longer find it beneath their dignity to make pictures for ad- vertising purposes, especially as the bids for their services run to large figures. Similar improvement has been achieved in typography, engraving and lithography, and in all the mechanical processes of reproduction.
As the volume of advertising expenditure has grown, so has the number of publications which derive their chief support from advertising. These publications have been divided more and more in recent years into groups or classes, each with an appeal to a certain class of the population. The number of general publications reaching all classes has been correspondingly reduced. The most prominent class publications are the women's magazines, chiefly of monthly issue, of which in 1921 there were four or five in America with more than a million circulation. These magazines deal with home problems, dressmaking, cook- ing, care of children and kindred subjects, and are the most valuable mediums for the advertising of foods, textiles and all household commodities. There are similar class publications devoted to business interests, the world of books, motion pictures, the theatre, fashionable society, sports of one kind and another and all classes of commercial and industrial enterprises. The significance of this tendency is that advertising of each kind may be placed before the readers it especially interests, with a selected audience and less waste of circulation.
Each succeeding year has seen some enlargement of the possibilities of advertising. Paid space has been used in increas- ingly large amounts in political campaigns, local and national, presenting the records of candidates and showing photographs of themselves and their families. It is used more and more to influence public opinion on behalf of one cause or another. Industrial disputes, involving strikes or lock-outs, have led employers and employees alike to appeal through advertisements to the public for sympathy and moral support. Public service institutions have used advertising to put themselves in a better light before the public or to explain the necessity for increased revenue. In one notable case, advertising was used to turn business away. The American Telephone & Telegraph Co. was seriously affected by the entry of the United States into the World War. It could not obtain the supplies it needed; the Government took thousands of its highly trained workers; and at the same time demands on its service increased enormously. The Company was wise enough to advertise, explaining why its service was deficient, why applicants were kept waiting for installations, and also imploring the public neither to conduct unnecessary conversations over the wires nor to prolong use beyond the time required. Similar advertising was employed by the American railways in the period immediately following their return from Government control to private management, but in this case the explanation of inadequate service was followed by an appeal for higher passenger and freight rates to provide revenue for rehabilitation. During the same period^ the Chicago meat-packers, facing threatened Federal action for the further regulation of their activities, entered upon an elaborate advertis- ing campaign to convince the public of their blamelessness.
All these varied developments of advertising have been of the utmost interest to students of economic trends. It is certain that advertising has been largely instrumental in changing buying habits and in introducing many things which have quickly become a part of everyday life. The chief function of advertising is the saving of time. Information, whether as to merchandise or controversial or public issues, can be placed before great numbers of the population almost over night. Public education on any subject can be effected in days or weeks, where years were required by old-fashioned methods of canvassing. For this reason it has been possible to build up entire new industries on advertised products within a short period. In political life, and in financial operations, advertising has served to eliminate the secrecy and ignorance which invite deceit and fraud. The whole tendency is to take the public into confidence and play the game in the full light of fair and frank publicity. Advertising is no weapon for dark causes and no advocate for unworthy goods. To be effective it must be a sincere expression of the character
of the advertiser. Unless it bears the stamp of truth and sincerity it is ineffective and defeats its own purpose.
This individuality of a business house as well as the conditions under which it operates and the field from which it may seek custom must all be considered carefully before embarking on an advertising campaign.. It is well to seek the expert assistance of an advertising agency of established reputation. The implements of advertising are many, including newspapers, weeklies, magazines, trade publications, outdoor displays, cards in railway cars and the sending of circulars and booklets to persons whose names have been selected on some sound principle. Each is more efficient for one purpose than another, and knowl- edge and judgment are needed to plan a campaign that will achieve results at economical cost. The advertising policy of a business house and the selection of an advertising agency and advertising manager should be a concern for the executive heads who direct the permanent interests of the business. For advertising, once entered upon, is a continuing influence. The advertising for any one week or any one month, unlike that week's or month's buying or selling, cannot be regarded as a completed transaction. Advertising, it already has been said, is an expression of character. It reveals the character of the advertiser, and immediately begins to form a consciousness of the particular house or merchandise advertised in the mind of the public. It has an influence also on the advertiser's own organization. The workman in the factory and the salesman in the shop judge from the advertising their employer's sincerity and desire to serve. If the advertising is such that they can take pride in it; if it is attractive in appearance; if it is placed in the right environment; if it is a worthy representation of the purposes and ideals that animate the business then the advertising will stimulate every employee to greater efforts and enhance the moral of the organization. Every advertisement tends to create or destroy the one great business asset, reputation.
The steady growth of advertising is assured. While there are no authentic data on the amount spent for advertising, it has been estimated that the expenditure for all forms of advertising in America in 1920 was upwards of $1,200,000,000, an increase of approximately 100% in five years. Individual industrial firms in Great Britain spend as much as 200,000 a year on advertising, and the total expenditure there on all forms of publicity is esti- mated at over a hundred million sterling annually. With the growth in public intelligence and the realization of the power of advertising, it is likely to be still more widely employed in the future. The modern business concern is adopting advertising as a part of its fixed business policy; not as an expedient for occasional use but as an element of business to be constantly employed.
AEHRENTHAL, ALOYS LEXA VON, Count (1854-1912), Austro-Hungarian statesman (see 3.25; 9.951), was born at Gross-Skal, Bohemia, the son of Baron (Freiherr) Johann Lexa von Aehrenthal and his wife Marie, nee Countess Thun-Hohenstein, and began his diplomatic career in 1877 as attache to the Paris embassy under Count Beust. He went in 1878 in the same capacity to St. Petersburg, and from 1883 to 1888 he worked at the Foreign Office in Vienna under Kalnoky, with whom he formed close relations. In 1888 he was sent as councillor of embassy to St. Petersburg, where he exercised considerable influence with the ambassador, Count Wolkenstein. Recalled in 1894 to service in the Foreign Office, he undertook important duties, and in the following year went to Bucharest as ambassador. Here he succeeded in strengthening the relations between the courts of Vienna and Bucharest, the secret alliance which King Charles had concluded in 1883 with the Central European Powers being renewed on Sept. 30. In 1899 he became ambassador in St. Petersburg, where he remained until his appointment as Foreign Minister in Oct. 1906. Aehrenthal at this time thought that Austria-Hungary must, even at the cost of some sacrifice, come to an agreement with Russia. In this sense he endeavoured to continue the negotiations successfully begun by his predecessor, Prince Franz Liechtenstein (b. 1853), for the bridging over of the differences on Balkan questions
