Astir a Publishers Life Story

clined. But where draw the line? Fraudulent advertising is objectionable always, but objectionable advertising is not always fraudulent. There are grades in advertising matter as in conduct. Black and white are easily distinguished; it is with the grays that doubt comes. It happened that one of these neutral cases arose soon after my coming, and I saw in it a chance for an object lesson more forcible than a Niagara of verbal argument. There turned up one day an order for a hair restorer, an advertisement which had found "The Delineator" a friendly medium for years. I decided to decline this order, but I wanted the company to know what I was doing; the official I picked out to consult was bald. As I put before him the large advertisement of the hair restorer, with its " Before" and "After" cuts of a man as ill- thatched as himself, I told him that the order amounted to $3ooo; that we had space for it; that it had run for many years past. I added that to me, however, it seemed a grave error to accept it unless it could do the things it promised. "Do you believe in such things?" I asked. "I!" he exclaimed. "Do you think that if there was a remedy, I 'd have stayed bald for thirty years?" In carrying out this policy, I had a most invaluable assistant in Mr. Balmer, who, with his high ideals, was naturally in sympathy with the idea. There was nothing halfway about our reform. It struck clear to the root of the evil. Many advertisers promised impossible values... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.