The Advertising Manager's reasoning was direct
and to the point. He must get people to use the coffins; and now he
had all the money to work with that he could use.

The new note was woven in so gradually that it is not easy to put a
finger on any one ad and say, "It began here." One of the first was
surely the widely-printed one showing a tattooed, smiling young man
with his chin thrust out manfully, lying in a coffin. He was
rugged-looking and likable (not too rugged for the spindly-limbed to
identify with) and he oozed, even though obviously dead, virility at
every pore. He was probably the finest-looking corpse since Richard
the Lion-Hearted.

Neither must one overlook the singing commercials. Possibly the
catchiest of these, a really cute little thing, was achieved by
jazzing up the Funeral March.

It started gradually, and it was all so un-violent that few saw it as
suicide. Teen-agers began having "Popping-off parties". Some of their
elders protested a little, but adults were taking it up too. The
tired, the unappreciated, the ill and the heavy-laden lay down in
growing numbers and expired. A black market in poisons operated for a
little while, but soon pinched out. Such was the pressure of
persuasion that few needed artificial aids. The boxes _were_ very
comfortable. People just closed their eyes and exited smiling.

The Beatniks, who had their own models of coffin--mouldy, scroungy,
and without lids, since the Beatniks insisted on being seen--placed
their boxes on the Grant Avenue in San Francisco. They died with
highly intellectual expressions, and eventually were washed by the
gentle rain.

Of course there were voices shouting calamity. When aren't there? But
in the long run, and not a very long one at that, they availed naught.

* * * * *

It isn't hard to imagine the reactions of the rest of the world. So
let us imagine a few.

The Communist Block immediately gave its Stamp of Disapproval,
denouncing the movement as a filthy Capitalist Imperialist Pig plot.
Red China, which had been squabbling with Russia for some time about a
matter of method, screamed for immediate war. Russia exposed this as
patent stupidity, saying that if the Capitalists wanted to die,
warring upon them would only help them. China surreptitiously tried
out the thing as an answer to excess population, and found it good. It
also appealed to the well-known melancholy facet of Russian nature.
Besi