418 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



their money to the cities — to the so-called trade and manufacturing 

 centers. Yet large as is the anioimt of such advertising carried by 

 ''Farm and Fireside" it is but a drop in the bucket compared to the 

 Avhole volume of carefully prepared advertising matter going into 

 the homes of the producers in this country with the purpose and 

 intention of educating them up to the point of being up-to-date, of 

 keeping in style. 



This oft repeated and long continued appeal has produced a 

 marked etlect in the industrial life of this country. Countless cities 

 profiting in the hundreds of channels of trade opened up by the ad- 

 vertising campaigns of the last twenty-five years have doubled and 

 tripled in population ; while the country districts offering only a 

 passive resistance to their exploitation by the cities have in very 

 ruany cases gone backward. 



The cities with the aid of their advertising campaigns have been 

 sending into country homes their patented luxuries and trade-mark 

 necessities at fancy prices; while the countrj'^ districts have blindly 

 competed with each other in the open market to dispose of their 

 foods, wools and cottons in bulk quantities with no thought to pro- 

 vide "stvles" in raw materials and eatables so as to bring back from 

 the cities at fancy prices some of the money sent there for the 

 stylish but high-priced city i)roducts which the country people have 

 been persuaded to believe form a necessary part of their everyday 

 living. 



As any man knows, who feels it necessary to buy a new derby 

 hat this year, because his old one, perfectly good yet, is this year 

 out of style, the styles in men's hats are controlled not by the con- 

 sumers, but by the hat trade, from manufacturer to retailer, whose 

 businesses would all be much restricted if the wearers were allowed 

 to use their old hats until worn sufficiently to demand new ones. 



Every worrran who studies this year's fashiou-plates and finds 

 that she can hardly re-trim her old hat because of change in shapes, 

 realizes that not she but the milliners control the styles in hats. 

 They may like to make it appear that a demand for the change 

 comes from the ultimate consumer but as yet 99 per cent, of the 

 ultimate consumers do not know what the change will be until they 

 see the "Ladies' Home Journal" or the ''Woman's Home Compan- 

 ion" such a pretext is nonsense. The millinery trade controls the 

 wires that re-create the fashions. 



And so it is all down the line of city-made goods. If the coun- 

 try communities are to turn the trade balances back to a position 

 favorable to them they must fight the advertisers with their own 

 fire. A few country districts have already learned this. Hood River 

 apples for instance sells at 25 cents apiece, not because of their 

 superior quality but because of the organized advertising that has 

 educated a certain class of consumers to demand such apples at 

 any price. Such advertising has been supplemented with proper 

 growing and packing and all the other details of successful market- 

 ing but exactly the same fruit mthout the advertising would never 

 have made land worth several thousand dollars an acre in Hood 

 River. Hood River has turned the trade balances in its favor be- 

 cause it has made it stylish to eat Hood River apples. 



