With a view to the maintenance and upkeep of this extraordinary jumble of publicity the country is patrolled year in and year out by thousands of advertising vans, each accompanied by a considerable staff of “old hands.” American papers commonly contain paragraphs like the following: “Advertising car No 2 of Pawnee Bill’s Wild West has the following people: Al Osborn, manager; Doc Ingram, boss billposter; A. Clarkson, lithographer; J. Dees, banners; N. C. Murray, J. Judge and twelve other billposters; B. Balke, paste-maker; and R. Richardson, chef.” That the boss billposter should rank after the manager and the chef after the paste-maker is a choice American touch. When you turn to the question of newspaper advertising you encounter pretty much the same characteristics, supplemented by a great deal of top-speed bellowing. In a high-class paper that lies before me as I write, a gentleman in the wholesale way announces in indecently tall black type that he is the “only live hardware man on earth,” and that he has “figured out a way to boost the business of his customers as well as build a good foundation.” Another dweller in the land of brotherly love—an artiste this time, if you please—announces himself as “The Death Defying Daredevil King of the High Wire” and assures us not only that he has been “the Feature Attraction for Three Seasons in Succession at Luna Park, Coney Island,” but that his “Reputation Talks for Itself.” The tone of these announcements is typical. Every American advertiser insists that he is the greatest man of business alive, and that the article he is so anxious to get rid of is the only fine thing in the world. You note, too, with a certain restrained joy, that every second advertisement appearing in an American paper or magazine starts off with the magical words: “It Will Pay You.” Thus if we are to believe the veracious publicity-monger it will pay you to wear So and So’s Collegian clothes which “are the only garments made in this entire country with real dash to them”; it will pay you to buy Thingamy Suspenders because they will make your boy “comfortable and good-natured”; it will pay you to go about in Thingamy Shoes because when you pay three dollars for the Thingamy Shoe “you can know that all of your money goes to the purchase of protection for your feet”; and it will pay you “to keep step with nature and tempt the fussy appetite with ‘Ten Liberal Breakfasts for Ten Cents.’” The authors of these touching suggestions evidently understand the public with whom they have to deal. They have learnt the sublime lesson that the American has but a single inducement in his nightmare of a life, namely—the inducement of money or noise.