Money spent on advertising is money spent as well as any I know of. It serves directly to bring about a rapid sale of goods at reasonable prices, so setting up a firm home market and making it possible to provide for export (出口) at good prices. By drawing attention to new ideas it helps greatly to raise standards of living. By helping to increase demand it causes an increased need for labour, and is therefore a nice way to fight unemployment. It lowers the costs of many services: without advertisements your daily newspaper would cost four times as much, the price of your television program would need to be doubled, and travel by bus or subway would cost more.
And perhaps most important of all, advertising provides a promise of reasonable value in the products and services you buy. Besides the fact that twenty-seven Acts of Parliament(国会)govern the terms of advertising, no regular advertiser dare produce anything that fails to live up to the promise of his advertisements. He might fool some people for a little while through misleading advertising. He will not do so for long, for the public has the good sense not to buy the poor goods more than once. If you see product frequently advertised, it is the proof I know that the product does what is promised for it, and that it has good value.
Advertising does more for the good of the public than any other force I can think of.
There is one more point I feel I ought to touch on. Recently I heard a well-known television person declared that he was against advertising because it persuades rather than informs. He was telling us the real difference. Of course advertising tries to persuade.
If its message were nothing but information, that would be difficult to get more people to buy, for even the choice of the colour of a shirt is a bit persuasive (有说服力的)--advertising would be so boring that no one would pay any attention. But perhaps that is what the well-known television person wants.
小题1:By the first sentence of the passage the writer means that ___.
| A．he is fairly familiar with the cost of advertising |
| B．everybody knows well that advertising is a waste of money |
| C．advertising costs more money than everything else |
| D．money on advertising is worth spending |
小题2:In the passage, which of the following is NOT included in the advantages of advertising?
| A．Getting greater fame. | B．Providing more jobs. |
| C．Raising living standards. | D．Reducing newspaper cost. |
小题3:The writer thinks that the well-known TV person is _____.
| A．quite right in passing his judgment on advertising |
| B．interested in nothing but the buyers' attention |
| C．correct in telling the difference between persuasion and information |
| D．obviously unfair in his views on advertising |
小题4:In the writer's opinion, ________.
| A．advertising can seldom bring material interest to man by providing information |
| B．advertising informs people of new ideas rather than wins them over |
| C．there is nothing wrong with advertising in persuading the buyer |
| D．the buyer is not interested in getting information from an advertisement |