ABSTRACT
THE branded article would never have reached its modern predominance if manufacturers had not been able to develop and use ' the modern technique of advertising. The beginnings of modern advertisement, though from the start coupled with mass sales, were rather rudimentary. When Sir Thomas Lipton began to think " in millions " he sent a procession of fifty drays accompanied by bands and pipers through the streets of Glasgow advertising his first purchase of 20,000 chests of tea.! Another pioneer of the branded article recognised at an early date the value of advertising his brand, when he decided to employ more largely the vegetable oils obtained from the tropical regions of the world and to brand them with the inviting name of " Sunlight Soap". Perhaps the most remarkable and effective poster of modern times (as contrasted with the more pictorial taste of Pears' Soap) was that of " Why does a woman look ,older sooner than a man?" This was the second step towards" branding" ; the first having been merely to sell the soap in pieces to the retailer, thus relieving him of the trouble of having the " bars" cut by his assistants and weighed into pounds and half-pounds. From this point soap became a branded proprietary article. Was it accidental that concurrently with this novel creation of consumers' mass appreciation for an article of daily ,use the first important British trustification appeared on the scene, the first huge concern controlling plants and distribution not only in Britain, but also in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, U.S.A., Canada and New South Wales? 2 Was it accidental that con-
7 currently with the creation of one of the first branded articles of this kind, with a quasi-monopoly value backed up constantly by advertising on an unprecedented scale, the formation of a retail trade federation was proposed by its founder as early as 1891 ? Here indeed we have all the elements of the new developmentfrom the loose article to the branded one, produced with all the means of technical rationalisation by a dominant concern of a trust-like character, distributed on the background of vast advertising schemes as an article for the millions, even in an international sphere, and protected at an early date by associative retail trade organisation.
