"The American Way"

l'The American Way"

From a showboat at the Great Lakes Exposition in Cleveland one night last week the three presidents of the country's three biggest steel companies successively addressed the nation. Studiously they avoided any reference to the subject uppermost in their minds--the coming battle over unionization of the steel industry.

Significantly they avoided any direct attacks upon the New Deal. Instead they dwelt upon the historic accomplishments of their industry, promised fine things to come, "provided the sound principles upon which our country has developed and grown great are continued."

U. S. Steel's William A. Irwin: The skies are brighter--business has improved, weekly earnings are better, some profits have been made within the year.

Bethlehem Steel's Eugene Grace: I believe that the vast industrial development which has taken place is certain to continue. . . .

Republic Steel's Tom Mercer Girdler: I believe the American standards of living will continue to rise.

In their own fashion the steelmasters were doing their bit to put over what has apparently become a prime policy of Big Business--i. e., to sell itself as such to the U. S. Public. Early in the New Deal, on the theory that the best defense was to attack, Business fell into the habit of concentrating its fire on Franklin D. Roosevelt. Belatedly it realized that to abuse the man who at last count was the most popular figure in the land was not precisely the smartest way to regain public confidence. So Business became ''constructive." meaning that it tried to divert attention from its sins to its virtues.

Though it controls most of the means of getting the public's eye and ear in the U. S., the Right always has a tough time presenting its case. Convinced that conservatives have either a poor case or no case at all. writers, artists and other people engaged in handling ideas tend to gravitate to the Left. Result is that the Left is usually vociferous, the Right inarticulate. And while the better business orators have turned from reviling the New Deal to extolling what is loosely called "the American Way." industry as a whole has had to fall back upon the only method it knows to get a hearing-- advertising.

Institutional advertising, which tries to sell an idea rather than a specific product, is the oldest example of an attempt to build public confidence in business. On a broader scale is the type of campaign now being sponsored by the railroads, which are trying to sell a ride not on a specific train but on any train. For four years the Advertising Federation of America has been telling the story of U. S. Business by broadcast and printed word but advertising has been the hero. There are at least three campaigns now running which are trying to sell U. S. Business as a whole.

Most ambitious of these originated with the National Association of Manufacturers, which has been fuming about attacks on Business for years. NAM's present head. Board Chairman Colby dicker of General Foods, has been exhorting his colleagues to tell their side of the story ever since he took office last winter. In Chicago last month NAM finally decided to try a series of advertisements prepared free of charge by Lord & Thomas.

"What Is Your America All About?" blazed the copy, adding apologetically, "You probably know every single fact in this advertisement." Most people indeed did. A box headed ''You are a stockholder in the United States. Inc." related that the country had produced three times as much wealth since the Revolution as the entire world had produced prior to 1776; that the U. S. worker's share of the national in come had risen from 38-c- in 1850 to 65-c- in 1929; that there were 44,000,000 savings accounts in the U. S. even in Depression. These and other facts, read the advertisement, reached "right down into the very roots of your own life -- and your family -- and your future," were as "deep, as abiding, as encompassing as hunger, love, religion."

Other advertisements in the series: "A Word to a Wise Woman" (taxes). "The Myth About Men & Machines." "Two Billion People Envy You." The last two prepared by Campbell-Ewald Co., harp the slogan, "There is No Way Like the American Way." NAM paid for the first test insertions but the plan is to have news papers sell the series as ready-made copy, the space to be paid for by individual manufacturers or local trade bodies. A number of the advertisements have appeared on this basis.

Another campaign to sell Business as an institution is being run in newspapers by Nation's Business, houseorgan of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. The current number in the series describes management as the "nation's most important resource," managers as today's "forgotten men." Reads the copy: "Isn't it time to quit talking about this land of ours as if it were split into hard and fast classes, and to think of it for what it really is, the greatest spot on the globe, if not the only one. where classes do not really exist but all. under the direction of management, pull together for the greatest good for the greatest number?"

A more subtle job is being done by N. W. Aver & Son. Inc. On its own hook this Philadelphia advertising agency is running every week on the cover of Printers' Ink a brief story about the accomplishments of some industry ("Mother Is On A Five-Day Week"), the importance of some business practice ("Joe And The Corporate Surplus"), the value of industrial research ("White Rats And Healthy Babies"). The copy goes in for such facts as that U. S. citizens have added more than two inches to their stature in the past 50 years, that it requires about $9,000 of capital to make one U. S. job. that one pound of automobile costs considerably less than one pound of butter. Stressing "The American Way" like the other efforts to sell Big Business to the public, the N. W. Ayer copy is reprinted in booklet form for free distribution.

N. W. Ayer's booklets grew out of a regular house advertisement which lamented the passing of the personal relationship of horse & buggy days between manufacturer and customer, suggested that it might be restored, in part at least, by the proper type of corporate copy. Good basis for N. W. Ayer's reasoning existed in the fact that the firm has handled the most successful institutional campaign ever run in the U. S., that of American Telephone & Telegraph Co. So well has this campaign worked that by now most people tend to differentiate between A. T. & T.. the Institution, and the Telephone Company, which sends the bills.

A. T. & T.'s institutional series began 28 years ago in the day of the late Theodore N. Vail, first president of the Bell System. Though a friend & contemporary of all the economic buccaneers of the late 19th Century, Theodore Vail was smart enough to see that a new day was dawning. Squarely he faced the fact that A. T. & T. was a monopoly but boldly set out to convince the public that a monopoly, at least in the telephone business, was a good thing. U. S. industry has grown far more monopolistic than it was in the trust-busting era in which the great telephone man lived, but it has produced no Theodore Vails to lead it to popular acceptance.

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