These four advertisements about advertising (and two others) have now appeared in 41 million copies of TIME, LIFE and FORTUNE. Those of you who read my Aug. 29 Letter will recall that I said we were running them to give as many people as possible more information about the way advertising works in the public interest. They presented six typical ways in which advertising helps to "create the demand that boosts the production that lowers the cost."

The response to this campaign from TIME Inc. readers all over the U.S. has, with a few exceptions, been enthusiastic, constructive, and very rewarding. Many readers took the time to write long, thoughtful treatises on the campaign itself and on their views of advertising's role in the U.S. economy. There were hundreds of requests for reprints of the advertisements--from manufacturers who wanted to display them on employee bulletin boards; from schools, colleges, art teachers, professors of history, journalism, advertising, marketing, etc., for use in classrooms; from business men and others who wanted to pass them on to friends.* The Canadian Association of Advertising Agencies has also asked (and been given) permission to reprint the series in Canada.

Some of our readers criticized the campaign--mostly for not doing more than it did. A few said that they had no use for advertising anyway, and there was an occasional reply like this one: ". . . The art work is arresting.

The double trucks are impressive. But if all national advertising copy had been as dull, boring and obtuse as in your series, the great American mass production machine would have ground to a halt long ago."

Other readers of a less dour turn of mind thought that the campaign was a first-rate contribution and should be continued indefinitely. They even suggested subjects for future series of advertisements (e.g., recreation: to show how advertising has helped the mass production of movies, sporting goods, etc.). Still another wrote as follows: "Your series is well directed toward making economic points, but does not do the job it should in highlighting the peculiarly democratic political contribution of advertising. You could have shown that but for advertisers there would be no free press . . . On this score it would have been interesting to show, by page spreads from newspapers and magazines of opposite political orientation, the range of diversity possible in a free advertising-supported press."

One of our hopes in presenting this series was that other publications would devise further campaigns in advertising's behalf. For without the swift exchange of goods and news about those goods our economy would grind to a halt. It was to the wider understanding of that basic truth that TIME Inc.'s "Campaign About Advertising" was directed.

Cordially yours,

*While the supply of reprints lasts, all requests for them are being filled.

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