Advertising Advertising

Last week 1,000 advertising men and women carried away from Washington. D. C. the pleasant feeling that their 26th annual convention of the Advertising Federation of America had jolted the nation's capital into consciousness of the scope of U. S. advertising. During their five-day visit they had been welcomed by the President of the U. S., addressed by cabinet officers, foreign diplomats, Senators, had attended 38 separate meetings, listened to 176 speakers, elected new officers.

Ringing in their ears were lofty tributes to the power and glory of advertising.

Senator Henry Justin Allen of Kansas: "If we spent 10% of the money we have expended for enforcement of the Volstead Act upon [advertising] the duty of obeying the law, and the daily effect of alcohol, we would almost have cured the anti-Volstead people. . . . There is some doubt as to whether the London Treaty will go over . . . because none of us has been compelled to read it. Turn it over to a modern advertising agency and we will not be able to dodge it."

Secretary of Labor James John Davis: "To the credit of great national advertisers, there has been less unemployment in their ranks than in the ranks of non-advertisers."

Vice President Francis Hinckley Sisson of Guaranty Trust Co. of New York: "The worst of the business depression is past. Our banking system is ready and able to finance expansion. . . . By the stimulating use of advertising, much valuable preparatory work can be done. . . . Gradually the banker has come to realize that whatever service it is proper to perform in banking . . it is proper to make a human presentation of it."

Secretary of Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur called upon admen to clean up U. S. landscapes defaced by billboards.

To succeed hustling, bustling President Charles C. Younggreen (Klau-Van Pietersom-Dunlap-Younggreen, Inc., of Milwaukee), who is credited with "putting the Federation on its feet," delegates chose Gilbert Tennent Hodges of the executive board of the New York Sun. His chief job: to strengthen the Federation's influence in the unclubby East.

Nast Trick

The ladies and ladylike gentlemen who read Vogue were disturbed to read in the May 24 issue of that famed semimonthly fashion chart the following appeal: "Constantly we have to face the problem presented by newspaper publishers, department stores and advertising art services who use or adapt Vogue cover designs, illustrations, decorations or other material and offer it to the public as their own without asking our permission. . . We are asking our readers to help us detect these flagrant violations of a fundamental and well-understood law. If you observe any Vogue cover design ... or other material reproduced in any magazine, newspaper, catalogue or other publications, will you help us to maintain the standards of American business honesty by reporting the infringement . . .?

"Conde Nast, publisher."

The situation sounded exciting when Mr. Nast also said: "Vogue has brought suit against many of them [infringers] in the past, and has yet to lose a case."

Quick with friendly interest in Publisher Nast's plight were not only Vogue's readers, but other publishers, who eyed each other suspiciously to see who had been treating a brother so. The files of public prints were examined. Publisher Nast's lawyers were interrogated. And then the other publishers had to applaud Publisher Nast.

There had been, it appeared, only one suit: in 1926 Vogue obtained an injunction against a Toledo department store to stop it selling "Vogue" hats. Several times subsequently Vogue had threatened similar actions and obtained satisfaction out of court. But despite Publisher Nast's insinuation, no newspapers or magazines had ever been involved. Publisher Nast had not been villainously put upon by unscrupulous publishing competitors. His appeal "to protect Vogue's originality," was simply another manifestation of the thing advertised, "Vogue's originality."

Cultivating Cuba

Last week U. S. editors became aware of a newspaper with a new function: quasi- official national business-getter.

High in a Manhattan office building is the Havana Post's new news bureau. No newshawks rush in and out. No telegraph instruments chatter. Its one-man staff-stubby, genial, bespectacled Carl Chandlee Dickey, onetime Columbia journalism instructor, an editor of World's Work, Mc-Clure's--has in fact little to do with the Havana Post. His function is to lure more U. S. tourists, more U. S. capital to Cuba.* His method: to send writers and artists to Havana. There magnetic Publisher Carl Byoir takes them in hand, makes them see everything, turns them loose to write and draw what they please, confident that the result will be the best type of propaganda for Cuba. Publisher Byoir has frankly assumed the task of exploiting Cuba, frankly admitting that his papers will profit thereby.

The Publisher. Carl Byoir made a fortune from patent medicines and cosmetics, among them Nuxated Iron and Blondex, etc. He visited Havana in 1928 because he heard the climate would relieve his sinus affliction. Constitutionally unable to remain inactive--or to stomach Cuban bread--he started an "American" bakery. But this could not for long absorb a man who served in Europe on President Wilson's Wartime Committee on Public Information; who after the War was Public Relations Counsel for President Thomas Garrigue Masaryk of Czechoslovakia; who with publicity man Edward L. Bernays, conducted a publicity campaign for the independence of Lithuania. The Havana Post and its evening companion, the Telegram, offered an outlet for Byoir's energy, his knack for diplomacy, his natural urge for influence. He bought the Post and Telegram from Rafael R. Govin, publisher of El Mundo, principal Cuban daily. The same day, says legend, he refused an offer and a profit of $250,000 from Lord Rothermere.

In a year Publisher Byoir became the best known, most universally liked American in Cuba, confidant alike of President Gerardo Machado y Morales and Mayor Miguel Mariano Gomez of Havana. U. S. investors in Cuba visit Minister Harry Frank Guggenheim first as a matter of form. When their business gets down to brass tacks they "see Byoir," who now almost amounts to President Machado's Department of Commerce.

First an expedient, Cuba has grown to be a passion with Mr. Byoir. Through the Post's columns he fights her cause with all the fervor of a native. Cubans took him to their collective bosom for his magnum opus, a thoroughgoing study of the sugar industry and a series of smashing antitariff editorials which, spread over the front page of the Post, were widely quoted in the U. S.

Dynamic, warm, lavish, Byoir is an instinctive mixer. Mornings he may be found in the patio of the Hotel Sevilla-Biltmore, habitually hatless, armed with a malacca stick, buttonholing or being buttonholed by this statesman, that sportsman. Afternoons find him on the sands of La Playa beach; midnight, in the two-story structure at Industria 77, erstwhile Casa Publica, now the plant of the Post and Telegram.

If Publisher Byoir has a hobby it is his bothersome sinus, which has undergone 14 operations, must undergo no more. No hypochondriac, he takes a lively interest in his sinus, priding himself as an authority. He has even been known to drain his own sphenoid cavity, an intricate and highly painful process. Among his prized possessions is a photograph made of him by his friend Robert Hobart ("Bob") Davis, onetime associate editor of Munscy's, editorial writer on the New York Sun. Inscribed Photog- rapher Davis: "It isn't a masterpiece, but then neither is Byoir."

* Approximately 150,000 U. S. tourists visited Cuba last year. Total U. S. capital in Cuba: $1,505,000,000.

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