ABOUT LOBSTERS 145 



Advertising is expensive but has proven over and over 

 again to yield big profits beyond its cost. It is doubtful if 

 any state would pay for the advertising expense for any one 

 industry, but if the lobstermen and buyers could be brought 

 together and educated, they could raise the funds by a vol- 

 untary small tax on each lobster. Approximately 25 million 

 lobsters (1960) are caught in Maine per year. One-half of 

 one cent tax on each lobster would raise an advertising fund 

 of $125,000. Does anyone raise their eyebrow in amuse- 

 ment at such an impractical idea? Yet something similar 

 has been done, and among the same sort of folk as the 

 lobstermen. The Maine potato growers banded together, 

 voluntarily put a tax on each bag of potatoes, and hired a 

 top-notch advertising firm to handle their campaign — with 

 heartening results. 



It can be done. 



An example of what advertising might do is to educate 

 doctors and the public that lobsters afford perhaps the best 

 and certainly the most palatable way of introducing phos- 

 phorus into the human body. 3 Calcium phosphate forms 

 about 58 per cent of bones, which owe their rigidity to its 

 presence. In young animals phosphorus has a remarkable 

 influence on the growth of bones. Owing to this influence, 

 it has been used in the treatment of rickets. Its most effec- 

 tive use, however, is as a nerve tonic in paralysis agitans, 

 locomotor ataxia, impotence, and nervous exhaustion. Yet 

 very few people know this. 



Another help from advertising would be to establish in 

 the public mind that two chicken lobsters are preferable to 

 one larger lobster. Some restaurants serve two chicken lob- 

 sters this way, but the buyer has not been sold on the fact 

 that they are as desirable. 



The Annual Lobster Festival in Rockland, Maine, is an 

 advertising venture; but it doesn't reach many people, and it 

 doesn't take advantage of the opportunity to educate those 

 it does reach, on the handling of lobsters or how to open 

 them or in what forms lobster can be bought. 



3 See page 28. 



