With a few honorable exceptions the press of the United States is at the
beck and call of the patent medicines. Not only do the newspapers modify
news possibly affecting these interests, but they sometimes become their
active agents. F. J. Cheney, proprietor of Hall's Catarrh Cure, devised
some years ago a method of making the press do his fighting against
legislation compelling makers of remedies to publish their formulæ, or
to print on the labels the dangerous drugs contained in the medicine--a
constantly recurring bugaboo of the nostrum-dealer. This scheme he
unfolded at a meeting of the Proprietary Association of America, of
which he is now president. He explained that he printed in red letters
on every advertising contract a clause providing that the contract
should become void in the event of hostile legislation, and he boasted
how he had used this as a club in a case where an Illinois legislator
had, as he put it, attempted to hold him for three hundred dollars on a
strike bill.
"I thought I had a better plan than this," said Mr. Cheney to his
associates, "so I wrote to about forty papers and merely said: 'Please
look at your contract with me and take note that if this law passes you
and I must stop doing business,' The next week every one of them had an
article and Mr. Man had to go."
So emphatically did this device recommend itself to the assemblage that
many of the large firms took up the plan, and now the "red clause" is a
familiar device in the trade. The reproduction printed on page 6 {p006}
is a fac-simile of a contract between Mr. Cheney's firm and the Emporia
_Gazette_, William Allen White's paper, which has since become one
of the newspapers to abjure the patent-medicine man and all his ways.
Emboldened by this easy coercion of the press, certain firms have since
used the newspapers as a weapon against "price-cutting," by forcing
them to refuse advertising of the stores which reduce rates on patent
medicines. Tyrannical masters, these heavy purchasers of advertising
space.
To what length daily journalism will go at the instance of the business
office was shown in the great advertising campaign of Paine's Celery
Compound, some years ago. The nostrum's agent called at the office of a
prominent Chicago newspaper and spread before its advertising manager a
full-page advertisement, with blank spaces in the center.
"We want some good, strong testimonials to fill out with," he said.
"You can get all of those you want, can't you?" asked the newspaper
manager.
"Can _you?_" returned the other. "Show me four or five strong ones from
local politicians and you get the ad."
Fake Testimonials.
That day reporters were assigned to secure testimonials with photographs
which subsequently appeared in the full-page advertisement as
promised. As for the men who permitted the use of their names for this
{006}purpose, several of them afterward admitted that they had
never tasted the "Compound," but that they were willing to sign the
testimonials for the joy of appearing in print as "prominent citizens."
Another Chicago newspaper compelled its political editor to tout for
fake indorsements of a nostrum. A man with an inside knowledge of the
patent-medicine business made some investigations into this phase of the
matter, and he declares that such procurement of testimonials became so
established as to have the force of a system, only two Chicago papers
being free from it.
[IMAGE ==>] {006}
To-day, he adds, a similar "deal" could be made with half a dozen of
that city's dailies. It is disheartening to note that in the case of
one important and high-class daily, the Pittsburg _Gazette_, a trial
rejection of all patent-medicine advertising received absolutely no
support or encouragement from the public; so the paper reverted to its
old policy.
[IMAGE ==>] {007} A WINDOW EXHIBIT IN A CHICAGO DRUG STORE.
{008} The control is as complete, though exercised by a class of
nostrums somewhat differently exploited, but essentially the same.
Only "ethical" preparations are permitted in the representative medical
press, that is, articles not advertised in the lay press. Yet this
distinction is not strictly adhered to. "Syrup of Figs," for instance,
which makes widespread pretense in the dailies to be an extract of the
fig, advertises in the medical journals for what it is, a preparation
of senna. Antikamnia, an "ethical" proprietary compound, for a long
time exploited itself to the profession by a campaign of ridiculous
extravagance, and is to-day by the extent of its reckless _use_ on the
part of ignorant laymen a public menace. Recently an article announcing
a startling new drug discovery and signed by a physician was offered to
a standard medical journal, which declined it on learning that the drug
was a proprietary preparation. The contribution was returned to the
editor with an offer of payment at advertising rates if it were printed
as editorial reading matter, only to be rejected on the new basis.
Subsequently it appeared simultaneously in more than twenty medical
publications as reading matter. There are to-day very few medical
publications which do not carry advertisements conceived in the same
spirit and making much tin same exhaustive claims as the ordinary quack
"ads" of the daily press, and still fewer that are free from promises
to "cure" diseases which are incurable by any medicine. Thus the medical
press is as strongly enmeshed by the "ethical" druggers as the lay press
is by Paine, "Dr." Kilmer, Lydia Pinkham, Dr. Hartman, "Hall" of the
"red clause" and the rest of the edifying band of life-savers, leaving
no agency to refute the megaphone exploitation of the fraud. What
opposition there is would naturally arise in the medical profession, but
this is discounted by the proprietary interests.
The Doctors Are Investigating.
"You attack us because we cure your patients," is their charge. They
assume always that the public has no grievance against them, or, rather,
they calmly ignore the public in the matter. In his address at the last
convention of the Proprietary Association, the retiring president, W.
A. Talbot of Piso's Consumption Cure, turning his guns on the medical
profession, delivered this astonishing sentiment:
"No argument favoring the publication of our formulas was ever uttered
which does not apply with equal force to your prescriptions. It is
pardonable in you to want to know these formulas, for they are good.
But you must not ask us to reveal these valuable secrets, to do what you
would not do yourselves. The public and our law-makers do not want your
secrets nor ours, _and it would be a damage to them to have them_."
The physicians seem to have awakened, somewhat tardily, indeed, to
counter-attack. The American Medical Association has organized a Council
on Pharmacy and Chemistry to investigate and pass on the "ethical"
preparations advertised to physicians, with a view to listing those
which are found to be reputable and useful. That this is regarded as
a direct assault on the proprietary interests is suggested by the
protests, eloquent to the verge of frenzy in some cases, emanating from
those organs which the manufacturers control. Already the council has
issued some painfully frank reports on products of imposingly scientific
nomenclature; and more are to follow.
What One Druggist Is Doing.
Largely for trade reasons a few druggists have been fighting the
nostrums, but without any considerable effect. Indeed, it is surprising
to see that people are so deeply impressed with the advertising claims
put forth daily as to be impervious to warnings even from experts. {009}
A cut-rate store, the Economical Drug Company of Chicago, started on a
campaign and displayed a sign in the window reading:
[IMAGE ==>] {009}