Life, 1920-12-30 · page 37 of 39
Life — December 30, 1920 — page 37: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **United States Rubber Company advertisement**, not political satire. The page promotes United States Tires through a somewhat manipulative argument. The ad's logic: just as you'd demand transparency buying a tire from a stranger, you should trust tire dealers who openly display the U.S. Rubber Company name and provide facts—implying competitors withhold information. The headline "Where there is Secrecy and Evasion there is Something to Hide" suggests rival tire makers are dishonest. The photograph shows two men in a garage examining automobiles, likely illustrating proper tire care (jacking up cars for winter storage) mentioned in the caption above. The pitch is essentially: **transparency equals trustworthiness; therefore buy from us**—a corporate trust-building campaign common in early 20th-century advertising. It conflates the company's reputation with dealer honesty, claiming U.S. Rubber "backs" all dealers with "its own" resources and responsibility.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Few practices are more destructive of tire life than leaving a car standing on its tires all winter long. Either a car should be jacked up, as shown, when laying it up for the winter, or the tires should be removed and stood on their treads, protected in either case from extreme temperatures. Where there is Secrecy and Evasion there is Something to Hide you and offered to sell you a tire. You would want to know something about it before you bought—where it came from— who made it—what it might be expected to do. Now reverse the situation. Go into a tire store. You will never learn anything about the tires you find there from the prices. The size of the discount will never tell you anything about the actual value of the tires. There is only one way of telling G Sou ana a man came up to anything about the tires you find in a tire store—by their reputation —the standing and responsibility of the company behind them. If a dealer has the right kind of tires in his store they will be known. They will have a reputa- ble name on them. The buyer will be given facts about the tires. * * * The facts about United States Tires are easily obtainable. Thousands of dealers all over the country stand ready to give them to you. Dealers who are more interested in securing the confidence and good will of the motoring public than they are in merely selling a num- ber of tires. The United States Rubber Com- pany stands behind these dealers with all the strength and influence at its command. Backing their responsibility with its own: Staking all ofits great and wide and varied resources on the quality of its tires and of its dealers. *- * * United States Tires are always worth what you pay for them, And the dealer who sells them toyouis worth justthat much more asastraightforwardtire merchant. United States Tires United States @ Rubber Company Fifty-three The oldest and largest Two hundred and Factories Rubber Organization in the World thirty-five Branches comicbooks.com