Advertising on Trial: Consumer Activism and Corporate Public Relations in the 1930s. By Inger L. Stole. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006. xviii, 290 pp. Cloth, $50.00, ISBN 978-0-252-03059-8. Paper, $25.00, ISBN 978-0-252-07299-4.)

Abstract

Twentieth-century advertising has been shaped by new technologies from industrial mass production to new media. But what about the laws that regulated commercial advertising That history is told in Inger L. Stole's carefully researched and well-written story of the struggles among consumer advocates, advertisers, and government agencies over what federal legal constraints should apply to deceptive ads, especially for life-threatening products. Stole argues that advertising interests mobilized public relations in a successful bid to limit the regulation of advertising and laid foundations for the arguments and lobbying techniques that are still in use today. Stole first outlines the rise of modern consumer culture, in which advertising is “a mandatory business expense for all firms in an oligopolistic market” (p. 4). He recounts the development of national distribution and branding, noting Progressive Era critiques of advertising and the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. Some of that tale has been told before, including the emergence of a consumer movement by the thirties, with conflicts between leading organizations such as Consumers' Research and the Consumers' Union. Stole notes that both consumer advocates and advertising moguls kept a close eye on public opinion, and he cites polls that repeatedly showed consumers' support for greater regulation of false and dangerous advertising. Business responded by creating front groups to burnish the public image of advertising and tout its educational functions.