which improves the mechanical output. In striking contrast to this,
the gigantic industry of advertising is to-day still controlled
essentially by an amateurish impressionism, by a so-called
commonsense, which is nothing but the uncritical following of a
well-worn path. Surely there is an abundance of clever advertisement
writers at work, and great establishments make some careful tests
before they throw their millions of circulars before the public. Yet
even their so-called tests have in no way scientific character. They
are simply based on watching the success in practical life, and the
success is gained by instinct. Commonsense tells even the most
superficial advertiser that a large announcement will pay more than a
small one, an advertisement in a paper with a large circulation more
than in a paper with a few subscribers, one with a humorous or
emotional or exciting text more than one with a tiresome and stale
text. He also knows that the cover page in a magazine is worth more
than the inner pages, that a picture draws attention, that a repeated
insertion helps better than a lonely one. Yet even a score of such
rules would not remove the scheme of advertising from the commonplaces
of the trade. They still would not show any trace of the fact that the
methods of exact measurement and of laboratory research can be applied
to such problems of human society.

Advertising is an appeal to the attention, to the memory, to the
feeling, to the impulses of the reader. Every printed line of
advertisement is thus a lever which is constructed to put some mental
mechanism in motion. The science of the mental machinery is
psychology, which works on principles with the exact methods of the
experiment. It seems unprogressive, indeed, if just this one industry
neglects the help which experimental science may furnish. A few slight
beginnings, to be sure, have been made, but not by the men of affairs,
whose practical interests are involved. They have been made by
psychologists who in these days of carrying psychology into practical
life have pushed the laboratory method into the field of advertising.

The beginnings indicated at once that much which is sanctioned by the
traditions of economic life will have to be fundamentally revised.
Psychologists, for instance, examined the memory value of the
different parts of the page. Little booklets were arranged in which
words were placed in the four quarter pages. The advertiser is
accusto