic, to know how utterly order and skill are lacking from the domestic arrangements of the ordinary American family.

In speaking of our national extravagance, at the banquet of the International Chambers of Commerce, the President said, 'Let us make our budget before spending it' —and it is a plea that would serve well as a motto for each person's simple buying. Economists give laws which govern the average expenditure of income. It would seem as natural to take them into consideration as to accept the fact that two and two make four. To the total expenditure, clothing and rent keep a fixed proportion, while the proportion of food-cost varies in an inverse ratio to the size of the income; so that the richer you are, the smaller is the proportion of your income which goes for food, and upon the poor man falls heaviest the burden of our national juggling in food-stuffs. Dr. Engel deduces, from typical budgets, the law that clothing assumes and keeps a constant proportion in the whole; and Mrs. Ellen H. Richards, in charts prepared for the purpose, gives to clothing a one-sixth share in the family budget. Now if it be true that clothing assumes a one-sixth share in our family income, why not face the music? Here is one sixth there are hats and coats and shoes and shirts and neckties and under-clothes for some of us, and hats and shoes and dresses and coats and corsets and gloves for some more of us, not forgetting the children, with their definite and increasing needs.

The making of a budget would place us at once in the rank of intelligent buyers and, as such, we should hold a commanding position. We are a selfrespecting people, and we ask of our merchants neither gifts nor sacrifice.

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What we want is common honesty and simple truth.

What a surprise it would be to find our great stores advertising, not the same old wearisome chatter about 'Latest Models from Paris' (made in Hoboken), but facts about economy and expenditure, real talk about real things. Suppose that they should help us to spend our sixth manfully or womanlike for we have to be clothed, or else return to Eden. Suppose that we should have some real plan in mind as to the sum that our clothes ought to cost, some system in their purchase. What a revolution it would make in certain phases of industry. Suppose that the advertisers should stop their lying and take us behind the scenes and tell us honestly about manufacturing,- showing us how products of skill and beauty are made by those who toil for our comfort, so that we might appreciate their real worth. People love dearly to see things made. If the great stores should put industrial exhibits into their subway windows they would be fined by the sub-surface road for obstructing traffic. It would be possible, for instance, to use a 'Bargain Basement' along the lines of Jane Addams's Industrial Museum at Chicago, or to create a 'Mechanics' Fair,' where processes were shown where mechanical and hand works, both, were exhibited, and where orders were taken.

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We could go to our great stores as to museums of vital and present importance, schools for the teaching of thrift and of order in living, places where bridges of contact are built between buyer and maker. To plan such a work would need culture as true, and a vision as large, as is demanded of the head of a great university.

Such department stores might show the producers that we, the consumers, are grateful to them for their skill and

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for their knowledge; that we hate cheap goods and cheap labor; and that the advertiser, the middleman, builds not a wall between the two, but a roadway easily traversed. Suppose that adver tisers should honestly confess to us the bitterness of the seasonal trades and the blight which they lay upon the homes of the workers and should ask us, the spenders, to help stamp out this evil.

There is now no test of excellence. A $25.00 suit may be more desirable than a $40 one. The mark-down' sale shows us conclusively that all the 'values' are fictitious. In every instance we have to gamble on our purchase. Suppose that the advertiser really told us how to judge. What a difference such a policy of bargaining and buying would make in our homes, elaborate as well as simple. Our great stores have the machinery to make for scientific purchasing, and for producing trained purchasers. What a change it would be for the shiftless, idle man and the capricious, vain woman who wander purposeless in search of 'things'; for the eager bargain-hunter who is living on the excitement of getting 'something for nothing'!

Not long since I had to wait for a friend on a 'great white floor' in my city. There was a 'sacrifice' sale of lace-trimmed chemises and nightgowns. The cloth was of flimsiest texture, the lace, coarse and cheap, was carelessly sewed by poor workers, the cut of the garments was vulgar, not modest, or decent, or useful.

I watched the buyers - for the most part, young girls in their teens, with faces so pretty, so sickly, so foolish, so vacant. I sent up the prayer, 'God! Lead us not into temptation.' Our shops seem to bid for such tradeelse why do they constantly publish suggestive pictures to lower the ideals of our youth. Our idle women and our

restless men are our menace, and our big stores cater to them, as though they were our pride, instead of our undoing.

What a sane and reasonable trade could be built up, if it were the fashion to use brains in purchasing and to demand thought of those we purchase from! We should speedily find both commodities, for we have brains as a nation - good brains, grown from the fine and sturdy stocks of the world; and we have sufficient education to compass such a result, if our minds were resolved to accomplish it.

There are a few small groups working on the subject of household economics. A few colleges, normal schools, and schools of domestic economy, are giving high service along these lines. There is a little experiment station at Darien, Connecticut, where Mr. and Mrs. Barnard are working on problems of household 'efficiency,' 'routing,' motion-study, and the like, and where are made tests of household appliances on the simplest scale. There is another such station in New Jersey, conducted by Louise Boynton and Georgie Boynton Child. The American School of Home Economics at Chicago provides bulletins on modern labor-saving appliances and conducts correspondence courses, with thousands of students all over the country. There may be other such honest and intelligent attempts.

Suppose our advertisers instead of publishing lists of bargains, with wood

VOL. 110 - NO. 6

cut illustrations, such as: 7 doz. eggbeaters, all nickel-plated, 39 cents each- were 50 cents'; and instead of assuming that we do not know that the cost of inserting this fact is far greater than the cost of all the beaters, should really advertise facts about efficiency, honest facts about labor-saving devices, about up-keep, and wear and tear, and repair, about the care and cleaning of kitchen utensils, about fuel and laundry work, — about all the things which go to make an ordered home. Such a store could have 'efficiency engineers,' men as qualified, as competent, as curators of a museum, who have insight, training, and sympathy to assist the purchaser. To be a trustworthy guide in a department store would be a useful career worthy of the honest effort of any man or

woman.

How many dozen cards do you receive (and throw away) daily, which say, 'We cheerfully furnish estimates.' Suppose that, instead of these advertising phrases, the stores cheerfully furnished real information, and were actually turning the tide so that those who sell cheap and shoddy articles, and those who make them, were both lifted out of the slough into which foolish over-production has dragged them. It would then be possible to use our artistic impulses, our common sense and our self-respect in daily purchasing and advertising might become a fine art and a worthy science.

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