There is being advertised now a finger ring which by the mere wearing cures any form of rheumatism. The maker of that ring has genuine letters from people who believe that they have been cured by it. Would any one other than a believer in witchcraft accept those statements? Yet they are just as "genuine" as the bulk of patent medicine letters and written in as good faith. A very small proportion of the gratuitous indorsements get into the newspapers, because, as I have said, they do not lend themselves Secure as is the present control of the Proprietary Association over the newspapers, there is one point in which I believe almost any journal may be made to feel the force of public opinion, and that is the matter of common decency. Newspapers pride themselves on preserving a respectable moral standard in their news columns, and it would require no great pressure on the part of the reading public (which is surely immediately interested) to extend this standard to the advertising columns. I am referring now not only to the unclean sexual, venereal and abortion advertisements which deface the columns of a majority of papers, but also to the exploitation of several prominent proprietaries. Recently a prominent Chicago physician was dining en famille with a friend who is the publisher of a rather important paper in a Western city. The publisher was boasting that he had so established the editorial and news policy of his paper that every line of it could be read without shame in the presence of any adult gathering. "Never anything gets in," he declared, "that I couldn't read at this table before my wife, son and daughter." The visitor, a militant member of his profession, snuffed battle from afar. "Have the morning's issue brought," he said. Turning to the second page he began on Swift's Sure Specific, which was headed in large black type with the engaging caption, "Vile, Contagious Blood Poison." Before he had gone far the 19-year-old daughter of the family, obedient to a glance from the mother, had gone to answer an opportune ring at the telephone, and the publisher had grown very red in the face. "I didn't mean the advertisements," he said. "I did," said the visitor, curtly, and passed on to one of the extremely intimate, confidential and highly corporeal letters to the ghost of Lydia E. Pinkham, which are a constant ornament of the press. The publisher's son interrupted: "I don't believe that was written for me to hear," he observed. "I'm too young—only 25, you know. Call me when you're through. I'll be out looking at the moon." Relentlessly the physician turned the sheet and began on one of the Chattanooga Medical Company's physiological editorials, entitled "What "Now," said the physician to his host, "what do you think of yourself?" The publisher found no answer, but thereafter his paper was put under a censorship of advertising. Many dailies refuse such "copy" as this of Wine of Cardui. And here, I believe, is an opportunity for the entering wedge. If every subscriber to a newspaper who is interested in keeping his home free from contamination would protest and keep on protesting against advertising foulness of this nature, the medical advertiser would soon be restricted to the same limits of decency which other classes of merchandise accept as a matter of course, for the average newspaper publisher is quite sensitive to criticism from his readers. A recent instance came under my own notice in the case of the Auburn (N. Y.) Citizen, which bought out an old-established daily, taking over the contracts, among which was a large amount of low-class patent medicine advertising. The new proprietor, a man of high personal standards, assured his friends that no objectionable matter would be permitted in his columns. Shortly after the establishment of the new paper there appeared an advertisement of Juven Pills, referred to above. Protests from a number of subscribers followed. Investigation showed that a so-called "reputable" patent medicine firm had inserted this disgraceful paragraph under their contract. Further insertions of the offending matter were refused and the Hood Company meekly accepted the situation. Another central New York daily, the Utica Press, rejects such "copy" as seems to the manager indecent, and I have yet to hear of the paper's being sued for breach of contract. No perpetrator of unclean advertising can afford to go to court on this ground, because he knows that his matter is indefensible. Our national quality of commercial shrewdness fails us when we go into the open market to purchase relief from suffering. The average American, when he sets out to buy a horse, or a house, or a box of cigars, is a model of caution. Show him testimonials from any number of prominent citizens and he would simply scoff. He will, perhaps, take the word of his life-long friend, or of the pastor of his church, but only after mature thought, fortified by personal investigation. Now observe the same citizen seeking to buy the most precious of all possessions, sound health. Anybody's word is good enough for him here. An admiral whose puerile vanity has betrayed him into a testimonial; an obliging and conscienceless senator; a grateful idiot from some remote hamlet; a renegade doctor or a silly woman who gets a bonus of a dozen photographs for her letter—any of these are sufficient to lure the hopeful patient to the purchase. He wouldn't buy a second-hand bicycle on the affidavit of any of them, but he will give up his dollar and take his chance of poison on a mere newspaper statement which he doesn't even investigate. Every intelligent newspaper publisher knows that the testimonials which he publishes are as deceptive as the advertising claims are false. Yet he salves his conscience with the fallacy that the moral responsibility is on the advertiser and the testimonial-giver. So it is, but the newspaper shares it. When an aroused public sentiment shall make our public men ashamed to lend themselves to this charlatanry, and shall enforce on the profession of journalism those standards of decency in the field of medical advertising which apply to other advertisers, the Proprietary
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