George L. Dyer
57
vanity, our taste, our sense of luxury, our desire for happiness, and it touches our pocketbook. Tell the story of your goods believing that it is the most interesting thing in the world. Then perhaps you can make it so. Donâ€&#x;t try to sneak the facts about your business into the public consciousness by a surreptitious hypodermic injection. Come out with them face to face. Tell the people what youâ€&#x;ve got, why you can serve them, what it costs and ask for their trade. Advertising is news. It will be a great day for advertising when men see it in a large way and stop taking a part of it for the whole. When they understand that the vital parts of advertising are the things that go with it and that advertising is a moral force and not a mechanical toy. Rule twisting and type sticking and stamp licking and space measuring all have their place and their value. I do not depreciate them when I say that they should not be permitted to obscure the view. Mechanical details have a great fascination for most minds, especially the mathematical American mind. The average business imagination does not rise much higher than it can travel in a passenger elevator. An increasing number of men refuse to believe in all but the things they can touch and see, and it is perhaps natural they should dwell upon the material, obvious aspects of the subject and miss the soul in the machine. Advertisers pay for space, buy cuts and copy, set the wheels in motion and stand by to see them run. If the things desired do not promptly happen it is plainly the fault of the agent or publisher, and they begin to tear things to pieces like a child that wrecks a toy because he lacks the intelligence to make it work.