into their own hands, instead of leaving it to the chaos of market chances.
Old Ideas Still Restrict the Extent of Advertising.
We smile as we read how, seventy years ago, the superstitiously conservative feared a divine law was being transgressed if a ship, man-controlled by steam, defied the winds which had controlled men so long. To proceed regardless of and contrary to the hitherto all-restrictive conditions seemed fearful to them.
Yet today those merchants are by no means all out of business who fear they are transgressing a trade law, more sacred in their conception than any divine law, if they themselves attempt to regulate by the propulsion of advertising the fate of their product which they have placed upon the market. To try to push it beyond the capacity of its old sales seems to them an endeavor to upset a "divine law" of demand which they themselves have deified through letting it control them so long.
This does not mean to say that men did not begin to grasp the idea of advertising at a very early date. But just as men grasped the first idea of steam power early also, but held its application in abeyance long, so the development of advertising proceeded slowly.
