American Agriculturist 
THE FARM PAPER THAT PRINTS THE FARM NEWS 
“Agriculture is the Most Healthful, Most Useful and Most Noble Employment of Man'’—Washington 
Reg. U. S. Pat. Off. Established 1842 
Volume 111 
For the Week Ending June 16, 1923 
Number 24 
World 
Where Are Displayed Everything From Diamonds to Doughnuts 
O NCE upon a time there was a man 
who had to spend considerable time 
. riding from his homQ to his place of 
business. Every time that he 
opened his newspaper or his magazine he 
found an advertisement urging him to try a 
certain brand of breakfast food. When he 
looked up from his paper, he 
found the same advertisement i 
staring at him from a sign on 
the side of the car, and it was 
again impressed upon his vision 
from big billboards when he 
looked out of the car windows. 
Convinced at last that there must 
be something to it, he bought a 
a package and took it home. The 
next morning, he tried 'to eat it 
and did not like it. Then he 
“No, I do not,” said the dealer. “This 
kind that I do keep is just as good, even if 
it is not advertised so blame much. I 
think this advertising business is all bunk 
anyway.” 
This was rather a discouraging start, but 
the visitor could not let the argument end 
a Week For Your “Daily” 
A new YOEK newspaper recently made the statement that were 
it not for advertising, subscribers would have to pay about $1 a 
copy for their daily newspaper, instead of 3 cents. The article on 
this page will give you a brief but interesting glimpse of “behind the 
scenes” in the publishing business. 
offered it to his dog, and the dog also re¬ 
fused it. 
After another week of reading the same 
advertisements constantly whether he 
wanted to or not, he concluded that some¬ 
thing must have been the matter with him 
in his first trial of this breakfast food; so 
he tried it again, liked it a little better but 
was not over-enthusiastic about it, 
and offered the biggest part of it 
again to his dog, who still refused 
to eat it, and growled menacingly 
when the man persisted. 
Back and forth, to and from the 
2 ity, for another week, he continued 
constantly to absorb unconsciously 
some of the advertised statements 
about this particular breakfast 
food until he again concluded that 
he must have failed the first two 
times to give the stuff a fair 
trial. And for the third tirrie, he 
had it served for a morning meal. 
This time he found it excellent 
and thereafter demanded it reg¬ 
ularly. 
Thinking that the dog may have 
been mistaken too, he again tried 
to get the dog to eat it, but the dog 
not only turned it down but bit 
the man in the leg for offering it to 
him. He then came to the conclu¬ 
sion that the only difference be¬ 
tween him and the dog was that 
he could read advertisements and 
the dog could not! 
So accustomed are we to seeing 
advertising in our papers, maga- ^ 
zines and on billboards, that few " 
of us have any idea of the tre¬ 
mendous indirect or subconscious 
influence of this method of selling 
ideas and merchandise. . 
A few days ago a hardware mer¬ 
chant in a small town was visited 
by a caller who wanted to get some 
first hand information about the 
results of advertising. 
“Do you keep Valspar?” asked 
the visitor naming this well known 
and highly advertised varnish. 
there, so he said, “Well don’t you have any 
calls for Valspar?” 
“Yes, I do,” the dealer replied, “but I 
try to seir the. customer the kind I keep. I 
don’t always succeed, of course. They keep 
Valspar at the store across the road, and 
when, some fool people get an idea in their 
heads, you can’t get it out.” 
On the other side of the room was quite 
a sizable display of seeds of a well-known 
seed firm that has advertised extensively for 
many years. 
“I see you have seeds. Do you like 
them?” 
“Yes,” replied the dealer, “I have carried 
them for twenty years and I sell 
lots of them.” 
When he was told that this 
seed firm, whose seeds he sold, 
spent thousands of dollars every 
year in helping him to sell those 
seeds through advertising, he said 
that he had never seen any of 
their advertisements, and he 
acted as though he doubted the 
statement. 
This local dealer did not realize, 
and probably the average person does not 
FROM A KODAK NEGATIVE 
KODAK 
Story-telling pictures like the one above, 
picture records of your crops, buildings and 
equipment, selling pictures of your cattle, 
chickens or hogs—they all represent the call 
for an Autographic Kodak on your place. 
A High Class Instructive and Entertaining Example of Modern 
Advertising 
know that much of modern business is based 
directly or indirectly upon the very thing 
that this dealer so heartily cursed—Adver¬ 
tising. 
Fortunately, for us, the human mind has 
a habit of unconsciosuly registering upon its 
memory truths which are often repeated. Like 
the dealer mentioned, we may not 
believe in advertising, but its 
effects and results are just the 
same, and. whether we know it or 
not, those results are contributing 
to our welfare because of the large 
part advertising plays in modern 
business and in modern civiliza¬ 
tion. Let us bring to your mind 
some examples to show that you 
and your life have been influenced 
by advertising. For instance, maybe 
you do not believe in advertising 
and never read it, but we bet 
you have heard of Sunkist oranges, 
a trade name that has brought 
prosperity to a cooperative organ¬ 
ization of farmers through adver¬ 
tising. 
If advertising has never had any 
effect on you, then, of course, you 
have never heard of Ivory soap, 
Heinz’ pickles, Campbell’s soup, 
Del Monte canned goods. Coca Cola, 
Postum, Jello, Blue Diamond wal¬ 
nuts, Blue Ribbon dried peaches, 
Kraft cheese, Elgin, Waltham or 
Ingersoll watches. Perfection oil 
heaters, Parawax paraffine, East¬ 
man Kodaks, or Wearever alumi¬ 
num and so on ad infinitum. If ad¬ 
vertising never had any effect on 
you or your business, what about 
Dairymen’s League ice cream, or 
Dairylea condensed and evaporated 
milk, or G. L. F. farm seeds or 
cattle feeds. 
If you do not read ads, of course 
you have never seen the picture 
of the old man wheeling a bar- 
row full of vegetables, which has 
made famous the Peter Hender- 
{Continued on page 507) 
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