Autobiography of HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG
Volume I
1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1967, 1973, 1974, 1986
HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG 1892-1986
FROM BEGINNINGS humble and small without parallel, to the magnitude of today's enterprises and worldwide impact is the story of GROWTH unbelievable! It is the incredible story of something never done before -- never done this way -- a seemingly impossible achievement utterly unique in the world!
By all the criteria of organizational and institutional experience, it simply could never have happened.
Every phase of this globe-girdling Work has been something altogether UNIQUE -- a first -- the blazing of a new trail.
Ambassador College is astonishingly UNIQUE among institutions of higher learning.
The Plain Truth magazine is utterly UNIQUE in the publishing field.
The World Tomorrow program, viewed and heard by millions worldwide on both television and radio, is entirely UNIQUE in broadcasting.
And the Worldwide Church of God, behind these global enterprises, is altogether UNIQUE on the earth -- practicing, as it does, the revealed ways of the living Creator God, and for the first time in 18 ½ centuries, thundering His all-important Message of the way to World Peace over all continents of the earth.
This entire Work has belied all traditional experience. It has reversed accepted procedures. Yet, I hasten to add, these have not been ways of my devising!
But how did it all start? And since this is the life story of a man, what led a man who had been unusually successful in the world of mammon, with his energy and drive solely directed toward self-gain and status in the business world, to come to reverse his entire life goal and become dedicated to the things of God? Why would a man turn his back on material rewards, and devote his life to GIVING instead of getting?
How I came to receive the eye-opening shock of my life, and in due time to be literally thrust into the very last calling and profession I would ever have chosen, was an experience as UNIQUE as everything done since.
Coming to the present, why do heads-of-state -- kings, presidents, prime ministers of many governments around the world invite personal meetings with a private citizen of my status? Why do governments officially confer highest honors on such a private alien?
I repeat, this reversing of trends, ways and procedures has not been that of my devising. As I look back over the years, I can only shake my head in wonderment. I have not done these things -- no man could. I cannot take credit. Yet, paradoxically, I have been privileged to have the leading part in these activities.
This, truly, is one of the most incredible success stories of our time. There is a very significant reason! For it is the story of what the living God can do -- and has done through a very average human instrument, called and chosen by Him -- one whose eyes He opened to astonishing truth about the real cause of the troubles and evils heads of governments face, and the way to World Peace -- one He reduced to humble obedience, yielded in faith and dedicated to God's way! God promises to prosper His own Work. And HOW GREATLY He has blessed and prospered it! Like the grain of mustard seed, it GREW! -- and GREW!
Ask yourself: What company, business, enterprise or institution in this world's ways, ever experienced a steady GROWTH averaging nearly 30% every year for decades?
This activity did! Most commercial businesses and enterprises do well to hold about even over the years. But a growth averaging 30% every year, regularly and steadily, for decades? It must be a record unmatched. It meant doubling in size and scope and power every 2 2/3 years. It meant multiplying itself in size eight times in every eight years, 64 times every 16 years, 4,096 times in 32 years!
Most, if not all major corporate institutions began with sizeable capital. But this worldwide Work started giving -- (reversing objectives and procedures) with absolutely no financial capital!
These globe-girding enterprises included the founding and operation of a co-ed college in the field of the liberal arts and humanities. I'm sure anyone experienced in the administration of a private-owned college would say: "No one could start to build such a college without money, endowment, government aid, or grant from any foundation, making no appeal to the public for financial support, and build such a college, of outstanding quality and beauty with the most modern facilities, and in so doing gain an enviable financial status recognized by major banks in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, London and Geneva. IMPOSSIBLE!"
But much more! In every way, Ambassador College is unique. In magnificence of its campus -- in the tone and character of its buildings and grounds -- the physical setting in which it has produced tone and character in young men and women -- Ambassador College is certainly unique in a world where education has drifted into materialism. Ambassador has dared to recapture the TRUE VALUES; to restore the most necessary MISSING DIMENSION in knowledge; to become a cultural character-building institution, concerned with moral, spiritual and ethical values as well as with the intellect. It started without money -- with four students and eight members of faculty and administration. There have been no protest marches, no friction between students and faculty and administration, no hippie-type students. Ambassador is indeed UNIQUE!
These enterprises include the World Tomorrow television and radio broadcast, aired weekly in nearly every market throughout the English-speaking world and in numerous other areas worldwide. There is no solicitation for financial support. The programs are UNIQUE in the broadcasting field, with worldwide impact on MILLIONS!
There is The Plain Truth -- a finest quality mass-circulation magazine in full color in seven languages, with about eight million copies monthly. This, alone, would rate as "BIG BUSINESS" if it were a commercial profit-making operation. But this enterprise was built, starting without capital, without advertising revenue and without subscription price income. It is indeed UNIQUE in the publishing field.
Also there are other publications, including The Bible Correspondence Course issued monthly, with scores of thousands of students enrolled; the Good News magazine and a Youth magazine. There are scientific expeditions, in association with the Leopold III Foundation for the Exploration and Conservation of Nature. This Work, further, has been engaged in large-scale archaeological projects in joint-participation with Hebrew University of Jerusalem and with the Japanese government; with other institutions in Syria, as well as cultural and humanitarian projects in Southeast Asia, the Kingdom of Jordan and in Africa.
Yes, truly, this has been "Mission Impossible" -- ACCOMPLISHED! And still being accomplished in ever-increasing magnitude! It has been and is, as stated above, an example of what the living God can do, has done, and is doing through human instrumentalities yielded to Him and obedient to HIS WAYS!
I had been, over wide areas, conducting surveys on conditions and trends. I was greatly concerned over learning that most people are not happy -- the world is full of evils. But WHY? My surveys revealed the worsening conditions, but not the cause. Nor could it be found in science, nor in education, nor in government, nor in religion.
In the autumn of 1926, my wife said she had discovered, in the Bible, a God-ordained WAY OF LIFE -- a way contrary to accepted Christianity. It became controversial. I was challenged into the most intensive study of my life.
I had been born and reared of upstanding and stable parents of a traditional orthodox Christian denomination. I had never had any particular religious interest, and by age 18 I dropped out of Sunday school and church attendance. I assumed, as probably do most, that the denominations of traditional Christianity had received their beliefs and doctrines from the Bible. I had always said, "I simply can't understand the Bible." But now I set out to prove, by the Bible, that "all these churches can't be wrong!"
Soon I encountered the most astonishing shock of my life! I was shocked to discover not only that traditional Christianity taught contrary to the Bible -- that the Christian religion, with more adherents than any religion, did not, as I had supposed, get its teachings from the Bible, BUT that the Bible contained teachings and revelations of facts not known or taught by any religion.
It was amazing! I began to see plainly, in the Bible, that what I had been taught from childhood was primarily the very opposite of what the Bible teaches in plain language! At first I was confused. My head was swimming! My foundations seemed to be crumbling beneath me.
Simultaneously I was making a renewed in-depth study of the theory of Evolution. I was researching it and at the same time the Biblical claims of special Creation.
Was there a God, after all? What could a man believe? It was, for a while, a frustrating dilemma.
Gradually, as these months of 12- to 16-hour days of study progressed, the real truth began to emerge. It didn't come easily or quickly. It required effort, zeal, determination, patience. And above all, a willingness to confess error when proved, and to confess truth even against my own will.
I did find absolute PROOF that the Creator, God Almighty, exists and RULES the universe. I found many proofs of the inspiration and authenticity of the Bible. And I found the CAUSE of all this world's ills, as well as the solution that will be made -- if even against the resistance and opposition of humanity! I found the MISSING DIMENSION in KNOWLEDGE -- what man is, why man was put on earth -- the PURPOSE for which we were made alive. I found THE WAY that was set in living motion to CAUSE and produce PEACE, HAPPINESS, ABUNDANCE! I found what neither science, religion, nor education has revealed -- what had been overlooked, though available.
And IT ALL MADE SENSE! I found THE REVEALED ANSWERS -- rational, obvious answers -- to humanity's problems, troubles and evils. Answers not found in science, education, government nor religion! And I found that the very GOSPEL -- which means good NEWS -- brought to the world by Christ had for 18 ½ centuries been rejected or ignored by that world!
How all this came about is the story of an experience as unique as it was heartrending and difficult to go through -- for it became a battle against my own self and my human -- my very human nature. In the end, I lost that battle in an unconditional surrender. And the incredible accomplishments in which I have been privileged to have the leading part, have been the result.
Sometime ago, a leading American news magazine, reviewing the frightening state of today's world, commented to the effect that it would seem the only hope for human survival now lies in the intervention of an unseen "Strong Hand from Someplace." What has been developed in such astonishing manner in this Work is directly creditable to the direction, inspiration, and empowerment of that "Strong Hand."
It is a historic fact that many times the unseen One has prepared in advance those to be used as His instruments for getting His purpose accomplished. In my personal case, looking back in retrospect, I have felt that the advance preparation, even from childhood, was a thrilling succession of unusual and intriguing experiences.
Thousands have requested that I write the details of those experiences.
Too often, it seems to me, leaders in science, in government, or other fields of activity hastily ask only, "How soon can we?" instead of "Should we?" I did ask myself, should the story of my life be written and published? For some time, I felt it should not. I felt it was my responsibility to get on with getting the job done, not to talk or write about myself.
But when listeners, viewers and readers ask to know what's back of this Work -- how it started, what led to it, how it has been done -- I came to realize they have a right to know.
As a young man I read Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography three times -- over a period of a few years. It had a considerable impact and influence on my life. I owe much to having read it. The reading of life experiences of many other men, whether biography or autobiography, have been of great value and inspiration.
There was the autobiography of Bernard Baruch, biographies of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and many others.
Then there was the Apostle Paul, a man of God, who told his life experiences, recorded in the Bible. The first four books of the New Testament consist, primarily, of those portions of the life-story of Jesus helpful to the reader. The Old Testament is replete with biographical sketches of the life experiences of many men -- Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Joshua, Samuel, David, Elijah, many others.
I came to realize that the recording of one's life experiences can be inspiring and helpful to others -- provided there has been something of real value in those experiences. The influence exerted on me by personal association with numerous leaders among men, in business, industry, education, government, and by reading of such lives, played their part in carrying me through an eventful life, filled with interesting, exciting and unusual experiences. They have helped solve problems, meet difficulties, sorrows, sufferings. They have contributed also to successes, and the joy of participating in great accomplishments.
And now, looking back on a long life well filled with action, effort, travel, important personal meetings with the so-called great and the near-great, many world leaders, kings, presidents, prime ministers, educators, industrialists, heads of great banks, scientists -- a life replete with exciting events and unusual experiences, I feel that the recording of all this might impart some measure of inspiration and help to the reader.
For one thing, I had felt, years ago, that the story of these experiences might be helpful and of value to my two sons. Benjamin Franklin addressed his Autobiography to his son. But there never seemed to be time to write it, just for them.
But after so many radio listeners and Plain Truth subscribers requested the background facts, it seemed that I owed it to them, and I decided to write it in serial form, an installment each month, in The Plain Truth.
Consequently, the Autobiography began appearing with the September, 1957, issue.
It is my sincere hope and desire that the reader will be helped to a
richer, fuller, more abundant life by this Autobiography.
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Chapter 1
Boyhood
EVEN FROM EARLIEST memory, life always has seemed unusual, eventful, exciting.
I was born July 31, 1892, of respected and upright parents who were of solid Quaker stock. My ancestors had emigrated from England to Pennsylvania with William Penn, a hundred years before the United States became a nation. My ancestry, through a paternal great-grandmother, traces back to Edward I, King of England.
I first saw the light of day in a red brick two-apartment flat on the northwest corner of East 14th and Grand Avenue, in Des Moines, Iowa. Of course I remember absolutely nothing of the day of my birth -- even as you remember nothing of the day you were born. But my mother always remembered it, especially since I was her firstborn, as my father was a firstborn son before me.
A friend in Des Moines, some years ago, jestingly remarked that I "became famous too late" -- the flat in which I was born long since had been replaced by a business property.
The earliest events that linger in memory occurred when I was three years of age. Our family then was living on West Harrison Street in Des Moines, near 14th. We lived in a modest cottage, and my father's parents lived in a two-story house next door. I remember scampering through the rear side door of their house to sample the delicious apple pies my grandmother made.
Also there is still memory of my maternal great-grandfather Elon Hole, then between 92 and 94, often taking me up in his arms -- and the tragedy that occurred when he fell down the stairs, and died from the fall. Then there was an uncle, Jesse Hole, in my memory -- also in his nineties.
I started kindergarten at age 5. I can still hear in my mind the mournful clang of the school bell, one block south.
Swearing Off Chewing
It was at this advanced age of 5 that I swore off chewing tobacco. A ditch was being dug in front of our house. Of course ditches were still being dug with shovels, by hand in 1897. This was quite exciting for a five-year-old. I spent most of my time out in the front yard watching. Ditch diggers in those days universally chewed tobacco. At least these particular diggers did.
"What's that there?" I asked, as one of them whipped a plug of tobacco out of his hip pocket, and bit off a corner.
"This is something good," he answered. "Here, sonny, bite off a chaw."
I accepted his generosity. I can remember distinctly struggling to bite off "a chaw." That plug was really tough. But finally I got it bitten off. It didn't taste good, and seemed to have a rather sharp bite. But I chewed it, as I saw him chew his, and when I felt I had it well chewed, I swallowed it.
And very soon thereafter -- a minute or less -- I swore off chewing tobacco for LIFE!!! I say to you truthfully, I have never chewed since!
This was very shortly after the days of the old horse-drawn street cars. The new electric trolley cars had just come in -- the little dinkeys. I remember them well. The conductor on our line was Charley, and the motorman was old Bill. The most fascinating thing in the world was to park myself up at the front of the long side seat, on my knees, so I could look through the glass and watch old Bill run that car. I decided then what I was going to be when I grew up. I was going to be a street car motorman. But something in later years seems to have sidetracked that youthful ambition.
I do remember, though, that my father had a different idea of what I would be when I grew up. I was constantly pestering him with questions. I always seemed to want to know "WHY?" or "HOW?" I wanted to UNDERSTAND. At age 5 I can remember my father saying: "That youngin is always asking so many questions he's sure to be a Philadelphia lawyer, when he grows up."
That obsession for understanding was to have great influence on founding The Plain Truth magazine and Ambassador College in later years.
Those Important First Years
When I was 6 the family moved to Marshalltown, Iowa, where my father entered the flour milling business.
I remember the events of those days at age 6 much better than I do those of age 56. The mind is much more receptive, and the memory far more retentive, in the earlier years.
Believe it or not, every baby learns and retains more the very first year of life than any year thereafter. Each year we learn and retain a little less than the year before. Few, however, realize this fact. For each succeeding year, the total fund of knowledge increases. Knowledge accumulation is additive, that of each year is added to the fund of previous years. Writing up these early experiences brings this forcibly to mind. Occurrences are coming back to me in my mind now, as I write, that I have not thought of consciously for years.
Old Century Out -- New Century In
After a year or so the family moved back to Des Moines. It was while we lived there that my brother Russell was born, Jan. 26, 1900, when I was 7½.
Another milestone event that lingers vividly in memory was the turn of the century. (Actually, the true turn of the century was Jan. 1, 1901.) That particular New Year's Eve was a once-in-a-lifetime event. Then and there I formed an aversion to church "Watch-nights" on New Year's Eve.
I couldn't see any fun, at 7½ years, in having to sit quietly in church from about 8 o'clock until midnight, unable to get up and play or run around, just quietly "watching" the old century out and the new century in. We were only watching the passing of a humanly calculated point of time, anyway. I only knew that it was a droll and dismal evening for me. I went to sleep once or twice, only to be awakened.
This new-century watch-night event occurred 26 days before my brother Russell was born. When my little baby brother was a few months old we moved to Union, Iowa, probably spring of 1900, where my father went into partnership in a hardware store.
The "Pigeon Milk" Hunt
One day I wandered into the town job-printing shop. I must have been on one of my usual information-seeking forays, asking so many questions that ways and means had to be thought up for ridding the printers of the nuisance.
"Say, sonny, I wonder if you'd run an errand for us," asked the printer. "Run over to the grocery and ask them for a half pint of pigeon milk."
"What's it for?" I asked. "Why do you want it?" I always had to understand "WHY?" and "HOW?"
"To grease the presses with," explained the printer. "How'll I pay for it?" "Tell 'em to charge it," was the answer. At the grocery store the grocer explained: "Sorry, bub, we're just out of pigeon milk. They carry that now at the jewelry store."
From the jewelry store I was sent to the furniture store, then to the drug store, and after almost every store in town I went to my father's hardware store. Dad explained that I had been chasing all over town on a fool's errand. Anyway, I added to my store of knowledge the fact that pigeon milk is not to be found in stores. And I didn't think it was a more foolish errand than the one a rookie sailor was sent on when his ship was anchored at Pearl Harbor. Older sailors sent him to a dour Commandant on shore to get the key to the flag pole -- and he got thrown in the brig.
While at Union I sold the Saturday Evening Post every week. I remember the special canvas bag with the magazine name on the side very well.
Our barn in Union was badly infested with rats. I determined to do something about it. I obtained a large cage rat trap at the hardware store, and almost every morning I had a number of rats in the trap.
I remember a birthday party my mother had for me on my 9th birthday, July 31, 1901, probably because a picture taken at the party has remained in the family box of old pictures.
Back to Des Moines we moved again in 1901, in early fall, after a year and a half in Union, this time near East 13th and Walker. I was now in the 4th grade. We lived a short distance from a Seventh-Day Adventist Sanitarium, with a bakery shop near the front entrance. I remember being sent often to this bakery for special "health" bread -- probably whole wheat. The thing that most impressed me, however, was the impression on my boyish mind that these Adventists must be some kind of odd religious people, because they "kept Saturday for their Sunday." Even at that age, anything different from common custom and general social acceptance automatically seemed strange -- and if strange, then of course it seemed WRONG. Why do people assume that the rank-and-file of PEOPLE can't be wrong?
It seems most of us, unless we do stop to think a bit, are like Mrs. O'Rafferty, watching her son march with the soldiers down Broadway, just returned to New York after World War I.
"I was that proud of Dinny," she said, "for, d'ye know, they were all out-of-step but him."
Well, perhaps it was Dinny who was properly in step -- who knows? The point is, we blindly assume that the majority of PEOPLE can't be wrong. But I was to learn, in later years, that people as a whole can be wrong -- so terribly wrong that PEOPLE are now bringing the END of their wrongly built civilization crashing down on their own heads.
Only, most people are still unaware of it! When I was eleven, 1903, the automobile was in its earliest infancy -- mostly built like the horse-drawn carriages, hard solid rubber tires, steered by a stick or handle rather than a wheel. We often called them horseless carriages. My father was always jolly, and he loved a joke. It was while we were living in this house that he called out to us:
"Hurry! Come quick! Here goes a horseless carriage!" Seeing one of these early automobiles was a rare sight. We came running to the front window. A carriage was going by. It was a horseless carriage all right. It was drawn, not by horses, but a pair of mules. My father's strong bass voice boomed forth in hearty laughter.
Wrestling became a favorite sport in those days. These were the days of Frank Gotch, Farmer Burns, Zbysco, and others, when wrestling was a real sport and not a fakery show. "Clayt" Schoonover's older brothers had set up a real wrestling mat, and they taught us all the main holds.
I think I loved ice skating perhaps more than any other sport, however. I had learned to take wide, sweeping strokes in a style so that my body would sway way over, from one side to the other, using the force of gravity to help propel forward. There was a rhythm and sort of sensation to it that was thrilling.
At that time, 1902-3, many of the streets in the city were as yet unpaved. The sidewalks were wood slats nailed down on two-by-four runners, with narrow cracks between slats. I remember this, because of an incident. One day someone dropped a dime -- a ten-cent piece -- and it fell onto the sidewalk and disappeared through one of the narrow cracks. Neighbors must have spent two or three man-hour days tearing up the sidewalks hunting that lost dime. I learned then that people will expend far greater effort to prevent losing something than they will to gain something. Later I used this bit of psychology with good effect in advertising copy.
When a Boy Is Eleven
I have often said that the HAPPIEST year in any human life is that of a BOY at age eleven. At that age a boy experiences something, I believe, which a girl never knows. He has no sense of responsibility to weight him down. He has no burdens but to HAVE FUN. Of course boys that age will do foolish things, sometimes dangerous things. How any boy lives to adulthood I will never know -- unless there is a guardian angel watching over and protecting each boy.
Another condition of the time illustrates how recently this world has become really modernized. The street lights in our neighborhood were gas lights. Electricity had not yet reached that stage of modernization in 1902-3. A man came by on horseback every evening about dusk, with a lighted wick on the end of a stick, with which he reached up and lit each light. Then, about sun-up next morning he had to ride by again turning the lights off.
During these days I did a great deal of bicycle riding, developing big calf muscles on both legs. By this time my father had invented the air-circulating jacket idea around a furnace, and had gone into the furnace manufacturing business, with a small factory on East 1st or 2nd Street. I worked summer vacations in the factory.
Our transportation, 1903-4, was horse and buggy -- and my bicycle. Going to the factory in the morning, we had to use the whip on the horse occasionally to keep him trotting. But returning home in the evening, it was necessary to hold tight rein on him. He needed no urging to trot. He seemed to know his oats were waiting for him in our barn.
Early Religious Training
I think it is time, now, to explain what boyhood religious training was mine.
Both my father and mother were of solid Quaker stock. From earliest memory I was kept regularly in the Sunday school and church services of the First Friends Church in Des Moines.
From earliest boyhood I was in a boys' class in Sunday school, and we all sort of grew up together. I can't remember when I first knew those boys. I guess we were all taken there as babies together.
Anyway it was interesting, some twenty-five years ago, to learn what had become of most of them -- for I had drifted away from church about age 18, and had gotten completely out of touch. One of them had become Dean of Student Personnel at San Francisco State College, with a Ph.D. from Yale. I contacted him, and he gave me considerable and valuable assistance and counsel in founding Ambassador College in 1947.
Another, who had been perhaps my principal boyhood chum through those early years, was a retired retail furniture merchant, who had enlarged and successfully maintained the retail establishment founded by his father. Another was a successful dentist. The son of the Pastor of my boyhood days had died apparently early in life. Another had become director of a large relief agency in the Middle East. On the whole, the boys of that class had grown to become successful men.
The Awakening -- Spark of Ambition Ignited
During the years between 12 and 16, besides school, I had many Saturday and vacation jobs. I carried a paper route, was errand boy for a grocery store, special delivery boy for a dry goods store, spent one summer vacation as draftsman for a furnace company, and there were other odd jobs.
But at age 16, during summer vacation, I obtained my first job away from home. The job was waiting on tables in the dining room of a semi-resort hotel in Altoona, the next town east of Des Moines. There was an electric line -- an interurban street car -- that ran out through Altoona and on east to the little town of Colfax. This Altoona hotel served food of a standard that attracted many guests from Des Moines.
The owner was a single man of perhaps 45. He complimented my work highly. Soon he began to tell me that he could see qualities in me that were destined to carry me to large success in life. He constantly expressed great confidence in me, and what I would be able to accomplish, if I were willing to put forth the effort.
The effect it had on me reminds me of an experience my wife has related which happened when she was a little girl. She was in her father's general store. A man came in, placed his hand on her head, and said:
"You're a pretty little girl, aren't you?" "I'll thank you," spoke up her mother indignantly, "not to tell my daughters they are pretty! That's not good for them."
Promptly little Loma ran to a mirror and looked into it. She made a discovery. She said to herself approvingly: "Well I am pretty ain't I?"
I had never realized before that I possessed any abilities. Actually I had never been a leader among boys. Most of the time I had played with boys older than I who automatically took the lead. But now, for the first time, I began to believe in myself. This hotel owner aroused ambition -- created within me the DESIRE to climb the ladder of success -- to become an important SOMEBODY. This, of course, was vanity. But it also was ambition for accomplishment -- for self-improvement. And he also stimulated the WILL to put forth whatever effort it would require to achieve this success. He made me realize I would have to study, acquire knowledge and know-how, be industrious and exercise self-denial. Actually this flowered into grossly overrated SELF-confidence and conceit. But it impelled me to driving effort.
Life's Turning Point
It is impossible to estimate the importance of this sudden arousal of ambition -- this injection of an intense desire for success -- this igniting of the spark of determined energy to achieve worthy accomplishment.
This was the turning point of my life. Suddenly life became a whole new "ball-game." There had awakened within a totally new outlook on the future.
This, I believe, is the vital ingredient that has been missing in most human lives. Most continue through life as I was prior to this arousal of ambition. As I have stated, up to this point I played with boys older than I. It seemed natural for them to assume leadership. I simply "went along." The idea of looking forward to achieving success, or an accomplishment of any note never intruded itself into my mind. Nor does it, probably, in the average mind. And it was like an intrusion, for my mind was uninterruptedly occupied only with the interests, pleasures and enjoyments of the moment.
Suddenly all this was changed! Drastically changed! What a tragedy the vast majority of human minds cannot be given this HOPE -- this DESIRE -- this ambitious expectation -- this CONFIDENCE -- in their future! The general attitude of hopelessness for the future has spawned the modern mod rebellions -- the hippie movement -- the campus protests, riots and violence.
Of course, as yet, at age 16, there had formulated no definite GOAL to work toward, further than the general ambition to SUCCEED. Of what that success was to consist had to crystalize later.
Also, so far, it was pure VANITY. But it was a positive vanity, and that might be vastly preferable to a negative, purposeless humility. It was the first start toward later accomplishment.
Some few years later, I was considerably inspired by one of Orison Swett Marden's "inspirations" books, titled, "He CAN Who Thinks He Can." What a pity that there seems to be a famine of such books today.
Returning to Des Moines I continued as a student at North High School. I began to spend extra hours outside of high school at the city library, mostly in the Philosophy, Biography, and Business Administration sections. I began to study Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and Epictetus. It was at this time that I first read Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography.
My first date with a girl took place at about this time -- a date to escort a next-door neighbor girl in my class in high school to some school function. At that stage I was pretty much in awe of girls, and felt awkward in their presence. It has always been a puzzle to me that so many boys around that age are afraid of girls, ill at ease before them, and yet girls seem not to be shy or bashful in any way in the company of boys. For the next 8 years I continued to date this girl on and off, (not what today is termed "going steady," however), but never did I put my arm around her, kiss her, or as they would say today, "neck with her." (It was called "loving up" in those days.)
North High had a total enrollment of only 400 then. In high school I went out for football, and for track, and played a small amount of basketball in the gym. In football I played end or halfback. I weighed only 135 in those days, and was too light to make the team, but I suited up with the team in all of its home games, usually played in the Drake University Stadium. In track I went out for the mile run in my Sophomore year only, but never was entered in the state meet. The best time I ever made was 5 minutes flat, on the Drake track, where the annual Drake Relays, nationally famous, are still run. Today the world's best milers run the mile under 4 minutes!
I was an average student in school. But in final exams I always got grades of 95% to 98%.
But as yet there had been set no definite GOAL in life. At the tender
age of 16 the idea of fixing a definite objective -- of finding the true
PURPOSE of life -- occurs to few teenagers. Ambition had been aroused.
I was burning with DESIRE to go somewhere in life -- to become a success.
But exactly where, or precisely what constituted the "SUCCESS," had not
as yet crystallized.
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Chapter 2
Learning Important Lessons
AT AGE 18 I found a book in the public library, titled, "Choosing a Vocation." It took the reader through a searching self-analysis, and a survey of vocations, occupations and professions, to place the candidate where he best fit.
A thorough study of this self-analysis and survey indicated that I would probably be most successful in the profession of journalism and advertising. And this, to me, was one of the truly exciting, thrilling professions.
It so happened that my uncle in Des Moines, Frank Armstrong, my father's younger brother, was the most prominent advertising man in the state. He had led the movement of establishing Ad-Clubs in other cities over the state, and he was the first president of the state association.
I went to my uncle for counsel and advice. From that time, since I had chosen his field, he practically steered my life for the next eleven years, and I owe much to him. To me he seemed like a sort of second Benjamin Franklin, and on the whole I felt he had unusual insight, understanding, and sound judgment.
The place to begin in the advertising profession, he advised, was the want-ad department of a daily newspaper. This was the freshman class of the advertising school of hard knocks.
It was late December, 1910. Now the big question came: should I stay in school, and take courses in advertising and journalism in college or university?
"Well, Herbert," he counseled, "that depends on you and how much ambition and drive you have. It happens that no college or university in the country has yet offered a course in this profession that is worth a plug nickel.
"Now I know," he continued, "that nearly everybody has the delusion that an education is something you get at school -- and higher education at the university. It's like going to a hardware store or department store to purchase a lawn mower. People seem to have the idea that an education is something they have all wrapped up at the university, ready to hand it over to you when you buy it by paying the tuition. But it has always seemed to me that traipsing across the door-sill of a college classroom, or sitting in an arm-chair, is not putting an education into your mind. Education comes from study -- from books -- from lectures -- from contacts -- from travel -- from thinking about what you see and hear and read -- and from experience.
"The reason we have to maintain schools and universities is simply that most people are too lazy -- most lack the ambition and persistence, the drive -- to procure an education outside of schools and colleges. Most people must have someone do their thinking and planning for them, assign lessons and homework, and force students to study and learn by a system of rewards and punishments in the form of grades, and finally, a sheepskin with a degree.
"Now if you have the initiative, and the will to drive yourself to study, without these prods of rewards and penalties, you can acquire just as complete an education outside the classrooms as in. You can gain a much more thorough and practical knowledge of the profession you have chosen outside than in. And so far as general education is concerned, you can acquire that, if you have the gumption and the will. I can help you choose the proper textbooks to study in general educational areas, as well as in advertising and journalism, and psychology -- which, by the way, you'll have to understand and use. Actually, Herbert," he continued, "a majority of corporate heads, presidents and board chairmen of New York and Chicago Banks are primarily self-educated beyond high school education. The doctors, dentists, scientists and technologists, of course, went on through university."
At that time a small percent of high school graduates went on to matriculate in college or university. Today that condition has reversed, and as high as 90% of high school graduates enter the mad scramble to gain entrance into the institutions of higher learning. Also, in 1910, a much smaller percent went on to graduate even from high school.
I went home and thought it over thoroughly. Ambition is not only the DESIRE, but the determination and the will to achieve the desired goal. For two years ambition had burned fiercely within me. I wanted both success and to become a well-educated person. I knew I wanted these goals intensively enough to drive myself to any needed extent to succeed.
I told my uncle my decision. He assigned me to one year's experience in want ads, and advised that I get a job in the want-ad department of the Des Moines Daily Capital, then published by Lafe Young, senior United States Senator from Iowa.
Applying Laws of Success
I didn't know, as yet, what later I came to learn were the seven laws -- or seven steps toward SUCCESS -- but I was starting out with the first four of them.
Well, ALMOST! The first law is to choose the right goal. I had chosen my life's goal. I thought then I had chosen carefully, intelligently, wisely, and the RIGHT goal. I had put myself through a thorough self-analysis, and survey of professions and occupations. I had not unthinkingly stumbled onto whatever job, field, or occupation that was nearest me.
Most people, I have observed, are victims of circumstance. They have given no intelligent thought to choosing where they live, what they do, or planning for the future. They have no specific aim or goal in life. They are headed toward no definite PURPOSE. They are where they are by circumstance.
I was to learn later that the RIGHT goal was one I knew nothing, as yet, about. But I had chosen the field that was to provide the precise needed TRAINING for the RIGHT goal, when my eyes became opened to it. I was getting the precise needed training, education and experience.
The second law of success is EDUCATION -- the specific specialized education and training needed for success in the chosen goal, in addition to the general balanced education one needs to develop the whole person.
With the determination and drive to study, and by applying myself to the task, the course of study and training had been laid.
And next comes good HEALTH, to which I gave much thought and diligence. And fourth was the DRIVE to push oneself into getting these things done. My ambition was so strong -- the desire to succeed so intense -- that I was imbued with almost excessive drive. And on this first assignment I became a hustler.
The fifth requisite is resourcefulness -- the ability to think a problem or obstacle through -- to find a BETTER WAY -- to find the SOLUTION to problems -- to THINK about what one is doing WHILE he is doing it.
And my very first experience on the new job was to demonstrate that.
I did not ask The Capital if they needed any help. That was too negative -- might have resulted in being turned down. I went straight to the manager of the want-ad department, told him I was entering the advertising profession, and had decided to join his staff because it offered the best opportunity to LEARN, and to advance. I got the job. The starting salary was $6 per week.
I had no conception, then, that the advertising profession was not, after all, to be my final life profession -- or that this experience was merely the preliminary training needed for the ultimate bigger job later in life.
In those days I had developed a very excessive case of self-confidence. I was snappy, confident, self-assured -- yet sincere, and in the intent of heart, honest.
On this want-ad job I soon became known as a "hustler." On the street I hurried -- walked rapidly. I was a dynamo of energy. Off nights I studied. Books were procured on advertising, on psychology, merchandising, business management, and English. All the leading trade journals were subscribed to and diligently read -- primarily "Printers Ink," and "Advertising & Selling," the two leading trade journals of the profession.
My uncle directed the training in learning an effective style in writing. Constantly I studied the writing style of Claude Hopkins, president and chief copywriter for the Lord & Thomas Advertising agency. This man reputedly drew a salary of $50,000 a year (big money in those days) writing the advertising copy for Quaker Oats, Pepsodent, Palmolive, Goodyear tires, Blue Jay Corn Plasters, Ovaltine, and others. His rapid style, unique, yet plain, simple and easy-to-read, built multimillion dollar businesses for those firms.
Also my uncle started me reading Elbert Hubbard, with his two magazines, "The Philistine" and "The Fra" -- primarily for ideas, writing style, vocabulary. Later I was to become personally acquainted with Elbert Hubbard.
The "Goat Work"
The first day in want ads I was started out, bright and early, on a job they called "the Goat Work," tutored by a young man now ready to graduate from that job.
This job in the newspaper business might be compared to "boot camp" in the Marines. It is a most undesirable, tough, breaking-in job. I soon learned what it was.
We each armed ourselves with a copy of the previous night's paper, a want-ad blank, and a pencil. Then we started out afoot. We headed up the hill on West Fourth and Fifth -- the rooming house district.
"I'll stop in at a couple of rooming houses," said my predecessor-instructor, "just to show you how to do it; then I'll go back to the office, and you're on your own."
Stepping boldly up to the first rooming house door, he rang the bell. The landlady opened the door, instantly recognizing the folded newspaper in his side pocket and the want-ad blank in his hand.
"NO!" she snapped decisively, before he could say a word, "I don't want to run any want ads."
"But lady," my instructor put a foot in the door being slammed in his face, "you know Mrs. Jones down in the next block, don't you?"
"Never heard of her!" Of course not. Neither had the boy with me.
"Well, Mrs. Jones put her ad in the Capital, and at least a dozen men came trying to rent the room. The reason you didn't get results is that you put your ad in the wrong paper."
But by this time the madam had managed to dislodge his foot and slam the door.
This same procedure was repeated at the next house. "Well -- " said my want-ad buddy, happily, "that shows you how to do it. Hope you sell a lot of ads. So long -- see you at the office."
Finding a More Effective Way
But it didn't seem that he had demonstrated how to do it -- but rather, how NOT to do it.
I waited until he was out of sight. I hid both the newspaper and the want-ad blank in my inner pocket, covered with my overcoat. Then I walked briskly up to the next rooming-house door.
"I hope you haven't rented your room yet," I smiled as the landlady opened the door. "May I see it?"
"Why, certainly," she smiled back, opening wide the door. I trailed her to the second-floor room. No doors were going to be slammed in my face.
"Why," I smiled, "this is a delightful room, isn't it?" The landlady beamed expectantly. I whipped out the want-ad blank and began rapidly writing.
"Here!" she exclaimed suspiciously, "what are you doing with that want-ad blank?"
But she could not slam the front door in my face now -- nor did she appear big enough to attempt throwing me out bodily.
"Now look," I said calmly. "This is a lovely room. Do you know why your want ads have not rented it for you? The want-ad solicitors have told you it was because you put it in the wrong paper. You know that's bosh as well as I. The reason you didn't rent your room is that you are not a professional advertising writer!"
By this time I had the want ad written -- at least two or three times longer (and costlier) than the average.
"Listen," I continued, "imagine you are a young man reading all the room-for-rent ads, looking for a room that is going to be your home. Now think how all those other ads are written -- then listen to this, and think! -- which room would YOU go to see, and rent?"
I read the ad, which certainly made the room sound very desirable. In fact, its glowing terms probably flattered her. She just couldn't resist seeing that flowery description of her room in print in the paper.
"Why, I'd certainly want to rent that room, instead of those ordinarily described in the want ads," she replied. "That does make it sound good." She bought the ad -- as large as three ordinary ads.
And the ad did rent her room! That was the first advertisement I ever wrote that was printed. But I had already been diligently studying textbooks on advertising writing.
Since 1958 we have been large purchasers of double-page and full-page advertising space in several of the world's leading mass-circulation magazines, including, in the United States, Life, Look, TV Guide, and around the world, double pages in many editions of Reader's Digest, half pages in London Sunday Times, full pages, full color, Sunday Times magazine; Hörzu in Germany, other leading magazines in Australia, South Africa, The Philippines, and others.
The twenty years experience in the advertising and journalism profession, starting with this first want ad, was the preparation that supplied the know-how for effective use of this type media, reaching a readership in excess of 150 million worldwide. Results were more than gratifying. Two such double pages in English in Reader's Digest brought 20,000 new subscribers in India for The Plain Truth.
After an energetic morning I was back at the want-ad office about 1 p.m., the deadline for getting ads to the composing room. I had a handful of want ads.
"Much-a-Welcome "
Soon I thought of a faster, more pleasant way to sell more room-for-rent ads, in less time.
The rival papers were The Register & Leader, and The Daily News. The News didn't count as a want-ad medium, but the "R&L" as we then called it was the city's big want-ad medium. Today The Des Moines Register is recognized by many as one of the nation's ten great newspapers. In 1924 I was offered the job of advertising manager of The Register, and refused it -- but that's getting ahead of the story.
The "R & L" printed perhaps three or four times more room-for-rent ads than The Capital. Rooming-house landladies had become smart. In order to prevent newspaper solicitors annoying them on the telephone, or prospective roomers turning them down on the phone before actually seeing the rooms, they usually gave the street address only, in their ads.
I knew that the "information" office of the telephone company indexed according to street addresses, as well as by name, but the information operators were not supposed to give out names or numbers for a given street address.
So I called the information office, and first engaged the operator in a jocular conversation. After a while I persuaded her, this once, to give me the name of the rooming-house landlady at a certain street address.
"Well MUCH-A-WELCOME" I said jokingly. "Oh, you're entirely welcome," she said. "No!" I came back, "I'm not welcome -- I said you're much-a-welcome."
She was a little confused at this 18-year-old kidding. "Well, what am I supposed to say, then?" "Why, you're supposed to answer, 'you're entirely OBLIGED!'" She had a good laugh. That joke sounds about as "corny" as Iowa's tall corn, now -- but it certainly got me results with that information operator.
Next morning I called "information," and said, "This is Much-a-welcome again!" It brought a friendly laugh. I was, in my self-confident assurance, a reasonably glib talker. Somehow I managed to talk this information operator into giving me the names and telephone numbers of every room-for-rent want ad in the morning paper that we had not carried the evening before.
Always I ended by saying "Much-a-welcome," and she would laughingly reply, "Oh, you're entirely obliged." Silly, perhaps -- but it got me the names and telephone numbers I wanted. Quite a telephonic friendship was struck up with this information operator. Often I wondered how old she was -- what she looked like. I never knew. It did not seem appropriate to suggest a face-to-face meeting. But this daily morning procedure continued as long as I was on Rooming House ads.
Getting Ads by Phone
Once I had the names and telephone numbers, they were called by phone.
"Good morning. Is this Mrs. Smith?" I would start off, cheerily.
While I was only a boy of 18, I had inherited a strong bass-baritone voice from my father, even lower-pitched then than now, and sounded quite mature on the telephone. I discovered, even then, that I was possibly more effective audibly than visually. Indeed, this was the first prelude training for radio broadcasting that was to follow, beginning 24 years later.
"I wonder," I would continue the telephone conversation, "if you would describe your room to me." While getting the description, prompted by repeated questions from me, I was rapidly writing a very descriptive want ad. Then I explained that she had not described it well enough in the morning-paper ad to cause anyone to really want to walk out to see it, and told her that I was an expert ad-writer, and quickly read the ad that would tell enough about the room to cause prospective roomers to want to see it. I explained that the reason she had not been getting results was the fact her ad was written so inexpertly.
A large majority of these hastily written telephone ads were sold. The rooms were usually rented -- unless they failed to live up to the description after prospective roomers called to see them.
Soon we were carrying more room-for-rent ads than the "R&L." Whenever one of our rooming-house customers had a vacant room, they automatically called for me on the telephone, and soon rented the room again.
One of the seven laws of success, I repeat, is resourcefulness. Also an important point I have always stressed to students in Ambassador College is to THINK -- and constantly to THINK about what you are doing while you are doing it! This experience in thinking of a more effective way of selling room-for-rent want ads might offer a helpful example to some of my readers.
My First Display Ads
It was not long until I was promoted out of the room-for-rent columns and into the Real Estate section.
But first came a challenging test -- the toughest of all. The want-ad manager, a young man (older than I) named Charles Tobin, had an ambition. He hoped to increase his salary to a point that would enable him to wear a fresh-laundered shirt every day. Immediately, that became one of my ambitions, too. The assignment he gave me was to sell a special section on the want-ad page, of single-column display ads to the second-hand furniture dealers.
These stores were all owned by a type of men who did not believe in advertising, and valued every penny as if it were a million dollars. To me, this was an unpleasant task, because so many of these stores were dirty and dusty and musty, cluttered and ill-arranged -- an unpleasant atmosphere to enter.
Here, again, however, ads were sold by writing the ads, and making attractive-appearing layouts. These were the very first display ads I ever had printed. I remember staying up until midnight studying a book on advertising and selling psychology. It took the combination of all the selling psychology, attractive advertising layouts and copy, and persuasive personality I could muster to accomplish that assignment. But it was accomplished -- a total of about a third of a page or more, as nearly as I can now remember.
During this "special number" crusade, I encountered a somewhat handicapped Jewish boy of about my age, the son of one of these "used furniture" merchants. The store owner was delighted to learn that I had some influence over his backward boy. It seemed like a responsibility that had come to me, to encourage him to go back to school, to study hard, and to begin to believe that he could be a success some day, and to start working, and fighting, even against sluggish impulses of self, to make something of himself. For some months I continued occasionally to drop in at this store to give this lad another "pep talk." It seemed to be doing good. I hope the progress continued, but after about a year we lost contact.
The $2 per Week Lesson
But after "putting over" this special number, I was given a Real Estate beat, and the salary raised to $8 per week.
I was put on a regular "beat," calling daily on a certain number of Real Estate brokers to pick up their ads. Here again, I started writing ads for them. Results were increased. More and more the dealers on my route began using large ads in the Capital, using less space in the "R & L."
It was on this job that I became known as a "hustler." I walked at a pace that was almost a run. It was drive, drive, DRIVE!! all morning long -- until the 1 p.m. deadline. Then the afternoons were spent in the office preparing form solicitations, to which were attached clipped want ads from the other local papers, or even those of other cities, which were mailed out. Thus I learned to sell want ads by mail. This knowledge landed an important job, later.
It was not long until Ivan Coolidge, then want-ad manager over at the "R & L," asked me to drop over and see him. He offered me $10 a week if I'd leave The Capital and join the Register staff. Later on, Ivan established an advertising agency of his own in Des Moines, which, I believe, gained some prominence -- but he was unfortunately cut off somewhere in mid-life by premature death.
I told Ivan I wanted to consult my uncle before giving him my decision.
"So," chuckled my Uncle Frank, with the wisdom of a Ben Franklin, "the opposition is beginning to feel the pressure, eh? Want to hire you away from the Capital -- willing to pay $10 a week to stop the competition, are they? Well, now listen, Herbert, a little encouragement once in a while is very helpful. It shows you are making good. You can get some inspiration out of it to provide incentive to keep driving yourself on. But I've noticed that there has been a tendency in some branches of our family to keep shifting around all the time from one thing to another -- never staying with one thing long enough to make a success of it. There's a good deal to the old adage, after all, that a rolling stone gathers no moss. One of the great success lessons you need to learn is persistence -- to stay with a thing.
"Now suppose you quit the Capital and go over to the Register. You wouldn't learn any more about the advertising profession over there than you're learning where you are. The only advantage is the $2 per week. You'd probably blow that in, and ten years from now you wouldn't remember having had it. I think the time has come for you to pay the $2 a week to learn the important lesson of staying with a thing. Every week, when you draw your $8 at the Capital, remember you are paying the extra $2 you might be getting at the Register as the price of that lesson, and I think you'll remember it."
I had started out to spend one year in want ads at the Capital. The temptation had come to weaken and get off that schedule.
I took my uncle's advice and stayed on the schedule. Learning Rules of Success
Thus, at the early age of 18, some of the seven important rules of success were being learned.
The first success rule -- I emphasize by repeating it -- is fixing the right GOAL. Avoid fitting the "square peg in the round hole." I was yet to learn the real PURPOSE of life, and the one true supreme GOAL. Actually I had set out on a wrong goal -- that of becoming someone "important," achieving business success and status for the purpose of making money. But at least I had made the self-analysis and the survey of vocations to find where I should fit within the realm of business, the field of this goal.
At least, ambition had been kindled. And, though little realized at the time, all this experience was building the necessary foundation for the worldwide activities of later life.
The second success rule is EDUCATION -- fitting oneself for the achievement of the goal. I was getting, not mere impractical and theoretical classroom book education, but the combined education of book study at night and practical experience in the daytime. And even here, the self-education being received was precisely that required to properly prepare me for this present worldwide Work of God, without which this Work today could not have become a success.
The third rule of success is good, vigorous HEALTH. Food plays a major part in this, and I was not to learn of the importance of food and diet until I was 38 years old. But I had learned the importance of sufficient exercise, deep breathing, daily bathing and elimination, and sufficient sleep.
The fourth rule, drive, putting a constant prod on oneself, seems to have come naturally as a result of the ambition that had been generated at sixteen. There was always the sense that I had to hurry! I was learning to plunge into a task with dynamic energy.
The fifth, resourcefulness, or thinking about the problem at hand, was unconsciously being developed by experience. For example, the experience of the "goat work" job, and then in finding a way to get in room-for-rent ads faster by telephone, was an example of learning this rule by experience -- thinking through and applying initiative, to a better way of solving a problem. Most people do such a job just as they are shown, without ever applying thought or resourcefulness to the activity.
And now, the sixth rule, perseverance, never quitting when it appears to everyone else one has failed, was being learned at the very low price of $2 per weekly lesson. In 1947, and again in 1948, Ambassador College appeared hopelessly to have failed. It seemed everyone else knew we had come to the "end of our rope." It has happened many times. But that $2 per week lesson learned at 18 turned a seeming hopeless failure into a worldwide ever-expanding success.
The seventh and most important rule I was not to learn until much later.
The First Sidestep From the Goal
But now came a big mistake in judgment.
Humans do not learn well from experience, nor all at once. The lesson of the forbidden fruit has not been learned by humanity in 6000 years. My $2 a week lesson was not really learned until later.
As the scheduled year of training in daily newspaper want ads drew to a close, a flattering offer came. And this time I failed to seek out the advice of my Uncle Frank who had wisely steered my business career thus far.
On The Daily Capital staff was a book critic, Emile Stapp, who edited a Book Review department. Her desk was on the second floor adjacent to the want ad and display advertising section. She had, apparently, observed my work, noted I was energetic and produced results. She was a sister-in-law of W. O. Finkbine, one of two millionaire brothers who owned and operated the Green Bay Lumber Company, with lumberyards scattered all over Iowa; the Finkbine Lumber Company, a large lumber manufacturing company in Wiggins, Mississippi; and operating a 17,000-acre wheat ranch in Canada.
Miss Stapp lived with her sister, Mrs. W. O. Finkbine, "out on the Avenue," as we called it -- meaning the millionaire residence street of Des Moines, West Grand Avenue. I doubt very much that all the residents of that fabled street were millionaires, but at least so it seemed to those of us who were of ordinary means in Des Moines.
One day, near the end of my year at The Capital, Miss Stapp told me she had spoken to Mr. Finkbine, and I was being offered the job of Timekeeper and Paymaster at the big lumber mill in southern Mississippi. I was first to work a short period in the company's commissary store, managed by her brother, whose name was Hal Stapp.
The job sounded flattering. The prospect of travel to far-off southern Mississippi had alluring appeal. I succumbed to it, going off on a tangent from the planned advertising career.
The First Meeting With a Millionaire
Before leaving, I was to go to the office of Mr. W. O. Finkbine for a short talk of instruction. I shall never forget my visit to the headquarters' offices of this lumber firm. I met also Mr. E. C. Finkbine, President of the corporation. W. O. was Vice President.
It was my first experience meeting millionaires. It made an intensive impression. I was awed. There seemed to be something in the appearance and personalities of these men that simply radiated POWER. It was instantly apparent that they were men of higher caliber than men I had known -- men of greater ability. There was an expression of intensity which seemed to radiate an aura of positive confident power about them, and affected one who came within proximity of it. I could see that they were men who had studied, used their minds continually, dynamically, and positively.
Of course I was over-impressed, due to the plastic susceptibilities and inexperience of youth. A very few years later I began meeting so many millionaires that they began appearing quite ordinary, after all -- just HUMAN!
I was taken into the private office of W. O. Finkbine. He wanted to give me a little general advice before sending a young man so far away from home. I have never forgotten what he said.
"We are going to send you down with the manager of our Canadian interests," he said. This man's name I do not remember now. It was early January, and he was going down to Wiggins for a vacation, and to inspect the company's operations there, during the off-season in Canada. I had never been farther from Des Moines than Omaha and Sioux City. It was a THRILL to look forward to the trip, first to seeing Chicago, then the deep South.
"First, I want to give you some advice about traveling," said Mr. Finkbine. "Most people look upon it as an extravagance to ride in the Pullman cars on trains. They are wrong. As you're starting on your first long trip from home, I want to impress on you the importance of always traveling in a Pullman car, except when you do not have the money to do so.
"First of all, especially at your age, we humans are influenced by everyone we come in contact with. On the Pullmans you will come in contact with a more successful class of people. This will have more influence than you can realize, now, on your future success in life. Then, in the Pullmans it is not only cleaner, but safer.
"Now," he continued, "whenever you stop at a hotel, the same principle applies. Always stop at the leading hotel in any city. If you want to economize, get the minimum-priced room, but always go to the best hotel. You are among more successful people, which will influence your own success. The best hotels are either fireproof or more nearly so -- always safer -- worth the little difference, if any, in cost as insurance against accident or fire. You are a young man, just getting started in life. Try to throw yourself into the company of as many successful men as possible. Study them. Try to learn WHY they are successful. This will help you learn how to build a success for yourself."
I did not disdain his advice. There have been many times in my life when I did not have enough money to travel on Pullman cars, or stay in the best hotels. Under such circumstances, I have traveled as I could afford -- and I have traveled a great deal since that eventful day in early January, 1912 -- in fact a goodly portion of my life has been spent in traveling, as you will see as this autobiography progresses.
Since we moved to Pasadena, I have learned that these Finkbine brothers later retired from business, and moved to Pasadena. Very often, these days, I drive past the home where W. O. Finkbine lived in retirement, and died. One lesson in life he apparently never learned. When a man decides he already has achieved success, and retires -- quits -- he never lives long. I expect to stay in harness as long as I live.
Introduction to the South
As I look back now, after a travel-filled life, on this first real trip away from home, it seems strange that I could have been so absolutely inexperienced in travel. But I suppose one must be initiated, and learn, and this was my introduction to a life of travel.
We boarded a Pullman car in Des Moines one night -- my first experience riding in one. I think I was too excited to sleep much, wanting to see as much of the scenery as possible -- especially my first glimpse of the great Mississippi River as we crossed it between Davenport and Rock Island.
There was a cold blizzard on our arrival in Chicago next morning. The ground was covered with snow. We went over to see Michigan Avenue. I was thrilled. We went through "Peacock Alley," a very long and narrow lobby, nationally famous, in the Congress Hotel, and walked through the tunnel under the street connecting it with the Auditorium Hotel. I think we visited the Stock Yards, taking the first ride in my experience on an "L" (Elevated train).
Near mid-day we boarded the famous all-Pullman "Panama Limited" on the Illinois Central Railroad at 12th Street Station. Going into the diner for lunch and again for dinner was an exciting experience -- I had never seen the inside of a dining car before. It was a new experience to learn about tipping waiters, redcaps, porters, bellboys -- but my companion was an experienced traveler, and this initiation into the "ropes" of traveling was under good tutelage. I learned fast. Night came all too soon, and this time I slept soundly in my berth.
The next morning the train arrived in Jackson, Mississippi, where we changed for a local train on the "G. & S. I." Line.
This was the strangest experience of my life up to this time. We had left Chicago in below zero temperature and a blizzard. I had gone to sleep that night somewhere near Cairo, Illinois. And now, this morning, after a brief sleep, here it was -- SUMMER!
I had never seen southern Negroes before, and in those days, January, 1912, they were quite different from the colored people I had known up north. (Readers will understand that in those days blacks were called "Negroes" and "colored people.")
Here in Jackson, Mississippi, it seemed that there were more black people than white on the streets, and they were utterly different from any people I had seen in the north -- and, for that matter, than southern blacks today. Today the blacks of the South are comparatively well educated, on the average, but then very few had been privileged to receive much, if any, education. I was especially attracted to the dresses of the black women -- bright and loud colors -- such as a bright yellow or orange, clashing with a loud purple.
Arriving in Wiggins, I found a room in town, over a mile walk from the commissary store and the lumber mill, just outside of town, and was quickly introduced to my job in the store. Saturday night was the big night at the store. The mill employees were paid Saturday evening, and thronged the store. I was broken in immediately as "soda-fountain jerker."
One of the first men I met was a Negro I shall never forget -- whose name was Hub Evans. One of the men in the store brought him around to me.
"Hub," he said, "tell Mr. Armstrong how many children you have."
"Thutty-six, suh," replied old Hub, promptly and proudly -- "hope t' make it foty 'fo Ah die!"
I was not merely amused -- but intensely interested. "Tell me, Hub," I responded, "how many wives have you had?"
"Only three, suh!" Hub was a proud man.
The New Job
After not more than a few weeks, I was transferred over to the mill office as timekeeper and paymaster. Later I learned that only a short time before, this job had been shared by three men, and all of them men of ability -- one of whom was now the leading real estate dealer in Wiggins, another was now the company's bookkeeper, and the third the assistant manager of the company.
The company was logging timber off a big tract east of Wiggins. It had its own railroad, by which the logs were brought into the mill. About 350 Negro men were employed, beside various department managers and top-ranking skilled employees, all white.
As mentioned above, Negroes of 62 years ago had received little or no education. There was not a man of this entire force who could write his own name. All statements were signed with an "x" -- "His mark." This was a legal signature.
I learned at once that the black employees had to be paid three times a day -- morning, noon, and night. They had never been trained in the handling of money. Had they been paid only once a week, they and their families would have starved before next payday, for they were nearly always "broke" before Monday morning.
But the company paid them in cash only on Saturday night. At all other times, they were paid in trade-checks on the commissary store -- good only in trade. What a contrast from the condition of today. This was in 1912. Only some 45-48 years from slavery. The terrible years after the war had done little toward giving our black people the economic, educational and social advantages the nation owed them.
But, even though we do not yet have the Civil Rights problem fully solved, the black people certainly have come a long way! These problems require time, patience, understanding, and replacing prejudice with a love of fellowman. I am here recording only true factual history, which should help us understand today's problems.
A Fish Out of Water
I was to learn that I was a square peg in a round hole. I had fixed a life GOAL in the advertising profession, where self-analysis had shown I fit. The glamour of getting to travel to far-off southern Mississippi, combined with the flattery of being offered such a job as a result of my record during that year in want ads, had momentarily blinded me to my previously fixed purpose. Of course, travel is an important phase of education -- so this six-month sidetracking was not altogether wasted time.
I have mentioned that this job combined the work previously done by three capable men, now risen to more important jobs. But it was not the kind of work into which I fit. It was, as we say, out of my line. I was a fish out of water. A square peg in a round hole.
In order to keep up with the job, due to inadaptability and resultant slowness, it became necessary to work nights. I established a system. I worked alternately one night until ten, the next until midnight, rising at 5:30 every morning. Time had to be taken out to walk the one or two miles from my room to the mill, and also to walk over to the boarding house where I took meals. I kept awake on the job nights by smoking a pipe -- my first habitual smoking. In just six months this overwork and loss of sleep exacted its toll, and I was sent to the hospital with a very severe case of typhoid fever.
Escape From Death
But during this six months in Wiggins there were a few social events. One was a pre-World War I encounter with a German, in which I narrowly escaped being shot to death.
I took meals at a boarding house out near the mill. The daughter of the landlady was an attractive southern brunette near my age. I had a few dates with her -- but, I think, quite unlike most dating today. There was no "necking" as today's youngsters call it. Indeed I had never yet kissed or had my arms around a girl. It just wasn't done, then, on the universal scale of these postwar years. Two world wars have brought greater social and moral changes than most people realize -- and mostly bad.
That girl's name was Matti-Lee Hornsby. The few dates I had were on Sundays, and consisted of walking and of conversation.
That kind of date would seem pretty "dull" to most 19-year-olds today, I suppose. I wonder if it isn't because they have lost the art of interesting conversation. I have always found that a scintillating conversation can be far more interesting than a prefabricated daydream in a movie or before a TV set -- far more stimulating, enjoyable, and beneficial than the lust-inciting pastime called "necking."
But more of the dating experiences later. I had not had a great many dates up to this time. One thing, however, sticks to my memory -- whenever Matti-Lee became a little provoked with me, her dark eyes flashed and she snapped out the epithet: "YANKEE!" It was of course, half in fun -- but I found that epithet was supposed to be insulting. I had never heard it before.
One acquaintance I made there was a young German. He must have been about 21 at the time. His father was a lumberman in Germany, and had sent the son to America to study American lumber methods. He was spending some few weeks at the Finkbine mill in Wiggins.
This German, whose name I do not remember, bragged at length on the superiority of German products, methods and systems. One day, in his room at the boarding house, he was demonstrating to me the superiority of his German-made revolver over a Colt or other American make.
In play, he pointed the revolver straight at me. "Don't point that at me!" I said, dodging. "Oh, it isn't loaded," he laughed. "Look, if you're afraid, I'll point it away from you and show you."
He pointed the revolver a couple of feet to one side of me, and pulled the trigger.
It was a very superior weapon, all right. It drilled a hole completely through the wall of his room, and let a little round ray of sunlight shine through from outdoors!
My German friend turned white, and trembled in confusion. "Why," he stammered in frightened embarrassment, "I was sure it wasn't loaded."
It is the gun "that isn't loaded" that has killed many people. And before I leave this little digression, may I respectfully suggest to all who read this that you teach -- yes, really TEACH your children never, under any circumstances, to point even a play gun at any person. The life you save may be your own!
In the Hospital
My stay in southern Mississippi was brought to a sudden and rude halt. By summer, weakened by overwork and loss of sleep in the desperate struggle to make good on a job I didn't belong in, a tiny typhoid germ, according to medical theories, found fertile soil. I became delirious. The mill officials, on doctor's orders, had me taken to the Southern Mississippi Infirmary at Hattiesburg. I entered there with the most severe case in the hospital's history. I was unconscious for two or three days.
But just to be able to stay in bed, after that six months' grind with all too little sleep seemed so good that somehow I "snapped out of it" quicker, apparently, than any previous typhoid patient at that hospital, and recovery was rapid.
One thing I want to mention here, for the benefit of a very large portion of my readers. It isn't often considered "nice" to talk about it, but constipation is called by some medical men "the mother of all diseases." A large percentage of people are plagued with it. For some two years I had been. Cathartics give only temporary relief. There isn't a cure in a carload.
In the hospital I was forced to fast. Daily they gave me castor oil. UGH! I have never taken it since, but I can taste the nasty stuff yet! They fed me only lemon juice, and occasionally buttermilk.
When I left the hospital the constipation was cured. Fasting, on raw fresh fruits (no bananas), will cure it, if you will keep it up long enough. I did not under valuate the blessing of being rid of this thing. I appreciated it enough to be SURE that I kept regular. I have never permitted that condition to return. That fact alone is responsible for a large part of whatever dynamic energy I have been able to give to our great Work -- and for long life. One of the 7 basic rules of SUCCESS is GOOD HEALTH! I hope this is enough said. You can't overestimate its importance.
In the hospital I was the favorite patient of practically all the nurses. Most of them were just a few years older than I -- but not so much that we did not enjoy a great deal of conversation while I was convalescing. My room became a sort of social rendezvous for the nurses. Often there would be five or six of them in there at a time. I really enjoyed this rest in the hospital -- the release from that frightening responsibility of trying so desperately to keep up with a job in which I did not belong, getting ample rest and sleep at last.
But I have always believed in the admonition: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy MIGHT," even though I didn't know it was in the Bible (Eccl. 9:10) until much later. I gave that job all I had. Now, in later life, there is some satisfaction in looking back on that.
The doctors told me I would have to return back north to protect my health. Thus, by forces outside my control, I was jerked out of this misfit detour job, and I thought I had learned, now, the lesson for which I sacrificed $2 a week the year before.
Arriving back in Des Moines, Iowa, mid-summer, 1912, I went this time
to seek my uncle's advice. Now began my real advertising career. I think
the story picks up in interest at this point.
Back to Table of Contents
Chapter 3
Learning to Write Effective Advertisements
THIS detour was my first experience in real travel. But on this job I was a total misfit.
I had now learned my lesson -- least temporarily. Now I was going to get back on the main track -- the advertising field.
Stopping off in Chicago between trains en route to Des Moines, I went up to the Mahan Advertising Agency headquarters, and succeeded in getting a job. But since it was still more than two weeks before I could become active again, I went on out to Des Moines to spend the time at home.
Hiring Myself a Job
Naturally I went almost immediately to my uncle Frank's office.
"Well, Herbert," he said approvingly, "I'm glad you've got that bookkeeping fling out of your system, and are ready to get back in the advertising field where you belong."
I told him about the job with the Mahan Agency in Chicago. "No, Herbert," he said, seriously, "you're not ready for agency experience yet. Mahan is one of the major agencies, and it would be years before you'd even work up to being noticed by any of the top men, who are the only ones over there that could teach you anything. They wouldn't know you existed.
"Besides," he continued, "although faraway pastures may look greener, often the best opportunity is right where you are. Now it so happens that on a national magazine, right here in Des Moines, are two men that I regard as the two best advertising and merchandising men in the country. These fellows really know advertising psychology. They know people, and how to deal with them. They know merchandising and business principles. They specialize in finding which business methods, selling methods, and advertising principles are successful, and which are not.
"They are two men over at The Merchants Trade Journal. It's a trade journal in the retail field -- read by owners and managers of retail stores -- but they circulate among every line of merchandising, and it's the biggest trade journal in the country, with a very large national circulation.
"One of these men is R. H. Miles, who is advertising manager, and the other is Arthur I. Boreman, manager of their Service Department, which is a sort of trade-paper advertising agency."
"Why," I interrupted, "I know Mr. Miles. He's a neighbor of ours."
"Well," continued my uncle, "go hire yourself a job. Don't let them turn you down. Over there you'll be in daily personal contact with these two men. You'll learn more there than anyplace I know. Don't forget, you're still going to school -- you still have a lot to learn."
I walked briskly over to The Merchants Trade Journal offices, gained admittance to the advertising manager's office.
"Why, hello, Herbert," greeted Mr. Miles, surprised to see me in his office.
"Mr. Miles, I have decided that I'm going to join your organization, here in your advertising department. The doctors have told me I can't start work for two more weeks. I will report for work the first Monday in next month!" This came out real snappy -- very positively.
"You -- you -- WHAT!" It caught Mr. Miles' breath. I repeated my affirmative statement. "Well!! -- so you've just hired yourself a job -- is that it?" "Exactly!" came the positive reply. "Well, now -- just back up a minute!" Mr. Miles began to recover. "You can't come barging in here and hire yourself a job, just because you're a neighbor of mine. We haven't any openings!"
"Oh, that's all right! You've got two whole weeks to create an opening," I came back promptly, in full self-assurance.
"Now, look!" Mr. Miles was beginning to get a little impatient at this youthful aggressiveness. "It seems you don't understand plain English. I said, WE DON'T NEED ANY HELP!"
Now it was my turn to become a little nettled. "Mr. Miles," I came back, more positively than ever, "I'm surprised at you. Isn't this a NATIONAL magazine? Isn't this an institution of national importance?"
"Yes, of course," he responded. "Well then, do you mean to tell me that an organization of national scope and influence is not interested in finding a way to create an opening for an ambitious, energetic young man like me? Do you realize that you probably don't get a chance once in several years to add to your staff a man of my caliber, my talents, and ambition and will to work! Why, you can't afford to pass up this opportunity. I'll grow with your organization. Of course you can create an opening! As I said, I'll report for work the first Monday in next month."
"Well, I haven't the slightest idea what we'd have you do," Mr. Miles was beginning to weaken a little.
I became more confident than ever. "Oh, poppycock, Mr. Miles," I snapped, disgusted. "Hand me a copy of that lousy sheet of yours!" This was commonly used advertising terminology.
On the back cover I saw two or three small ads, want-ad style, advertising stores for sale.
"Do you call these want ads?" I inquired. "Oh, we don't have a want-ad section. We only solicit display ads. Occasionally a merchant decides to quit and sell out, and sends in a small want ad to sell his business."
"Well, I happen to know that hundreds of small merchants are going broke all the time, over the whole country. Now, supposing you had a full page, or even two pages of these store-for-sale ads every month. The rate for these small ads is a lot higher than the display rate by the page. One page of want ads would bring in as much advertising revenue as three or four pages of display ads, wouldn't it?"
"Well, yes," admitted Miles, rather reluctantly, "but we have no way of selling ads of that sort."
I was real cocky and confident by now. "I can put one or two full pages of want ads of businesses for sale in every issue of The Journal. One thing I've learned is how to bring in want ads by mail. So, if I have to create my own opening, I'll report for work the first Monday morning in next month."
"Well," came a last objection, "we can't pay you a very high salary. We couldn't pay you over $10 a week."
"Who said anything about salary?" I rejoined. "I still live at home with the folks. I'm not coming up here for the salary I make now, but for what I can learn, and the salary I will make, later. I'm hired at $10 per week," rising and extending my hand. "All I ask is that you agree to raise my salary as fast as I earn it. See you in two weeks."
My First Display Ad
All this was along about July or August, 1912. I do not remember now, after more than 60 years, whether I was actually put to work on building a page or two of want ads by direct mail solicitation; but it seems, in the dim distance of memory, that I did bring in a page or more of want ads the first two or three issues.
In any event, I was not long on want-ad work. I was assigned to the Service Department, directly under A. I. Boreman. For some little time I was given routine office work, with a certain amount of correspondence to answer. For this work, I was given a stenographer and a dictaphone. During this period it was my job to break in a number of different stenographers. As soon as a new girl became experienced enough to be efficient, she was taken away from me, and a new green girl fresh out of business college assigned to me.
It was not long until I was given opportunity to start writing and designing display ads. As mentioned above, this Service Department was a sort of trade-journal advertising agency. We handled the trade-paper division of the advertising budget of manufacturers who sold through retailers. As a rule the larger advertising agencies were glad to relinquish the trade-paper portion of any client's advertising. They were primarily interested in consumer media.
I shall never forget the first ad Mr. Boreman assigned to me to write and lay out. I have mentioned before that I had been studying every book on advertising writing I could acquire. I was studying books on psychology, and on advertising psychology. I had diligently read the trade journals in the advertising field -- Printers Ink and Advertising & Selling. I had studied diagrams of design and layout of ads. But as yet I had received almost no experience in actually writing the copy and designing the layout of an ad.
I do not remember at all the nature of the commodity or service or the name of the manufacturer whose ad I was to write.
But I shall never forget Mr. Boreman's left-handed compliment when I laid the "dummy" and typed copy before him.
"Mm-hmm -- well, Herbert, that's a pretty good ad," he drawled, slowly, examining it critically.
"Now, that headline, of course, will have to be changed," he continued. "You've used too many words. There's nothing in that headline that will catch the eye. The average reader will be scanning past it to something else. You have only the fleeting fraction of a second to stop the eye. There's nothing in your headline to arouse instant interest and create immediate suspense -- nothing to make the reader say, 'Well, I never thought of that! I want to read that!' or, to say 'Now I've always wondered about that!' -- so he'll want to read on.
"The headline is not displayed correctly on your layout. Not enough white space around the headline to create contrast between a bold, black, short headline and white space around it. Never be afraid of wasting white space around your headlines. Never waste white space around the text matter.
"Now next," continued Mr. Boreman, "your major subhead above the text matter is all wrong. You must grab attention -- stop the eye -- in the main headline -- but you must go on to arouse interest and create suspense in the subhead, if you are to win a reading for your copy. This subhead is in the wrong place in your layout, the wrong size and kind of type.
"Now, coming to the main text matter -- that opening sentence won't do, Herbert. It should have been indicated on the layout to be in larger type than the balance of the text matter, and the first word should have started out with a large initial letter. Unless this opening sentence follows up the headings by cementing interest, and arousing more curiosity or suspense, no one is going to read past it. No, this first sentence will have to be rewritten, just like the headlines.
"Now, these smaller subheads through the text matter don't add anything. They must create interest, make the reader want to read what's under them. And they, too, are in the wrong kind of type. And this text matter will all have to be rewritten. It doesn't hold the interest, if you had created interest in the first place. It doesn't arouse desire for this thing you're selling. It doesn't make the reader -- if he ever reads this ad -- want to buy this product.
"And then, finally, there's no emotional ending to arouse the reader to action -- IF you had first stopped his eye and gained his attention, aroused interest, created suspense, made him actually read through your ad, made him WANT what you advertise. The signature isn't right, either -- and the border around the ad will have to be eliminated.
"But, outside of that, Herbert," he said encouragingly, "that's a pretty good ad!"
No, I shall never forget that experience! That kind of encouragement was pretty hard to take -- but I learned more about how to write an ad in that one analysis of this first ad, than many copywriters and layout men in big agencies have ever learned, or ever will learn! This one experience was well WORTH all the time I spent on the staff of the Merchants Trade Journal -- and I was to be with them three years.
I went to work with a will, writing that ad all over. Practice makes perfect. It was probably two or three years later before I was able to write ads that actually STOPPED roving eyes, grabbed instantaneous interest, created suspense, held the reader's interest throughout, convinced the reader, and then moved him to action. It took time. But I was on the way.
Not long after returning from the South, and starting with The Merchants Trade Journal, my father went out to Idaho, where he bought a small ranch near Weiser. The household goods were packed and stored, ready to be moved after he became located.
My mother, two younger brothers and sister, went to the home of one of my mother's sisters, on a farm some 25 or 30 miles south of Des Moines, for a visit. After my father was located in Idaho, they followed and joined him there.
Learning Effective Ad-Writing
For something like a year and a half I was kept in the Service Department of The Journal. There I received a most intensive and practical basic training in the true psychological principles of writing and designing advertisements.
It has always seemed to me that the advertising profession generally has "missed the boat." It's the same in many professions.
The ad-men have progressed into a system of intricate display designs, complicated art work, and overly rhetorical text matter which, after all, doesn't really say much or do much to the readers -- if any.
Take a look through the advertising pages of a magazine or newspaper today. It's a confused, jumbled hodgepodge of fancy art work, and small bits of text, artistically blocked off -- usually in such a manner that no one reads it! Nothing stands out to catch, and stop, the fleeting eye trying to get to the next news or article headline. Nothing snatches attention away from all surrounding matter. There's nothing to arouse instantaneous interest at the very point where the eye is drawn for that fraction of a second glance -- nothing to hold that interest until it creates suspense sufficient to induce a reading of the text matter.
The ads I was trained to write, during those formative years between ages 20 and 23, always got results. Often they were more plain and simple in appearance than the more fancy, artistic, highly illustrated ads around them. But they stopped roving eyes -- drew attention from surrounding matter -- aroused and held interest -- convinced readers, and moved them to act! (This early training was destined to serve a great purpose!)
Today all that early training and the years of subsequent experience are being put into the production of full-page ads which are selling, not a commercial product or service for profit, but God's truth, without price or profit.
Overhauling and Simplifying a Vocabulary
For some two years, prior to joining the Merchants Trade Journal staff, I had been striving diligently to acquire a large vocabulary. Ever since I had read Elbert Hubbard's boast of possessing the largest vocabulary of any man since Shakespeare, it had been a challenge! I was determined to acquire a greater! To be able to pour out a torrent of big words incomprehensible to any but the highly educated had appealed to intellectual vanity.
But -- at age 20 -- Mr. Boreman changed all that. "When you write advertising," he explained, "the purpose is not to impress the readers with your superior vocabulary. Your purpose is to sell goods, services, or ideas! The purpose of words is to convey thoughts, facts, ideas -- a message! When 98% of the people do not understand your words, they do not receive your message. They only become confused and turn to something interesting. In advertising we must reach the 98% -- not the 2%.
"Use only plain, simple words. Use words that readers of no more than a third or fourth grade education can UNDERSTAND. Try to achieve good literary quality with a large vocabulary of common, simple words, and by the manner in which you weave those words into the sentence structure."
Immediately my vocabulary underwent an over-hauling. Deliberately I began dropping out of my speaking and writing vocabulary all the big words not in common usage. Every person has three vocabularies: smallest of all, his speaking vocabulary, consisting of the fund of words with which he is able to speak readily; next larger, his writing vocabulary; and largest, his reading or listening vocabulary. Everyone can understand many words which he may read, or hear spoken by others, which he could not readily use himself in conversation.
My effort, then, became that of developing ability to use the largest variety of words readily comprehensible by most people when heard or read.
But effective writing is far more than memorizing a store of words. It is the manner in which those words are put together in sentence structure that determines effectiveness. So I began to study a STYLE in writing. Immediately I set out to develop a distinct and effective style. It had to be fast-moving, vigorous, yet simple, interesting, making the message plain and UNDERSTANDABLE.
All this advertising instruction was the most valuable possible training for the real mission in life to which I was later to be called -- our worldwide enterprises of today. It was a training such as one could never receive in any university. It was the most practical training.
Some speakers and writers seem to think they impress their audiences or readers by their ability to use big words beyond the comprehension of the audience. Others succumb to the temptation to become too "scholarly," speaking over the minds of their hearers -- but never plainly into their minds. The same rules that attract attention, arouse interest, create suspense, win conviction and stir emotions to action in advertising accomplish the same results in public speaking.
Another most important principle -- I was taught to avoid the academic "outline" form of presentation. This is the manner in which nearly all students are taught in colleges to organize their writing or speaking. This is the one, two, three, a), b), c) form of outline. It is orderly and precise, but dull, dry, uninteresting to the readers.
But in writing advertising, I learned always to tell a story -- to make it interesting -- and to tell it in story form. That is, first, put a question in the minds of readers they really want answered -- or make a statement that is so unusual it either raises a question in the readers' minds, or challenges them to demand an explanation and want to read on to get it. It must arouse instant interest. It must create suspense! Like a mystery play, it must not tell the reader the answer at the beginning. It must develop, rapidly, lucidly, increasing the interest, toward the final solution or answer. It must HOLD the interest until the story is told.
The advertising headline should, when possible, make people say either: "I've always wondered about that!" or, "I never thought of that -- say, that's interesting -- I want to know the answer!!"
I learned in those early days to put a story flow into the text of an advertisement, holding the interest of readers to learn the answer. An ad of this nature may contain hundreds, or even thousands of words -- and people will be glued to it until they have read it all.
I remember an incident that happened many years later. This was in 1925, when I had established an advertising service of my own in Portland, Oregon. One of my clients was a laundry in Vancouver, Washington. I had a number of other clients in Vancouver -- a retail clothing store, a jewelry store, a large drug store, and others. One of the banks had installed a new Safety Deposit Department, with new vaults and safety deposit boxes. The president of the bank called me in.
"Mr. Armstrong," he began, "we have noticed the attractive and compelling ads you have prepared for clients here in Vancouver, and we would like to retain your services to prepare a short campaign to announce the opening of our new department.
"Now," he continued, apologetically, "we think your ads are fine -- they certainly stand out -- they're interesting -- but we have just one criticism. We think those ads you write for the laundry are too long -- too many words. People won't read so many words in an ad."
"Well now, Mr. Jones," I replied, "in the first place, your advertising requires entirely different advertising treatment, because you have a totally different advertising problem. The laundry is up against adverse public opinion, and suspicion in regard to supposed harmful laundry methods. Their problem requires what we call EDUCATIONAL ADVERTISING. It must educate women to the true facts -- it must change public opinion. This requires more words -- totally different advertising treatment.
"But, as to whether people ever read so many words, I wonder if you remember an ad of a month ago, captioned, 'Is MOTHER Worth Saving?' "
"Why, yes!" he replied quickly. "Yes, I do remember that ad, very well. That was unusually interesting."
"How much of it did you read?" "Oh, I read all of it," he responded. "It aroused my curiosity, and I couldn't stop till I found the answer."
"Well, Mr. Jones, how many other ads do you remember reading in that same edition of the newspaper?"
"Why -- why -- " he stammered, "I -- I don't remember reading any others."
"Exactly!" I had won my point. "That ad was the longest, wordiest ad in that newspaper -- and yet it's the only one you remember reading, and you read it clear through! Moreover, it is the longest ad I ever wrote!"
"Yes," he protested, "but that ad was interesting!" "That's just the point," I concluded. "If what you write is sufficiently interesting -- if it has created suspense, and holds the interest or even increases it as the reader is led along through it -- people will read it all the way through, no matter how long.
"It is not a matter of HOW LONG an ad is, or how many words, it is altogether a matter of whether you have been able to catch readers' attention, arouse their interest, and HOLD that interest. How many words are there in a complete novel? Yet the book stores sell such thick books by the millions -- and people read them clear through!"
That is the principle I was taught under Mr. Boreman and Mr. Miles, between ages 20 and 23.
Applying All These Principles Now
The principles that make for effective advertising copy, which I began learning during those three years, apply also in broadcasting, and in magazine writing, as well as in straight advertising copy.
Let me add here that, in advertising, there are different types of merchandising problems. The ads I wrote for the laundry required educational advertising. They had to re-educate the public in regard to laundry methods. They had to remove prejudices, create confidence, change habits.
But perhaps most advertising is in the field called convenience goods. This includes such products as tooth-paste, shaving cream or soaps, cigarettes, where popularizing a brand name is the objective. This depends more on repetition than on lengthy educational copy. Such ads have few words.
I have been amused by the problems confronting the writers of cigarette ads. With the restrictions imposed by laws, there is not much an ad-writer can say about a cigarette, anyway. I have marvelled at the hundreds of millions of dollars spent saying NOTHING that means anything about cigarettes. The "kick the habit" commercials (1971) by the cancer society, however, seem really to have had a message.
I was to learn, later in life, that far more people will listen to a solid half-hour all-speech radio program applying these principles, than will listen to a one-minute DRY talk or commercial that arouses no interest. For many years, the World Tomorrow program has enjoyed highest ratings of listener-interest on most stations we use -- and second highest on most others. That is in comparison to all programs in most markets around the world where we are heard. The various editors of the Plain Truth magazine and our other publications have received training in these same principles in Ambassador College. And that is one reason why The Plain Truth is so avidly read, and its circulation continues growing so phenomenally, while other leading mass-circulation magazines are in deep financial difficulties, and several have gone out of publication. Plain Truth and Good News articles and the Correspondence Course lessons are INTERESTING -- they SAY SOMETHING, and say it in a manner extremely easy to read!
But, to return to the story. Mr. Miles had, perhaps, the snappiest, fastest-moving style of copy-writing I have ever read. I thought it was too fast -- too many short, terse sentences. Long sentences tend to slow down the reader. Short sentences tend to speed him up. But when writing consists of nothing but a succession of overly short, terse, staccato sentences, it becomes monotonous and unnatural. I strove for a style that gave change of pace! A proper balance between quick, short sentences, and occasional longer ones.
To hold a mass reading, writing should be reasonably crisp and lucid, not "dry" or slow. But a monotony of very short, terse sentences seemed to me to lack sincerity, and writing should, above all, be sincere!
In any event, this early training resulted in literally thousands of letters during recent years from radio listeners and readers of The Plain Truth, saying that the FACTS are being made more plain, more clear and understandable than they ever heard them before! Today that early training SERVES and helps millions of people all over the world!
But there is another principle in advertising even more important than any of these. That is to be honest -- to stick to the TRUTH!
I attended many Ad-Club luncheons, and even the national Ad-Club conventions, during the many years I spent in the advertising field. From the start I was much impressed by the Associated Advertising Club's slogan: "TRUTH in Advertising."
But do you really know how much TRUTH there is in most commercial advertising today? If you knew how little, you'd be shocked.
I spent twenty years in the advertising field. I got to know advertising men. The average advertising man, preparing to write advertising copy, searches for what IDEAS or statements he might make about his product will cause the public to BUY. It never seems to occur to most advertising men to check up and see whether the statements or claims are true! If a certain claim or statement about the product will sell it, the ad man grabs it and makes that claim in his copy with enthusiasm.
You will see, later in this autobiography, that when I became a publishers' representative in Chicago, I built a business on HONESTY that produced CONFIDENCE. The advertising agencies, the banks, and the manufacturers with whom I did business came to know that I knew my field -- I had the facts they needed -- and that I was accurate and TRUTHFUL, and they could RELY on whatever I told them.
Another principle I was taught is this: "A CUSTOMER is more profitable than a single sale." Win the confidence of a customer through honesty and integrity, and many repeat sales will come your way without selling expense.
One other ingredient is absolutely necessary, along with telling the TRUTH. And that is SINCERITY!
I Was Never Insincere
I was never insincere. True, I had swung from a sense of inferiority, to one of supreme self-confidence.
But I was entirely sincere. Usually a bragging, conceited young lad who is cocky, is also an insincere flippant smart aleck. I was not. It seems I was, by nature, deeply sincere and in earnest, and although excessively self-confident, even snappy and cocky in manner, there was always with it a sense of earnestness and dignity. At least I thought I was right, and in my heart meant to be. Human nature wants to be good -- but seldom does it want to do good. That natural desire in one to wish to consider himself good, I suppose, led to an attitude of sincerity.
Later, God had to take the self-confidence, conceit, and cockiness out of me. He replaced it with a different kind of confidence -- an unbounded FAITH in God. I have far more ASSURANCE for the future today than I had then -- many times over. But today it is based on what God is going to do -- not what I am able to do.
All these are the principles I was taught under Mr. Boreman and Mr. Miles during the three years with The Merchants Trade Journal. I owe them much.
In the Service Department of The Merchants Trade Journal I was sent on occasional trips to places like Waterloo and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Albert Lea, Minnesota, and others, selling ads I had prepared to manufacturers.
I remember vividly, at this point, a trip of this kind to Waterloo. I think it was a refrigerator account. I worked carefully on the advertising copy and layout in the hotel, then went over to see the manufacturer. This, I believe, was the first magazine display ad I ever sold.
What a thrill it was! As I walked from the factory back to the hotel, I was floating on air! Ah, sweet SUCCESS! It was elation! Thrills ran all through me!
Playing With a Million Dollars
The Journal regarded a Waterloo department store merchant as one of the best merchandisers in the nation. His name was Paul Davis. There were two department stores in Waterloo -- the James Black Company, and the Paul Davis store. The Black store was the older-established and larger, but the Davis company was catching up.
Then Paul Davis had a fire. His store was totally destroyed. The next time I was in Waterloo, after his misfortune, I found the Paul Davis store in temporary quarters in a two-story building in the middle of a block. It was only a fraction the size of the department store occupying a prominent corner that had burned down. At that time, Mr. Davis said he was planning to build a new building, larger than the Black Company store.
But on my next visit, some six months later, there was no sign of any new building activity.
"What happened to that big new quarter-block multiple-story building you were going to erect?" I asked.
"Oh, that!" Mr. Davis laughed. By this time he called himself my "second Daddy." "Well, I'm not going to build it for a while yet. I'm having a lot of fun. I have one cool million dollars, CASH, in the bank. It's the insurance money. It was no time at all until every manufacturer in New York knew we had that million dollars cash. Every time a manufacturer gets overloaded with some stock, or needs to raise some quick money, he comes or sends a representative out here to Waterloo. I am able to buy chunks of merchandise in this manner, by sharp trading, at far less than any competitors. Then I put on a BIG SALE. I take a small profit, cut the price way down, and the public simply streams into our little two-floor store here. We have low overhead. We have a small inventory, compared to what we carried in the bigger store. We sell fast, turn our stock more times a year. And the secret of success is not the total volume of sales, but TURNOVER -- the number of times you turn your stock a year -- the number of times you make a profit on the same capital!
"I find that money attracts money! That's a principle of life. Don't ever forget it! Truly, 'to him that HATH shall be given, and to him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath!' I can do things with a million dollars cash I never dreamed could be done. It's a lot of fun. I'm enjoying it! No, I'm not going to put that million into a new store building right away. I'm going to keep it in the bank, and working for me a little while longer!"
I never did forget the lessons this successful merchant, Paul Davis, taught me.
Soon after this, I became "the Idea Man" of The Merchants Trade Journal. I was sent on long trips, either to the Atlantic Coast or to the Gulf of Mexico and back, interviewing merchants, businessmen and Chamber of Commerce secretaries, looking for IDEAS and material for articles in the magazine.
On one of these trips, a challenge from an angry merchant resulted in
what I believe was the pioneer experience in all these surveys and samplings
of public opinion. So far as I know, I was the originator of such polls.
Back to Table of Contents
Chapter 4
"Idea Man" for a National Magazine
MY WIFE was reflecting on what might have happened to us. "What if we had never met," she mused. "What if we had never been brought through the failure of our own plans? We probably never would have found the way to abundant living -- the joys of right living! Think how drab and dull and empty our lives might have been! How grateful we ought to be!"
WHY This Is Written
Yes, our lives have been eventful, exciting, filled with action, effort, unusual experiences, travel. There have been problems, reverses, chastenings, persecutions, sufferings, but there has been success, accomplishments, happiness and JOY! We have been kept busy. We have really lived!
So, let me repeat, this autobiography is being written in the hope that these unusual life experiences may bring inspiration, encouragement, and benefit to many.
I have been greatly influenced by the tremendous impress on my life that resulted from a triple reading of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. After reading that, I sought to learn by the experiences of other successful men.
And so it is in the hope that this story of my own life may be a means of bringing to many, in inspirational and interesting manner, the very same useable help that other biographies brought to me, that this is written.
Learning Magazine Makeup
For one six months' period, during the first two years on The Journal, I was given the job of "making up the magazine." That is, of taking all of the galley proofs of articles, proofs of all the ads, and pasting them in a dummy magazine the way each issue was to be designed.
During this six months I was given a desk out at the Successful Farming plant in their composing room.
I learned, as the publishers of The Journal knew, that a smaller-circulation magazine can have their publication printed each month in the plant of a larger magazine, or some large-operation printing establishment, at less cost than operating their own printing plant. The reason is obvious. The presses turn only one or two days a month on a single smaller publication. To keep all the machinery idle, besides printers, most of the month is to tie up capital that is not working. It doesn't pay.
This lesson was of very practical benefit in our present activities. For years The Plain Truth has been printed by large commercial printing plants in the United States and abroad.
Beginning about 1945 or 1946 we did operate our own small printing shop -- first with one Davidson duplicator press, then with two, and later with three larger, but still comparatively small Miehle presses. They did our minor printing only -- booklets, letterheads and such things.
All these earlier experiences were precisely what was needed to build, later, the worldwide activities of today.
Coddling a Temper
One rather dramatic incident occurred at the Successful Farming printing plant. It contains a lesson worth, I think, the telling.
The foreman of the printing plant at Successful Farming was an old experienced printer named Ed Condon. It seemed to me that printers were, in those days at least, more profane than any class of men. Perhaps it was because, in the days of hand-setting all type, a printer often would "pie" the type -- that is, it would slip out of his hand and fall in a jumbled mass, whereupon every single letter of type would have to be sorted out, put back into the case and then set all over again. It was a severe test on patience. Mr. Condon not only could "cuss" -- he also had a temper!
The only thing wrong with Mr. Condon's temper was that he made no attempt to control it. He was proud of it. He pampered it. He bragged about it.
One day he "flew off the handle" at me for some reason I no longer remember. He raved, swore, shouted, called names. I left the composing room, returned to the Journal offices. Mr. Boreman either went out or called him on the telephone. He received the same treatment -- only more violently. He then went into the office of our publisher and editor, Mr. W. J. Pilkington. Mr. Pilkington called Mr. Charles E. Lynde, then general manager of Successful Farming. He asked Mr. Pilkington if he would have Mr. Boreman and me come to his office.
When we arrived, Mr. Condon was called into Mr. Lynde's office.
"Ed," said Mr. Lynde sternly, "we cannot have our good customers insulted. You may either apologize to Mr. Boreman and Mr. Armstrong, and also give me, and them, your word of honor that this burst of temper will never be repeated, or you are fired on the spot."
Ed Condon humbly apologized. "May I say a word to Ed?" asked Mr. Boreman. "Ed, you're a very competent printer, and a fine and likeable fellow -- except when you let loose a burst of temper. I'd like to give you a little advice as a friend -- for we like you. I've noticed that you have bragged about that temper of yours. You've been proud of your ability to lose your head. You've nursed it along as if it were your baby you love. You've never tried to control it. Now a temper is a mighty good thing -- as long as it is under perfect control and directed by the mind in good judgment. When you learn to control it, then that's something to be proud of!. You've just been proud of it in the wrong state of action, Ed -- that's all that's wrong."
Mr. Condon took the advice -- he had to, standing in front of his top boss. He said he'd never thought of it that way, and thanked Mr. Boreman.
Perhaps some of our readers never thought of it that way. Mr. Boreman's advice was very sound! Never let tempers get out of control!
Becoming "the Idea Man"
After about one and a half to two years of training in advertising copy writing and layout, selling advertising space, office work in dictating and letter-answering, and composing room makeup with The Merchants Trade Journal, I was put on a new and unique activity.
I have never heard of anything like it. I became The Journal's "Idea Man."
This was the most unusual training and experience of all. I was now transferred into the Editorial Department, under Ben R. Vardeman, Associate Editor. Also, on this job, I was kept partially under supervision of Mr. Boreman.
Mr. Vardeman was a tall, dignified man who was author of a book on the principles of retail salesmanship, and a Chautauqua lecturer. Also, I believe, he had written a correspondence course on retail salesmanship. He wrote most of the articles that composed the reading content of The Journal.
The editorial and reading columns of The Journal were devoted mainly to IDEAS that had been successfully used by retail merchants in increasing sales, speeding up turnover, reducing costs, principles and methods of business management, training of personnel, improving public relations. Also they put emphasis on community betterment and chamber of commerce activity.
This reading material was not written out of theoretical imagination. The Journal maintained an "Idea Man" who travelled all over the country, visiting stores in all lines, discussing problems and methods with merchants, checking on community and social conditions. The actual experiences of successful merchants, as sought out and reported by the "Idea Man" were written up by the editors into article form in the magazine.
I was equipped with a Hotel Credit Letter and a large postcard-size folding camera. The Credit Letter authorized me to cash checks, or write out and draw drafts on The Merchants Trade Journal, up to a total of $100 per week, ample in those days to cover traveling expenses. A book of instruction in photography was given me. I had to learn to take pictures of a quality worth publishing.
Expense Account Troubles
I was allowed a reasonably liberal expense account, but no extravagances or luxuries. The Journal expected their men to stop at leading hotels, but I always took a minimum-price single room if available. Breakfasts were nearly always taken at the lunch counter, lunches at the coffee shop or lunch counter, but the evening meal quite often in the hotel's main dining room.
I had not been out long before I put down on my expense account: "Ice Cream Soda -- " and "Movie -- " -- or whatever the prices of those items were in those days. Mr. Vardeman was meticulously careful of details. He frowned on these expense items, and was about to disallow them, when Mr. Boreman came to my rescue. He urged Mr. Vardeman to let it go, this time, saying that he, Mr. Boreman, would write me proper instructions about these expense items.
"Next time, Herbert," Mr. Boreman's letter advised," put any little items like that down included under 'Miscellaneous.' " So after that the occasional ice cream sodas and movies were bulked together into one item, called "Miscellaneous."
This is an incident that I had forgotten. But just at this juncture (written February 1968), in order to refresh my memory on one or two other incidents as I had come to the writing of this stage of my experiences with the Journal, I called Mr. Boreman by long distance telephone. This expense account incident was one of two that he remembered vividly after all these years. He seemed to enjoy immensely reminding me of the incident.
This incident reminds me of an experience Benjamin Franklin related in his autobiography. During the Revolutionary War all people were required to contribute for the purchase of gunpowder. The Quakers of Pennsylvania found it contrary to their doctrine and conscience to do this. Yet they wanted to be loyal. So they solved their dilemma by contributing money for "corn, oats, and other grain." The "other grain," Franklin explained with a chuckle, was gunpowder!
The other incident which Mr. Boreman recalled to my memory was the time I "discovered" a most remarkable and practical invention being used in a grocery store. It was only a few days after I had started on my first trip. I was still pretty "green" on this job of recognizing good ideas used by merchants.
It was a vegetable rack, with water dripping down slowly over the vegetables. Now this was not only ingenious, I thought, but a most practical idea. It attracted attention, and kept the vegetables fresh. So I carefully took several camera shots of it, as I remembered it. But as Mr. Boreman remembered it, I hired a photographer to come and photograph it for me. Enthusiastically I sent in a glowing report of my new discovery.
There was, apparently, quite a reaction in The Journal office when this report, with pictures, reached them. It seems that their laughter almost shook the building down. Groceries had been using this type of vegetable rack for many years -- but never having been in the grocery business, and being new and inexperienced in my "Idea" job, they somehow had escaped my attention. I thought I had made a wonderful new discovery. This demonstrated again that most of us learn, not by observation, but by cruel experience.
Ending Sluggishness
The first "Idea Man" tour took me to New York st