Advertising v. New Deal

Whenever in the judgment of the President such action is necessary or proper . . . he may . . . regulate or prohibit, with respect to any commodity . . . selling, marketing, or inventory practices . . . which in his judgment are equivalent to or are likely to result in price increases inconsistent with the purposes of this Act.

These words in the price-control bill now before Congress prompted the American Newspaper Publishers Association last week to issue an eight-page alarm. They meant, as the Association read them, that the President could dictate whether, how and how much businesses could advertise, the last straw in the Administration's repeated attacks on advertising.

The publishers have cooperated in efforts to eliminate false advertising, but they view with alarm the Government's "using the term 'false advertising' as a mask with which to cloak a very evident desire to restrict or prohibit all advertising or to subject it to Government control."

They objected in particular to the New Deal's fomenting consumer distrust of advertising by describing it as "economic waste." Said Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold: "Advertising is in reality a social liability."

Two examples of Government interference :

> Jones' Dairy Farm was forbidden to advertise

Most little pigs go to market

The best little pigs go to Jones'. Said the Department of Agriculture: "Not necessarily so."

> Tombstone makers were ordered to cease and desist from advertising their stones as "everlasting." Said FTC: "Exaggerated."

One attempt to combat such Government interference will be a series of ads on advertising which will make pointed reference to a statement made by Franklin Roosevelt when he was Governor of New York:

"It is a generally recognized fact that the general raising of the standards of modern civilization among all groups of people during the past half century would have been impossible without the spreading of the knowledge of higher standards by means of advertising."

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