20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or David Copperfield

by Robert Benchley

  “Mr. Flanagan of New Zealand values this interest on the basis of an annuity using the 5% interest tables. Calculating the value on a 6% basis he would proceed as follows: Lessor receives $6,000 per annum for ten years, the present value of which is 6,000x7.36 equals $44,160; plus the present value of $12,000 per annum for 89 years commencing ten years hence which is 12,000 x 9.254 (16.614 - 7.36) equals $111,048. Lessor is also entitled to receive either possession or rent after 99 years have expired, the reversionary value of which can be taken at $12,000 x 16.667 less 16.614 or .053 equals $636. Thus $111,048 plus $44,160 equals $155,844, the value of the lessor’s interest.”

  How do you mean 16.614, Mr. Flanagan? Aren’t you forgetting depreciation?

  For those who like to browse along lazily with British royalty, we can think of no less charming way than to accompany Helen, Countess-Dowager of Radnor through her 361-page book: “From a Great-Grandmother’s Armchair.” We had almost decided not to begin it at all, until we read in the Countess-Dowager’s preface: “At the present time I am resting ‘on my oars’ (or rather, in my Armchair) at my quiet country home, which, amongst those of the third generation, goes by the name of ‘Grannie’s Peace-pool.’”

  This gave us incentive to read further.

  And what a treat! “Grannie” certainly has earned her “peace-pool” after the exciting life she has led. Every year of her long career is given here in detail and it must make fascinating reading for the Radnors if only as a record of where the Countess left her umbrella that time in Godalming and who played zither in her “Ladies’ String Band and Chorus” in 1879.

  Among other things that are cleared up in this volume is the question of what the Countess did during those first hectic weeks of July, 1901.

  “A good many engagements were crowded into the first fortnight of July,” she writes modestly, “before going back to Venice. Among other things I passed a very pleasant week-end at Wendover Lodge with Alfred and Lizzie Gatty.”

  But the book does not dwell entirely in the past. Right up to the present day we have disclosures of equal importance. In September, 1920, while visiting in Bath, the following incident occurred:

  “One Sunday I started off in the car to go and lunch with Mrs. Knatchbull. When we had gone a few miles, however, the car broke down, a ‘rubber-washer’ having perished and let the water through! We telephoned for a ‘Taxi’ which took me back to Bath, and the car was towed back. Later in the afternoon Mrs. Knatchbull sent a car for me to go over to tea, and I flew over hill and dale and reached her place in Babington in half an hour.”

  So you see, the Countess really had intended to lunch with Mrs. Knatchbull!

  We neglected to mention that the authoress is by birth a Chaplin; so she probably can get free seats whenever Mary’s boy Charlie comes to town in a picture.

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  The Woolen Mitten Situation

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  BEING A CONFIDENTIAL REPORT

  This great historical document, sometimes referred to as the Epic of Advertising, is here presented, complete and unexpurgated, as delivered to the A.N.A. in Atlantic City.

  I have some very important data for all advertising men. I might as well admit right at the start that my first job on leaving college was with the advertising department of the Curtis Publishing Co. I am probably the only ex-Curtis advertising man who has not gone into the agency business for himself. As a matter of fact, when I left Curtis (I was given plenty of time to get my hat and coat) I was advised not to stick to advertising. They said that I was too tall, or something. I forget just what the reason was they gave.

  But one of my last jobs before leaving Curtis was to go out on a commercial research trip for Mr. Charles Coolidge Parlin, the well-known Curtis commercial research sharp. Most of you have been shown some of Mr. Parlin’s reports – in strict confidence – giving you the inside dope on the distribution of your own product and proving that, by using exclusively the Curtis publications – their names escape me at the moment – you will not only reach all the public that you want to reach but will have enough people left over to give an amateur performance of “Pinafore.”

  I used to have a hand in making up these Parlin reports. My report on the gingham situation was perhaps considered my most successful, owing to the neat manner in which it was bound. It has been estimated that my gingham report retarded by ten years the entrance of the gingham manufacturers into national advertising.

  Looking through an old trunk last week I came upon a report which I made for Mr. Parlin, but which was never used. I would like to read it to you tonight. It is a report on the woolen mitten situation in the United States and was intended to lead the way for a national campaign in the Curtis publications to reach mitten consumers all over the country.

  In making this report I visited retail stores and jobbers selling mittens in 49 states, asking the following questions:

  Of the retailers I asked:

  1. Does the average woman, in buying mittens, ask for them by brand or just ask for mittens?

  2. Does she try on the mittens for size?

  3. Is there any appreciable consumer demand for mittens during the summer? If so what the hell for?

  4. Is there any appreciable consumer demand for mittens during the winter?

  5. Isn’t it true that a mitten with a nationally advertised trade-name – like “Mitto” or “Paddies” – provided the Curtis publications were used exclusively – would sweep the field?

  6. How many mitten buyers demand that the mittens be attached together with a string?

  Of the jobbers we asked the following questions:

  1. How do you like jobbing?

  2. Are you a college man?

  3. Wouldn’t you be happier doing something else?

  4. Do you ever, by any chance, sell any mittens?

  Out of 4,846 jobbing establishments visited, only eight jobbers were found in. Jobbing establishments are always on such dark streets and there never seems to be anybody in the store. I finally got so that I would sit in my hotel and make up the jobbers’ answers myself.

  Now, as a result of this investigation, the Curtis Company was able to place the following facts at the disposal of the various mitten manufacturers. Each mitten manufacturer was blindfolded and taken into a darkened room where he was made to promise that he would never tell any one the facts about his own business that he was about to be told. Then he was turned around and around until he was dizzy, and then hit over the head by the Curtis Advertising Director.

  Following is the result of the mitten investigation:

  1. In 49 states it was found that 615,000 women do not buy mittens at all. At first, these statistics would seem to be confusing. But, on being analyzed, it is found that 82 per cent, of these 615,000 women live in towns of a population of 50,000 or over, which means that they can keep their hands in their pockets and do not need mittens. Here, then, a consumer demand must be created.

  2. From 5.6 per cent, to 95 per cent, of the department store sales of men’s mittens are made to women. This just shows what we are coming to.

  3. In the New England states one woman in ten buys ready-to-wear mittens instead of piece-goods from which to make her own mittens.

  4. In the Middle West, one woman in eleven buys mitten piece-goods. This extra woman is accounted for by the fact that an aunt of mine went to live in Wisconsin last year.

  In the South, they had never heard of mittens. At one place in Alabama we were told that they had drowned the last batch they had, thinking the inquiry had been for “kittens.” This gave us an idea, and we made a supplementary report on kitten distribution. In this investigation it was found:

  A. That there is no general consumer knowledge of breeds of kittens. In other words, a kitten is a kitten and that’s all.

  B. Four out of five kittens never do anything worthwhile in the world.

  C. The market for kittens is practically negligible. In some st
ates there are no dealers at all, and hardly any jobbers.

  D. A solution of the kitten dealer-problem might lie in the introduction of dealer helps. In other words, improve the package so that the dealer can play it up. Give him a kitten he will be proud to display.

  But to return to our mittens:

  We have shown that a nationally advertised brand of mittens, if given the proper distribution and if adapted to the particular consumer demand in the different mitten localities throughout the country, ought to dominate the field.

  We now come to the problem of the proper medium for such a campaign.

  In the chart on this same page we have a pyramid representing the Curtis circulation. Eleven million people, of whom 25,000 are able to lift the paper high enough to read it. In this shaded section here is where the country club is going to be. This is all made land. . . . We come down here to a circle showing consumer demand, 49 per cent. . . . Curtis quota 48 per cent, and here is the State of Kansas which was admitted as a free state in 1856.

  To continue: in 1902, the year of the war, there were 160,000 of these sold in Michigan alone. Bring this down to present-day values, with time and a half for overtime, and you will see what I mean. Of these, 50,000 were white, 4,600 were practically white and 4,000 were the same as those in Class A – white.

  We have now pretty well lined up the channels of distribution for mittens and have seen that there is only one practical method for reaching the mitten consumer, namely, 52 pages a year in the Post, and 12 pages in color in the Journal and Country Gentleman. There will be no duplication here as the readers of the Country Gentleman go to bed so early.

  In addition to the benefit derived from all this, the mitten manufacturers will be shown all over the Curtis building in Philadelphia and allowed to peek into Mr. Lorimer’s office. And, if they don’t like this plan for marketing their product, they can lump it, because it’s all they are going to get.

  This report was the start of the big campaign which put the Frivolity Mitten Co. where it is today. And, for submitting it, I was fired.

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  The Typical New Yorker

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  One of the most persistent convictions reported by foreign commentators on the United States (a group which evidently embraces all unoccupied literates of England and the more meditative sections of the Continent) is that the real America is represented by the Middle West. Aside from the not entirely adventitious question of who is to decide just what “the real America” is, there arises a fascinating speculation for breeders and students of climatic influence as to why a man living in Muncie, Indiana, should partake of a more essential integrity in being what he is than a man living in New York City. Why is the Middle Westerner the real American, and the New Yorker the product of some complicated inbreeding which renders him a sport (in the biological sense) and a man without a country?

  Of course, at the bottom of it all is the generally accepted theory (not limited by any means to visiting scribes but a well-founded article in our national credo) that there is something about the Great Open Spaces which makes for inherent honesty and general nobility of character. Hence the firmly rooted superstition that a boy who has been raised on a farm is somehow finer and more genuine than a boy who has been raised in the city.

  I remember once a mother whose three children were being brought up in the country (and very disagreeable and dishonest children they were, too) saying, with infinite pity of the children of a city acquaintance: “Just think, those kiddies have probably never seen a cow!” Just what sanctity or earnest of nobility was supposed to attach itself to the presence of a cow in a child’s life I never could figure out, but there was an answer which might have been made that her own kiddies had never seen the Woolworth Building or the East River bridges at night. Among the major inquiries which will one day have to be made is one into the foundation for this belief that intimacy with cows, horses, and hens or the contemplation, day in and day out, of great stretches of crops exerts a purifying influence on the souls of those lucky enough to be subjected to it. Perhaps when the answer is found, it may help solve another of the pressing social problems of the day – that of Rural Delinquency.

  However, so ingrained is this faith in the efficacy of live-stock and open spaces in the elevation of the race, that even to question it is to place oneself under suspicion of being a character who will bear watching by the authorities. So it will be perhaps just as well to pass quickly on to the second, and more specific, reason for our guest-writers’ impression that the Middle West is America and that New York is just New York.

  In most cases this is easily explained by following the New York itinerary of the guest-writer (and the word “guest” is used advisedly – it has been estimated that the total personal expenditures of visiting authors during their stay in America, if pooled, might possibly buy one American author one breakfast at the Savoy in London). The New York about which they write is the New York they have seen or have been told about by their hosts, and, for even the most conscientious among them, this cannot constitute more than a quarter of even the Borough of Manhattan.

  Ford Madox Ford has even been so explicit as to call his recent book “New York Is Not America,” and yet he admits in the course of his argument that, for him, “New York is intimately and solely the few miles. . . along Fifth Avenue and Broadway from the Battery.” And, at that, Mr. Ford knows his New York much better than most foreigners who prescribe for it. The customary laboratory and field work entered into by New York diagnosticians from abroad consists of a luncheon at the Coffee House Club, visits to several of the more accessible night clubs, a peep into Greenwich Village, and a series of dinners more or less under the auspices of Otto H. Kahn. If they are really in earnest, they may be taken up into Harlem and shown the negro exhibit, or over to Long Island City and shown how Sunshine Biscuits are made. They ask questions of their dinner partners, and those answers which they cannot use in a “vignette” of New York they embody in a searching and comprehensive analysis of the American Woman. This is generally considered ample investigation on which to base a broad survey entitled “The Meaning of New York,” or, as Mr. Ford has put it, “New York Is Not America.”

  For most visitors to Manhattan, both foreign and domestic, New York is the Shrine of the Good Time. This is only natural, for outsiders come to New York for the sole purpose of having a good time, and it is for their New York hosts to provide it. The visiting Englishman, or the visiting Californian, is convinced that New York City is made up of millions of gay pixies, flitting about constantly in a sophisticated manner in search of a new thrill. “I don’t see how you stand it,” they often say to the native New Yorker who has been sitting up past his bedtime for a week in an attempt to tire his guest out. ‘It’s all right for a week or so, but give me the little old home town when it comes to living.” And, under his breath, the New Yorker endorses the transfer and wonders himself how he stands it.

  The New York pixie element is seen by visitors because the visitors go where the pixie element is to be found, having become, for the nonce, pixies themselves. If they happen to be authors in search of copy, they perhaps go slumming to those places where they have heard the Other Half lives. They don’t want to be narrow about the thing. There are the East Side push-carts, which they must see and write a chapter about under the title of “The Melting Pot.” Greenwich Village they have heard about, but that only fortifies their main thesis that New York is a gay, irresponsible nest of hedonists. Wall Street comes next, with its turmoil and tall buildings – rush-rush-rush-money-money-money! These ingredients, together with material gathered at the Coffee House Club and private dinners, and perhaps a short summary of the gang situation, all go into a word picture called “New York,” and the author sails for home, giving out an interview at the pier in which he says that the city is pleasure-mad and its women are cold and beautiful.

  Typical of the method by which the actual
ities of New York are taken by writers and translated into material for the New York of their dreams is the fantasy indulged in by Mr. Ford (in common, it must be admitted, with most of our domestic writers) of attributing the lights in the buildings along lower Manhattan to some province of fairyland.

  “By day the soaring cliffs,” writes Mr. Ford, “that rise joyously over behind the Battery are symbols not merely of hope but of attainment; after dark, and more particularly in the dusk, they are sheer fairyland. There is something particularly romantic in a Germanic sort of way about mountains illuminated from within. . . the million-wise illumination of New York is a lighter, gayer affair. . . the mind on seeing it connotes not subterranean picks and sweat but lighter more tenuous occupations – the pursuits of delicate, wayward beings.”

  Our visitors are confronted with so much gaiety in New York, especially where the lights are brightest, that they fall into the literary error of ascribing any metropolitan utilization of voltage to the pursuit of pleasure. And it is difficult to look at the lighted windows at the end of the island and not idealize them into some sort of manifestation of joy and exuberance. But if the writers who thrill so at the sight and translate it into terms of New York’s light-heartedness could, by some sardonic and unkind force, be projected along any one of those million beams of fairy light, they would find that it came directly from an office peopled by tired Middle Westerners, New Englanders, and Southerners, each watching the clock as lighting-up time comes, not to start out on a round of merrymaking but to embark on a long subway ride up town. And this ride will take them on past the haunts that the visitors and their hosts know, past the clubs and theaters and squash-courts, to an enormous city above One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street, where life is, with the exception of a certain congestion in living-quarters, exactly the same as life in Muncie, Indiana, or Quincy, Illinois. For the inhabitants of this city have come direct from Muncie and Quincy and have never become assimilated into the New York of the commentators. It is not even picturesque, as the East Side is picturesque. It is a melting pot where the ingredients refuse to melt. The people are just as much New Yorkers as those in the Forties, and they outnumber the “typical” New Yorkers to so great an extent that an intramural battle between the two elements could not possibly last for more than twenty minutes, even if the pixies had machine guns.