Mystery of the Ages
Out of Portland, Oregon, where I had moved with my family, I established an advertising service for laundry owners. The laundry industry was 11th in the country in dollar volume of business, yet the most backward. I teamed with an efficiency expert, in my judgment top in the nation in his field. I took on only clients who allowed us to put their businesses on a new efficiency basis—both in the quality of laundering service and in business methods, which I supervised. I had to be able to make promises in the advertising that my clients would fulfill. But in 1926 a national advertising agency based in the East sold the Laundry Owner’s National Association a bill of goods—to put big-space advertising in the national women’s magazines. The association had power to obligate every member to a commitment for this magazine advertising equal to approximately 85 percent of the justifiable advertising expenditure each local laundry could make. I knew nothing of this until it was a closed deal. I had been doubling and trebling the business volume of each of my clients. My business was growing. Again a highly successful business was swept out from under my feet through causes over which I had no control. But there was a reason—God was taking away my advertising business. Disturbing Dual Challenges
Then, in the fall of 1926, at age 34, it seemed that the roof had caved in and I was crushed! I was assailed by very disturbing dual challenges. My wife, after nine years of happy marriage, began keeping the seventh-day Sabbath instead of Sunday! I was aghast! I was angry. To me that was religious fanaticism! What would business contacts think? But 18