Do Not Forget the Children
The lead pigment manufacturers did not act on the NPVLA's advice. Rather, they actively sought to promote the use of lead in general and the safety of lead for interior uses in particular. Sherwin-Williams' logo was a can of paint poured over the entire globe, with the slogan "Covers the Earth." The Dutch Boy logo of National Lead Company paints was a familiar symbol in the first half of the 20th century and was an essential part of the company's marketing strategy for white lead. In addition to appealing to master painters, homeowners, wives, and mothers, National Lead sought to influence generations of owners by marketing directly to children. In fact, children were a prime target of the company's advertising campaign from early on, even before the LIA was founded.
In a promotion to paint distributors, the company advised store owners, "Do Not Forget the Children". In the 1920s, National Lead produced "A Paint Book for Girls and Boys" titled The Dutch Boy's Lead Party. Its cover showed the Dutch Boy, bucket and brush in hand, looking at lead soldiers, light bulbs, shoe soles, and other members of the "lead family". The Dutch Boy also promoted the use of lead paint in schoolrooms, suggesting that summer was the best time to "get after the school trustees to have each room repainted" with "flat paint made of Dutch Boy white-lead and flatting oil.
By the late 1920s and into the Depression, as information about lead paint's danger to children continued to accumulate -- and after the LIA had acknowledged the inappropriateness of using lead paint on children's toys and furniture -- the National Lead Company used the Dutch Boy to promote the useof lead in children's rooms. In one of its several paint books for children, National Lead suggested that its paint book "Dutch Boy Conquers Old Man Gloom":
The girl and boy felt very blue
Their toys were old and shabby too,
They couldn't play in such a place,
The room was really a disgrace.
......................
This famous Dutch Boy Lead of mine
Can make this playroom fairly shine
Let's start our painting right away
You'll find the work is only play. |
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The booklet shows the Dutch Boy mixing white lead with colors and painting walls and furniture.
To emphasize the benign qualities of lead paint, a National Lead Company's advertisement depicted a child in a bathtub scrubbing himself with a brush. His Dutch Boy cap, clothes, and shoes were slung on a chair, and a can of Dutch Boy All-Purpose Soft Paste and paintbrush sat on the floor next to him. The caption read, "Takes a Scrubbing with a Smile.
Another promotion showed a crawling infant touching a painted wall. The caption proclaimed, –There is no worry when fingerprint smudges or dirt spots appear on a wall painted with Dutch Boy white-lead. The explicit message was that it was easy to clean the wall; the implicit message was that it was safe for toddlers to touch woodwork and walls covered with lead paint. The theme of children painting appeared in numerous advertisements and articles.
Even in 1949, National Lead remained particularly proud of its marketing campaign directed at children. This marketing of the Dutch Boy image was seen as an essential element of National Lead Company's increasing profitability; the company's sales rose from $80 million in 1939 to more than $320 million in 1948. The continuing use of the Dutch Boy image was understood by the broader marketing industry as a clever method of improving the image of National Lead. In 1949, one marketing journal noted that "putting the boy, with his wooden keg and brush, in the attitude of a housepainter, gave animation to the subject, tied him up with the product and suggested that the quality of the paint was so good that even a child could use it.
In addition to portraying children in its advertisements, the pigment industry emphasized lead paint's "healthful" qualities. As early as 1923, National Lead advertisements in National Geographic Magazine promoted the idea that "lead helps to guard your health." Throughout the 1920's, National Lead advertisements in The Modern Hospital called the company's tinted paint "the doctor's assistant" 'because of its cheerful color and the fact that it could be washed with soap and water. The ads assured readers that walls covered with National Lead paint "do not chip, peel or scale". In 1930 the ads suggested, "Every room in a modem hospital deserves a Dutch Boy quality painting job".
In the early 1930s the LIA produced a book, Useful Information About Lead, that suggested that the "prospective paint user" would be well advised to use paints containing a high percentage of lead, "the higher the better." A section called "White
Lead in Paint" stated that "well painted buildings, both inside and out, go hand in hand with improved sanitation." The book included no warnings about the dangers of lead, despite the fact that the book was produced "to disseminate accurate information regarding lead products and how they best may be used." It included pictures of home and hotel interiors with captions such as "white lead paint is widely used for home interiors". The theme of safety continued to beused to promote lead paint through the early war years. In 1943 Eagle Picher advertisements in National Painters Magazine urged professional painters to use "four arguments with prospects-you'll find they really sell paint jobs." The fourth argument was that "Eagle White Lead is just about the purest, safest, most fool-proof paint you or anybody else can use.
Next: The White Lead Promotion Campaign
