In the early years of The New Yorker, after the magazine ran some advertisements featuring endorsements by its own writers, the editor Harold Ross sent a heated memo to an aide to Raoul Fleischmann, the publisher. He wrote:> Our readers, or the readers we hope to hold and get for the New Yorker are intelligent enough to know that this stuff is the bunk. We are being shortsighted in running it. We have an opportunity to live honestly. We also have the great privilege now of being in a position to lead the advertising industry for Christ’s sake. Let us no longer pussyfoot. Let us be really honest, and not just slick. I think that in our present prosperous condition we could afford to suffer even a temporary small loss in revenue to keep our conscience clear.

Subsequently, the magazine took greater pains to monitor the integrity of its advertising. It stopped allowing testimony from its own contributors and avoided ads for dubious products like patent-medicine cures, which were a fixture of magazine pages back then. Instead, its pages were filled with ads for upscale car companies, expensive lingerie, beauty creams, and other aspirational items.

This week, as The New Yorker launches Currency, our new business blog, we’ve looked through our archives and selected a dozen business advertisements that reflect evolving attitudes and fashions over the past eighty years. Some of these ads highlight battle-of-the-sexes humor; one features the tongue-in-cheek claim that Pabst Blue Ribbon beer can calm a wandering, restless husband. Others, such as a nineteen-sixties Philip Morris ad featuring a smart dynamo named Barbara, show how certain companies shrewdly marketed their products as tools of social liberation. In retrospect, all of these ads offer a revealing glimpse of the cultural idiosyncrasies of the past and the evolving perspectives of the magazine’s readers.

Enjoy the slide show, and click on the red arrows for a full-screen view.