Part VI

2

3

4 The new publicitor alchemy consisted essentially of playing the power of advertising appropriations,—a corporation gun nuzzling trick;

5 and of precipitating vertical merger,—

6 not dissimilar to Capone’s protective association; and also kicking the bosses upstairs—high out of the way.

7 For these old fogeys were too high minded about American business principles;

8 about honorable seniority rights and that kind of mush.

9 The war had made them soft in the head.

10 They had become too fraternal.

11 However, the publicitor innately lacked the creative mind and knew it intuitively,—if not admittedly;

12 and furthermore was focusing attack essentially on the fear potential of actual or prospective clients so he next adopted a classical scheme for keeping his ammunition well stocked against privy council requirement.

13 The scheme was to watch all artists and listen to original thinkers and for every creative expression articulated by them to devise a reflection model which though equally as glamorous in surface appearance as the original was actually reversed in face and also completely lacking in substance. The reflection models they then presented with an alchemist’s wink to the client.

14 The publicitor knew by experience that, though the client never heard of the original thinker until the latter had stopped original thinking, nevertheless when the publicitor failed thus to intercept the artist’s broadcast gifts, the client always intuitively stumbled upon, stamped on, and threw down the flush, as many of the new creative compositions as were popularly good enough to threaten any out for man from under the client’s hard won position of certified man exploitation,—(albeit preferably by classically benevolent exploitation).

15 It is his glimpse into the cosmic warehouse of unlimited potential outs for man which of course precisely inspires the original thinker to articulate his anonymous creations.

16 This was a waste of good by-product material, said P.R. (short for publicitor) because the client could also recognize painlessly in the Publicitors’ reflection model all the hypnotic, though de-ovaried, features inherent in the artist’s virginal offering such as would stimulate popular exploitation like a mechanical rabbit of progress giving the tumultuous run around to the human longing for betterment; —by fake streamlining, for instance, that increases resistance.

17 Thus would the Publicitor and all his handymen;—his pseudo da Vincis;—industrial designers and prostitute writers;—always be certain

18 of hitting the Jack Pot and wearing the laurels while the clients safely enjoyed being the patrons of art. What a wow!

19 The Publicitor had also

20 the slickest of theories regarding monopoly not evident earlier when the big stick was cracking down

21 on U.S.A, domestic trusts.

22 It was evident, said P.R. if you wanted to make money instead of human progress,—that vulgar St. Vitus affliction,—that world encircling monopolies would counterbalance the profit consuming insatiable obsolescence

23 caused by irrepressively advancing standards in the home market;—

24 where you yourself spent the dough and where always dwelt the world’s greatest suckers to ape you.

25 Distance, indeed, lends enchantment in more ways than one and what a corporation did abroad would be outside the inquiry scope of the government of any one country,—as well as of minority stockholders, —and foreign wars would conveniently reduce price lowering scrap surpluses;—slap-me-down boys ring-around-the-rosy pockets full of cash.

26 ‘‘Furthermore,’’ said the Publicitors, ‘‘this is the biggest of big game hunting of all time and the chips to be kicked around will have to be large,—and ‘bluest of the blue.’

27 No, no, no! and a no, no, no!—Never make things simple when you can make them complicated.’’

28 When corporate merger had effected sufficient acromegaly,—an uneuphonious, even awkward, word,—meaning paralysis due to sheer bulk of head hands and feet,—

29 (a much worse affliction than elephantiasis) the Publicitors

30 self-endowed themselves further with unblushing omnipotence in the detection

31 and interpretation of

32 public taste, consumer appetites, and national mental capacities, without protest from their hom-swaggled clients;—without recourse or even quits-rights for the tolerant enough even if wise cracking public.

33 The only remaining authority over these Public Relationers was vested in bankers and the sole banking criteria as to the Publicitors’ self-announced fitness was profits, enormous, immediate, though at obvious expense of the future.

34 But the future looked lousy anyway to the bankers who cogently opined they had might just as well cash in their ‘‘position’’ and be off to the South Seas or equivalent escape.

35 For the professional banker,—was now a sartorially unctions sanctimonious automaton,—ethically trained to unquestioning acceptance of questionable standards involving momentum

36 of loyalty

37 of hand-picked youngsters

38 of preferable sapling classification

39 head swimmingly flattered

40 into acceptance

41 of superior gentlemen’s responsibilities.

42 This was another publicitor scheme for shifting the debt blandly to the widows and trusts,—no feelings hurt.

43 Wherefore the banker crop of the twenties

44 was banker only in name;—a hot-house, white-calla hybrid of the former wild tiger lily exuding soft negatives fertilized never

45 with an imaginative ‘‘yes.’’

46 But the hybrid super sensitive intuitively knew that it was useless

47 to try to keep up the game forever with negatives.

48 And that when the debt wheel stopped spinning the heavy steel ball had to settle on somebody’s number.

49 As the wheel slowed down the bad debts thus consolidated into one heavy pellet rolled into the U.S.A’s government number and though the government unwittingly had broken the bank of international privateering to the exclusive credit of the commonwealth it collected four I.O.U. dollars for every one in hard cash.

50 Though the government now owned the bank as time limited trustee of the people no one would risk further playing with Uncle Sam at the head because the ground rules on public domain prescribed betting only with one’s own personal cash.

51 Though the Publicitors had themselves counseled short sale by their clients, through the I.O.U. trick and also counseled default in delivery easily condoned by foreign debt bankruptcies while tutoring the public to hum to itself ‘‘Never sell America short’’;—nevertheless by perversity of fate, the profits to Public Relations, for subsequently making a regular business out of relentlessly taunting the government with responsibility for selling that bounced-back national future

52 developed so richly in the next period,—‘33-‘37,—as to threaten the survival of democracy by camouflaging the main issue

53 relative to the latter’s survival.

54 The main issue

55 was how to arrange

56 scientific launching and topsides outfitting for high seas utility

57 of the super dreadnaught industries,

58 grass bottomed, barnacled, and rusting in dry docks of fallacious security

59 on inland lake shores of attempted monopoly.

60 Though excellent dreadnaughts if knowingly handled, they were beached by the obsolete scheme which concentrates its efforts

61 on the making, interpreting, finessing and baiting of law, instead of on

62 efficient wealth making, both common and private. Wherefore every third cog

63 of the industrial interservice mechanism was stripped, crushed or jammed by the persistent refusal of business to improve, replenish or even to filter the lubrication specifications and service accounting.

64 The would-be monopoly players through mistaken confidence,—because of skill at the law game, and direct and indirect patronage control, of bench and solicitor,—had vainly hoped to exploit the dreadnaughts; —which otherwise they would not have allowed fatuous science and technology to build, certainly never if they had foreseen that only science could profitably command them.

65 But this lesson the super gangster politicos now of international genii proportion, inevitably induced by the vacuum drag of the gross inefficiencies and frictions entailed were soon to teach P. R. and his generation changed clients by the unprofitable method of progress by destruction.

66 Unfortunately more of that later for the broader and deeper trend exploration.

67 Suffice it to say for the chronicler’s nonce by way of proving the camouflage excellence at which it’s self-evident

68 P. R. is tops;

69 that sum totally in popular memory the major characteristics

70 of the round dozen of years,—1920--1932,—were boom (quantitative) then stop.

71 They had a song in the ‘20s

72 ‘‘Baby fa’ down and go boom.’’

73 However there were two healthy new twigs of this period remaining after the old leaves fell to enrich compost and loam.

74 They were

75 (1) a cleanly accomplished infinite confidence engendering

76 called-shot

77 flight by man

78 across the treacherous

79 cold North Atlantic

80 no hat and two sandwiches;

81 and

82 (2) a whisper that sung round the world as a young man hey-hoed

83 softly to millions irrespective of where

84 and great lunged Caruso died.