This book is not written as a personal history, but as a business story. I have tried to avoid trivialities and to confine myself to matters of instructive interest. The chief object behind every episode is to offer helpful suggestions to those who will follow me. And to save them some of the midnight groping which I did.My only claim for credit is that I have probably worked twice as long as anybody else in this field. I have lived for many years in a vortex of advertising. Naturally I learned more from experience than those who had a lesser chance.Now I want that experience, so far as possible, to help others avoid the same difficult climb. Every pioneer should blaze his trail. That is all I have tried to do.I set down these findings solely for the purpose of aiding others to start far up the heights I scaled. Then, with the efforts I here describe, I hope you can now attain some peaks in advertising beyond any of us to date.- Claude C. Hopkins