Class v. Mass

The Lord Mayor of London is almost invariably a different sort of man from his counterpart in a great U. S. city such as Chicago or New York. Political pull cannot elevate an Englishman to the post whose incumbent has authority to grant (and hence to refuse) permission to the King-Emperor to pass Temple Bar, traditional gateway to the City of London. Great wealth and an established, honorable position in the business community are the well-nigh indispensable qualifications of any Londoner who would become "My Lord Mayor." The office is really honorary, the incumbency only one year. Anyone who has been Lord Mayor of London is more apt to be a solid, respected man of affairs than a blathering Big Bill or wisecracking Jimmy.

Last week Baron Ebbisham. who as Sir George Rowland Blades was two years ago Lord Mayor of London, returned to London from a business trip to the U. S. and imparted to his countrymen some shrewd advice. "I want to say a word." he began, "against slavish copying of methods which may have produced prosperity in other lands. Take such experiments as American mass production methods or German cartelized [trust] control of entire industries. These may be only passing phases. At any rate remember that our traditional lines of development have little in common with those countries."

Stressing "quality" as the distinctive attribute of British goods, and also the extraordinary diffuseness of the Empire's markets, the onetime Lord Mayor concluded: "We are frequently exhorted to copy American selling practices quite regardless of the fact that high pressure sales campaigns coupled with mass advertising in a closed market are not readily adaptable to the needs of a small island whose traditional outlet for its surplus products has been found in catering to the highly diversified and specialized requirements of markets in every corner of the globe. The central quest to which British energies should be directed is the discovery of the quickest way of exploiting our acknowledged pre-eminence as producers of high quality goods."