ABSTRACT
In 1925, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover announced with pride that since the end of the Great War America’s ability to make quality goods had reached historic levels of efficiency and magnitude. America had become the most productive country in the world. Along with this boast, however, the secretary felt he needed to issue a warning. Massive production was worthwhile only if was matched by consumption. Otherwise, goods would pour off American assembly lines only to sit in warehouses. For production to match consumption business had to predict, and even promote, what the amount of consumption would be. That is to say, businesses required a clear picture of how to distribute to new markets all the things it produced. Hoover bemoaned that, for all its recent economic progress, America still lacked “the basic data of distribution.” He called for “accurate and adequate knowledge of where and what the market is, and the means it can be reached most economically and effectively,” and he delegated this task both to the U.S. Department of Commerce and to private industry in a shared, cooperative effort.1 Later, as president, Hoover went so far as to advocate government help in “stimulating consumption.”2 He suggested that business and government together could promote product distribution and thereby secure a firm financial future for all classes of Americans. Advertisers welcomed Hoover’s warning as confirmation of what they had claimed from long before the war and, moreover, claimed that their service was the best way to create these mass markets and solve the national problem of distribution.
