om pure, and that always hurts the
teeth. Many children and adults are being cured of flat foot by men who
make money by selling shoes designed to strengthen the arch of the
foot. Millions would never know how to discover the evil effects upon
themselves of coffee and alcohol except for money-making
advertisements. Little Jo's Smile taught a nation that the majority of
crippled children are victims of neglect on the part of adult
consumptives.

Certain it is that advertising is an art promoted by the severest
competition of the cleverest brains. It is a force which we cannot
afford to ignore. If we can harness it to the promotion of aids to
health, it will do more good than all the hygiene books ever written.
To this end we must educate ourselves to distinguish between goods
which do what they profess to do and those which do not. A good eye
opener would be to keep for a week clippings from a high-priced daily
paper, a penny daily paper, and one or two representative magazines,
including a religious paper. Teachers and parents can very easily
interest children in such clippings. Moreover, they can use the
bulletin method, the stereopticon exhibit, the _cumulative
illustration_ of a fact, which is the essence of successful
advertising. Boards of health can use all the typographical aids to
clear understanding,--cuts, diagrams, interesting anecdotes. In New
York both the health board and the school board have issued circulars
and given illustrated lectures, some of them being in school and some
on public squares. Medical and sanitary societies and other educators
can be induced to follow what a successful business man has called the
three cardinal rules of advertising:

First, put your advertisement where it will be seen. (Tell your
story where it will be heard.)

Second, write it so that people will read it. (Tell it so that
people will understand it.)

Third, tell the truth, so that people will believe it.

CHAPTER XXXIX

IS CLASS INSTRUCTION IN SEX HYGIENE PRACTICABLE?

Among remedies for preventable disease and preventable poverty, the
following was urged at a national conference for the betterment of
social conditions: "We have been too prudish. Because we have been
unwilling to teach school children the evils of violating sex hygiene,
we have been unsuccessful in combating evils justly attributable to
ignorance on the part of girls as to the duties and dangers of
motherhood." This point o