Life — August 19, 1915 — page 26: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

LAE E ° The Lightning Protector “I WISH to bring to your notice,” said the Prepossessing Promoter to the Finical Financier, “an article that will mean untold fortunes for those who will back it and handle it properly The Finical Financier nodded to him to proceed. “Tt is nothing more or less than a sovereign remedy for keeping people from being struck by lightning. In this preliminary talk it is not necessary to go into all the details of its discovery, derivation, manufacture and thera- peutic value. Suffice it to say that it is a serum brewed from a common house-cat which has been subjected to an electric current of sufficiently high voltage to produce all the effects, though in a much milder form, of a stroke of lightning.” The ical Financier remained in a thoughtful, listening attitude, and the Prepossessing Promoter continued : “As I have already said, I have put the remedy in the form of a serum. That is the correct thing to-day. Ten years ago I would probably have put it in the form of a pill or perhaps a salve. But pills are not being taken this season by the best people, and fashion must be strictly observed in medicine, as in everything else. Now, of course, a serum is harder to prepare than a pill and con- sequently more costly. We would have to maintain a high-power electric plant, and our consumption of cats would be enormous, which would, no doubt, send the prices soaring. The ill effects of this, however, could probably be obviated by cornering the cat market in ad- vanee. But, after all, that would be of relatively slight importance, because people expect to pay a great deal more for a serum than for a pill, which would insure a hand- some margin of profit.” “Yes, but how many could we sell?” asked the Finical inancier. “The only limit of sales is the extent of the human race. There are upward of fifteen hundred million people on this earth, and there is not one of them that wants to be struck by lightning. Do you get the idea?” Of course they don’t want to be struck by lightning,” agreed the Finical Financier. “That is all clear enough. On the other hand, there is no likelihood that they will be struck by lightning. Consequently they will not be willing to pay anything to avoid it. “Yes, I was coming to that,” said the Prepossessing Promoter, “and I admit it to be one of the hardest parts of our problem, but it is by no means insurmountable, What we must do is to scatter among the people a great terror of lightning. We must make judicious but ex- tensive use of well-known press-agent methods, working through our great periodical disseminators of real and imaginary information. This, I confess, will require a large amount of capital. For instance, every time anybody anywhe: struck by lightning it will be our business to sce that the fact, with all its harrowing details, is sent broadcast by all the news agencies and played up on the first page by all the newspapers. Then we can get scien- tific men to write articles showing the increased danger from lightning on account of the denudation of our forests, the intrinsic inflation of the gold supply and other causes. We can hire well-known medical men to give interviews showing that human beings are more susceptible to lightning than ever before, owing to the increased sensitivencss of the vaso-motor system, the extensive use of automobiles, the altitude of scrapers and so on. These are but a few illustrations of the “The Finical Financier remained in a thoughtful, li ing attitude” thousands of ways in which we can scare the human race into a unanimous consumption of our serum. “T don't believe you can do it,” said the Finical Finan- cier, after a brief pause. “Of course we can do it,” promptly asseverated the Prepossessing Promoter. “Look how they keep the people scared about smallpox, although, with our modern methods of hygiene and sanitation, smallpox is not a whit more threatening than lightning. And look how they act about dogs. Immediately some dog somewhere froths at the mouth, the cry of rabies goes up, and every dog in Christendom must be muzzled.” “Tt may be that your scheme has possibilities,” observed comicbooks.com