Browsing through the library this book caught my attention with its character on the front of an “mad scientist look”. The book reviews advertisements which appeared in the United States in the 1880’s. As one can imagine the consumer protection laws were very thin and promising the moon and delivering the pebble at your foot was common practice. The book was put together by Dick Sutphen and is called The Mad Old Ads published by McGraw Hill Book Company, NY, 1966. One of the lessons that can be gained is quacks and imposters were hard to tell from the real thing. One has to remember the population was more rural than urban; the medical profession was still giving out opium and everyone was looking for a cure for their illness. There were no perfect answers and all kinds of devices were offered which could help. Some seem to do more harm than good, but they might help in individual circumstances.

This was also the time of the transition to electricity for everyone, which meant people were selling devices which ran on electricity as a great thing. One would think some people were shocked when they used the devices.

Similar to today’s world, getting wealthy was important and there were many swindles and hoaxes advertised to help you depart from your cash.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, reading through the advertisements in some ways we have changed and in many ways we have new and improved advertisements to take your money from you. When you buy your investment, ideally the price goes up but no one really knows, what we do know is over time a profitable company will trade at a higher multiple of earnings and the price will go higher. Along the way it is very good to collect a toll for use of your money or a dividend.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions