Is Your Washroom Breeding Bolsheviks?

I found this earlier and had to share:
Old Scot Paper Towel Ad

As best I can tell from Googling, this is not a PhotoShop but an actual ad circa 1930. The image has the watermark of the Georgetown Book Shop, which offers the poster for sale. The copy reads:

This is a perennial bestseller and attention grabber, but to us the best line in the ad is the opening sentence, which tries to equate a “Bolshevik” with any employee who would “grumble” over a harsh, cheap paper towel. We’re sure that as soon at this guy’s boss satisfied his revolutionary yearning for soft towels, his jealousy towards his friends at the National Lead Co. and the Campbell Soup Co. abated, and that his moustache was shaved in a display of recognition that a long and bitter era of class warfare had resolved itself.

Indeed.

I was unable to determine how successful this campaign was in moving paper towels. I can report that most of the places I’ve worked continue to use cheap paper towels (which are, inexplicably, jammed into the dispenser in such a manner that grabbing a single towel would be impossible even if it were sufficient to the task) and that I have noted hints of disgruntlement and some leftist tendencies.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is a Professor of Security Studies. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Michael says:

    I can report that most of the places I’ve worked continue to use cheap paper towels (which are, inexplicably, jammed into the dispenser in such a manner that grabbing a single towel would be impossible even if it were sufficient to the task)

    I’d also note that they also “crumble and fall to pieces” when wet, making it impossible to even extract an entire sheet from said dispenser when your hands are wet.