ABSTRACT
The voice of old-style greetings lacked subtlety; the self it created—guileless, optimistic, goodhearted, oblivious to the necessity of looking before and after, incapable of imagining an unamiable in life—was a pure projection of yearnings for innocence. The case is that the consumer of New Greetings is a man of tradition, as well as of revolt—a member, as it were, of the grand old army of passionate American mutes. The manufacture of greeting cards is a three-hundred-million-dollar-a-year business. Publishers vie for the distinction of bringing out the first book-length collection of "classic" CC's—a competition unprecedented in the annals of the greeting card. But when the appropriate concessions are entered, it remains to be added that the development of greeting-card style over the years does possess piquancy for students of American character. That the New Greeter's knowledgeability is usually displayed in the areas of domesticity and romance doesn't signify that elsewhere he is naive—or gentle-spoken.
