The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century
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16. “Wheat Outlook Is Fine,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 31, 1898, 10.
17. This was certainly a living wage. At this same time, Theodore Dreiser’s fictional Caroline Meeber (Sister Carrie) found employment at a cap factory, where she was paid $3.50 a week.
18. Description of the office based on Albert Lasker and Boyden Sparkes, Hammered Brass, unpublished collaboration, Installment 2, 2.
19. Reminiscences of Albert Lasker, in the Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection (hereafter “Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC”), 46.
20. Sparkes, 102.
21. Lasker and Sparkes, Hammered Brass, 5.
22. Sparkes interview with Elmer Bullis, October 27, 1937, 102.
23. Historical Statistics of the United States, U. S. Department of Commerce, 1970 edition, 259–271.
24. Ibid., Q 518–523.
25. Ibid., Q 329–345, Q 331–345.
26. Ibid., Q 530–547.
27. Ibid., R 1–12, R 1–16.
28. Dedmon, Fabulous Chicago, 189.
29. Historical Statistics of the United States, R 232–257.
30. John Morrish, Magazine Editing (New York: Routledge, 1996), 7.
31. George P. Rowell, Forty Years an Advertising Agent (New York: Printers’ Ink Publishing, 1906). Of one highly successful competitor, Rowell wrote (on p. 446), “If he had any office I never knew where it was. For his correspondence he commonly used the stationery of his clients. He doubtless did have a billhead.”
32. Mark Tungate, Adland: A Global History of Advertising (Philadelphia: Kogan Page, 2007), 14.
33. Ralph M. Hower, The History of an Advertising Agency: N. W. Ayer & Son at Work, 1869–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939), 638–639.
34. Stephen Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1984), 39.
35. Daniel Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 121.
36. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 21–22. But patent medicines, as we will see, were about to undergo a steep decline. For example: they represented 15 percent of Ayers’s billings in 1900, but only 3.4 percent of its billings in 1901, according to Hower, The History of an Advertising Agency, 639.
37. Lord & Thomas, “Pocket Directory, 1892–93,” 658.
38. From an advertisement in Printers’ Ink, August 1895. Quoted in Pamela Walker Laird, “The Business of Progress: The Transformation of American Advertising, 1870–1920.” Business and Economic History 22, no. 1 (Fall 1993).
39. Fox, The Mirror Makers, 14.
40. Albert D. Lasker, “A Call for Dedication to Fundamentals in Advertising,” undated speech, probably from the late 1920s.
41. Hower, The History of an Advertising Agency, 96–97.
42. From “A. D. Lasker Traces Advertising Agency’s Development,” Printers’ Ink, October 13, 1927, 142. Lasker also recounted this story in “Salesmanship in Print,” Printers’ Ink, July 29, 1926, 1.
43. Sparkes interview with Ralph Sollitt, 9.
44. Lasker and Sparkes, Hammered Brass, 8.
45. Sparkes interviews, 115.
46. Lasker and Sparkes, Hammered Brass, 8.
47. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 39.
48. Sparkes, 119.
49. Ibid., 120.
50. Lasker and Sparkes, Hammered Brass, 17.
51. Sparkes, 354.
52. Lasker and Sparkes, Hammered Brass, 19.
53. Sparkes, 113.
54. Ibid., 130.
55. Lasker told Columbia’s oral historians that Thomas went with him to pay off the debt. If so, that underscores the affection that Thomas felt for his young protégé.
56. Albert Lasker, The Lasker Story: As He Told It (Chicago: Advertising Publications, 1963), 16.
57. Ibid., 20.
58. Sparkes, 135.
59. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 34.
60. Sparkes, 132.
61. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 37.
62. “A. D. Lasker Traces Advertising Agency’s Development,” 142.
63. These numbers changed with each retelling of the story. John Gunther’s numbers were substantially higher; he had Wilson’s monthly ad budget at $20,000—an implausibly large figure. See Gunther, Taken at the Flood, 46.
64. Sparkes, 225.
65. According to Don Belding’s 1952 recollections upon the occasion of Lasker’s death, these six copywriters were Robert P. Crane, Walker Evans Jr. (father of the celebrated photographer), Carl Johnson, William Merriam, Arthur Palmer, and George Spencer. In addition, the fledgling creative department included a “merchandising man,” Paul Faust, and an artist named Charles Church. From Don Belding’s papers in the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University.
66. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 39.
CHAPTER FOUR
1. Quoted in Albert Lasker, “Salesmanship in Print,” Printers’ Ink, July 29, 1926, 1.
2. Albert Lasker, The Lasker Story: As He Told It (Chicago: Advertising Publications, 1963), 13.
3. Ibid., 14.
4. Ibid., 25. Since Armour was then a valued Lord & Thomas client, Lasker probably kept this particular opinion to himself.
5. Ibid., 19; and Sparkes, 227.
6. Sparkes, 230.
7. Albert Lasker, “A Call for Dedication to Fundamentals in Advertising,” undated speech, probably from the late 1920s, 4.
8. Sparkes, 228.
9. Tommy Smith, “John E. Kennedy,” in The Ad Men and Women: A Biographical Dictionary of Advertising, ed. Edd Applegate (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), 200–204.
10. According to an internal Foote, Cone & Belding memorandum dated November 8, 1977, the fiftieth anniversary issue of Printers’ Ink (1938) records that “in 1903 John E. Kennedy joined the Postum Cereal Company.” Since this is the same period that he was living in Wisconsin and working for Dr. Shoop’s Family Medicine, it seems unlikely that he could have joined the Post payroll fulltime.
11. This version of this key moment is from Lasker, The Lasker Story, 21.
12. Sparkes, 230.
13. Almost every recorded version of this proposed deal uses much higher figures. Lasker’s 1925 oral history (later published as The Lasker Story) sets Kennedy’s annual salary at $28,000, of which Shoop proposed to pay half of half, or $7,000. But the contract extension that Lord & Thomas offered to Kennedy on September 15, 1904, states that the firm was paying Kennedy “$16,000 per year for [his] full time service” in 1904. This lower figure is confirmed by a feature about the recently hired Kennedy in the July 1904 issue of Judicious Advertising. We infer that Shoop proposed to pay half of half of $16,000, or $4,000.
14. Sparkes, 231.
15. Lasker, The Lasker Story, 25.
16. Ibid.
17. Alternatively, Kennedy stated this principle as “salesmanship on paper.”
18. Adelaide Hechtlinger, The Great Patent Medicine Era: or, Without Benefit of Doctor (New York: Galahad Books, 1970), 208.
19. The quote belongs to Claude C. Hopkins, another Shoop alumnus, to whom we will return shortly. From Claude C. Hopkins, My Life in Advertising (Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business Books, 1991), 76.
20. The description of Thompson is from a Lasker autographical excerpt regarding Kennedy, ghostwritten by Boyden Sparkes in 1938–1939.
21. Sparkes, 229. See note 13 regarding Kennedy’s salary. We have adjusted the figures attributed to Thompson in this quote (from $28,000 to $16,000) to reflect the numbers actually reported in Judicious Advertising, which is most likely where Thompson would have read the offending salary figures.
22. Sparkes, 229.
23. The Nineteen Hundred Washer Co. went through a series of mergers in subsequent decades. It acquired the Whirlpool brand name in 1922—a brand that became so powerful that in 1950, Nineteen Hundred renamed itself the Whirlpool Corporation.
24. Lasker, The Lasker Story, 29.
25. Sparkes, 231.
26. Sparkes, 411.
27. Lasker, The Lasker Story, 31. Emphasis added.
28. From Article III in The Book of Advertising Tests, from typescript copy dated 1912, 8.
29. Sparkes interview with Noyes. Noyes didn’t join Lord & Thomas until long after Kennedy had departed, so this was office hearsay.
30. Lasker, The Lasker Story, 34.
31. The 300 figure comes from Don Belding’s 1952 recollections upon the occasion of Lasker’s death. From Don Belding’s papers in the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University.
32. Lasker, The Lasker Story, 34.
33. From the January 1905 issue of Judicious Advertising.
34. John Gunther, Taken at the Flood: The Story of Albert D. Lasker (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), 62.
35. Lasker, The Lasker Story, 34–35.
36. There appear to be two episodes compressed into one, in many of Lasker’s retellings of this phase—as, for example, in a confused passage from Sparkes, p. 232. Apparently, the original staff of six recruited by Lasker was expanded to nine after Kennedy’s hiring. According to Don Belding’s subsequent recollections (see above), the new recruits included George Daugherty, Hugo Levin, and Lucius Crowell.
37. Ralph M. Hower, The History of an Advertising Agency: N. W. Ayer & Son at Work, 1869–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939), 97.
38. Daniel Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 139.
39. Ibid., 143.
40. Albert Lasker, “Salesmanship in Print,” Printers’ Ink, July 29, 1926, 166.
41. Sparkes, 236.
42. Sparkes, 233.
43. Sparkes, 240.
44. Sparkes, 227.
45. Sparkes, 253.
46. Sparkes, 411 and 254.
47. Sparkes, 232.
48. Sparkes, 230.
49. Sparkes, 253.
CHAPTER FIVE
1. Unless otherwise noted, the account of Lasker meeting and marrying Flora Warner is from Sparkes, 160 ff.
2. Sparkes, 75.
3. Flora Warner frequently understated her age.
4. John Gunther, Taken at the Flood: The Story of Albert D. Lasker (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), 54.
5. Albert Lasker and Boyden Sparkes, My Interest in You, unpublished manuscript, second installment, 36.
6. Lasker biographer John Gunther reports that the Warner family had some misgivings about Lasker, in part related to his drinking (Taken at the Flood, 53). Perhaps Arthur had brought home stories about Grand Rapids.
7. Lasker later said that the woman who befriended Flora in the Chicago Beach Hotel also contracted typhoid fever.
8. Chicago statistics from “Historical Information for the Chicago Metropolitan Area,” http://landcover.usgs.gov/urban/chicago/hist_ch.html; national statistics from “Achievements in Public Health, 1900–1999: Safer and Healthier Foods,” Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Volume 126, January–June, 1892, 128.
9. Gunther, Taken at the Flood, 54.
10. “I can’t go through this,” a distraught Lasker told his ghostwriter at this point in his retelling of the story. “Why should I live that over? I put that out of my mind.” Sparkes, 207.
11. Gunther, who had access to other family members, tells a different story. He says that Flora was encouraged to have a child to “improve her circulation,” and then was forbidden to have more (Taken at the Flood, 54).
12. This story, through the departure of Daniel Lord and the partnership agreement with Lasker and Erwin, is from Sparkes, 210–215.
13. One of the first policy changes that Lasker made when he gained complete control of Lord & Thomas in 1912 was to do away with these contracts, on the theory that his agency would provide better service without them. The business “grew tremendously under that policy,” Lasker asserted, and most other agencies soon adopted it.
14. This chronology may be somewhat compressed, but Lasker later said the whole episode transpired over the course of only a few days. John Gunther gives a sanitized account of this momentous episode (Taken at the Flood, 57).
15. Lasker later said that his father “never forgave [him]” for not asking him for the money. At that point, Morris’s businesses—especially his flour mills—were profitable, and he had ample cash to make the loan. But Albert wanted to prove that he could “do it without [him].” Sparkes, 217.
16. The quotations in this section are all from Sparkes, 233–238.
17. “Ambrose L. Thomas Dead,” Chicago Tribune, November 11, 1906, 4.
18. Sparkes, 240. The December 1906 issue of Judicious Advertising says that Thomas and Lasker had just gotten out of the elevator on the seventh floor when Thomas, “without a word or a cry, collapsed and sank to the floor near a pile of rugs which he intended to inspect.”
19. Albert Lasker, The Lasker Story: As He Told It (Chicago: Advertising Publications, 1963), 48.
20. Sparkes, 249.
21. All after-the-fact psychological interpretation is risky. We are indebted to Kay Redfield Jamison’s books, especially Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (New York: Free Press, 1993), for a clear delineation of the spectrum of manic-depressive disorders.
22. See Joshua Wolf Shenk, Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005) for an account of Lincoln’s affective disorder. The first breakdown is described on pages 19–22. Curiously, just before Lincoln had his breakdown, he was caring for a typhoid fever victim, Ann Rutledge, for whom he had deep feelings.
23. Jamison, Touched with Fire, 5.
24. Ibid., 6.
CHAPTER SIX
1. The Van Camp brand ultimately was acquired by ConAgra Foods in 1995. These details are from http://conagrafoods.com/consumer/brands/getBrand.do?page=van_camps.
2. Bert Van Camp letter to R. W. Bullis, January 11, 1938, Schultz collection.
3. Printers’ Ink, July 28, 1938, 97–98.
4. Ibid.
5. Reprinted in Albert Lasker, The Lasker Story: As He Told It (Chicago: Advertising Publications, 1963), 42.
6. Albert D. Lasker and Boyden Sparkes, Hammered Brass, unpublished collaboration, 54.
7. This description of the evaporated milk production process, as well as the account details that follow, are from the Van Camp client account notes. These accounts were written mainly to help Lord & Thomas representatives sell business. While generally boosterish, they provide invaluable detail about how the agency actually did its work.
8. Sparkes, 246.
9. Lord & Thomas, Van Camp client account notes.
10. Ibid.
11. Sparkes interview with W. G. Irwin, 7.
12. J. George Frederick, “Advertising Canned Goods,” Judicious Advertising, November 1905.
13. Sparkes, 107.
14. From an AdAge.com biography of Curtis (www.adage.com/century/people/people088.html, accessed April 10, 2005), and a summary of his publishing ventures at www.scripophily.net/curpubcom.html.
15. Lasker, The Lasker Story, 39.
16. Hopkins provides this detail in his memoir. He also writes that Curtis told him this story himself; see Claude C. Hopkins, My Life in Advertising (Lincolnwood IL: NTC Business Book, 1991), 85.
17. Reprinted in John Gunther, Taken at the Flood: The Story of Albert D. Lasker (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), 69.
18. Hopkins, My Life in Advertising, 8–9.
19. Many of the facts in this section about Hopkins’s life are from Rob Schorman, “Claude Hopkins, Earnest Calkins, Bissell Carpet Sweepers and the Birth of Modern Advertising,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 7, no. 2 (April 2008), www.historycooperative.org/journals/jga/7.2/schorman.html. To track down the elusive Hopkins, Schorman scoured city directories, courthouse records, and local newspaper files in southern and western Michigan and cross-referenced his discoveries with clues in early trade publications and
Hopkins’s own writings. We are grateful to Schorman for his assistance.
20. Hopkins, My Life in Advertising, 7.
21. Ibid., 35.
22. Ibid., 46.
23. Ibid., 58.
24. Ibid., 63.
25. Given the fuzziness of the dates involved, it is possible that Hopkins and Kennedy met in Racine, or even overlapped. Alternatively, Kennedy may have been hired to replace Hopkins when Hopkins left Racine in 1902.
26. Hopkins, My Life in Advertising, 76.
27. Ibid., 95.
28. Lasker remembered Stack as “the biggest man” at Lord & Thomas when Lasker arrived in Chicago—presumably excepting Ambrose Thomas and Daniel Lord.
29. Hopkins, My Life in Advertising, 84.
30. Ibid., 100. The “milk” reference may be a reference to the all-milk diet then in vogue because of Thomas A. Edison’s endorsement of it. Alternatively, it may be Hopkins’s way of signaling that he had temporarily given up alcohol.
31. Samuel Hopkins Adams, “The Great American Fraud,” Collier’s, October 7, 1905, http://www.museumofquackery.com/ephemera/oct7-01.htm, accessed October 7, 2001.
32. Ibid.
33. www.bottlebooks.com/LIQUOZONE/LIQUOZONE%20EXPOSED.htm.
34. Ibid.
35. Lasker and Sparkes, Hammered Brass, 23.
36. Lasker, The Lasker Story, 41.
37. Ibid., 41.
38. This was an interesting replay of the discovery of John E. Kennedy, who also had written several campaigns that Lasker had noticed and admired.
39. This version of the story is from the Sparkes interview, 260–261.
40. Two years later, in a rare speech (before the Sphinx Club of New York, on January 14, 1909, as reported in the January 1909 issue of Judicious Advertising), Hopkins admitted that he had “longed to be a Jack London.”
41. Hopkins, My Life in Advertising, 100–101.
42. Although this is a story from Hammered Brass, and doesn’t ring true as Lasker’s speaking voice, it certainly sounds like the way Lasker would have chosen to introduce Hopkins to the Lord & Thomas staff. By way of corroboration, the same scene is remembered by the anonymous author of “A Midwestern Ad Man Remembers,” Advertising & Selling, May 20, 1937, 42.