In the corporate world of the 1970s, the Federal Trade Commission was widely regarded as toothless; the greater the profits to be made, the more a successful company found the fines and other reprimands – usually a cease-and-desist order – a price worth paying. In an entry in its last printed edition, Britannica itself appeared to endorse this view in its own entry on the FTC. In reference to a judgement against Campbell’s Soup Company for false promotion (it used glass marbles to make a photo of its vegetables appear more abundant than they were), it stated, ‘The FTC, however, had not been given the legal instruments or the staff necessary to effectively administer and monitor advertising. Moreover, in many cases, the FTC relied heavily upon making deals with companies, in the form of consent orders, to halt misleading or false advertising.’
In 1971, the New York Department of Consumer Affairs reported that deceptive encyclopaedia salesmen were ‘still on the scene’. It had received around 500 individual complaints. Accordingly, it had persuaded Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. to sign a ten-point ‘assurance of discontinuance’, by which it agreed that its salesmen would not ‘instil fear and anxiety’ during their pitches in the home, nor to suggest to a parent that their child could underachieve unless they bought the encyclopaedia. They also agreed not to offer a ‘special deal’ wherein a set would be sold at a cheaper price than originally stated, the reduction merely reflecting the same set in a cheaper binding. In its defence, Britannica, Inc. said it was happy to sign the assurance, but admitted no wrongdoing apart from ‘isolated cases’. This was at the peak of its doorstepping: in 1970, Britannica had about 2000 travelling salespeople.*
The department also found that Field Educational Enterprises, the publishers of World Book, frequently failed to leave purchasers with a post-paid reply card that enabled them to cancel their orders during the three-day cooling-off period. Grolier fought back, claiming the attacks were unwarranted. ‘We’re the favorite whipping boy,’ said William J. Murphy, the company’s president. ‘This is the day to be against business, against everything.’*
A year later the FTC found that Britannica representatives were still failing to reveal the true purpose of their visit when they entered a person’s home, often claiming they were engaged in ‘advertising research’. Further, the company was charged with deceiving its own prospective salespeople in its recruitment adverts. Britannica unsuccessfully took the case to the US Court of Appeals, and were instructed to remedy its deceptive practices by fully disclosing the nature of any domestic visit. In 1979, in a similar case, the FTC ordered the publishers of the Grolier Encyclopedia ‘to cease misrepresenting, failing to make relevant disclosures, or using any other unfair or deceptive method to recruit door-to-door sales personnel, sell merchandise and services, and collect delinquent accounts.’*
Perhaps the greatest shame about these stories is that the product they were selling was generally a good one. Encyclopaedia companies, through their marketing wheezes and sales representatives, had somehow managed to give their entire industry – this vast educational resource – a bad name. This was the truly dastardly irony: they were selling a valuable trove of well-intentioned and trustworthy information in a mean-spirited and duplicitous way. The industry was unable to shake off this reputation to the very end.
SEXUALITY (a diversion …)
To paraphrase Philip Larkin, homosexuality began in 1929. This was rather too late for Britannica’s eleventh edition (1910–11), which made no mention of it between Homonym and Homs, and also the supplementary volumes of the twelfth (1922), where there was nothing between the German theologian Heinrich Julius Holtzman and Honduras, nor the thirteenth (1926), an omission between the British painter Sir Charles Holroyd and the American zoologist William Temple Hornaday.
The fourteenth edition made a little headway. Homosexuality was afforded a single page, whereas Home Equipment (water softeners and electrically heated utensils) was allocated six, and Homer got fourteen. Alas, what did appear from 1929 to 1973 was disparaging, hysterical and malicious.
The subject was referred to as ‘Sexual Inversion’. The entry began by studying animals, notably apes; the suggestion was clear. The article explained that among the Greeks and certain ancient ‘pre-literate’ societies, homosexuality was regarded as a normal practice, but in modern societies it existed even when repressed: ‘The death penalty itself has failed to stamp it out.’
The article then looks for a cause, suggesting homosexuality is disproven as both ‘a genetic aberration’ and an endocrine disorder, and it dismissed the theory that it was the cause of the collapse of the Roman Empire (‘It is now thought that any deterioration in the Romans that cannot be explained by political or economic causes is better attributed to malaria than to perversion’). The modern ‘social aspects’ are regarded by the encyclopaedia as the most troubling. Homosexual prostitutes are frequent blackmailers, which ‘explains the fact that homosexuals sometimes sink down the social scale’. On the other hand, ‘not all male homosexuals are outwardly effeminate, and some can be dangerously violent’. Some homosexuals ‘have made valuable contributions to society, notably in the arts, though it is improbable that it is the sole or even the main cause of genius.’
It wasn’t until the fifteenth edition (1974) that a more modern, dispassionate view appeared, although this too sanctioned a level of disapproval. Homosexuality was a ‘sexual interest in and attraction to members of one’s own sex. This attraction usually but not always leads to physical contact culminating in orgasm.’
The entry mentioned lesbianism, and how the term ‘gay’ had become an acceptable substitute for both men and women. Historically, Britannica notes, and in different cultures, homosexuality was either approved of, treated or banned. Modern Western attitudes were said to be ‘in flux’. ‘Until the early 1970s the US psychiatric establishment classified homosexuality as a mental illness, but that designation was dropped amid increased political activity and efforts by homosexuals to be seen as individuals exercising a different sexual preference rather than as aberrant personalities.’ Possible causes are examined (Freudian; physiological events in foetal development), and not dismissed.
The Kinsey surveys get a look-in, noting the dubious finding that only about half as many women as men are homosexual, and ‘a large population of bisexuals’ are mentioned for the first time.
The concepts that all male homosexuals are effeminate or that all lesbians are masculine and aggressive, widespread in the West as recently as the 1950s and early 1960s, have largely been discarded. Similarly, the notion that homosexuals are ‘sick’ individuals who need only to meet the right person of the opposite sex to be ‘cured’ has largely given way, particularly in areas with large homosexual populations, to some degree of tolerance or acceptance.
*
As one might expect, the classification of homosexuality in religion-based encyclopaedias ranges from dismissive to intolerant. The New Catholic Encyclopedia found that
usually, temporary homosexuality is due to specific environmental conditions, such as those found in prisons, army camps, and boarding schools, or to passing emotionalism (crushes) or adolescent curiosity. Some men are homosexual for a time because nothing else is available; and some adolescents are curious and have no other outlets. The vast majority of boys who engage in homosexual activity, even for several years during their adolescence, grow out of it. Permanent homosexuality, on the other hand, is found in the true sexual invert.