The Pittsburgh Press (June 24, 1946)
Ferguson: Poor salesmanship
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
Our foreign correspondents report people abroad are asking embarrassing questions about what goes on in the United States. Women in the Orient wonder whether feminine freedom, as it is practiced in the Western Hemisphere is anything for them to shoot at. They’ve got some questions coming; I think.
They hear about our divorces, delinquency, a crime wave among women and girls. They look at our magazines which feature the wild antics of bobbysoxers and nude public exhibitions.
Their wonder can hardly be astonishing, since for so many years we have been asking them to be as we are.
Missionaries certainly deserve sympathy as well as help. They’ve been called upon to sell American culture and Christianity to the heathen, and, along with them, travel our moving pictures and popular publications which portray life in America as anything but uplifting.
The truth is – we’re using poor salesmanship to sell American ideals to the rest of the world.
There are plenty of fine people in our country. Isn’t it time they got a little more publicity? We’d better give them a hand if we want to sell Christianity and democracy to what we now call the backward people of the earth. Because backward people aren’t always dumb.