Advertising -- Fiction; Bank employees -- Fiction; Labor unions -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Satire
"I come to you _first_ because you are an artist concerned with color
effects and striking arrangements. You also are a psychologist, since
you compel people to halt on the sidewalk and then mutely induce them to
use the doors. You really are the man who declares the dividends on the
firm's capital stock. Yes, you do, and I'll see that the big chief
acknowledges it, too. Now I've come to you--_first_! Whatever you do
will be copied. It makes you plagiarizable, and that is merely the
recognition of greatness. You have the window. In order to dissociate
the idea of money from your shop in the public's mind I'm going to give
you a chance to prove that you are above mere money-making, which is
something no Fifth Avenue shop ever did before. Remember in this
connection the psychology of the crowd and of the money they wish to
spend and at the same time keep in their pockets. You and your windows
are New York--the New York that draws the crowd of natives and
Americans. Give a whole window, not to _my_ charity, but to New
York's--to yours! Put this menu on an easel, with a background of that
wonderful velvet you had the other day--the one that killed your
competitors. It was wonderful!"
Before the artist could draw his breath H. R. had warmly bid him
good-by, leaving a menu in the astonished artist's hand.
They did. It was original, as they explained to the boss. And even
department-store bosses know that originality means novelty, and novelty
is what New York pays for.
Within six hours the first edition of menus was exhausted. In every shop
window in New York the public could read the Public Menu Commission's
masterpiece. Cost: $68.14 + H. R.
The undoubted possessors of perfect beauty gave more trouble than the
menu, and therefore got more space in the newspapers. A regular detail
of police guarded not only the Allied Arts Building day and night, but
also the honor and features of the Public Beauty Commission. Grace
Goodchild was compelled to make use of her neighbor's house, Mrs.
Vantine's, in order to reach the street. She used the Seventy-sixth
Street entrance. Mrs. Vantine congratulated Grace each time on her
deserved triumph and asked her to look at Louise, her youngest.
H. R. had told Barrett to convey delicately to the press that the
relatively young wife of one of the members of the commission had left
for Reno. No name was mentioned. Therefore the portraits of all the male
members were impartially published. A neat little interrogation-mark
after each name did _not_ constitute libel.
The commissioners were thereafter compelled to be particularly nice to
their own wives in public.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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