CATCHWORDS

"The newspapers are the universities of the people" is a truism to which Horace Greeley gave wide currency, and since his time at has been repeated often, but with lessening conviction. Journals have, it appears, largely ceased to be organs of opinion, they have become organs of selling. The superiority of asbestos over concrete shingles must be impressed upon buyers because the high geared industrial mechanism produces a surplus of goods which must be sold by brute advertising. When advertising is relaxed, is during the printers' strike in New York last year, buying falls off immediately, and the slackening of demand is effected throughout industry to the very sources of production.

Politics reflect this change. Campaigns have become, not a season for serious discussion of issues, but a time when candidates are "sold" to the electorate by the best of advertising methods, News columns reflect as much as advertising pages the desire of vote seekers to hold the public attention by a massive emphasis on slogans and names. Issues fade, personalities are focussed. The same blaring methods that drag money from the pocket of the reader of advertisements tend to be equally successful in drawing his votes. Reiteration, not seasoning, wins.