MODERN ADVERTISING

        Venditation is the characteristic activity of our age.  Ease of manufacture has led, long since, to over-production, each firm trying to produce a world-supply of its own goods, in the hope that its own goods will be bought in preference to those of its rivals.  And now the harassed artificer, finding himself left with stocks of unsaleable goods on his hands, must run for aid to the advertiser, in the hope that he will be able to put things right.       

        The advertiser began in a humble way, as a medium between consumer and producer, to signify where and at what price certain goods could be bought.  When competition was in full swing, he reaped a harvest by crying one man's goods against another's.  Now he performs a still more important economic function by trying to persuade us that we ought to buy goods which, as a matter of fact, we do not need.          

Blessed John Cardinal Newman

(11-16-10)