ABSTRACT
The first stage in the American jurisprudence affecting advertising was the so-called "laissez faire" era, a "free-booting" period epitomized by the slogan of caveat emptor. In selling an article, it made no difference how one described it, provided the purchaser had an opportunity of inspecting it. Abuses in business relations and particularly in advertising were many. With the bulk of advertising expenditures concentrated on quack cures, patent medicines, and promotion schemes of every type, the newspapers, periodicals, and the mails were filled with false and flamboyant claims. Under the legal maxim of "let the buyer beware" many unfair trade practices were taken for granted and, in fact, became the unofficial standard of doing business: "Those were the good old days, that is to say, they were good for the Jay Goulds, the Jim Fiskes and the Commodore Vanderbilts of yesteryear when the public could be damned." 1
The second stage in the development of the law of advertising was the legislative stage. Simultaneously with the emergence of an organized business of national advertising, reformers and public-spirited citizens appeared on the scene to urge upon Congress the concepts that the seller should also beware and that the public had a right to be protected against
the fraudulent and even the over-enthusiastic claims of advertising men. With the tremendous increase in mass production and distribution at the turn of the century, it was impossible for the consumer to maintain personal relationships with the producers of thousands of products. The consumer was often deprived of a chance to inspect the product and had to rely upon the label or package. As the national Better Business Bureau expressed it:
role in the growth and development of the regulations which were enacted. The periodic waves of popular indignation against unfair practices, adulteration of foods, and other misrepresentation finally brought about a small measure of special governmental protection for the consumer. State and local provisions against the more glaring instances of adulterat,ion or fraud proved to be inadequate because the proportion of interstate to intrastate commerce increased, and federal supplementation of state protection became essentia1. Interstate competition prevented any single state from setting up a standard very far out of line with the standard of other states. The struggle for a federal pure food and drug law began about 1880, but it required more than a quarter of a century to secure the enactment of such a law.
