I resolved never to allow an advertisement to go out of the office that was unconvincing to a thinker. If my argument convinces the man of affairs, I determined, it will certainly win over the man of no affairs. Dogmatically expressed, the idea was this: Never appeal to the intelligence of fools, no matter how easily they may part with their money. Turn your batteries on the thinking ones and convince them, and the unthinking will to follow. That principle was applied to the _argument_ of the advertisement. The headlines were constructed on an entirely different principle, namely, to be positive to an extreme. The Bible was my exemplar. It says, "It is" or "It was," "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not," and the Bible rarely explains or tells why. The strength of a headline lies in its positiveness. The logic which directed that the flaring headline of my big display advertising copy embrace a very positive statement, and that the _argument_ which followed in small type be convincing to the thinker, was based on a recognition of the fact, that, while boldness of statement invariably attracts attention, analysis is the final resort of the thinker before becoming convinced. More circumspection was used also in the process of selecting media for the advertising. Newspapers that did not publish in their news-columns mining-stock quotations of issues traded in on the New York Curb, the Boston Stock Exchange, the Boston Curb, the Salt Lake Stock Exchange or the San Francisco Stock Exchange were taboo, on the theory that by this time trading in mining stocks had grown sufficiently popular to command a regular following, and that it was easier to appeal to those who had some experience in mining-stock speculations than to those who had never before ventured. Subsequent advertising campaigns were always conducted from this viewpoint. I did not set the ocean on fire with my Stray Dog promotion, the advertising campaign of which was conducted on these lines, but this was due to circumstances which I explain further on. Later, when the Sullivan Trust Company grew and prospered, and afterward when I reached the East and learned more and more of the inside mechanism of the big Wall Street promotion game in rails and industrials as well as mining stocks, I found that my publicity principles were comparable to those accepted by the Street generally. _The mighty powers of Wall Street recognize the fact that it is not in the nature of things that fools should have much money, and thinkers, not fools, are the quarry of the successful modern-day promoter, high or low, honest or dishonest._ _A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and the man who thinks he knows it all because he has accumulated much money in his own pet business enterprise is a typical personage on whom the successful modern-day multi-millionaire Wall Street financier trains his batteries._