public opinion content themselves with restraining the worst
excesses of the advertiser, leaving many sensitive persons to
suffer. The National Society for Checking the Abuses of Public
Advertising (known as SCARA), founded in 1803 in London,
was organized for purposes which it describes as follows:--
The society aims at protecting the picturesque simplicity
of rural and river scenery, and promoting a regard for
dignity and propriety of aspect in towns---with especial
reference to the abuses of spectacular advertising.
It seeks to procure legislation whereby local representative
bodies would be enabled to exercise control, by means of
by-laws framed with a view to enabling them, at any rate,
to grant relief in cases of flagrant and acknowledged abuse.
It is believed that, when regulation is applied in cases where
local conditions are peculiarly favourable, the advantage will
be so apparent that, by force of imitation and competition,
the enforcement of a reasonable standard will gradually become
common. The degree of restraint will, of course, depend upon
the varying requirements of different places and positions.
No hard-and-fast rule is suggested; no particular class of
advertisement is proscribed; certainly no general prohibition
of posters on temporary hoardings is contemplated. Within
the metropolitan area sky signs have already been prohibited,
and it is hoped that some corresponding check will be placed
on the multiplication of the field boards which so materially
diminish the pleasure or comfort of railway journeys.
The society regards with favour the imposition of a moderate
tax or duty for imperial or local purposes on exposed
advertisements not coming within certain categories of
obviously necessary notices. The difficulty of inducing a
chancellor of the exchequer to move in a matter where revenue
is not the primary consideration is not overlooked. But it
is thought that an impost would materially reduce the volume
of exposed advertisements, and would at once extinguish
the most offensive and the most annoying class, i.e.
the quack advertisements by the road sides and the bills
stuck by unauthorized persons on trees, walls and palings.
Members are recommended to make it known that there exists
an active repugnance to the present practice of advertising
disfigurement, by giving preference, in private transactions,
to makers and dealers who do not employ objectionable
methods, and by avoiding, as far as possible, the purchase
of wares which, in their individual opinion, are offensively
puffed. Action on these lines is advised rather for its
educational than for its immediately deterrent effect;
although, in the case of many of the more expensive
commodities, makers would undoubtedly be much influenced by
the knowledge that they would lose, rather than gain, custom.
The foregoing proposals are based on the following estimate
of the conditions of the problem. It is believed that the
present licence causes discomfort or loss of enjoyment to
many, and that, in the absence of authoritative restriction,
it must grow far beyond its present limits; that beauty or
propriety of aspect in town and country forms as real a part
of the national wealth as any material product, and that to
save these from impairment is a national interest; that the
recent developments of vexatiously obtrusive advertising have
not grown out of any necessities of honourable business, but
are partly the result of a mere instinct of imitation, and
partly are a morbid phase of competition by which both the
consumers and the trade as a whole lose; that restriction
as regards the size and positions of advertising notices
would not be a hardship to those who want publicity--since
all competitors would be treated alike, each would have the
same relative prominence; that, as large sums of public money
are expended on institutions intended to develop the finer
taste, and on edifices of elaborate design, it must be held
inconsistent with established public policy to permit the
sensibilities thus imparted to be wounded, and architectural
effect to be destroyed at the discretion of a limited
class. The influence of this society is to be seen in many
of the restrictions which have been imposed upon advertisers
since its work began. About a year after its foundation
the London County Council abolished (under statutory powers
obtained from Parliament) advertisements coming within
the definition of sky-signs in the London Building Act of
1894. These specifications are as follows--``Sky sign', means
any word, letter, model, sign, device, or representation in
the nature of an advertisement, announcement, or direction
supported on or attached to any post, pole, standard,
framework, or other support, wholly or in part upon, over,
or above any building or structure, which, or any part of
which, sky sign shall be visible against the sky from any
point in any street or public way, and includes all and every
part of any such post, pole, standard, framework, or other
support. The expression ``sky sign'' shall also include any
balloon, parachute, or similar device employed wholly or in
part for the purposes of any advertisements or announcement
on, over, or above any building, structure, or erection
of any kind, or on or over any street or public way.
The act proceeds to exclude from its restrictions flagstaffs, weathercocks
and any solid signs not rising more than 3 feet above the roof.
Another by-law of the London County Council, in great measure
due to the observations made at coroners' inquests, protects the
public against the annoyances and the perils to traffic occasioned
by flashlight and searchlight advertisements. This by-law reads
as follows:--No person shall exhibit any flashlight so as to
be visible from any street and to cause danger to the traffic
therein, nor shall any owner or occupier of premises permit
or suffer any flashlight to be so exhibited on such premises.
The expression ``flashlight'' means and includes any light used
for the purpose of illuminating, lighting, or exhibiting any
word, letter, model, sign, device, or representation in the
nature of an advertisement, announcement, or direction which
alters suddenly either in intensity, colour, or direction.
No person shall exhibit any searchlight so as to be visible
from any street, and to cause danger to the traffic therein,
nor shall any owner or occupier of premises permit or
suffer any searchlight to be so exhibited on such premises.
The expression ``searchlight'' means and includes any
light exceeding 500-candle power, whether in one lamp
or lantern, or in a series of lamps or lanterns used
together and projected as one concentrated light, and
which alters either in intensity, colour, or direction.
Advertising vans were so troublesome in London as to be
prohibited in 1853; the ``sandwich-man'' has in the City of
London and many towns been ousted from the pavement to the
gutter, from the more crowded to the less crowded streets,
and as the traffic problem in the great centres of population
becomes more urgent, he will probably be altogether suppressed.
Hoardings are now so restricted by the London Building Acts
that new hoardings cannot, except under special conditions, be
erected exceeding 12 feet in height, and no existing hoardings
can be increased in height so as to exceed that limit. The
huge signs which some advertisers, both in England and the
United States, have placed in such positions as to mar the
landscape, have so far aroused public antagonism that there is
reason to hope that this form of nuisance will not increase.
In 1899 Edinburgh obtained effective powers of control over
ail sorts of advertising in public places, and this achievement
has been followed by no little agitation in favour of a
Parliamentary enactment which should once for all do away with
the defacing of the landscape in any part of the United Kingdom.
In 1907 an act was passed (Advertisements Regulation Act) of a
permissive character purely, under which a local authority is
enabled to make by-laws, subject to the confirmation of the Home
Secretary, regulating (1) the erection of hoardings, &c., exceeding
12 feet in height, and (2) the exhibition of advertisements which
might affect the ``amenities'' of a public place or landscape.
The English law with regard to posters has undergone very little
change. The Metropolitan Police Act 1839 (2 and 3 Vict.
cap. 47) first put a stop to unauthorized posting, and the
Indecent Advertisements Act of 1889 (sec. 3) penalized the public
exposure of any picture or printed or written matter of an
indecent or obscene nature. But in general practice there
is hardly any limitation to the size or character of poster
advertisements, other than good taste and public opinion.
On the other hand, public opinion is a somewhat vague entity,
and there have been cases in which a conflict has arisen as
to what public opinion really was, when its legally authorized
exponent was in a position to insist on its own arbitrary
definition. Such an instance occurred some few years ago
in the case of a large poster issued by a well-known London
music-hail. The Progressive majority on the London County
Council, led by Mr (afterwards Sir) J. M`Dougall, a well-known
``purity'' advocate, took exception to this poster, which
represented a female gymnast in ``tights'' posed in what was
doubtless intended for an alluring and attractive attitude; and,
in spite of any argument, the fact remained that the decision
as to renewing the licence of this music-hall rested solely
with the Council. In showing that it would have no hesitation
in provoking even a charge of meddling prudery, the Council
probably gave a salutary warning to people who were inclined
to sail rather too near the wind. But in Great Britain and
America, at all events (though a doubt may perhaps exist as to
some Continental countries), the advertiser and the artist are
restrained, not only by their own sense of propriety, but by
fear of offending the sense of propriety in their customers.
Posters and placards in railway stations and upon public
vehicles still embarrass the traveller who desires to find
the name of a station or the destination of a vehicle. In
respect of all these abuses it is a regrettable fact that
unpopularity cannot be expected to deter the advertiser. If a
name has once been fixed in the memory, it remains there long
after the method of its impression has been forgotten, and
the purpose of advertisements of the class under discussion
is really no more than the fixing of a trade name in the
mind. The average man or woman who goes into a shop to buy
soap is more or less affected by a vague sense of antagonism
towards the seller. There is a rudimentary feeling that even
the most ordinary transaction of purchase brings into contact
two minds actuated by diametrically opposed interests. The
purchaser, who is not asking for a soap he has used before,
has some hazy suspicion that the shopkeeper will try to
sell, not the article best worth the price, but the article
which leaves the largest margin of profit; and the purchaser
imagines that he in some measure secures himself against a
bad bargain when he exercises his authority by asking for
some specific brand or make of the commodity he seeks. If
he has seen any one soap so persistently advertised that his
memory retains its name, he will ask for it, not because he
has any reason to believe it to be better or cheaper than
others, but simply because he baffles the shopkeeper, and
