The Agency is neither of them. While there may be some procedural similarities, because procedures in many agencies are much the same, no person or happening in either of the agencies in which I have worked (or any others) may be identified with any person or happening in this book. There is no such thing as Foundation Soap, as far as I know, and I doubt if it would sell if there were. For obvious reasons, I had to invent something which couldn’t exist as a marketable product. There are many toilet soaps, and some have a lanolin base, and most are perfumed, and such phrases as “deep-cream cleansing” and “exclusive ingredients” could be used, and probably have been used about many of them, but none of them is Foundation Soap. Hoppness, Silch & Co. is a firm which does not exist. What is called “the soap field” is, it is true, dominated by three firms, but it wouldn’t have been possible for me to find any commodity of mass-distribution in this country for which similar conditions did not obtain; wherever you look, you’ll find that a few giant firms in competition with one another control most of the market.
