Dramatic Expression

Smart is the publication which can get the public to pay its promotion bills. Life did it last spring by "sponsoring" a campaign against Prohibition. Popular subscriptions brought in some $19,000 to pay for full-page advertisements in 23 newspapers (TIME, March 24). Last week World's Work tried a plan similar to Life's but somewhat more amorphous: it "sponsored" an expression of "confidence" in and "deep gratitude" to President Hoover --a "unified and dramatic expression on the part of the nation's leaders." Over 5,000 letters signed by Editor Russell Doubleday were sent to business and professional men throughout the U. S., soliciting endorsements to a full-page newspaper advertisement to appear Jan. 2. Also solicited were contributions "not to exceed $100" to buy the space in as many papers as possible. Accompanying the appeal was an advance proof of the advertisement : an open letter to the President with World's Work noted as sponsor, and with surrounding spaces left blank for endorsers' names. Excerpts: ". . . our financial and industrial foundations stand broader and firmer today than at any other time in our history. We believe the American people owe this achievement to ... your sane and progressive leadership. . . . We . . . express our deep gratitude for what you have accomplished during the past year and . . . assure you that you will have in the continuation of your policies . . . the unqualified support of all Americans who, regardless of party or of special interest, have the nation's prosperity at heart."

The plan was to be kept "confidential" until time to spring it on the President as a New Year's surprise. But the secret was only one day old when it fell into the hands of Mississippi's sly Senator Pat Harrison. With obvious relish he read on the Senate floor, sentence by sentence, from the "ludicrous" plan to "bedeck [the President's] brow with a coronet of praise and warm his heart with every complimentary expression." Also, he noted, the President's administrative assistant French Strother was once an editorial writer on World's Work.

Next day Editor Doubleday declared emphatically that the plan had not been submitted to the White House; that World's Work was sole and spontaneous sponsor.

An idea for just such a testimonial to President Hoover was recently submitted by one Harold S. Ellms, then identified with Street & Finney advertising agency, to TIME and also to Review of Reviews. Both rejected it. Editor Doubleday had nothing to say of Adman Ellms. Said he: "It does not matter whose idea it was. It's entirely our own show."

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