Advertising

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           We were still on board the Normandie and the tugboats and the tugboats had just pulled the steamer into the New York harbor when two things came to our attention. One was small and greenish: the Statue of Liberty. The second was enormous and insolent: an advertising panel propagandizing "Wrigley's Chewing Gum." From that time on the billboard with the flat little green snout with the enormous megaphone followed us all over America, convincing us, begging us, persuading us, and demanding of us that we chew "Wrigley's," the flavored, incomparable, first-class gum.
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           The fact of the matter is that the more widespread the advertising, the more meaningless the object for which it is intended. Only the sale of some kind of nonsense can recoup this crazed advertising. Americans' buildings, roads, fields and trees are all disfigured by these annoying billboards. The consumer also pays for these billboards. We were told that a five-cent bottle of "Cola-Cola" costs the manufacturers one cent, while three cents go toward the advertising. We don't need to write about where the fifth cent goes. That's pretty clear.
           The manufacturers of useful, excellent articles of everyday technology and household economy, with which America is so rich, can't advertise their wares in as frenzied a manner as that in which silly chewing gum, or brown whiskey with a strong medicinal smell and a fairly disgusting taste, are advertised.

Chapter Fourteen: You Can't Catch America By Surprise.