Page:The Science of Advertising (1910).djvu/39

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The Science of Advertising
35

the car rack just over our eyes. When we changed sides, it was on another rack: "Be Clean; 'Tis the Best of Good Manners." When we changed cars it met us again: "Be Clean; 'Tis Due to Others."

On other cards and elsewhere we are reminded of "Cleanliness as the First Principle," as "Good Policy," as "Healthfulness" and as "Politeness."

Effect of Such Suggestion on the Reader.

Of course, these soap makers are not interested immediately in altering habit or raising the standard of cleanliness. They want to sell the full extent of their possible output of soap under the present cheap and efficient manufacturing conditions; so they are trying to make enough people use soap or more soap to exhaust their supply. They persuade us to make additional effort to be clean and, having once put us on the higher level of more unexceptional cleanliness, they keep us resisting the tendency ever to remain soiled.

I do not mean to ridicule this soap. I use it. I go in and out upon the cars to Chicago—and Chicago requires the use of much soap. But when I got on the cars a year or so ago and saw staring at me, "Be Clean; 'Tis the Best of Good Manners," and "'Tis Due to Others," it began sticking to me a little closer than the Chicago soot.

I would resent as sharply as you the sugges-