Confession & Dividend

"We have a frank confession to make. The automobile you bought from us was not really as good as we said. But now we have new patents and are putting out a superb machine. Just take our word for it."

"Did the suit we sold you wear out in a month? That was because our materials were no good. But now we are buying better materials."

"We are sorry that our baking powder made you ill. We feel sure we have found and corrected the cause."

Advertisingmen last week had fun making up such hypothetical copy as the above. For if all companies followed the lead of Gillette Safety Razor Co., such a style might come into vogue. A Gillette advertisement, headed a "Notice to the Public," explained that recent blades have not been very good but that a new process insures their quality from now on. Seen in this bold departure was the sensational and not subtle hand of Gerard Barnes Lambert, Listerine-promoter who became Gillette's president. Attributed to him also was the recent Listerine-like "repulsion campaign" showing pouting wives leaving homes and beds after gazing at stubble-bearded husbands.

In Gillette's confession is perhaps the last milestone of the historic Gillette-Probak (AutoStrop) fight. When the Gillette advertisement said, "Finally we discovered and purchased for our exclusive use and at the cost of millions of dollars a manufacturing process that was amazingly superior to our own," it referred to the Probak-process. Razormen feel that Gillette's "discovery" of the process came about in Probak's damage suit, that Auto-Strop was bought only as the cheaper way out. Soon after the merger was completed, the AutoStrop machinery was moved from New York City to Boston, installed in the Gillette plants. A continuous process, it takes strips of steel, turns them out as finished blades. Last week, almost all Gillette blades for sale were those finished in the new method.

Apparently confident that the new blades will please, that the confession will be taken in good heart, last week Gillette voted a dividend of 25-c-, the first payment in a year.

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