On Advertising

I am not an advertiser. I say this not because I look down on the profession, but merely to prove my disinterestedness. As a matter of fact, the inventor of the 98-cent article has always had my serious admiration, and the innermost deeps of my nature are strangely and pleasantly stirred whenever a new Campbell kid or Sapolio jingle confronts me in the street cars. It is at such times that one reflects upon the advantages of married life and wonders at the existence of the servant problem. What bliss to scour pans when Sapolio is at hand, or to feed a husband when Campbell's soup lines the pantry shelves!

And being in a self-communing mood one might, and often does, ask oneself why other things, colleges for instance, are not more widely advertised.

Not long ago, Goucher College was "advertised" in a way that provoked criticism. The Sophomores were reported, unjustly 'tis said, to have compelled the Freshmen to dance the tango on fly-paper. As for the tango, it is quite wicked enough without fly-paper and I confess that my own daughter, if I had one, should not be allowed to dance it. This "advertisement" is said to have traveled as far as San Francisco

Of course, we do not want that kind of advertising. But take another instance.

About two weeks ago a New York woman, who was about to change her home from New York to Baltimore, asked a Goucher graduate if there was a college near Baltimore to which she could send her daughter. The Goucher girl, upon recovering from the shock of the question, proudly mentioned the name of her Alma Mater. Then, seeing no look of enlightenment in the questioner's eyes, she added pleasantly, "It's Jessie Wilson's College- the President's daughter's college, you know."

The tone of the remark that followed was a mixture of guilelessness and polite incredulity.

"My daughter is now at Vassar; I have never heard of Goucher."

Please remember, this was not an unread, untutored, 'backwoods" sort of person, but an apparently wide-awake, cultivated woman with a daughter of college age.

Consider the two incidents. Was it worse that the College should be "advertised" from Atlantic to Pacific by the fly-paper story, or that it had been so little "advertised" that apparently worth-while people in New York had not heard of it? I am not prepared to state, and I repeat, I am not an "advertiser". I do know that an "advertiser's" ambition to write a readable story may out-run his better judgement. But most people make allowances for "reportorial fervor" and, after all, such mistakes do not occur frequently or, as a rule, intentionally. I believe that gentle, consistent, persistent, persuasive advertising is not beneath the dignity of any college.

EMILIE A. DOETSCH, '03.

Goucher Kalends, February 1914