1 II K s II l I) i> It II f E. M E I S E L : A MAGAZINE ON THEWAR-PATH 85 percent of all purchases in retail trade are made by women. At least, this is the opinion of the great department stores, advertising agents, and women’s magazines of the United States, an assertion hard to prove, but no doubt in the main, correct. The women’s magazines are particularly keen on this theory, since it has proved remarkably lucrative for them. The advertiser says to himself, logically enough-very well, if 85 percent of all goods are bought by women, then it is only necessary to advertise in the great women’s magazines of America (Ladies’ Home Journal, Women's Home Companion, Good Housekeeping, etc., etc.) and one may be sure of effectually capturing the attention of 85 percent ot fhe interested public. The wide-spread popularity of this theory is however less desirable in the eyes of such magazines as appeal mainly to the general public or even in the main to the masculine reader. When the advertising agents of such magazines appear, they are met with the invariable argument-why should one split up one’s Propaganda unnecessarily, why advertise in such media, when it is possible to reach 85 percent of the consumers at one blow by advertising in women’s papers? An inconvenient argument, hard to answer and almost impossible to controvert, if the premises be correct and invulnerable. Sometimes, however, things appear invulnerable which merely have not been attacked. And thus one of these much misunderstood family magazines with a mixed circle of readers, the "Red Book", one of the McCall publications (a magazine of most respectable Aus der Inseraten serie des Red Boot r Magazin „Hinter je° der Frau, die kauf! 4 steht der Schattet eines Mannes". F: