330 THE BEEKEEPERS' REVIEW 



and the remedy has been searched for, and plans for relief tried, 

 but the general conditions are but little improved- The price of 

 honey is too cheap to produce at a profit, compared with the same 

 effort in producing food products. 



Why ? The reason is simply that other lines are boosted by well 

 planned advertising campaigns, backed by unlimited money, and 

 we find ourselves eating stuff that we would hardly feed to the 

 chickens if the alleged good qualities of it were not dinned in our 

 ears 365 days in the year, so much, indeed, that we find ourselves 

 believing things that we really know that we ought not to believe. 

 In other words, the American public eats what the shrewd adver- 

 tisers tell it to eat, regardless of its tastes, and does not eat that 

 which is not advertised. I have made a study of advertising, and 

 know this to be the exact truth. 



Then why not advertise "HONEY." I speak from my know- 

 ledge of the science of publicity, and feel sure that I am right in the 

 position, that if we would spend the money boosting HONEY, that 

 is behind Postum, Karo, or similar high priced articles of low food 

 value, the price of honey would soar to the fifty or sixty cent mark, 

 and possibly higher, and the bees would have to work overtime to 

 supply the demand at that. But we cannot finance a deal of that 

 magnitude in the ordinary way of things, because the parties inter- 

 ested are widely separated, and have small individual interests, al- 

 though the aggregate is large. 



Here in Indiana we considered the matter in all these phases, 

 and decided to try a new plan. We set aside a day and designated 

 it "HONEY DAY," and invited everybody to ''Eat a little Honey." 

 Press notices were sent to many papers, and more than 100 of them 

 printed them. Many of them commented editorially. We sent 

 notices to all the wholesale grocers in the state, and many of them 

 pushed the sale of honey in preparation for the day. We had 

 placards printed announcing the day, and asking the public to 

 "EAT A LITTLE HONEY." These did some good, possibly, al- 

 though they were not used as freely as they should have been. 



We spent less than $40.00, and secured several hundreds of 

 dollars' worth of the best kind of advertising. The papers were 

 willing to print our "stuff," and we moved quite an amount of 

 honey, and would have sold much more if we had had it to sell. 

 This plan could be used in a nation-wide publicity campaign to bet- 

 ter advantage than in a local way. The remote producers would be 

 glad to assist the consuming states boost HONEY in this, and many 

 similar ways that an experienced advertising man could use with- 



