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<body>
<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 61364 ***</div>
<div class="transnote covernote">
<p class="center larger">Transcriber’s Note</p>
<p class="center">Cover created by Transcriber from the original book’s
Title page, and placed in the Public Domain.</p>
</div>
<h1><span class="smcap large"><span class="gesperrt1">Crystallizing</span><br />
Public Opinion</span></h1>
<p class="p2 center wspace larger">EDWARD L. BERNAYS</p>
<div class="figcenter" style="max-width: 5.1875em;">
<img src="images/i_logo.png" width="83" height="107" alt="Publisher‘s logo" />
</div>
<p class="center"><span class="wspace">LIVERIGHT PUBLISHING CORPORATION</span><br />
PUBLISHERS <span class="in7">NEW YORK</span></p>
<hr />
<p class="newpage p4 center vspace">
<i>Copyright, 1923, by</i><br />
<span class="smcap">Boni and Liveright, Inc.</span><br />
<span class="smcap">Liveright Publishing Corporation</span></p>
<hr class="narrow" />
<p class="center smaller">PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p>
<hr />
<p class="newpage p4 center vspace">
<span class="smcap">To My Wife</span><br />
DORIS E. FLEISCHMAN</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iii">iii</span></p>
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="PREFACE_TO_NEW_EDITION">PREFACE TO NEW EDITION</h2>
</div>
<p>In the ten years that have elapsed since this
book was written, events of profound importance
have taken place. During this period,
many of the principles set forth in the book
have been put to the test and have been proven
true.</p>
<p>The book, for instance, emphasized ten years
ago that industrial organizations dealing with
the public must take public opinion into consideration
in the conduct of their affairs. We
have seen cases in the past decade where the
public has actually stepped in and publicly
supervised industries which refused to recognize
this truth.</p>
<p>The field of public relations counsel has developed
tremendously in this period. But the
broad basic principles, as originally set forth,
are as valid today as they were then, when the
profession was a comparatively new one. It
seems appropriate that this new edition, for
which the publishers have asked me to write a
new foreword, should appear at a time when
the new partnership of government, labor and
industry has brought public relations and its<span class="pagenum" id="Page_iv">iv</span>
problems to the fore. The old group relationships
that make up our society have undergone
and are undergoing marked changes. The
peaceful harmonizing of all the new conflicting
points of view will be dependent, to a great extent,
upon an understanding and application
by leaders of public relations and its technique.</p>
<p>In the future, each industry will have to act
with increasing understanding in its relationship
to government, to other industries, to
labor, to stockholders and to the public. Each
industry must be cognizant of new conditions
and modify its conduct to conform to them if
it is to maintain the good-will of those upon
whom it depends for its very life.</p>
<p>This principle applies not only to industry;
it applies to every kind of organization and institution
that uses special pleading, whether
it be for profit or for any other cause.</p>
<p>The new social and economic structure in
which we live today demands this new approach
to the public. Public relations has
come to play an important part in our life.</p>
<p>It is hoped that this book may lead to a
greater recognition and application of sound
public relations principles.</p>
<p class="sigright">E. L. B.</p>
<p class="in0"><i>January, 1934</i></p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">v</span></p>
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="FOREWORD">FOREWORD</h2>
</div>
<p>In writing this book I have tried to set down
the broad principles that govern the new profession
of public relations counsel. These principles
I have on the one hand substantiated by the findings
of psychologists, sociologists, and newspapermen—Ray
Stannard Baker, W. G. Bleyer, Richard
Washburn Child, Elmer Davis, John L.
Given, Will Irwin, Francis E. Leupp, Walter
Lippmann, William MacDougall, Everett Dean
Martin, H. L. Mencken, Rollo Ogden, Charles J.
Rosebault, William Trotter, Oswald Garrison
Villard, and others to whom I owe a debt of
gratitude for their clear analyses of the public’s
mind and habits; and on the other hand, I have
illustrated these principles by a number of specific
examples which serve to bear them out. I
have quoted from the men listed here, because
the ground covered by them is part of the field
of activity of the public relations counsel. The
actual cases which I have cited were selected because
they explain the application of the theories
to practice. Most of the illustrative material is
drawn from my personal experience; a few examples
from my observation of events. I have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">vi</span>
preferred to cite facts known to the general public,
in order that I might explain graphically a
profession that has little precedent, and whose
few formulated rules have necessarily a limitless
number and variety of applications.</p>
<p>This profession in a few years has developed
from the status of circus agent stunts to what
is obviously an important position in the conduct
of the world’s affairs.</p>
<p>If I shall, by this survey of the field, stimulate
a scientific attitude towards the study of public
relations, I shall feel that this book has fulfilled
my purpose in writing it.</p>
<p class="sigright">E. L. B.</p>
<p>December, 1923.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">vii</span></p>
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2>
</div>
<table id="toc" summary="Contents">
<tr>
<td class="tdc chap" colspan="3"><a href="#PART_I">PART I—SCOPE AND FUNCTIONS</a></td></tr>
<tr class="small">
<td class="tdc">CHAPTER</td>
<td> </td>
<td class="tdr">PAGE</td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr top">I</td>
<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Scope of the Public Relations Counsel</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_I_I">11</a></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr top">II</td>
<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Public Relations Counsel; the Increased and Increasing Importance of the Profession</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_I_II">34</a></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr top">III</td>
<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Function of a Special Pleader</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_I_III">50</a></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdc chap" colspan="3"><a href="#PART_II">PART II—THE GROUP AND HERD</a></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr top">I</td>
<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">What Constitutes Public Opinion?</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_II_I">61</a></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr top">II</td>
<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Is Public Opinion Stubborn or Malleable?</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_II_II">69</a></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr top">III</td>
<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Interaction of Public Opinion with the Forces That Help to Make It</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_II_III">77</a></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr top">IV</td>
<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Power of Interacting Forces That Go to Make up Public Opinion</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_II_IV">87</a></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr top">V</td>
<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">An Understanding of the Fundamentals of Public Motivation Is Necessary to the Work of the Public Relations Counsel</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_II_V">98</a></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr top">VI</td>
<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Group and Herd Are the Basic Mechanisms of Public Change</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_II_VI">111</a></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr top">VII</td>
<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Application of These Principles</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_II_VII">118</a></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdc chap" colspan="3"><a href="#PART_III">PART III—TECHNIQUE AND METHOD</a></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr top">I</td>
<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Public Can Be Reached Only Through Established Mediums of Communication</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_III_I">125</a></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr top">II</td>
<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Interlapping Group Formations of Society, the Continuous Shifting of Groups, Changing Conditions and the Flexibility of Human Nature Are All Aids to the Counsel on Public Relations</span><span class="pagenum" id="Page_viii">viii</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_III_II">139</a></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr top">III</td>
<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">An Outline of Methods Practicable in Modifying the Point of View of a Group</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_III_III">166</a></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdc chap" colspan="3"><a href="#PART_IV">PART IV—ETHICAL RELATIONS</a></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr top">I</td>
<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Consideration of the Press and Other Mediums of Communication in Their Relation to the Public Relations Counsel</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV_I">177</a></td></tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr top">II</td>
<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">His Obligations to the Public as a Special Pleader</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV_II">208</a></td></tr>
</table>
<hr />
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="PART_I">PART I<br />
<span class="subhead"><span class="smcap">Scope and Functions</span></span></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">11</span></p>
<h2 id="CRYSTALLIZING_PUBLIC"><span class="larger">CRYSTALLIZING PUBLIC
OPINION</span></h2>
<h2 id="CHAPTER_I_I" class="nobreak p2 vspace">CHAPTER I<br />
<span class="subhead">THE SCOPE OF THE PUBLIC RELATIONS COUNSEL</span></h2>
<p class="drop-cap a"><span class="smcap1">A new</span> phrase has come into the language—counsel
on public relations. What does it
mean?</p>
<p>As a matter of fact, the actual phrase is completely
understood by only a few, and those only
the people intimately associated with the work
itself. But despite this, the activities of the public
relations counsel affect the daily life of the
entire population in one form or another.</p>
<p>Because of the recent extraordinary growth of
the profession of public relations counsel and the
lack of available information concerning it, an
air of mystery has surrounded its scope and functions.
To the average person, this profession is
still unexplained, both in its operation and actual
accomplishment. Perhaps the most definite picture
is that of a man who somehow or other produces<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">12</span>
that vaguely defined evil, “propaganda,”
which spreads an impression that colors the mind
of the public concerning actresses, governments,
railroads. And yet, as will be pointed out
shortly, there is probably no single profession
which within the last ten years has extended
its field of usefulness more remarkably and
touched upon intimate and important aspects of
the everyday life of the world more significantly
than the profession of public relations
counsel.</p>
<p>There is not even any one name by which the
new profession is characterized by others. To
some the public relations counsel is known by
the term “propagandist.” Others still call him
press agent or publicity man. Writing even
within the last few years, John L. Given, the
author of an excellent textbook on journalism,
does not mention the public relations counsel.
He limits his reference to the old-time press
agent. Many organizations simply do not bother
about an individual name and assign to an existing
officer the duties of the public relations
counsel. One bank’s vice-president is its recognized
public relations counsel. Some dismiss
the subject or condemn the entire profession
generally and all its members individually.</p>
<p>Slight examination into the grounds for this
disapproval readily reveals that it is based on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">13</span>
nothing more substantial than vague impressions.</p>
<p>Indeed, it is probably true that the very men
who are themselves engaged in the profession
are as little ready or able to define their work
as is the general public itself. Undoubtedly this
is due, in some measure, to the fact that the profession
is a new one. Much more important than
that, however, is the fact that most human activities
are based on experience rather than
analysis.</p>
<p>Judge Cardozo of the Court of Appeals of the
State of New York finds the same absence of
functional definition in the judicial mind. “The
work of deciding cases,” he says, “goes on every
day in hundreds of courts throughout the land.
Any judge, one might suppose, would find it easy
to describe the process which he had followed
a thousand times and more. Nothing could be
farther from the truth. Let some intelligent layman
ask him to explain. He will not go very
far before taking refuge in the excuse that the
language of craftsmen is unintelligible to those
untutored in the craft. Such an excuse may cover
with a semblance of respectability an otherwise
ignominious retreat. It will hardly serve to still
the prick of curiosity and conscience. In moments
of introspection, when there is no longer
a necessity of putting off with a show of wisdom<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">14</span>
the uninitiated interlocutor, the troublesome problem
will recur and press for a solution: What
is it that I do when I decide a case?”<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">1</a></p>
<p>From my own records and from current history
still fresh in the public mind, I have selected
a few instances which only in a limited measure
give some idea of the variety of the public relations
counsel’s work and of the type of problem
which he attempts to solve.</p>
<p>These examples show him in his position as
one who directs and supervises the activities of
his clients wherever they impinge upon the daily
life of the public. He interprets the client to the
public, which he is enabled to do in part because
he interprets the public to the client. His advice
is given on all occasions on which his client appears
before the public, whether it be in concrete
form or as an idea. His advice is given
not only on actions which take place, but also on
the use of mediums which bring these actions
to the public it is desired to reach, no matter
whether these mediums be the printed, the spoken
or the visualized word—that is, advertising, lectures,
the stage, the pulpit, the newspaper, the
photograph, the wireless, the mail or any other
form of thought communication.</p>
<p>A nationally famous New York hotel found
that its business was falling off at an alarming<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">15</span>
rate because of a rumor that it was shortly going
to close and that the site upon which it was located
would be occupied by a department store. Few
things are more mysterious than the origins of
rumors, or the credence which they manage to
obtain. Reservations at this hotel for weeks and
months ahead were being canceled by persons
who had heard the rumor and accepted it implicitly.</p>
<p>The problem of meeting this rumor (which like
many rumors had no foundation in fact) was
not only a difficult but a serious one. Mere denial,
of course, no matter how vigorous or how
widely disseminated, would accomplish little.</p>
<p>The mere statement of the problem made it
clear to the public relations counsel who was retained
by the hotel that the only way to overcome
the rumor was to give the public some positive
evidence of the intention of the hotel to remain
in business. It happened that the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">maître d’hôtel</i>
was about as well known as the hotel itself. His
contract was about to expire. The public relations
counsel suggested a very simple device.</p>
<p>“Renew his engagement immediately for a
term of years,” he said. “Then make public announcement
of the fact. Nobody who hears of
the renewal or the amount of money involved
will believe for a moment that you intend to
go out of business.” The <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">maître d’hôtel</i> was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">16</span>
called in and offered a five-year engagement.
His salary was one which many bank presidents
might envy. Public announcement of his engagement
was made. The <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">maître d’hôtel</i> was
himself something of a national figure. The
salary stipulated was not without popular interest
from both points of view. The story was one
which immediately interested the newspapers. A
national press service took up the story and sent
it out to all its subscribers. The cancellation of
reservations stopped and the rumor disappeared.</p>
<p>A nationally known magazine was ambitious
to increase its prestige among a more influential
group of advertisers. It had never made any
effort to reach this public except through its own
direct circulation. The consultant who was retained
by the magazine quickly discovered that
much valuable editorial material appearing in the
magazine was allowed to go to waste. Features
of interest to thousands of potential readers were
never called to their attention unless they happened
accidentally to be readers of the magazine.</p>
<p>The public relations counsel showed how to extend
the field of their appeal. He chose for his
first work an extremely interesting article by a
well-known physician, written about the interesting
thesis that “the pace that kills” is the slow,
deadly, dull routine pace and not the pace of life<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">17</span>
under high pressure, based on work which interests
and excites. The consultant arranged to
have the thesis of the article made the basis of
an inquiry among business and professional men
throughout the country by another physician associated
with a medical journal. Hundreds of
members of “the quality public,” as they are
known to advertisers, had their attention focused
on the article, and the magazine which the consultant
was engaged in counseling on its public
relations.</p>
<p>The answers from these leading men of the
country were collated, analyzed, and the resulting
abstract furnished gratuitously to newspapers,
magazines and class journals, which published
them widely. Organizations of business
and professional men reprinted the symposium
by the thousands and distributed it free of charge,
doing so because the material contained in the
symposium was of great interest. A distinguished
visitor from abroad, Lord Leverhulme,
became interested in the question while in this
country and made the magazine and the article
the basis of an address before a large and influential
conference in England. Nationally and
internationally the magazine was called to the
attention of a public which had, up to that time,
considered it perhaps a publication of no serious
social significance.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">18</span>
Still working with the same magazine, the publicity
consultant advised it how to widen its influence
with another public on quite a different
issue. He took as his subject an article by
Sir Philip Gibbs, “The Madonna of the Hungry
Child,” dealing with the famine situation in
Europe and the necessity for its prompt alleviation.
The article was brought to the attention
of Herbert Hoover. Mr. Hoover was so impressed
by the article that he sent the magazine
a letter of commendation for publishing it. He
also sent a copy of the article to members of
his relief committees throughout the country.
The latter, in turn, used the article to obtain support
and contributions for relief work. Thus,
while an important humanitarian project was
being materially assisted, the magazine in question
was adding to its own influence and standing.</p>
<p>Now, the interesting thing about this work is
that whereas the public relations counsel added
nothing to the contents of the magazine, which
had for years been publishing material of this nature,
he did make its importance felt and appreciated.</p>
<p>A large packing house was faced with the
problem of increasing the sale of its particular
brand of bacon. It already dominated the market
in its field; the problem was therefore one of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">19</span>
increasing the consumption of bacon generally,
for its dominance of the market would naturally
continue. The public relations counsel, realizing
that hearty breakfasts were dietetically
sound, suggested that a physician undertake a
survey to make this medical truth articulate.
He realized that the demand for bacon as a breakfast
food would naturally be increased by the
wide dissemination of this truth. This is exactly
what happened.</p>
<p>A hair-net company had to solve the problem
created by the increasing vogue of bobbed
hair. Bobbed hair was eliminating the use of
the hair-net. The public relations counsel, after
investigation, advised that the opinions of club
women as leaders of the women of the country
should be made articulate on the question. Their
expressed opinion, he believed, would definitely
modify the bobbed hair vogue. A leading artist
was interested in the subject and undertook a
survey among the club women leaders of the
country. The resultant responses confirmed the
public relations counsel’s judgment. The opinions
of these women were given to the public
and helped to arouse what had evidently been
a latent opinion on the question. Long hair was
made socially more acceptable than bobbed hair
and the vogue for the latter was thereby partially
checked.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">20</span>
A real estate corporation on Long Island was
interested in selling coöperative apartments to a
high-class clientele. In order to do this, it realized
that it had to impress upon the public the
fact that this community, within easy reach of
Manhattan, was socially, economically, artistically
and morally desirable. On the advice of
its public relations counsel, instead of merely proclaiming
itself as such a community, it proved
its contentions dramatically by making itself an
active center for all kinds of community manifestations.</p>
<p>When it opened its first post office, for instance,
it made this local event nationally interesting.
The opening was a formal one. National
figures became interested in what might
have been merely a local event.</p>
<p>The reverses which the Italians suffered on the
Piave in 1918 were dangerous to Italian and Allied
morale. One of the results was the awakening
of a distrust among Italians as to the sincerity
of American promises of military, financial
and moral support for the Italian cause.</p>
<p>It became imperative vividly to dramatize for
Italy the reality of American coöperation. As
one of the means to this end the Committee on
Public Information decided that the naming of
a recently completed American ship should be
made the occasion for a demonstration of friendship<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">21</span>
which could be reflected in every possible
way to the Italians.</p>
<p>Prominent Italians in America were invited
by the public relations counsel to participate in
the launching of the <i>Piave</i>. Motion and still
pictures were taken of the event. The news of
the launching and of its significance to Americans
was telegraphed to Italian newspapers. At
the same time a message from Italian-Americans
was transmitted to Italy expressing their confidence
in America’s assistance of the Italian
cause. Enrico Caruso, Gatti-Casazza, director
of the Metropolitan Opera, and others highly
regarded by their countrymen in Italy, sent inspiriting
telegrams which had a decided effect
in raising Italian morale, so far as it depended
upon assurance of American coöperation. Other
means employed to disseminate information of
this event had the same effect.</p>
<p>The next incident that I have selected is one
which conforms more closely than some of the
others to the popular conception of the work of
the public relations counsel. In the spring and
summer of 1919 the problem of fitting ex-service
men into the ordinary life of America
was serious and difficult. Thousands of men just
back from abroad were having a trying time
finding work. After their experience in the war
it was not surprising that they should be extremely<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">22</span>
ready to feel bitter against the Government
and against those Americans who for one
reason or another had not been in any branch of
the service during the war.</p>
<p>The War Department under Colonel Arthur
Woods, assistant to the Secretary of War, instituted
a nation-wide campaign to assist those men
to obtain employment, and more than that, to
manifest to them as concretely as it could that
the Government continued its interest in their
welfare. The incident to which I refer occurred
during this campaign.</p>
<p>In July of 1919 there was such a shortage of
labor in Kansas that it was feared a large proportion
of the wheat crop could not possibly be
harvested. The activities of the War Department
in the reëmployment of ex-service men had
already received wide publicity, and the Chamber
of Commerce of Kansas City appealed directly
to the War Department at Washington,
after its own efforts in many other directions had
failed, for a supply of men who would assist
in the harvesting of the wheat crop. The public
relations counsel prepared a statement of this opportunity
for employment in Kansas and distributed
it to the public through the newspapers
throughout the country. The Associated Press
sent the statement over its wires as a news dispatch.
Within four days the Kansas City Chamber<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">23</span>
of Commerce wired to the War Department
that enough labor had been secured to harvest
the wheat crop, and asked the War Department
to announce that fact as publicly as it had first
announced the need for labor.</p>
<p>By contrast with this last instance, and as an
illustration of a type of work less well understood
by the public, I cite another incident from
the same campaign for the reëstablishment of ex-service
men to normal economic and social relations.
The problem of reëmployment was, of
course, the crux of the difficulty. Various measures
were adopted to obtain the coöperation of
business men in extending employment opportunities
to ex-members of the Army, Navy and
Marines. One of these devices appealed to the
personal and local pride of American business
men, and stressed their obligation of honor to
reëmploy their former employees upon release
from Government service.</p>
<p>A citation was prepared, signed by the Secretary
of War, the Secretary of the Navy and the
Assistant to the Secretary of War for display in
the stores and factories of employers who assured
the War and Navy Departments that they would
reëmploy their ex-service men. Simultaneous
display of these citations was arranged for Bastile
Day, July 14, 1919, by members of the Fifth
Avenue Association.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">24</span>
The Fifth Avenue Association of New York
City, an influential group of business men, was
perhaps the first to coöperate as a body in this
important campaign for the reëmployment of ex-service
men. Concerted action on a subject which
was as much in the public mind as the reëmployment
of ex-service men was particularly interesting.
The story of what these leaders in American
business had undertaken to do went out to
the country by mail, by word of mouth, by
newspaper comment. Their example was potent
in obtaining the coöperation of business men
throughout the land. An appeal based on this
action and capitalizing it was sent to thousands of
individual business men and employers throughout
the country. It was effective.</p>
<p>An illustration which embodies most of the
technical and psychological points of interest in
the preceding incidents may be found in Lithuania’s
campaign in this country in 1919, for popular
sympathy and official recognition. Lithuania
was of considerable political importance in
the reorganization of Europe, but it was a country
little known or understood by the American
public. An added difficulty was the fact that the
independence of Lithuania would interfere seriously
with the plans which France had for the
establishment of a strong Poland. There were
excellent historical, ethnic and economic reasons<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">25</span>
why, if Lithuania broke off from Russia, it should
be allowed to stand on its own feet. On the
other hand there were powerful political influences
which were against such a result. The
American attitude on the question of Lithuanian
independence, it was felt, would play an important
part. The question was how to arouse popular
and official interest in Lithuania’s aspirations.</p>
<p>A Lithuanian National Council was organized,
composed of prominent American-Lithuanians,
and a Lithuanian Information Bureau established
to act as a clearing house for news about Lithuania
and for special pleading on behalf of Lithuania’s
ambitions. The public relations counsel
who was retained to direct this work recognized
that the first problem to be solved was America’s
indifference to and ignorance about Lithuania
and its desires.</p>
<p>He had an exhaustive study made of every
conceivable aspect of the problem of Lithuania
from its remote and recent history and ethnic
origins to its present-day marriage customs and
its popular recreations. He divided his material
into its various categories, based primarily on
the public to which it would probably make its
appeal. For the amateur ethnologist he provided
interesting and accurate data of the racial
origins of Lithuania. To the student of languages<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">26</span>
he appealed with authentic and well written
studies of the development of the Lithuanian
language from its origins in the Sanskrit. He
told the “sporting fan” about Lithuanian sports
and told American women about Lithuanian
clothes. He told the jeweler about amber and
provided the music lover with concerts of Lithuanian
music.</p>
<p>To the senators, he gave facts about Lithuania
which would give them basis for favorable action.
To the members of the House of Representatives
he did likewise. He reflected to those
communities whose crystallized opinion would be
helpful in guiding other opinions, facts which
gave them basis for conclusions favorable to
Lithuania.</p>
<p>A series of events which would carry with
them the desired implications were planned and
executed. Mass meetings were held in different
cities; petitions were drawn, signed and presented;
pilgrims made calls upon Senate and
House of Representatives Committees. All the
avenues of approach to the public were utilized
to capitalize the public interest and bring public
action. The mails carried statements of Lithuania’s
position to individuals who might be interested.
The lecture platform resounded to
Lithuania’s appeal. Newspaper advertising was
bought and paid for. The radio carried the message<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">27</span>
of speakers to the public. Motion pictures
reached the patrons of moving picture houses.</p>
<p>Little by little and phase by phase, the public,
the press and Government officials acquired a
knowledge of the customs, the character and the
problems of Lithuania, the small Baltic nation
that was seeking freedom.</p>
<p>When the Lithuanian Information Bureau
went before the press associations to correct inaccurate
or misleading Polish news about the
Lithuanian situation, it came there as representative
of a group which had figured largely in the
American news for a number of weeks, as a result
of the advice and activities of its public relations
counsel. In the same way, when delegations
of Americans, interested in the Lithuanian
problem, appeared before members of Congress
or officials of the State Department, they came
there as spokesmen for a country which was no
longer unknown. They represented a group
which could no longer be entirely ignored. Somebody
described this campaign, once it had
achieved recognition for the Baltic republic, as
the campaign of “advertising a nation to freedom.”</p>
<p>What happened with Roumania is another instance.
Roumania wanted to plead its case before
the American people. It wanted to tell
Americans that it was an ancient and established<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">28</span>
country. The original technique was the issuance
of treatises, historically correct and ethnologically
accurate. Their facts were for the
large part ignored. The public relations counsel,
called in on the case of Roumania, advised them
to make these studies into interesting stories
of news value. The public read these stories
with avidity and Roumania became part of
America’s popular knowledge with consequent
valuable results for Roumania.</p>
<p>The hotels of New York City discovered that
there was a falling off of business and profits.
Fewer visitors came to New York. Fewer travelers
passed through New York on their way to
Europe. The public relations counsel who was
consulted and asked to remedy the situation, made
an extensive analysis. He talked to visitors. He
queried men and women who represented groups,
sections and opinions of main cities and towns
throughout the country. He examined American
literature—books, magazines, newspapers, and
classified attacks made on New York and New
York citizens. He found that the chief cause
for lack of interest in New York was the belief
that New York was “cold and inhospitable.”</p>
<p>He found animosity and bitterness against
New York’s apparent indifference to strangers
was keeping away a growing number of travelers.
To counteract this damaging wave of resentment,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">29</span>
he called together the leading groups, industrial,
social and civic, of New York, and formed the
Welcome Stranger Committee. The friendly and
hospitable aims of this committee, broadcasted
to the nation, helped to reëstablish New York’s
good repute. Congratulatory editorials were
printed in the rural and city journals of the
country.</p>
<p>Again, in analyzing the restaurant service of
a prominent hotel, he discovers that its menu
is built on the desires of the average eater and
that a large group of people with children desire
special foods for them. He may then advise
his client to institute a children’s diet service.</p>
<p>This was done specifically with the Waldorf-Astoria
Hotel, which instituted special menus
for children. This move, which excited wide
comment, was economically and dietetically sound.</p>
<p>In its campaign to educate the public on the
importance of early radium treatments for incipient
cancer, the United States Radium Corporation
founded the First National Radium
Bank, in order to create and crystallize the impression
that radium is and should be available
to all physicians who treat cancer sufferers.</p>
<p>An inter-city radio company planned to open
a wireless service between the three cities of New
York, Detroit and Cleveland. This company
might merely have opened its service and waited<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">30</span>
for the public to send its messages, but the
president of the organization realized astutely
that to succeed in any measure at all he must
have immediate public support. He called in a
public relations counsel, who advised an elaborate
inauguration ceremony, in which the mayors
of the three cities thus for the first time connected,
would officiate. The mayor of each city
officially received and sent the first messages
issued on commercial inter-city radio waves.
These openings excited wide interest, not only
in the three cities directly concerned, but throughout
the entire country.</p>
<p>Shortly after the World War, the King and
Queen of the Belgians visited America. One of
the many desired results of this visit was that
it should be made apparent that America, with
all the foreign elements represented in its body,
was unified in its support of King Albert and
his country. To present a graphic picture of the
affection which the national elements here had
for the Belgian monarch, a performance was
staged at the Metropolitan Opera House in New
York City, at which the many nationalist groups
were represented and gave voice to their approval.
The story of the Metropolitan Opera
House performance was spread in the news columns
and by photographs in the press throughout<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">31</span>
the world. It was evident to all who saw the
pictures or read the story that this king had really
stirred the affectionate interest of the national
elements that make up America.</p>
<p>An interesting illustration of the broad field
of work of the public relations counsel to-day
is noted in the efforts which were exerted to
secure wide commendation and support among
Americans for the League of Nations. Obviously
a small group of persons, banded together
for the sole purpose of furthering the appeal
of the League, would have no powerful effect.
In order to secure a certain homogeneity among
the members of groups who individually had
widely varied interests and affiliations, it was
decided to form a non-partisan committee for
the League of Nations.</p>
<p>The public relations consultant, having assisted
in the formation of this committee, called a meeting
of women representing Democratic, Republican,
radical, reactionary, club, society, professional
and industrial groups, and suggested that
they make a united appeal for national support of
the League of Nations. This meeting accurately
and dramatically reflected disinterested and unified
support of the League. The public relations
counsel made articulate what would otherwise
have remained a strong passive sentiment. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">32</span>
still insistent demand for the League of Nations
is undoubtedly due in part to efforts of this nature.</p>
<p>Cases as diverse as the following are the daily
work of the public relations counsel. One client
is advised to give up a Rolls-Royce car and to
buy a Ford, because the public has definite concepts
of what ownership of each represents—another
man may be given the contrary advice.
One client is advised to withdraw the hat-check
privilege, because it causes unfavorable public
comment. Another is advised to change the
façade of his building to conform to a certain
public taste.</p>
<p>One client is advised to announce changes of
price policy to the public by telegraph, another
by circular, another by advertising. One client
is advised to publish a Bible, another a book of
French Renaissance tales.</p>
<p>One department store is advised to use prices
in its advertising, another store not to mention
them.</p>
<p>A client is advised to make his labor policy,
the hygienic aspect of his factory, his own personality,
part of his sales campaign.</p>
<p>Another client is advised to exhibit his wares
in a museum and school.</p>
<p>Still another is urged to found a scholarship
in his subject at a leading university.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">33</span>
Further incidents could be given here, illustrating
different aspects of the ordinary daily
functions of the public relations counsel—how,
for example, the production of “Damaged Goods”
in America became the basis of the first notably
successful move in this country for overcoming
the prudish refusal to appreciate and face the
place of sex in human life; or how, more recently,
the desire of some great corporations to increase
their business was, through the advice of Ivy Lee,
their public relations counsel, made the basis of
popular education on the importance of brass
and copper to civilization. Enough has been
cited, however, to show how little the average
member of the public knows of the real work of
the public relations counsel, and how that work
impinges upon the daily life of the public in an
almost infinite number of ways.</p>
<p>Popular misunderstanding of the work of the
public relations counsel is easily comprehensible
because of the short period of his development.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that he
has become in recent years too important a figure
in American life for this ignorance to be
safely or profitably continued.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">34</span></p>
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="CHAPTER_I_II" class="vspace">CHAPTER II<br />
<span class="subhead">THE PUBLIC RELATIONS COUNSEL; THE INCREASED
AND INCREASING IMPORTANCE OF THE
PROFESSION</span></h2>
</div>
<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">The</span> rise of the modern public relations counsel
is based on the need for and the value
of his services. Perhaps the most significant
social, political and industrial fact about the
present century is the increased attention which
is paid to public opinion, not only by individuals,
groups or movements that are dependent on public
support for their success, but also by men
and organizations which until very recently stood
aloof from the general public and were able to
say, “The public be damned.”</p>
<p>The public to-day demands information and
expects also to be accepted as judge and jury
in matters that have a wide public import. The
public, whether it invests its money in subway
or railroad tickets, in hotel rooms or restaurant
fare, in silk or soap, is a highly sophisticated
body. It asks questions, and if the answer in
word or action is not forthcoming or satisfactory,
it turns to other sources for information or relief.</p>
<p>The willingness to spend thousands of dollars<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">35</span>
in obtaining professional advice on how best to
present one’s views or products to a public is
based on this fact.</p>
<p>On every side of American life, whether political,
industrial, social, religious or scientific, the
increasing pressure of public judgment has made
itself felt. Generally speaking, the relationship
and interaction of the public and any movement
is rather obvious. The charitable society which
depends upon voluntary contributions for its support
has a clear and direct interest in being favorably
represented before the public. In the same
way, the great corporation which is in danger
of having its profits taxed away or its sales fall
off or its freedom impeded by legislative action
must have recourse to the public to combat successfully
these menaces. Behind these obvious
phenomena, however, lie three recent tendencies
of fundamental importance; first, the tendency
of small organizations to aggregate into groups
of such size and importance that the public
tends to regard them as semi-public services;
second, the increased readiness of the public,
due to the spread of literacy and democratic
forms of government, to feel that it is entitled
to its voice in the conduct of these large aggregations,
political, capitalist or labor, or whatever
they may be; third, the keen competition for public
favor due to modern methods of “selling.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">36</span>
An example of the first tendency—that is, the
tendency toward an increased public interest in
industrial activity, because of the increasing social
importance of industrial aggregations—may
be found in an article on “The Critic and the
Law” by Richard Washburn Child, published in
the <cite>Atlantic Monthly</cite> for May, 1906.</p>
<p>Mr. Child discusses in that article the right
of the critic to say uncomplimentary things about
matters of public interest. He points out the legal
basis for the right to criticize plays and novels.
Then he adds, “A vastly more important and
interesting theory, and one which must arise from
the present state and tendency of industrial conditions,
is whether the acts of men in commercial
activity may ever become so prominent and
so far reaching in their effect that they compel
a universal public interest and that public comment
is impliedly invited by reason of their conspicuous
and semi-public nature. It may be said
that at no time have private industries become
of such startling interest to the community at
large as at present in the United States.” How
far present-day tendencies have borne out Mr.
Child’s expectation of a growing and accepted
public interest in important industrial enterprises,
the reader can judge for himself.</p>
<p>With regard to the second tendency—the increased
readiness of the public to expect information<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">37</span>
about and to be heard on matters of political
and social interest—Ray Stannard Baker’s
description of the American journalist at the
Peace Conference of Versailles gives an excellent
picture. Mr. Baker tells what a shock American
newspaper men gave Old World diplomats
because at the Paris conference they “had come,
not begging, but demanding. They sat at every
doorway,” says Mr. Baker. “They looked over
every shoulder. They wanted every resolution
and report and wanted it immediately. I shall
never forget the delegation of American newspaper
men, led by John Nevin, I saw come striding
through that Holy of Holies, the French Foreign
Office, demanding that they be admitted to
the first general session of the Peace Conference.
They horrified the upholders of the old methods,
they desperately offended the ancient conventions,
they were as rough and direct as democracy
itself.”</p>
<p>And I shall never forget the same feeling
brought home to me, when Herbert Bayard
Swope of the <cite>New York World</cite>, in the press room
at the Crillon Hotel in Paris, led the discussion
of the newspaper representatives who forced the
conference to regard public opinion and admit
newspaper men, and give out communiques daily.</p>
<p>That the pressure of the public for admittance
to the mysteries of foreign affairs is being felt<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">38</span>
by the nations of the world may be seen from
the following dispatch published in the <cite>New York
Herald</cite> under the date line of the <cite>New York
Herald</cite> Bureau, Paris, January 17, 1922: “The
success of Lord Riddell in getting publicity for
British opinion during the Washington conference,
while the French viewpoint was not stressed,
may result in the appointment by the Poincaré
Government of a real propaganda agent to meet
the foreign newspaper men. The <cite>Eclair</cite> to-day
calls on the new premier to ‘find his own Lord
Riddell in the French diplomatic and parliamentary
world, who can give the world the
French interpretation.’” Walter Lippmann of
the <cite>New York World</cite> in his volume “Public
Opinion” declares that “the significant revolution
of modern times is not industrial or economic or
political, but the revolution which is taking place
in the art of creating consent among the governed.”
He goes on: “Within the life of the new
generation now in control of affairs, persuasion
has become a self-conscious art and a regular organ
of popular government. None of us begins
to understand the consequences, but it is no daring
prophecy to say that the knowledge of how
to create consent will alter every political premise.
Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily
in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the
only constants of our thinking have become variables.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">39</span>
It is no longer possible, for example, to
believe in the cardinal dogma of democracy, that
the knowledge needed for the management of
human affairs comes up spontaneously from the
human heart. Where we act on that theory we
expose ourselves to self-deception and to forms
of persuasion that we cannot verify. It has been
demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition,
conscience, or the accidents of casual opinion if
we are to deal with the world beyond our reach.”<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">2</a></p>
<p>In domestic affairs the importance of public
opinion not only in political decisions but in the
daily industrial life of the nation may be seen
from numerous incidents. In the <cite>New York
Times</cite> of Friday, May 20, 1922, I find almost a
column article with the heading “Hoover Prescribes
Publicity for Coal.” Among the improvements
in the coal industry generally, which Mr.
Hoover, according to the dispatch, anticipates
from widespread, accurate and informative publicity
about the industry itself, are the stimulation
of industrial consumers to more regular demands,
the ability to forecast more reliably the volume
of demand, the ability of the consumer to “form
some judgment as to the prices he should pay
for coal,” and the tendency to hold down over-expansion
in the industry by publication of the
ratio of production to capacity. Mr. Hoover<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">40</span>
concludes that really informative publicity “would
protect the great majority of operators from the
criticism that can only be properly leveled at the
minority.” Not so many years ago neither the
majority nor the minority in the coal industry
would have concerned itself about public criticism
of the industry.</p>
<p>From coal to jewelry seems rather a long step,
and yet in <cite>The Jeweler’s Circular</cite>, a trade magazine,
I find much comment upon the National
Jewelers’ Publicity Association. This association
began with the simple commercial ambition of
acquainting the public with “the value of jewelry
merchandise for gift purposes”; now it finds itself
engaged in eliminating from the public mind in
general, and from the minds of legislators in particular,
the impression that “the jewelry business
is absolutely useless and that any money spent
in a jewelry store is thrown away.”</p>
<p>Not so long ago it would scarcely have occurred
to any one in the jewelry industry that
there was any importance to be attached to the
opinion of the public on the essential or non-essential
character of the jewelry industry. To-day,
on the other hand, jewelers find it a profitable investment
to bring before the people the fact that
table silver is an essential in modern life, and
that without watches “the business and industries
of the nations would be a sad chaos.” With all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">41</span>
the other competing interests in the world to-day,
the question as to whether the public considers
the business of manufacturing and selling jewelry
essential or non-essential is a matter of the
first importance to the industry.</p>
<p>The best examples, of course, of the increasing
importance of public opinion to industries which
until recently scarcely concerned themselves with
the existence or non-existence of a public opinion
about them, are those industries which are
charged with a public interest.</p>
<p>In a long article about the attitude of the public
towards the railroads, the <cite>Railway Age</cite>
reaches the conclusion that the most important
problem which American railroads must solve is
“the problem of selling themselves to the public.”
Some public utilities maintain public relations departments,
whose function it is to interpret the organizations
to the public, as much as to interpret
the public to them. The significant thing, however,
is not the accepted importance of public
opinion in this or the other individual industry,
but the fact that public opinion is becoming cumulatively
more and more articulate and therefore
more important to industrial life as a whole.</p>
<p>The New York Central Railroad, for example,
maintains a Public Relations Department under
Pitt Hand, whose function it is to make it clear
to the public that the railroad is functioning<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">42</span>
efficiently to serve the public in every possible
way. This department studies the public and
tries to discover where the railroad’s service can
be mended or improved, or when wrong or harmful
impressions upon the public mind may be corrected.</p>
<p>This Public Relations Department finds it
profitable not only to bring to the attention of the
public the salient facts about its trains, its time
tables, and its actual traveling facilities, but also
to build up a broadly coöperative spirit that is
indirectly of great value to itself and benefit to
the public. It coöperates, for example, with such
movements as the Welcome Stranger Committee
of New York City in distributing literature to
travelers to assist them when they reach the city.
It coöperates with conventions, to the extent of
arranging special travel facilities. Such aids as
it affords to the directors of children’s camps at
the Grand Central Station are especially conspicuous
for their dramatic effect on the general
public.</p>
<p>Even a service which is in a large measure
non-competitive must continually “sell” itself to
the public, as evidenced by the strenuous efforts
of the New York subways and elevated lines to
keep themselves constantly before the people in
the most favorable possible aspect. The subways
strive in this regard to create a feeling of submissiveness<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">43</span>
toward inconveniences which are
more or less unavoidable, and they strive likewise
to fulfill such constructive programs as that of
extending traffic on less frequented lines.</p>
<p>Let us analyze, for example, the activities
of the health departments of such large cities
as New York. Of recent years, Health Commissioner
Royal S. Copeland and his statements
have formed a fairly regular part of the
day’s news. Publicity is, in fact, one of the
major functions of the Health Department, inasmuch
as its constructive work depends to a
considerable extent upon the public education it
provides in combating evils and in building up a
spirit of individual and group coöperation in all
health matters. When the Health Department
recognizes that such diseases as cancer, tuberculosis
and those following malnutrition are due
generally to ignorance or neglect and that amelioration
or prevention will be the result of knowledge,
it is the next logical step for this department
to devote strenuous efforts to its public
relations campaign. The department accordingly
does exactly this.</p>
<p>Even governments to-day act upon the principle
that it is not sufficient to govern their own
citizens well and to assure the people that they are
acting whole-heartedly in their behalf. They
understand that the public opinion of the entire<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">44</span>
world is important to their welfare. Thus Lithuania,
already noted, while it had the unbounded
love and support of its own people, was nevertheless
in danger of extinction because it was unknown
outside of the immediate boundaries of
those nations which had a personal interest in it.
Lithuania was wanted by Poland; it was wanted
by Russia. It was ignored by other nations.
Therefore, through the aid of a public relations
expert, Lithuania issued pamphlets, it paraded,
it figured in pictures and motion pictures and
developed a favorable sentiment throughout the
world that in the end gave Lithuania its freedom.</p>
<p>In industry and business, of course, there is
another consideration of first-rate importance,
besides the danger of interference by the public
in the conduct of the industry—the increasing intensity
of competition. Business and sales are no
longer to be had, if ever they were to be had
for the asking. It must be clear to any one who
has looked through the mass of advertising in
street cars, subways, newspapers and magazines,
and the other avenues of approach to the public,
that products and services press hard upon one
another in the effort to focus public attention on
their offerings and to induce favorable action.</p>
<p>The keen competition in the selling of products
for public favor makes it imperative that the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">45</span>
seller consider other things than merely his product
in trying to build up a favorable public reaction.
He must either himself appraise the
public mind and his relation to it or he must
engage the services of an expert who can aid
him to do this. He may to-day consider, for
instance, in his sales campaign, not only the
quality of his soap but the working conditions,
the hours of labor, even the living conditions of
the men who make it.</p>
<p>The public relations counsel must advise him
on these factors as well as on their presentation
to the public most interested in them.</p>
<p>In this state of affairs it is not at all surprising
that industrial leaders should give the closest
attention to public relations in both the broadest
and the most practical concept of the term.</p>
<p>Large industrial groups, in their associations,
have assigned a definite place to public relations
bureaus.</p>
<p>The Trade Association Executives in New
York, an association of individual executives of
state, territorial or national trade associations,
such as the Allied Wall Paper Industry, the
American Hardware Manufacturers’ Association,
the American Protective Tariff League, the
Atlantic Coast Shipbuilders’ Association, the
National Association of Credit Men, the Silk
Association of America and some seventy-four<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">46</span>
others, includes among its associations’ functions
such activities as the following: coöperative advertising;
adjustments and collections; cost accounting;
a credit bureau; distribution and new
markets; educational, standardization and research
work; exhibits; a foreign trade bureau;
house organs; general publicity; an industrial
bureau; legislative work; legal aid; market reports;
statistics; a traffic department; Washington
representation; arbitration. It is noteworthy
that forty of these associations have incorporated
public relations with general publicity as a definite
part of their program in furthering the interests
of their organizations.</p>
<p>The American Telephone and Telegraph Company
devotes effort to studying its public relations
problems, not only to increase its volume of
business, but also to create a coöperative spirit
between itself and the public. The work of the
telephone company’s operators, statistics, calls,
lineage, installations are given to the public in
various forms. During the war and for a period
afterwards its main problem was that of satisfying
the public that its service was necessarily
below standard because of the peculiar national
conditions. The public, in response to the efforts
of the company, which were analogous to a gracious
personal apology, accepted more or less irksome
conditions as a matter of course. Had the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">47</span>
company not cared about the public, the public
would undoubtedly have been unpleasantly insistent
upon a maintenance of the pre-war standards
of service.</p>
<p>Americans were once wont to jest about the
dependence of France and Switzerland upon the
tourist trade. To-day we see American cities
competing, as part of their public relations programs,
for conventions, fairs and conferences.
The <cite>New York Times</cite> printed some time ago an
address by the governor of Nebraska, in which
he told a group of advertising men that publicity
had made Nebraska prosper.</p>
<p>The <cite>New York Herald</cite> carried an editorial
recently, entitled, “It pays a state to advertise,”
centering about the campaign of the state of
Vermont to present itself favorably to public
attention. According to the editorial, the state
publishes a magazine, <cite>The Vermonter</cite>, an attractive
publication filled with interesting illustrations
and well-written text. It is devoted exclusively
to revealing in detail the industrial and
agricultural resources of the state and to presenting
Vermont’s strikingly beautiful scenic
attractions for the summer visitor. Similar instances
of elaborate efforts, taking the form of
action or the printed word, either to obtain public
attention or to obtain a favorable attitude from
the public for individual industries and groups<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">48</span>
of industries, will come readily to the reader’s
mind.</p>
<p>Without attempting to take too seriously an
amusing story printed in a recent issue of a New
York newspaper, leaders in movements and industries
of modern life will be inclined to agree
with the protagonist of publicity spoken of. According
to the story, a man set out to prove to
another that it was not so much what a man
did as the way it was heralded which insures
his place in history. He cited Barbara Frietchie,
Evangeline, John Smith and a half dozen others
as instances to prove that they are remembered
not for what they did, but because they had excellent
counsel on their public relations.</p>
<p>“‘Very good,’ agreed the friend. ‘But show
me a case where a person who has really done a
big thing has been overlooked.’</p>
<p>“‘You know Paul Revere, of course,’ he
said. ‘But tell me the names of the two other
fellows who rode that night to rouse the countryside
with the news that the British were coming.’</p>
<p>“‘Never heard of them,’ was the answer.</p>
<p>“‘There were three waiting to see the signal
hung in the tower of the Old North Church,’ he
said. ‘Every one of them was mounted and
spurred, just as Mr. Longfellow described Paul
Revere. They all got the signal. They all rode<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">49</span>
and waked the farmers, spreading the warning.
Afterward one of them was an officer in Washington’s
army, another became governor of one
of the States. Not one in twenty thousand Americans
ever heard the names of the other two, and
there is hardly a person in America who does not
know all about Revere.’</p>
<p>“‘Did Revere make history or did Longfellow?’”</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">50</span></p>
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="CHAPTER_I_III" class="vspace">CHAPTER III<br />
<span class="subhead">THE FUNCTION OF A SPECIAL PLEADER</span></h2>
</div>
<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">Public</span> opinion has entered life at many
points as a decisive factor. Men and movements
whose interests will be affected by the
attitude of the public are taking pains to have
themselves represented in the court of public
opinion by the most skillful counselors they can
obtain. The business of the public relations
counsel is somewhat like the business of the
attorney—to advise his client and to litigate his
causes for him.</p>
<p>While the special pleader in law, the lawyer
for the defense, has always been accorded a
formal hearing by judge and jury, this has not
been the case before the court of public opinion.
Here mob psychology, the intolerance of human
society for a dissenting point of view, have made
it difficult and often dangerous for a man to plead
for a new or unpopular cause.</p>
<p><cite>The Fourth Estate</cite>, a newspaper for the
makers of newspapers, says: “‘Counsel on public
relations’ and ‘director of public relations’ are
two terms that are being encountered more often<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">51</span>
every day. There is a familiar tinge to them,
in a way, but in justice to the men who bear these
titles and to the concerns which employ them, it
should be said that they are—or can be—dissociated
from the old idea of ‘publicity man.’ The
very fact that many of the largest corporations
in the country are recognizing the need of maintaining
right relationships with the public is alone
important enough to assure a fair and even favorable
hearing for their public relations departments.</p>
<p>“Whether a man is really entitled to the appellation
‘counsel on public relations’ or whether he
should merely be called ‘publicity man’ rests entirely
with the individual and the firm that employs
him. As we see it, a man who is really
counsel or director of public relations has one
of the most important jobs on the roster of any
concern; but a man who merely represents the
old idea of getting something for nothing from
publishers is about <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">passé</i>....</p>
<p>“So there is made plain the difference between
two terms, the old and the new, both of which
have occasioned much natural curiosity among
newspaper men. When Napoleon said, ‘Circumstance?
I make circumstance,’ he expressed very
nearly the spirit of the public relations counsel’s
work. So long as this new professional branch
live up to the possibilities that their title suggests,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">52</span>
they are bound to accomplish general constructive
good. Maybe they, at last, will make
us forget that ingratiating though insidious individual,
the publicity man.”</p>
<p>As indicative perhaps of the growing importance
of the profession, an article by Mary Swain
Routzahn, in charge of the Department of Surveys
and Exhibits of the Russell Sage Foundation,
on “Woman’s Chance as Publicity Specialist”
published in the <cite>New York Globe</cite> of August
2nd, 1921, discusses the profession as one of recent
development, but of such importance as to
deserve the serious consideration of women who
are interested in making a professional career for
themselves.</p>
<p>The public relations counsel is first of all a
student. His field of study is the public mind.
His text books for this study are the facts of
life; the articles printed in newspapers and magazines,
the advertisements that are inserted in
publications, the billboards that line the streets,
the railroads and the highways, the speeches that
are delivered in legislative chambers, the sermons
issuing from pulpits, anecdotes related in smoking
rooms, the gossip of Wall Street, the patter
of the theater and the conversation of other men
who, like him, are interpreters and must listen
for the clear or obscure enunciations of the
public.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">53</span>
He brings the talent of his intuitive understanding
to the aid of his practical and psychological
tests and surveys. But he is not only a
student. He is a practitioner with a wide range
of instruments and a definite technique for their
use.</p>
<p>First of all, there are the circumstances and
events he helps to create. After that there are
the instruments by which he broadcasts facts and
ideas to the public; advertising, motion pictures,
circular letters, booklets, handbills, speeches,
meetings, parades, news articles, magazine articles
and whatever other mediums there are
through which public attention is reached and
influenced.</p>
<p>Now sensitiveness to the state of mind of the
public is a difficult thing to achieve or maintain.
Any man can tell you with more or less accuracy
and clearness his own reactions on any particular
issue. But few men have the time or the interest
or the training to develop a sense of what other
persons think or feel about the same issue. In
his own profession the skilled practitioner is sensitive
and understanding. The lawyer can tell
what argument will appeal to court or jury. The
salesman can tell what points to stress to his
prospective buyers. The politician can tell what
to emphasize to his audience, but the ability to
estimate group reactions on a large scale over<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">54</span>
a wide geographic and psychological area is a
specialized ability which must be developed with
the same painstaking self-criticism and with the
same dependence on experience that are required
for the development of the clinical sense in the
doctor or surgeon.</p>
<p>Of course, the public relations counsel employs
all those practical means of gauging the public
mind which modern advertising has developed
and uses. He employs the research campaign,
the symposium, the survey of a particular group
or of a particular state of mind as a further aid,
and confirmation or modification of his own appraisals
and judgments.</p>
<p>Charles J. Rosebault, the author of an article
in the <cite>New York Times</cite> recently, headed “Men
Who Wield the Spotlight,” remarks that the
competent public relations counsel has generally
had some newspaper training and that the value
of this training “is a keen sense of the likes and
dislikes of what we call the public—that is, the
average of men and women. The needle of the
compass is no more sensitive to direction, nor
the mercury in the thermometer to variations of
heat and cold than is this expert to the influence
of publicity upon the mind and emotions of the
man in the street.”</p>
<p>It is not surprising that the growing interest
of the public in men and movements should have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">55</span>
led to the spontaneous creation of the new profession.</p>
<p>We have presented here, in very broad outline,
a picture of the fundamental work of the public
relations counsel and of the fundamental conditions
which have produced him. On the one
hand, a complex environment of which only small,
disconnected portions are available to different
persons; on the other hand, the great and increasing
importance either of making one’s case accessible
to the public mind or of determining whether
that case will impinge favorably or unfavorably
upon the public mind—these two conditions, taken
together, have resulted inevitably in the public
relations counsel. Mr. Lippmann finds in these
facts the underlying reason for the existence of
what he calls the “press agent.” “The enormous
discretion,” he says, “as to what facts and what
impressions shall be reported is steadily convincing
every organized group of people that, whether
it wishes to secure publicity or to avoid it, the
exercise of discretion cannot be left to the
reporter. It is safer to hire a press agent
who stands between the group and the newspapers.”<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">3</a></p>
<p>It is clear that the popular impression of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">56</span>
scope and functions of the counsel on public relations
must be radically revised if any accurate
picture of the profession is to be looked for. The
public relations counsel is the lineal descendant,
to be sure, of the circus advance-man and of
the semi-journalist promoter of small-part actresses.
The economic conditions which have
produced him, however, and made his profession
the important one it is to-day, have in themselves
materially changed the character of his work.</p>
<p>His primary function now is not to bring his
clients by chance to the public’s attention, nor to
extricate them from difficulties into which they
have already drifted, but to advise his clients
how positive results can be accomplished in the
field of public relations and to keep them from
drifting inadvertently into unfortunate or harmful
situations. The public relations counsel will
find that the conditions under which his client
operates, be it a government, a manufacturer of
food products or a railroad system, are constantly
changing and that he must advise modifications
in policy in accordance with such changes in the
public point of view. As such, the public relations
counsel must be alive to the events of the
day—not only the events that are printed but
the events which are forming hour by hour, as
reported in the words that are spoken on the
street, in the smoking cars, in the school room,
or expressed in any of the other forms of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">57</span>
thought communication that make up public
opinion.</p>
<p>So long as the press remains the greatest single
medium for reaching the public mind, the work
of the public relations counsel will necessarily
have close contacts with the work of the journalist.
He transmits his ideas, however, through
all those mediums which help to build public
opinion—the radio, the lecture platform, advertising,
the stage, the motion picture, the mails.
On the other hand, he is becoming to-day as much
of an adviser on actions as he is the communicator
of these actions to the public.</p>
<p>The public relations consultant is ideally a constructive
force in the community. The results
of his work are often accelerated interest in matters
of value and importance to the social, economic
or political life of the community.</p>
<p>The public relations counsel is the pleader to
the public of a point of view. He acts in this
capacity as a consultant both in interpreting the
public to his client and in helping to interpret his
client to the public. He helps to mould the action
of his client as well as to mould public opinion.</p>
<p>His profession is in a state of evolution. His
future must depend as much upon the growing
realization by the public of the responsibility to
the public of individuals, institutions and organizations
as upon the public relations counsel’s own
realization of the importance of his work.</p>
<hr />
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="PART_II">PART II<br />
<span class="subhead"><span class="smcap">The Group and Herd</span></span></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">61</span></p>
<h2 id="CHAPTER_II_I" class="vspace">CHAPTER I<br />
<span class="subhead">WHAT CONSTITUTES PUBLIC OPINION?</span></h2>
<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">The</span> character and origins of public opinion,
the factors that make up the individual
mind and the group mind must be understood if
the profession of public relations counsel is to
be intelligently practiced and its functions and
possibilities accurately estimated. Society must
understand the fundamental character of the
work he is doing, if for no other reason than its
own welfare.</p>
<p>The public relations counsel works with that
vague, little-understood, indefinite material called
public opinion.</p>
<p>Public opinion is a term describing an ill-defined,
mercurial and changeable group of individual
judgments. Public opinion is the aggregate
result of individual opinions—now uniform,
now conflicting—of the men and women who
make up society or any group of society. In
order to understand public opinion, one must go
back to the individual who makes up the group.</p>
<p>The mental equipment of the average individual
consists of a mass of judgments on most of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">62</span>
the subjects which touch his daily physical or
mental life. These judgments are the tools of
his daily being and yet they are his judgments,
not on a basis of research and logical deduction,
but for the most part dogmatic expressions accepted
on the authority of his parents, his teachers,
his church, and of his social, his economic
and other leaders.</p>
<p>The public relations counsel must understand
the social implications of an individual’s thoughts
and actions. Is it, for example, purely an accident
that a man belongs to one church rather than
another or to any church at all? Is it an accident
that makes Boston women prefer brown
eggs and New York women white eggs? What
are the factors that work in favor of conversion
of a man from one political party to another
or from one type of food to another?</p>
<p>Why do certain communities resist the prohibition
law—why do others abide by it? Why
is it difficult to start a new party movement—or
to fight cancer? Why is it difficult to fight
for sex education? Why does the free trader
denounce protectionism, and vice versa?</p>
<p>If we had to form our own judgments on every
matter, we should all have to find out many things
for ourselves which we now take for granted.
We should not cook our food or live in houses—in
fact, we should revert to primitive living.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">63</span>
The public relations counsel must deal with the
fact that persons who have little knowledge of
a subject almost invariably form definite and
positive judgments upon that subject.</p>
<p>“If we examine the mental furniture of the
average man,” says William Trotter, the author
of a comprehensive study of the social psychology
of the individual,<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">4</a> “we shall find it made up of
a vast number of judgments of a very precise
kind upon subjects of very great variety, complexity,
and difficulty. He will have fairly settled
views upon the origin and nature of the universe,
and upon what he will probably call its meaning;
he will have conclusions as to what is to happen
to him at death and after, as to what is and what
should be the basis of conduct. He will know
how the country should be governed, and why
it is going to the dogs, why this piece of legislation
is good and that bad. He will have strong
views upon military and naval strategy, the principles
of taxation, the use of alcohol and vaccination,
the treatment of influenza, the prevention
of hydrophobia, upon municipal trading, the
teaching of Greek, upon what is permissible in
art, satisfactory in literature, and hopeful in science.</p>
<p>“The bulk of such opinions must necessarily<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">64</span>
be without rational basis, since many of them
are concerned with problems admitted by the expert
to be still unsolved, while as to the rest it
is clear that the training and experience of no
average man can qualify him to have any opinion
upon them at all. The rational method adequately
used would have told him that on the
great majority of these questions there could be
for him but one attitude—that of suspended
judgment.”</p>
<p>The reader will recall from his own experience
an almost infinite number of instances in which
the amateur has been fully prepared to deliver
expert advice and to give final judgment in matters
upon which his ignorance is patent to every
one except himself.</p>
<p>In the Middle Ages, society was convinced that
there were witches. People were so positive that
they burned people whom they suspected of witchcraft.
To-day there is an equal number of people
who believe just as firmly, one way or the
other, about spiritualism and spirits. They do
not burn mediums. But people who have made
no research of the subject pass strong denunciatory
judgments. Others, no better informed, consider
mediums divinely inspired. Not so long
ago every intelligent man knew that the world
was flat. To-day the average man has a belief
just as firm and unknowing in the mysterious<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">65</span>
force which he has heard called atomic energy.</p>
<p>It is axiomatic that men who know little are
often intolerant of a point of view that is contrary
to their own. The bitterness that has been
brought about by arguments on public questions
is proverbial. Lovers have been parted by bitter
quarrels on theories of pacificism or militarism;
and when an argument upon an abstract question
engages opponents they often desert the main line
of argument in order to abuse each other.</p>
<p>How often this is true can be seen from the
congressional records of controversies in which
the personal attack supersedes logic. In a recent
fight against the proposed tariff measures, a
protagonist of protection published long vindictive
statements, in which he tried to confound
the character and the disinterestedness of his
opponents. Logically his discussion should have
been based only upon the sound economic, social
and political value of the bill as presented.</p>
<p>A hundred leading American bankers, business
men, professional men and economists united in
public disapproval of this plan. They stated their
opinion that the “American” Valuation Plan, as
it was called, would endanger the prosperity of
the country, that it would be inimical to our
foreign relations and that it would injure the
welfare of every country with whom our commercial
and industrial ties were at all close.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">66</span>
This group was a broadly representative group
of men and women, yet the chairman of the
Ways and Means Committee accused all these
people of acting upon motives of personal gain
and lack of patriotism. Prejudice superseded
logic.</p>
<p>Intolerance is almost inevitably accompanied
by a natural and true inability to comprehend or
make allowance for opposite points of view. The
skilled scientist who may be receptive to any
promising suggestion in his own field may outside
of his own field be found quite unwilling
to make any attempt at understanding a point
of view contrary to his own. In politics, for
example, his understanding of the problem may
be fragmentary, yet he will enter excitedly into
discussions on bonus and ship subsidy, of which
he has made no study. We find here with significant
uniformity what one psychologist has
called “logic-proof compartments.”</p>
<p>The logic-proof compartment has always been
with us. Scientists have lost their lives through
refusing to see flaws in their theories. Intelligent
mothers give food to their babies that they
would manifestly forbid other mothers to give
their children. Especially significant is the tendency
of races to maintain religious beliefs and
customs long after these have lost their meaning.
Dietary laws, hygienic laws, even laws based<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">67</span>
upon geographical conditions that have been
changed for more than a thousand years are still
maintained in the logic-proof compartment of
dogmatic adherence. There is a story that certain
missionaries give money to heathen at the
time of conversion and that the heathen, having
got their money, bathe away their conversion in
sacred streams.</p>
<p>The characteristic of the human mind to adhere
to its beliefs is excellently summarized in
the volume by Mr. Trotter to which reference has
been made before. “It is clear,” says Mr. Trotter,<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">5</a>
“at the outset that these beliefs are invariably
regarded as rational and defended as such,
while the position of one who holds contrary
views is held to be obviously unreasonable.</p>
<p>“The religious man accuses the atheist of being
shallow and irrational, and is met by a similar
reply. To the Conservative the amazing
thing about the Liberal is his incapacity to see
reason and accept the only possible solution of
public problems. Examination reveals the fact
that the differences are not due to the commission
of the mere mechanical fallacies of logic, since
these are easily avoided, even by the politician,
and since there is no reason to believe that one
party in such controversies is less logical than<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">68</span>
the other. The difference is due rather to the
fundamental assumptions of the antagonists being
hostile, and these assumptions are derived
from herd-suggestions; to the Liberal certain
basal conceptions have acquired the quality of instinctive
truth, have become <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">a priori</i> syntheses,
because of the accumulated suggestions to which
he has been exposed; and a similar explanation
applies to the atheist, the Christian, and the Conservative.
Each, it is important to remember,
finds in consequence the rationality of his position
flawless and is quite incapable of detecting
in it the fallacies which are obvious to his opponent,
to whom that particular series of assumptions
has not been rendered acceptable by herd
suggestion.”</p>
<p>Thus the public relations counsel has to consider
the <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">a priori</i> judgment of any public he deals
with before counseling any step that would modify
those things in which the public has an established
belief.</p>
<p>It is seldom effective to call names or to attempt
to discredit the beliefs themselves. The
counsel on public relations, after examination of
the sources of established beliefs, must either discredit
the old authorities or create new authorities
by making articulate a mass opinion against
the old belief or in favor of the new.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">69</span></p>
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="CHAPTER_II_II" class="vspace">CHAPTER II<br />
<span class="subhead">IS PUBLIC OPINION STUBBORN OR MALLEABLE?</span></h2>
</div>
<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">There</span> is a divergence of opinion as to
whether the public mind is malleable or
stubborn—whether it is a passive or an active
element. On the one hand is the profound belief
that “you can’t change human nature.” On
the other hand is the equally firm assurance that
certain well-defined institutions modify and alter
public opinion.</p>
<p>There is a uniformity of opinion in this country
upon many issues. When this uniformity
accords with our own beliefs we call it an expression
of the public conscience. When, however,
it runs contrary to our beliefs we call it
the regimentation of the public mind and are inclined
to ascribe it to insidious propaganda.</p>
<p>Uniformity is, in fact, largely natural and only
partly artificial. Public opinion may be as much
the producer of “insidious propaganda” as its
product. Naturally enough, where broad ideas
are involved, criticisms of the state of the public’s
mind and of its origin come most frequently from
groups that are out of sympathy with the accepted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">70</span>
point of view. They find the public unreceptive
to their point of view, and justly or
unjustly they attribute this to the influence of antagonistic
interests upon the public mind.</p>
<p>These groups see the press, the lecture platform,
the schools, the advertisements, the
churches, the radio, the motion picture screen,
the magazines daily reaching millions. They see
that the preponderant point of view in most, if
not all, these institutions conforms to the preponderant
state of mind of the public.</p>
<p>They argue from the one to the other and
reach their conclusions without much difficulty.
They do not stop to think that agreement in point
of view between the public and these institutions
may often be the result of the control exercised
by the public mind over these institutions.</p>
<p>Many outside forces, however, do go to influence
public opinion. The most obvious of these
forces are parental influence, the school room,
the press, motion pictures, advertising, magazines,
lectures, the church, the radio.</p>
<p>To answer the question as to the stubbornness
or malleability of the public, let us analyze the
press in its relation to public opinion, since the
press stands preëminent among the various institutions
which are commonly designated as
leaders or moulders of the public mind. By
the press, in this instance, I mean the daily<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">71</span>
press. Americans are a newspaper-reading public.
They have become accustomed to look to
their morning and evening papers for the news
of the world and for the opinions of their leaders.
And while the individual newspaper reader does
not give a very considerable portion of his day
to this occupation, many persons find time to read
more than one newspaper every day.</p>
<p>It is not surprising that the man who is outside
the current of prevailing public opinion
should regard the daily press as a coercive force.</p>
<p>Discussions of the public’s reaction to the press
are two-sided, just as are discussions of the influence
of the pulpit or other forces. Some
authorities hold that the public mind is stubborn
in regard to the press and that the press has little
influence upon it. There are graphic instances of
the stubbornness of the public point of view. A
most interesting example is the reëlection of
Mayor Hylan of New York by an overwhelming
majority in the face of the opposition of all but
two of the metropolitan dailies. It is also noteworthy
that in 1909, Gaynor was elected Mayor
of New York with every paper except one opposing
his candidacy. Likewise, Mayor Mitchel of
New York was defeated for reëlection in 1917,
although all the New York papers except two
Hearst papers and the <cite>New York Call</cite> supported
him. In Boston, in a recent election, a man was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">72</span>
elected as mayor who had been convicted of a
penal offense, and elected in the face of the practically
united opposition of all the newspapers of
that city. How would such authors as Everett
Dean Martin, Walter Lippmann and Upton Sinclair
explain these incidents? How, on the theory
of the regimentation of the public mind by
the daily press, can such thinkers explain the
sharpness with which the public sometimes rejects
the advocacies of a united press? These instances
are not frequent; but they show that
other influences beside the press enter into the
making of a public opinion and that these forces
must never be disregarded in the estimate of the
quality and stability of a prevalent public opinion.</p>
<p>Francis E. Leupp, writing in the <cite>Atlantic
Monthly</cite> for February, 1910, on “The Waning
Power of the Press,” remarks that Mayor Gaynor’s
comments shortly after his election in 1909
“led up to the conclusion that in our common sense
generation nobody cares what the newspapers
say.” Mr. Leupp continues: “Unflattering as
such a verdict may be, probably the majority of
a community if polled as a jury would concur
in it. The airy dismissal of some proposition
as ‘mere newspaper talk’ is heard at every social
gathering until one who is brought up to regard
the press as a mighty factor in modern civilization<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">73</span>
is tempted to wonder whether it has actually
lost the power it used to wield among us.”</p>
<p>And H. L. Mencken, writing in the same
magazine for March, 1914, declares that “one
of the principal marks of an educated man, indeed,
is the fact that he does <em>not</em> take his opinions
from newspapers—not, at any rate, from the militant,
crusading newspapers. On the contrary,
his attitude toward them is almost always one of
frank cynicism, with indifference as its mildest
form and contempt as its commonest. He knows
that they are constantly falling into false reasoning
about the things within his personal knowledge,—that
is, within the narrow circle of his
special education,—and so he assumes that they
make the same, or even worse, errors about other
things, whether intellectual or moral. This assumption,
it may be said at once, is quite justified
by the facts.”</p>
<p>The second point of view holds that the daily
press and the other leading forces merely accept,
reflect and intensify established public opinion
and are, therefore, responsible for the uniformity
of public reaction. A vivid statement of the point
of view of the man who typifies this group is
found in Everett Dean Martin’s volume on
“The Behavior of Crowds.” He says:<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">6</a> “The
modern man has in the printing press a wonderfully<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">74</span>
effective means for perpetuating crowd-movements
and keeping great masses of people
constantly under the sway of certain crowd-ideas.
Every crowd-group has its magazines,
press agents, and special ‘literature’ with which
it continually harangues its members and possible
converts. Many books, and especially certain
works of fiction of the ‘best seller’ type, are
clearly reading mob phenomena.”</p>
<p>There is a third group which perhaps comes
nearer the truth, which holds that the press, just
as other mediums of education or dissemination,
brings about a very definite change in public
opinion. A most graphic illustration of what
such mediums can do to change opinions upon
fundamental and important matters is the woman
suffrage question and its victory over established
points of view. The press, the pulpit, the lecture
platform, the motion pictures and the other mediums
for reaching the public brought about a
complete popular conversion. Other examples of
the change that may be brought about in public
opinion in this way, by such institutions of
authority, is the present attitude towards birth
control and towards health education.</p>
<p>Naturally the press, like other institutions
which present facts or opinions, is restricted,
often unconsciously, sometimes consciously, by
various controlling conditions. Certain people<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">75</span>
talk of the censorship enacted by the prejudices
and predispositions of the public itself. Some,
such as Upton Sinclair, ascribe to the advertisers
a conscious and powerful control of publications.
Others, like Walter Lippmann, find that an effective
barrier between the public and the event exists
in the powerful influence which, he says, is
exerted in certain cases on the press by the so-called
quality public which the newspapers’ advertisers
wish to reach and among whom the
newspapers must circulate if the advertising is
to be successful. Mr. Lippmann observes that
although such a restriction may exist, much of
what may be attributed to censorship in the newspaper,
often is actually inadequate presentation
of the events it seeks to describe.</p>
<p>On this point he says:<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">7</a> “It follows that in
the reporting of strikes, the easiest way is to let
the news be uncovered by the overt act, and to
describe the event as the story of interference
with the reader’s life. This is where his attention
is first aroused and his interest most easily enlisted.
A great deal, I think myself, of the crucial
part of what looks to the worker and the reformer
as deliberate misrepresentation on the part of
newspapers, is the direct outcome of a practical
difficulty in uncovering the news, and the emotional
difficulty of making distinct facts interesting<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">76</span>
unless, as Emerson says, we can ‘perceive’
(them) and can ‘set about translating (them)
at once into parallel facts.’”</p>
<p>In view then of the possibility of a malleable
public opinion the counsel on public relations, desiring
to obtain a hearing for any given cause,
simply utilizes existent channels to obtain expression
for the point of view he represents. How
this is done will be considered later.</p>
<p>Because of the importance of channels of
thought communication, it is vital for the public
relations counsel to study carefully the relationship
between public opinion and the organs that
maintain it or that influence it to change. We
shall look into this interaction and its effect in
the next chapter.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">77</span></p>
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="CHAPTER_II_III" class="vspace">CHAPTER III<br />
<span class="subhead">THE INTERACTION OF PUBLIC OPINION WITH THE
FORCES THAT HELP TO MAKE IT</span></h2>
</div>
<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">The</span> public and the press, or for that matter,
the public and any force that modifies public
opinion, interact. Action and interaction are
continually going on between the forces projected
out to the public and the public itself.
The public relations counsel must understand this
fact in its broadest and most detailed implications.
He must understand not only what these various
forces are, but he must be able to evaluate their
relative powers with fair accuracy. Let us consider
again the case of a newspaper, as representative
of other mediums of communication.</p>
<p>“We print,” says the <cite>New York Times</cite>, “all the
news that’s fit to print.” Immediately the question
arises (as Elmer Davis, the historian of the
<cite>Times</cite> tells us that it did when the motto was
first adopted) what news <em>is</em> fit to print? By what
standard is the editorial decision reached which
includes one kind of news and excludes another
kind? The <cite>Times</cite> itself has not been, in its long<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">78</span>
and conspicuously successful career, entirely free
from difficulties on this point.</p>
<p>Thus in “The History of The <cite>New York
Times</cite>,” Mr. Davis feels the need for justifying
the extent to which that paper featured Theodore
Tilton’s action against the Rev. Henry
Ward Beecher for alienation of Mrs. Tilton’s
affections and his conduct with her. Mr. Davis
says (pages 124-125): “No doubt a good many
readers of the <cite>Times</cite> thought that the paper
was giving an undue amount of space to this
chronicle of sin and suffering. Those complaints
come in often enough even in these days from
readers who appreciate the paper’s general reluctance
to display news of this sort, and wonder
why a good general rule should occasionally be
violated. But there was a reason in the Beecher
case, as there has usually been a reason in similar
affairs since. Dr. Beecher was one of the most
prominent clergymen in the country; there was a
natural curiosity as to whether he was practicing
what he preached. One of the counsel at the
trial declared that ‘all Christendom was hanging
on its outcome.’ Full reporting of its course was
not a mere pandering to vulgar curiosity, but a
recognition of the value of the case as news.”</p>
<p>The simple fact that such a slogan can exist
and be accepted is for our purpose an important
point. Somewhere there must be a standard to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">79</span>
which the editors of the <cite>Times</cite> can conform, as
well as a large clientele of constant readers to
whom that standard is satisfactory. “Fit” must
be defined by the editors of the <cite>Times</cite> in a way
which meets with the approval of enough persons
to enable the paper to maintain its reading public.
As soon, however, as the definition is attempted,
difficulties arise.</p>
<p>Professor W. G. Bleyer, in an article in his
book on journalism, first stresses the importance
of completeness in the news columns of a paper,
then goes on to say that “the only important
limitations to completeness are those imposed by
the commonly accepted ideas of decency embodied
in the words, ‘All the news that’s fit to print’
and by the rights of privacy. Carefully edited
newspapers discriminate between what the public
is entitled to know and what an individual has
a right to keep private.”</p>
<p>On the other hand, when Professor Bleyer
attempts to define what news is fit to print and
what the public is entitled to know, he discusses
generalizations capable of wide and frequently
inconsistent interpretation. “News,” says he, “is
anything timely which is significant to newspaper
readers in their relations to the community, the
state and the nation.”</p>
<p>Who is to determine what is significant and
what is not? Who is to decide which of the individual’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">80</span>
relations to the community are safeguarded
by his right of privacy and which are
not? Such a definition tells us nothing more
definite than does the slogan which it attempts
to define. We must look further for a standard
by which these definitions are applied. There
must be a consensus of public opinion on which
the newspaper falls back for its standards.</p>
<p>The truth is that while it appears to be forming
the public opinion on fundamental matters,
the press is often conforming to it.</p>
<p>It is the office of the public relations counsel
to determine the interaction between the public,
and the press and the other mediums affecting
public opinion. It is as important to conform
to the standards of the organ which projects
ideas as it is to present to this organ such ideas
as will conform to the fundamental understanding
and appreciation of the public to which they
are ultimately to appeal. There is as much truth
in the proposition that the public leads institutions
as in the contrary proposition that the institutions
lead the public.</p>
<p>As an illustration of the manner in which
newspapers are inclined to accept the judgments
of their readers in presenting material to them,
we have this anecdote which Rollo Ogden tells
in the <cite>Atlantic Monthly</cite> for July, 1906, about a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">81</span>
letter which Wendell Phillips wished to have published
in a Boston paper.</p>
<p>“The editor read it over, and said, ‘Mr. Phillips,
that is a very good and interesting letter,
and I shall be glad to publish it; but I wish you
would consent to strike out the last paragraph.’</p>
<p>“‘Why,’ said Phillips, ‘that paragraph is the
precise thing for which I wrote the whole letter.
Without that it would be pointless.’</p>
<p>“‘Oh, I see that,’ replied the editor; ‘and what
you say is perfectly true! I fully agree with it
all myself. Yet it is one of those things which
it will not do to say publicly. However, if you
insist upon it, I will publish it as it stands.’</p>
<p>“It was published the next morning, and along
with it a short editorial reference to it, saying
that a letter from Mr. Phillips would be found
in another column, and that it was extraordinary
that so keen a mind as his should have fallen into
the palpable absurdity contained in the last paragraph.”</p>
<p>Recognition of this fact comes from a number
of different sources. H. L. Mencken recognizes
that the public runs the press as much as the press
runs the public.</p>
<p>“The primary aim of all of them,” says
Mr. Mencken,<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">8</a> “not less when they play the secular<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">82</span>
Iokanaan than when they play the mere newsmonger,
was to please the crowd, and to give a
good show; and the way they set about giving
that good show was by first selecting a deserving
victim, and then putting him magnificently to the
torture.</p>
<p>“This was their method when they were performing
for their own profit only, when their
one motive was to make the public read their
paper; but it was still their motive when they
were battling bravely and unselfishly for the public
good, and so discharging the highest duty of
their profession.”</p>
<p>There are interesting, if somewhat obscure,
examples of the complementary working of various
forces. In the field of the motion pictures,
for example, the producers, the actors and the
press, in their support, have continually waged
a battle against censorship. Undoubtedly censorship
of the motion pictures is in its practical workings
an economic and artistic handicap. Censorship,
however, will continue in spite of the producers
as long as there is a willingness on the
part of the public to accept this censorship. The
public, on the whole, has refused to join the fight
against censorship, because there is a more or less
articulate belief that children, if not women,
should be protected from seeing shocking sights,
such as murders visibly enacted, the taking of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">83</span>
drugs, immoralities and other acts which might
offend or suggest harmful imitation.</p>
<p>“Damaged Goods,” before its presentation to
America in 1913, was analyzed by the public relations
counsel, who helped to produce the play.
He recognized that unless that part of the public
sentiment which believed in education and truth
could be lifted from that part of public opinion
which condemned the mentioning of sex matters,
“Damaged Goods” would fail. The producers,
therefore, did not try to educate the public by
presenting this play as such, but allowed group
leaders and groups interested in education to
come to the support of Brieux’s drama and, in a
sense, to sponsor the production.</p>
<p>Proof that the public and the institutions that
make public opinion interact is shown in instances
in which books were stifled because of popular
disapproval at one time and then brought forward
by popular demand at a later time when public
opinion had altered. Religious and very early
scientific works are among such books.</p>
<p>A more recent instance is the announcement
made by <cite>Judge</cite>, a weekly magazine, that it would
support the fight for light wine and beer. <cite>Judge</cite>
took this stand because it believed in the principle
of personal freedom and also because it
deemed that public sentiment was in favor of
light wine and beer as a substitute for absolute<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">84</span>
prohibition. <cite>Judge</cite> believed its stand would please
its readers.</p>
<p>Presumably writing of newspaper morality,
Mr. Mencken, in his article just quoted, finds at
the end of it that he has “written of popular
morality very copiously, and of newspaper morality
very little.</p>
<p>“But,” says Mr. Mencken, “as I have said before,
the one is the other. The newspaper must
adapt its pleading to its clients’ moral limitation
just as the trial lawyer also must adapt <em>his</em> pleading
to the jury’s limitations. Neither may like
the job, but both must face it to gain the larger
end.”</p>
<p>Writing on the other hand from the point
of view of the man who feels that the public taste
requires no justification, Ralph Pulitzer nevertheless
agrees with Mr. Mencken that the opinion
of the press is set by the public; and he justifies
“muckraking”<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">9</a> by finding it neither “extraordinary
nor culpable that people and press
should be more interested in the polemical than
in the platitudinous; in blame than in painting
the lily; in attack than in sending laudatory coals
to Newcastle.”</p>
<p>Even Mr. Leupp<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">10</a> concludes that “whatever<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">85</span>
we may say of the modern press on its less commendable
side, we are bound to admit that newspapers,
like governments, fairly reflect the people
they serve. Charles Dudley Warner once went
so far as to say that no matter how objectionable
the character of a paper may be, it is always
a trifle better than the patrons on whom it relies
for its support.”</p>
<p>Similarly, from an unusually wide experience
on a paper as highly considered, perhaps, as any
in America, Rollo Ogden claims this give and
take between the public and the press is vital to a
just conception of American journalism.</p>
<p>“The editor does not nonchalantly project his
thoughts into the void. He listens for the echo
of his words. His relation to his supporters is
not unlike Gladstone’s definition of the intimate
connection between the orator and his audience.
As the speaker gets from his hearers in mist what
he gives back in shower, so the newspaper receives
from the public as well as gives to it. Too
often it gets as dust what it gives back as mud;
but that does not alter the relation. Action and
reaction are all the while going on between the
press and its patrons. Hence it follows that the
responsibility for the more crying evils of journalism
must be divided.”<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">11</a></p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">86</span>
The same interaction goes on in connection
with all the other forces that mould public opinion.
The preacher upholds the ideals of society.
He leads his flock whither they indicate a willingness
to be led. Ibsen creates a revolution when
society is ripe for it. The public responds to
finer music and better motion pictures and demands
improvements. “Give the people what
they want” is only half sound. What they want
and what they get are fused by some mysterious
alchemy. The press, the lecturer, the screen and
the public lead and are led by each other.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">87</span></p>
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="CHAPTER_II_IV" class="vspace">CHAPTER IV<br />
<span class="subhead">THE POWER OF INTERACTING FORCES THAT GO TO
MAKE UP PUBLIC OPINION</span></h2>
</div>
<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">The</span> influence of any force which attempts
to modify public opinion depends upon the
success with which it is able to enlist established
points of view. A middle ground exists between
the hypothesis that the public is stubborn and
the hypothesis that it is malleable. To a large
degree the press, the schools, the churches, motion
pictures, advertising, the lecture platform
and radio all conform to the demands of the public.
But to an equally large degree the public
responds to the influence of these very same
mediums of communication.</p>
<p>Some analysts believe that the public has no
opinions except those which various institutions
provide ready made for it. From Mr. Mencken
and others it would almost seem to follow that
newspapers and other mediums have no standards
except those which the public provides, and that
therefore they are substantially without influence
upon the public mind. The truth of the matter,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">88</span>
as I have pointed out, lies somewhere between
these two extreme positions.</p>
<p>In other words, the public relations counsel
who thinks clearly on the problem of public opinion
and public relations will credit the two factors
of public opinion respectively with their influence
and effectiveness in mutual interaction.</p>
<p>Ray Stannard Baker says<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">12</a> that “while there
was a gesture of unconcern, of don’t care what
they say, on the part of the leaders (of the Versailles
conference), no aspect of the conference
in reality worried them more than the news,
opinions, guesses that went out by scores of thousands
of words every night, and the reactions
which came back so promptly from them. The
problem of publicity consumed an astonishing
amount of time, anxiety and discussion among
the leaders of the conference. It influenced the
entire procedure, it was partly instrumental in
driving the four heads of States finally into
small secret conferences. The full achievement
of publicity on one occasion—Wilson’s Italian
note—nearly broke up the conference and overturned
a government. The bare threat of it,
upon other occasions, changed the course of the
discussion. Nothing concerned the conference
more than what democracy was going to do with
diplomacy.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">89</span>
For like causes we find great industries—motion
pictures being one and organized baseball
another—appointing as directors of their activities
men prominent in public life, doing this to
assure the public of the honest and social-minded
conduct of their members. The Franklin Roosevelts
are in this class, the Will Hayses and the
Landises.</p>
<p>A striking example of this interaction is illustrated
in what occurred at the Hague Conference
a few years ago. The effect of the Hague Conference’s
conduct upon the public was such that
officials were forced to open the Conference doors
to the representatives of newspapers. On June
16th, 1922, a note came from The Hague by
the Associated Press that Foreign Minister Van
Karnebeek of Holland capitulated to the world’s
desire to be informed of what was going on
by admitting correspondents. Early announcement
that “the press cannot be admitted” was,
according to the report, followed by anxious
emissaries begging the journalists to have patience.
Editorials printed in Holland pointed out
that the best way to insure public coöperation
was to take the public into its confidence. Minister
van Karnebeek, who had been at Washington,
was thoroughly awake to the invaluable service
the press of the world rendered there. One
editorial here pointed out that public statements<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">90</span>
“were used by the diplomats themselves as a
happy means of testing popular opinion upon the
various projects offered in council. How many
‘trial balloons’ were sent up in this fashion, nobody
can recall. Nevertheless each delegation
maintained clipping bureaus, which were brought
up to date every morning and which gave the
delegates accurate information as to the state of
mind at home. Thus it came about that world
opinion was ready and anxious to receive the
finished work of the conference and that it was
prompt to bring individual recalcitrant groups
into line.”</p>
<p>Let me quote from the <cite>New York Evening
Post</cite> of July, 1922, as to the important interaction
of these forces: “The importance of the press
in guiding public opinion and the coöperation between
the members of the press and the men who
express public opinion in action, which has grown
up since the Peace Conference at Paris, were
stressed by Lionel Curtis, who arrived on the
<i>Adriatic</i> yesterday to attend the Institute of Politics,
which opens on July 27 at Williamstown.
‘Perhaps for the first time in history,’ he said,
‘the men whose business it is to make public
opinion were collected for some months under
the same roof with the officials whose task in life
is the actual conduct of foreign affairs. In the
long run, foreign policy is determined by public<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">91</span>
opinion. It was impossible in Paris not to be
impressed by the immense advantage of bringing
into close contact the writers who, through the
press, are making public opinion and the men
who have to express their opinion in actual
policy.’”</p>
<p>Harvard University, likewise, appreciating the
power of public opinion over its own activities,
has recently appointed a counsel on public relations
to make its aims clear to the public.</p>
<p>The institutions which make public opinion
conform to the demands of the public. The
public responds to an equally large degree to
these institutions. Such fights as that made by
<cite>Collier’s Weekly</cite> for pure food control show this.</p>
<p>The Safety First movement, by its use of every
form of appeal, from poster to circular, from
lecture to law enforcement, from motion pictures
to “safety weeks,” is bringing about a
gradual change in the attitude of a safety-deserving
public towards the taking of unnecessary
risks.</p>
<p>The Rockefeller Foundation, confronted with
the serious problem of the hookworm in the South
and in other localities, has brought about a
change in the habits of large sections of rural
populations by analysis, investigation, applied
medical principles, and public education.</p>
<p>The moulder of public opinion must enlist the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">92</span>
established point of view. This is true of the
press as well as of other forces. Mr. Mencken
mixes cynicism and truth when he declares that
the chief difficulty confronting a newspaper which
tries to carry out independent and thoughtful
policies “does not lie in the direction of the board
of directors, but in the direction of the public
which buys the paper.”<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">13</a></p>
<p>The <cite>New York Tribune</cite>, as an example of editorial
bravery, points out in an advertisement published
May 23, 1922, that though “news knows
no order in the making” and though “a newspaper
must carry the news, both pleasant and
unpleasant,” nevertheless, it is the duty of any
newspaper to realize that there is a possibility
of selective action, and that “in times of stress
and bleak despair a newspaper has a hard and
fast duty to perform in keeping up the morale
of the community.”</p>
<p>Indeed, the instances are frequent and accessible
to the recollection of any reader in which
newspapers have consciously maintained a point
of view toward which the public is either hostile
or cold.</p>
<p>Occasionally, of course, even the established
point of view is alterable. The two Baltimore
Suns do brave their public and have been braving<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">93</span>
their public for some time, not entirely without
success. As severe a critic as Oswald Garrison
Villard points out that though modern Baltimore
is a difficult city to serve, yet the two <cite>Suns</cite> have
courageously and consistently stood for the policies
of their editors and have refused to yield
to pressure from any source. To the public relations
counsel this is a striking illustration of
the give and take between the public and the
institutions which attempt to mould public opinion.
The two interact upon each other, so that
it is sometimes difficult to tell which is one and
which is the other.</p>
<p>The <cite>World</cite> and the <cite>Evening World</cite> of New
York, pride themselves upon the following campaigns
which are listed in <cite>The World Almanac</cite>
of 1922. They illustrate this interaction.</p>
<div class="tb">* * * * *</div>
<p class="p1 b1 center">“<i>Conference on Limitation of Armament
Grew from ‘World’s’ Plea</i></p>
<p>“Bearing in mind in 1921 the injunction of
its founder, Joseph Pulitzer, to fight always for
progress and reform, and having led the campaign
for disarmament in advance of any other
demand therefor, the <cite>World</cite> covered the Washington
Conference on Limitation of Armament
in a comprehensive way....</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">94</span></p>
<div class="tb">* * * * *</div>
<p class="p1 b1 center">“<i>Measures Advocated by ‘World’ Made Law</i></p>
<p>“During the 1921 session of the New York
Legislature many measures advocated by the
<cite>World</cite> were enacted. One of this paper’s chief
achievements was the passage of a resolution
broadening the power of the Lockwood Housing
Committee, enabling it to inquire into high finance
as related to the building trades situation.</p>
<p>“The <cite>World</cite> was instrumental in obtaining
the Anti-Theater Ticket Speculator Law. It also
brought about a change in bills to abolish the
Daylight-Saving Law so that municipalities might
enact their own daylight-saving ordinances. It
was successful in its campaign against the search-and-seizure
and other drastic features of the
State Prohibition Enforcement Law.</p>
<div class="tb">* * * * *</div>
<p class="p1 b1 center">“<i>The ‘World’ Told Facts About Ku Klux Klan</i></p>
<p>“The <cite>World</cite> on September 6 commenced the
publication of a series of articles telling the truth
about the Ku Klux Klan. Twenty-six newspapers,
in widely separated sections of the United
States, joined the <cite>World</cite> in the publication; some
had been invited to participate, others requested
the <cite>World</cite> to let them use the articles. All these
newspapers realized that the only motive back
of the <cite>World’s</cite> publication was public service.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">95</span>
It was their desire to share in this service, and
the <cite>World</cite> is proud that they asked only assurance
of its traditional accuracy and fairness before
they saw their way clear to coöperation.</p>
<p>“The <cite>World</cite> is proud that the completed record
shows no evidence either that it was terrified by
threats or was goaded by abuse into departures
from its object of presenting the facts honestly
and without exaggeration.</p>
<div class="tb">* * * * *</div>
<p class="p1 b1 center">“<i>Changes in Motor Vehicle Laws</i></p>
<p>“As a result of a crusade to lessen automobile
fatalities in New York City and State, the <cite>World</cite>
won a victory when changes in the motor vehicle
laws were made. The paper printed exclusive
stories giving the motor and license numbers of
cars stolen daily in this city, and started a campaign
against outlaw taxicabs and financially
irresponsible drivers and owners.</p>
<div class="tb">* * * * *</div>
<p class="p1 b1 center">“<i>‘Evening World’s’ Achievements</i></p>
<p>“The <cite>Evening World</cite> continued its campaign
against the coal monopoly and the high coal prices
charged in New York City—a state of affairs that
has been constantly and vigorously exposed in
<cite>Evening World</cite> columns. After consultation
with leading Senators at Washington, several<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">96</span>
bills were introduced in Congress to alleviate the
conditions.”</p>
<p>I am letting the <cite>World</cite> speak for itself merely
as an example of what many splendid newspapers
have accomplished as leaders in public movements.
The <cite>New York Evening Post</cite> is another
example, it having long led popular demand for
vocational guidance and control.</p>
<p>The public relations counsel cannot base his
work merely upon the acceptance of the principle
that the public and its authorities interact. He
must go deeper than that and discover why it is
that a public opinion exists independently of
church, school, press, lecture platform and motion
picture screen—how far this public opinion
affects these institutions and how far these institutions
affect public opinion. He must discover
what the stimuli are to which public opinion
responds most readily.</p>
<p>Study of the mirrors of the public mind—the
press, the motion pictures, the lecture platform
and the others—reveal to him what their standards
are and those of the groups they reach.
This is not enough, however. To his understanding
of what he actually can measure he must add
a thorough knowledge of the principles which
govern individual and group action. A fundamental
study of group and individual psychology
is required before the public relations counsel can<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">97</span>
determine how readily individuals or groups will
accept modifications of viewpoints or policies,
which they have already imposed upon their respective
mediums.</p>
<p>No idea or opinion is an isolated factor. It
is surrounded and influenced by precedent,
authority, habit and all the other human motivations.</p>
<p>For a lucid conception of the functions, power
and social utility of the public relations counsel
it is vitally important to have a clear grasp of
the fundamentals with which he must work.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">98</span></p>
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="CHAPTER_II_V" class="vspace">CHAPTER V<br />
<span class="subhead">AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF
PUBLIC MOTIVATION IS NECESSARY TO THE
WORK OF THE PUBLIC RELATIONS
COUNSEL</span></h2>
</div>
<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">Before</span> defining the fundamental motivations
of society, let me mention those outward
signs on which psychologists base their
study of conditions.</p>
<p>Psychological habits, or as Mr. Lippmann calls
them, “stereotypes,” are shorthand by which
human effort is minimized. They are so clearly
and commonly understood that every one will
immediately respond to the mention of a stereotype
within his personal experience. The words
“capitalist” or “boy scout” bring out definite images
to the hearer. These images are more comprehensible
than detailed descriptions. Chorus
girl, woman lawyer, politician, detective, financier
are clean-cut concepts and capable of definition.
We all have stereotypes which minimize
not only our thinking habits but also the ordinary
routine of life.</p>
<p>Mr. Lippmann finds that the stereotypes at the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">99</span>
center of the code by which various sections of
the public live “largely determine what group of
facts we shall see and in what light we shall see
them.” That is why, he says, “with the best will
in the world, the news policy of a journal tends
to support its editorial policy, why a capitalist
sees one set of facts and certain aspects of human
nature—literally sees them; his socialist opponent
another set and other aspects, and why each regards
the other as unreasonable or perverse, when
the real difference between them is a difference
of perception. That difference is imposed by the
difference between the capitalist and socialist pattern
of stereotypes. ‘There are no classes in
America,’ writes an American editor. ‘The history
of all hitherto existing society is the history
of class struggles,’ says the Communist Manifesto.
If you have the editor’s pattern in your
mind, you will see vividly the facts that confirm
it, vaguely and ineffectively those that contradict.
If you have the communist pattern, you will not
only look for different things, but you will see
with a totally different emphasis what you and
the editor happen to see in common.”</p>
<p>The stereotype is the basis of a large part of
the work of the public relations counsel. Let
us try to inquire where the stereotype originates—why
it is so influential and why from a practical
standpoint it is so tremendously difficult to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">100</span>
affect or change stereotypes or to attempt to substitute
one set of stereotypes for another.</p>
<p>Mr. Martin attempts to answer questions such
as these in his volume on “The Behavior of
Crowds.” By “crowds” Mr. Martin does not
mean merely a physical aggregation of a number
of persons. To Mr. Martin the crowd is rather
a state of mind, “the peculiar mental condition
which sometimes occurs when people think and
act together, either immediately where the members
of the group are present and in close contact,
or remotely, as when they affect one another
in a certain way through the medium of an organization,
a party or sect, the press, etc.”</p>
<p>Motives of social behavior are based on individual
instincts. Individual instincts, on the
other hand, must yield to group needs. Mr.
Martin pictures society as an aggregation of
people who have sacrificed individual freedom in
order to remain within the group. This sacrifice
of freedom on the part of individuals in the
groups leads its members to resist all efforts at
fundamental changes in the group code. Because
all have made certain sacrifices, reasons are developed
why such sacrifices must be insisted upon
at all times. The “logic-proof” compartment is
the result of this unwillingness to accept changes.</p>
<p>“What has been so painstakingly built up is
not to be lightly destroyed. Each group, therefore,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">101</span>
within itself, considers its own standards
ultimate and indisputable, and tends to dismiss
all contrary or different standards as indefensible.</p>
<p>“Even an honest, critical understanding of the
demands of the opposing crowd is discouraged,
possibly because it is rightly felt that the critical
habit of mind is as destructive of one crowd-complex
as the other, and the old crowd prefers
to remain intact and die in the last ditch rather
than risk dissolution, even with the promise of
averting a revolution. Hence the Romans were
willing to believe that the Christians worshiped
the head of an ass. The medieval Catholics, even
at Leo’s court, failed to grasp the meaning of
the outbreak in North Germany. Thousands
saw in the reformation only the alleged fact that
the monk Luther wanted to marry a wife....”<a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">14</a></p>
<p>The main satisfaction, Mr. Martin thinks,
which the individual derives from his group association
is the satisfaction of his vanity through
the creation of an enlarged self-importance.</p>
<p>The Freudian theories upon which Mr. Martin
relies very largely for his argument lead to
the conclusion that what Mr. Henry Watterson
has said of the suppression of news applies
equally to the suppression of individual desire.
Neither will suppress. With the normal person,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">102</span>
the result of this social suppression is to produce
an individual who conforms with sufficient closeness
to the standards of his group to enable him
to remain comfortably within it.</p>
<p>The tendency, however, of the instincts and
desires which are thus ruled out of conduct is
somehow or other, when the conditions are favorable,
to seek some avenue of release and satisfaction.
To the individual most of these avenues
of release are closed. He cannot, for example,
indulge his instinct of pugnacity without running
foul of the law. The only release which the individual
can have is one which commands, however
briefly, the approval of his fellows. That
is why Mr. Martin calls crowd psychology and
crowd activity “the result of forces hidden in a
personal and unconscious psyche of the members
of the crowd, forces which are merely released
by social gatherings of a certain sort.” The
crowd enables the individual to express himself
according to his desire and without restraint.</p>
<p>He says further, “Every crowd ‘boosts for’
itself, gives itself airs, speaks with oracular
finality, regards itself as morally superior, and
will, so far as it has the power, lord it over every
one. Notice how each group and section in society,
so far as it permits itself to think as crowd,
claims to be ‘the people.’”</p>
<p>As an illustration of the boosting principle Mr.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">103</span>
Martin points out the readiness of most groups
to enter upon conflict of one kind or another with
opposing groups. “Nothing so easily catches
general attention and grips a crowd as a contest
of any kind,” he says. “The crowd unconsciously
identifies its members with one or the other competitor.
Success enables the winning crowd to
‘crow over’ the losers. Such an action becomes
symbolical, and is utilized by the ego to enhance
its feeling of importance. In society this egoism
tends to take the form of the desire for dominance.”
According to Mr. Martin, that is why
“... whenever any attempt is being made to
secure recruits for a movement or a point of view
the leaders intuitively assume and reiterate the
certainty of ultimate victory.”</p>
<p>Two points which Mr. Martin makes seem to
me most important. In the first place, Mr. Martin
points out with absolute justice that the
crowd-mind is by no means limited to the ignorant.
“Any class,” he says, “may behave and
think as a crowd—in fact, it usually does so in
so far as its class interests are concerned.”
Neither is the crowd-mind to be found only when
there is a physical agglomeration of people.
This fact is important to an understanding of
the problems of the public relations counsel, because
he must bear in mind always that the readers
of advertisements, the recipients of letters,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">104</span>
the solitary listener at a radio speech, the reader
of the morning newspapers are mysteriously part
of the crowd-mind.</p>
<p>When Bergson came to America about a decade
ago, men and women flocked to his classes,
both the French and the English sessions. It
was obvious to the observer that numbers of disciples
who conscientiously attended the full
course of lectures understood almost nothing of
what was being said. Their behavior was an
instance of the crowd-mind.</p>
<p>Everybody read “Main Street.” Each reader
in his own study tried to react as a crowd-mind.
They felt as they thought they ought to.</p>
<p>Initiation scandals, where the crowd-mind has
created a brutality not possible to individuals,
take place not only in brotherhoods among
what Mr. Martin calls “the lower classes,” but
also among well-bred college youths and the fraternal
orders of successful business and professional
men. A more specific instance is the football
game, with its manifestations of the crowd-mind
among a selected group of individuals.
The Ku Klux Klan has numbered among its violent
supporters some of the “best” families of
the affected localities.</p>
<p>The crowd is a state of mind which permeates
society and its individuals at almost all times.
What becomes articulate in times of stress under<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">105</span>
great excitement is present in the mind of the individual
at most times and explains in part why
popular opinion is so positive and so intolerant
of contrary points of view. The college professor
in his study on a peaceful summer day is
just as likely to be reacting as a unit of a crowd-mind,
as any member of a lynching party in
Texas or Georgia.</p>
<p>Mr. Trotter in his book, “Instincts of the Herd
in Peace and War,”<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">15</a> gives us further material
for study. He discusses the underlying causes
and results of “herd” tendencies, stressing the
herd’s cohesiveness.</p>
<p>The tendency the group has to standardize the
habits of individuals and to assign logical reasons
for them is an important factor in the work of the
public relations counsel. The predominant point
of view, according to Mr. Trotter, which translates
a rationalized point of view into an axiomatic
truth, arises and derives its strength from
the fact that it enlists herd support for the point
of view of the individual. This explains why it is
so easy to popularize many ideas.</p>
<p>“The cardinal quality of the herd is homogeneity.”<a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">16</a>
The biological significance of homogeneity<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">106</span>
lies in its survival value. The wolf pack
is many times as strong as the combined strength
of each of its individual members. These results
of homogeneity have created the “herd”
point of view.</p>
<p>One of the psychological results of homogeneity
is the fact that physical loneliness is a real terror
to the gregarious animal, and that association
with the herd causes a feeling of security. In
man this fear of loneliness creates a desire for
identification with the herd in matters of opinion.
It is here, says Mr. Trotter,<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">17</a> that we find “the
ineradicable impulse mankind has always displayed
towards segregation into classes. Each
one of us in his opinions and his conduct, in matters
of amusement, religion, and politics, is compelled
to obtain the support of a class, of a herd
within the herd.”</p>
<p>Says Mr. Trotter:<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">18</a> “The effect of it will
clearly be to make acceptable those suggestions
which come from the herd, and those only. It is
of especial importance to note that this suggestibility
is not general, and it is only herd suggestions
which are rendered acceptable by the action
of instinct, and man is, for example, notoriously
insensitive to the suggestions of experience. The
history of what is rather grandiosely called human<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">107</span>
progress everywhere illustrates this. If we
look back upon the developments of some such
thing as the steam engine, we cannot fail to be
struck by the extreme obviousness of each advance,
and how obstinately it was refused assimilation
until the machine almost invented itself.”</p>
<p>The workings of the gregarious instinct in
man result frequently in conduct of the most
remarkable complexity, but it is characterized by
all of the qualities of instinctive action. Such
conduct is usually rationalized, but this does not
conceal its real character.</p>
<p>We may sincerely think that we vote the Republican
ticket because we have thought out the
issues of the political campaign and reached our
decision in the cold-blooded exercise of judgment.
The fact remains that it is just as likely that we
voted the Republican ticket because we did so
the year before or because the Republican platform
contains a declaration of principle, no matter
how vague, which awakens profound emotional
response in us, or because our neighbor
whom we do not like happens to be a Democrat.</p>
<p>Mr. Lippmann remarks:<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">19</a> “For the most part
we do not first see and then define, we define first
and then see. In the great booming, buzzing confusion
of the outer world we pick out of the
clutter what is already defined for us, and we<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">108</span>
tend to perceive that which we have picked out
in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.”</p>
<p>Mr. Trotter cites as a few of the examples of
rationalization the mechanism which “enables the
European lady who wears rings in her ears to
smile at the barbarism of the colored lady who
wears her rings in her nose”<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">20</a> and the process
which enables the Englishman “who is amused
by the African chieftain’s regard for the top hat
as an essential piece of the furniture of state to
ignore the identity of his own behavior when
he goes to church beneath the same tremendous
ensign.”</p>
<p>The gregarious tendency in man, according to
Mr. Trotter, results in five characteristics which
he displays in common with all gregarious animals.</p>
<p>1. “<i>He is intolerant and fearful of solitude,
physical or mental.</i>”<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">21</a> The same urge which
drives the buffalo into the herd and man into the
city requires on the part of the latter a sense of
spiritual identification with the herd. Man is
never so much at home as when on the band
wagon.</p>
<p>2. “<i>He is more sensitive to the voice of the
herd than to any other influence.</i>” Mr. Trotter
illustrates this characteristic in a paragraph which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">109</span>
is worth quoting in its entirety. He says: “It
(the voice of the herd) can inhibit or stimulate
his thought and conduct. It is the source of his
moral codes, of the sanctions of his ethics and
philosophy. It can endow him with energy, courage,
and endurance, and can as easily take these
away. It can make him acquiesce in his own punishment
and embrace his executioner, submit to
poverty, bow to tyranny, and sink without complaint
under starvation. Not merely can it make
him accept hardship and suffering unresistingly,
but it can make him accept as truth the explanation
that his perfectly preventable afflictions are
sublimely just and gentle. It is this acme of the
power of herd suggestion that is perhaps the
most absolutely incontestable proof of the profoundly
gregarious nature of man.”</p>
<p>3. “<i>He is subject to the passions of the pack
in his mob violence and the passions of the herd
in his panics.</i>”</p>
<p>4. “<i>He is remarkably susceptible to leadership.</i>”
Mr. Trotter points out that the need for
leadership is often satisfied by leadership of a
quality which cannot stand analysis, and which
must therefore satisfy some impulse rather than
the demands of reason.</p>
<p>5. “<i>His relations with his fellows are dependent
upon the recognition of him as a member
of the herd.</i>”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">110</span>
The gregarious tendency, Mr. Trotter believes,
is biologically fundamental. He finds therefore
that the herd reaction is not confined to outbreaks
such as panics and mob violence, but that it is a
constant factor in all human thinking and feeling.
Discussing the results of the sensitiveness of the
individual to the herd point of view, Mr. Trotter
says in part, “To believe must be an ineradicable
natural bias of man, or in other words, an affirmation,
positive or negative, is more readily accepted
than rejected, unless its source is definitely disassociated
from the herd. <em>Man is not, therefore,
suggestible by fits and starts, not merely in panics
and mobs, under hypnosis, and so forth, but always,
everywhere, and under any circumstances.</em>”</p>
<p>The suggestibility of people to ideas which are
part of the standards of their groups could not
be more succinctly expressed than in the old command,
“When in Rome do as the Romans.”</p>
<p>Psychologists have defined for the public relations
counsel the fundamental equipment of
the individual mind and its relation to group reactions.
We have seen the motivations of the
individual mind—the motivations of the group
mind. We have seen the characteristics in
thought and action of the individual and the
group. All these things we have touched on,
though briefly, since they form the ground-work
of knowledge for the public relations counsel.
Their application will be discussed later.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">111</span></p>
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="CHAPTER_II_VI" class="vspace">CHAPTER VI<br />
<span class="subhead">THE GROUP AND HERD ARE THE BASIC MECHANISMS
OF PUBLIC CHANGE</span></h2>
</div>
<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">The</span> institutions that make public opinion
carry on against a background which is in
itself a controlling factor. The real character of
this controlling background we shall take up
later. Let us first consider some examples that
prove its existence—then we can look into its
origin and its standards.</p>
<p>Powerful standards control the very institutions
which are supposed to help form public opinion.
It is necessary to understand the origin,
the working and the strength of these institutions
in order to understand the institutions themselves
and their effect upon the public.</p>
<p>In tracing the interaction of institution upon
public and public upon institution, one finds a
circle of obedience and leadership. The press, the
school and other leaders of thought are themselves
working in a background which they cannot
entirely control.</p>
<p>Let us turn to the press again for a text.</p>
<p>That the press is so frequently unable to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">112</span>
achieve a result on which its combined members
are unanimously set makes it evident that the
press itself is working in a medium which it
cannot entirely control. The <cite>New York Times</cite>
motto, “All the news that’s fit to print,” drives
this point home. The standards of fitness created
in the minds of the publishers express the point
of view of a mass of readers, and this enables the
newspapers to achieve and maintain circulation
and financial success.</p>
<p>The very fact that newspapers must sell to
the public is an evidence that they must please
the public and in a measure obey it. In the press
there is a very human tendency to compromise
between giving the public what it wants and giving
the public what it <em>should</em> want. This is
equally true in music, where artists like McCormack
or Rachmaninoff popularize their programs.
It is true in the drama, where managers, producers
and authors combine to adjust plots, situations
and endings to what the public will be
willing to pay to see. It is true in art, in architecture,
in motion pictures. It is true of the lecture
platform and of the pulpit.</p>
<p>So-called radical preachers, for example, usually
succeed in broadcasting their radical ideas
only when their following is prepared to accept
their views. The Rev. Percy Stickney Grant was
a great problem to the upholders of the accepted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">113</span>
order, only because there was so large a body of
parishioners eager to hear and accept his <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">dicta</i>.
The Rev. Billy Sunday, evangelist, derived his
following from among people who were awaiting
a faith-stirring appeal.</p>
<p>Another evidence of the fact that a powerful
outside influence helps make the forces that mould
public opinion is shown by the newspapers in
the actual selection of news. The public actually
demands that certain types of facts be omitted.
The standing problem of every newspaper office—the
winnowing of the day’s news from the mass
of material that reaches the editorial desks—illustrates
pointedly the need there is to examine the
reasons which prompt the editors in selection.</p>
<p>In an exceedingly interesting advertisement
published by the <cite>New York Tribune</cite>, on April
19, 1922, the <cite>Tribune’s</cite> editors state the problem
most graphically. The advertisement is headed,
“What Else Happened That Day?” and it reads
as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Madame Caillaux was on trial in Paris for
killing Gaston Calmette.</p>
<p>“In Long Island a woman was mysteriously
shot in a doctor’s office while on a night visit.</p>
<p>“Forty-five stage coaches were held up in Yellowstone
Park by two masked bandits who took
all the cash of 165 tourists.</p>
<p>“Romantic crime, mystery crime, adventurous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">114</span>
crime, a public eagerly interested—and they suddenly
dropped from the newspapers. The public
forgot them. As news, these events became as
if they had never happened. Something else had
happened.</p>
<p>“The day of Madame Caillaux’s acquittal Austria
declared war on Serbia. Russia mobilized
fourteen army corps on the German border and
the price of wheat in this country soared.</p>
<p>“All the news that a newspaper prints is affected
by what else happened that day. If an
earthquake occurs the day you announce your
daughter’s engagement her picture may be left
out of the newspaper.</p>
<p>“The man who made a golf hole in one the
day of the Dempsey-Carpentiér fight was out of
luck so far as an item on the sporting page was
concerned.</p>
<p>“When real news breaks, semi-news must go.
When real news is scarce, semi-news returns to
the front page. A very great man picked out
Sunday night to dine at a Bowery mission. Monday
is usually a dull day for news, although some
big events, notably the sinking of the <i>Titanic</i>,
came over the wires Sunday night.</p>
<p>“All papers feature big news. When there is
no big news, real editing is needed to select the
real news from the semi-news.</p>
<p>“What you read on dull news days is what fixes
your opinions of your country and of your compatriots.
It is from the non-sensational news
that you see the world and assess, rightly or
wrongly, the true value of persons and events.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">115</span>
“The relative importance your newspaper gives
to an occurrence affects your thought, your character,
and your children’s thought and character.
For few daily habits are as firmly established as
the habit of reading the newspaper.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Now each of the items mentioned in the
<cite>Tribune’s</cite> advertisement was news. Comparison
of the newspapers of that day will undoubtedly
show a wide divergence in the manner in which
these items were treated and in the relative importance
assigned to each. The basis of the selection
was clearly the general standard of the
clientele of each individual paper.</p>
<p>And this selection of ideas for presentation
goes on in every medium of thought communication.</p>
<p>This basis of selection has long been recognized.
Thus in an article in the <cite>Atlantic
Monthly</cite> for February, 1911, Professor Hargar,
formerly head of the Department of Journalism
at the University of Kansas, draws attention to
it in regard to newspapers, and points out that
“the province of the city paper is one of news
selection.<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">22</a> Out of the vast skein of the day’s happenings
what shall it select? More ‘copy’ is
thrown away than is used. The <cite>New York Sun</cite>
is written as definitely for a given constituency<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">116</span>
as is a technical journal. Out of the day’s news
it gives prominence to that which fits into its
scheme of treatment, and there is so much news
that it can fill its columns with interesting materials,
yet leave untouched a myriad of events.
The <cite>New York Evening Post</cite> appeals to another
constituency, and is made accordingly. The
<cite>World</cite> and the <cite>Journal</cite> have a far different plan,
and ‘play up’ stories that are mentioned briefly,
or ignored, by some of their contemporaries. So
the writer on the metropolitan paper is trained
to sift news, to choose from his wealth of material
that which the paper’s traditions demand
shall receive attention; and so abundant is the
supply that he can easily set a feast without exhausting
the market’s offering. Unconsciously
he becomes an epicure, and knows no day will
dawn without bringing him his opportunity.”</p>
<p>Mr. Lippmann makes the same observation.
He says:<a id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">23</a> “Every newspaper when it reaches
the reader is the result of a whole series of
selections as to what items shall be printed, in
what position they shall be printed, how much
space each shall occupy, what emphasis each shall
have. There are no objective standards here.
There are conventions. Take two newspapers
published in the same city on the same morning.
The headline of one reads: ‘Britain pledges aid<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">117</span>
to Berlin against French Aggression. France
Openly Backs Poles.’ The headline of the second
is: ‘Mrs. Stillman’s Other Love.’ Which you
prefer is a matter of taste, but <em>not entirely a
matter of the editor’s taste</em>. It is a matter of
his <em>judgment as to what will absorb the half
hour’s attention a certain set of readers will give
to his newspaper</em>.”</p>
<p>The American stage continually bows to public
demand and consciously ascribes to the public
the changes it undergoes. The character of advertising
has definitely yielded to public demand
and fake advertising has been to a great extent
eliminated. Motion pictures have responded, too,
to public taste and public pressure, both as to the
kind of picture presented and, in isolated instances,
to the type of action permitted to
appear.</p>
<p>It is therefore apparent that these and the
other institutions which modify public opinion
carry on against a background which is also in
itself a controlling factor. What the real character
of this controlling background is we shall
now consider.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">118</span></p>
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="CHAPTER_II_VII" class="vspace">CHAPTER VII<br />
<span class="subhead">THE APPLICATION OF THESE PRINCIPLES</span></h2>
</div>
<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">Both</span> Trotter, Martin and the other writers
we have quoted confirm what the actual
experience of the public relations counsel shows—that
the cause he represents must have some
group reaction and tradition in common with the
public he is trying to reach. This must exist
before they can react sympathetically upon one
another. Given these common fundamentals,
much can be done to capitalize or destroy them.
It is as untrue to contend that public opinion is
manufactured as it is to contend that public
opinion governs the agencies which mould it.</p>
<p>The public relations counsel must continually
realize that there are always these limitations to
his effectiveness.</p>
<p>The very “leaders,” men who have been
selected from the mass to “lead the nation,” live
with their ears to the ground for every slight
rumbling of public sentiment. Preachers, acknowledged
to be the ethical leaders of their
flocks, express obedience to public opinion.</p>
<p>The critics who hold these extreme points of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">119</span>
view about public opinion have too easily confused
cause and effect. The sympathy between
the orator and his audience is not one which the
orator can create. He can intensify it, or by
tactless speaking he can dissipate it, but he cannot
manufacture it from thin air.</p>
<p>Margaret Sanger, a leader in the fight for
education on birth control, will evoke enthusiasm
when she addresses an audience that approves
of her sentiments. When, however, she injects
her point of view into groups that have a preconceived
aversion to them, she is in danger of abuse,
if not of actual physical violence. Likewise, a
man who would talk of prison reform at a time
when the public is aroused by an unwonted crime
wave will find little response. On the other hand,
when Madam Curie, co-discoverer of radium,
came to America, she found a country that was
prepared to meet her because of intensive effort
on the part of a large radium corporation and
a committee of women formed by Marie B.
Meloney, to apprise the public of the importance
of her visit. Had she come two years sooner,
she might have been ignored save by a few
scientists.</p>
<p>A historic incident illustrative of the interaction
between a leader and a public is that of the
sudden turn in the affairs of Rear Admiral
Dewey. The idol of the Spanish American War,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">120</span>
he nevertheless alienated popular affection by
giving to his wife a house which had been presented
to him by an admiring public. For some
reason the public failed to sympathize with
Admiral Dewey’s own undoubtedly sound and
worthy reasons.</p>
<p>To say, therefore, as some persons have said
at great length and with considerable vehemence,
that the public relations counsel is responsible
for public opinion, is not true. The public relations
counsel is not needed to persuade people
to standardize their points of view or to persist
in their established beliefs. The established point
of view becomes established by satisfying some
real or assumed human need.</p>
<p>In common with the scenario writer, the
preacher, the statesman, the dramatist, the public
relations counsel, has his share in making up the
mind of the public. The public quite as truly
makes up the mind of the journalist, the pamphleteer,
the scenario writer, the preacher and the
statesman. The main direction of the public
mind is often irrevocably set for its leaders.</p>
<p>Hendrik Van Loon, in his “Story of Mankind,”
paints a picture of the action and interaction
between Napoleon the Great and his public
in a way that might well have been made
to illustrate our point. When Napoleon led the
public truly in the direction towards which it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">121</span>
was headed, that is, towards democracy and
equality, he was its successful leader and its
idol, says Van Loon. When in the latter part of
his career he turned back to a goal which the
public had discarded and was eager to forget,
that is, Bourbonism, Napoleon met with irresistible
defeat.</p>
<p>“Damaged Goods” was able to make the American
public accept the word “syphilis” because the
counsel on public relations projected the doctrine
of sex hygiene through those groups and sections
of the public which were prepared to work
with him.</p>
<p>Public opinion is the resultant of the interaction
between two forces.</p>
<p>This may help us to see with greater clarity
the position the public relations counsel holds in
relation to the world at large, and what the factors
are with which he is concerned and by which
he accomplishes his work.</p>
<p>We have gone somewhat elaborately into the
fundamental equipment of the individual mind
and its relation to the group mind because the
public relations counsel in his work in these fields
must constantly call upon his knowledge of individual
and group psychology. The public relations
counsel can come forward, first, as the
representative of established things when their
security is shaken, or when they desire greater<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">122</span>
power; and second, as the representative of the
group which is struggling to establish itself.</p>
<p>Mr. Lippmann says propaganda is dependent
upon censorship. From my point of view the
precise reverse is more nearly true. Propaganda
is a purposeful, directed effort to overcome censorship—the
censorship of the group mind and
the herd reaction.</p>
<p>The average citizen is the world’s most efficient
censor. His own mind is the greatest barrier
between him and the facts. His own “logic-proof
compartments,” his own absolutism are the
obstacles which prevent him from seeing in terms
of experience and thought rather than in terms
of group reaction.</p>
<p>The training of the public relations counsel
permits him to step out of his own group to look
at a particular problem with the eyes of an impartial
observer and to utilize his knowledge of
the individual and the group mind to project his
clients’ point of view.</p>
<hr />
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="PART_III">PART III<br />
<span class="subhead"><span class="smcap">Technique and Method</span></span></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">125</span></p>
<h2 id="CHAPTER_III_I" class="vspace">CHAPTER I<br />
<span class="subhead">THE PUBLIC CAN BE REACHED ONLY THROUGH
ESTABLISHED MEDIUMS OF COMMUNICATION</span></h2>
<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">When</span> the United States was made up of
small social units with common traditions
and a small geographic and social area, it was
comparatively simple for the proponent of a point
of view to address his public directly. If he
represented a social or a political idea, he could,
at no very great expense and with no very great
difficulty in the early Eighteenth Century, cover
New England with his pamphlets. He could
arouse the thirteen colonies with his journals and
brochures. That was because the heritage of
these groups made them sensitive to the same
stimuli. One man, remarks Mr. Lippmann, then
was able single-handed to crystallize the common
will of his country in his day and generation.
To-day the greatest superman as yet developed
by humanity could not accomplish the same result
with the United States.</p>
<p>Populations have increased. In this country
geographical areas have increased. Heterogeneity<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">126</span>
has also increased. A group living in any
given area is now extremely likely to have no common
ancestry, no common tradition, as such, and
no cohesive intelligence. All these elements make
it necessary to-day for the proponent of a point
of view to engage an expert to represent him
before society, an expert who must know how to
reach groups totally dissimilar as to ideals, customs
and even language. It is this necessity
which has resulted in the development of the
counsel on public relations.</p>
<p>Now it must be understood that the proponent
of a point of view, whether acting alone or under
the guidance of a public relations counsel, must
utilize existing avenues of approach. Modern
conditions are such that it is not feasible to build
up independent organs. Innovators and innovations
cannot create their own channels of communication.
They must for a great part work
through the existing daily press, the existing
magazine, the existing lecture circuit, existing advertising
mediums, the existing motion picture
channels and other means for the communication
of ideas. The public relations counsel, on
behalf of the groups he represents, must reach
majorities and minorities through their respective
approaches.</p>
<p>If the public relations counsel can succeed in
presenting ideas and facts to the public in spite<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">127</span>
of the heterogeneity of society, in spite of the
vast psychological and geographic problems, in
spite of the difficulties, monetary and otherwise,
of reaching and influencing populations numbering
millions—if he can succeed in overcoming
these difficulties by a skillful understanding of
the situation, his profession is socially valuable.</p>
<p>Absolute homogeneity, resulting in a dead level
of uniformity in public and individual reaction,
is undesirable. On the other hand, agreement on
broad social purposes is essential to progress.
Agreement on broad industrial purposes may be
equally desirable. Without such agreement, without
unified purposes, there can be no progress and
the unit must fall. The men who were most
effective in stimulating national morale during
the war never lost sight of these underlying
needs, whether they stimulated a whole nation
to ration itself voluntarily and give up the eating
of sugar, or whether they stimulated knitting and
Red Cross activities and voluntary contributions
to funds.</p>
<p>Three ways are cited by Mr. Lippmann to
obtain cohesive force among the special and local
interests which make up national and social units.
The public relations counsel avails himself only
of the third. The first method which is described
is that of “patronage and pork.” This is very
largely the method relied upon by certain legislative<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">128</span>
bodies to-day to maintain cohesive force.
As an instance of this, the investigations of the
methods used in connection with the bills to
secure the building of local post offices or the
dredging of harbors or rivers seem to point
out that a representative from one community
will promise reciprocal support to the member
from another community, if he in turn will act
favorably on another item. This method intensifies
the feeling that all are working together,
even though they may not be working for the
highest interests of the country. Similarly the
chief executive of a city may institute certain
measures to placate school teachers. He will
expect the school teachers to support him on some
other project at some other period.</p>
<p>The second method named by Mr. Lippmann<a id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">24</a>
is “government by terror and obedience.”</p>
<p>The third method is “government based on such
a highly developed system of information, analysis
and self-consciousness that ‘the knowledge
of national circumstances and reasons of state’
is evident to all men. The autocratic system is
in decay. The voluntary system is in its very
earliest development and so, in calculating the
prospects of associations among large groups of
people, a league of nations, industrial government,
or a federal union of states, the degree to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">129</span>
which the material for a common consciousness
exists determines how far coöperation will depend
upon force, or upon the milder alternative
to force, which is patronage and privilege. The
secret of great state builders, like Alexander
Hamilton, is that they know how to calculate
these principles.”</p>
<p>The method of education by information,
which was to a great extent relied upon by the
United States, for example, was evidenced in
the formation during the war of such agencies
as the Committee on Public Information. The
public relations counsel, through the mediums
chosen by him, presented to the public the information
necessary to aid in understanding America’s
war aims and ideals. George Creel and his
organization reached vast groups, representing
every phase of our national elements, in every
modern method of thought communication. But
even in the United States the other two methods
were used to obtain cohesive force.</p>
<p>In fact the method least relied upon in any
of the belligerent countries was that of “government
based on such a highly developed system
of information, analysis and self-consciousness
that ‘the knowledge of national circumstances
and reasons of state’ is evident to all
men.”</p>
<p>This breakdown did not occur among small,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">130</span>
inefficiently organised groups. It occurred among
the representatives of the highest development
in social organization.</p>
<p>If this was the fate of the most highly organized
social groups, consider then the problem
which confronts the social, economic, educational
or political groups in peace time, when they attempt
to obtain a public hearing for new ideas.
Innumerable instances have shown the difficulty
that any group faces in gaining an acceptance for
its ideas.</p>
<p>The development of the United States to its
present size and diversification has intensified the
difficulty of creating a common will on any subject
because it has heightened the natural tendency
of men to separate into crowds opposed to
one another in point of view. This difficulty is
further emphasized by the fact that often these
crowds live in different traditional, moral and
spiritual worlds. The physical difficulties of
communication make group separation greater.</p>
<p>Mr. Trotter’s conclusions from a study of the
gregarious instinct are singularly apt on this
point. He says that<a id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">25</a> “the enormous power of
varied reaction possessed by man must render
necessary for his attainment of the full advantages
of the gregarious habit a power of inter-communication
of absolutely unprecedented fineness.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">131</span>
It is clear that scarcely a hint of such
power has yet appeared, and it is equally obvious
that it is this defect which gives to society the
characteristics which are the contempt of the man
of science and the disgust of the humanitarian.”</p>
<p>When the worker was of the same ancestry as
his employer, labor difficulties, for example, could
be discussed in terms which were comprehensible
to both parties. To-day the United States Steel
Corporation must exert tremendous effort to present
its view to its thousands of employees who
are South Europeans, North Europeans, Americans.</p>
<p>Czechoslovakia, during the Peace Conference,
wanted to appeal to its countrymen in America,
but this group was vague and scattered in a
population that lived in many cities throughout
the country. The public relations counsel who
was engaged to reach this scattered population
had, therefore, to translate his appeals so that
they might be understood logically and emotionally
by the educated and the uneducated, the urban,
the rural, the laboring and the professional
man.</p>
<p>The same problem in a quite different guise
presented itself to the public relations counsel
who wanted to insure a public response to the
appeal of the Diaghileff Russian Ballet, of which
the public knew nothing. He had, therefore, to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">132</span>
surmount the difficulties of dissimilar geographic
and artistic heritage and taste, of unwillingness
to accept novelty and of interests already firmly
attached to other forms of amusement.</p>
<p>Dominant groups to-day are more secure in
their position than was the most successful autocrat
of several hundred years ago, because to-day
the inertia which must be overcome in order
to displace these groups is so much greater. So
many persons with so many different points of
view must be reached and unified before anything
effective can be done. Unity can be secured
only by finding the greatest common factor or
divisor of all the groups; and it is difficult to find
one common factor which will appeal to a large
and unhomogeneous group.</p>
<p>A very simple and broadly appealing campaign
for reaching the public was undertaken recently
by the railroads in combination. They utilized
the poster in graphic, fundamental appeal to
awaken an instinct of carefulness in regard to
crossing railroad tracks. When the government
sought to reëstablish ex-service men, the public
relations counsel had to appeal vividly and
quickly to employers and returned soldiers out
of the vast complexity of their interests. He
selected the most fundamental appeals of loyalty,
fairness and patriotism in order to be understood
actively.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">133</span>
Domination to-day is not a product of armies
or navies or wealth or policies. It is a domination
based on the one hand upon accomplished
unity, and on the other hand upon the fact that
opposition is generally characterized by a high
degree of disunity. The institution of electing
representatives to Congress is so firmly established
that no existent force to-day can overthrow
it. More specifically, why is it that the two parties,
Republican and Democrat, have maintained
themselves as the dominant force for so many
years? Only the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt
seemed for a time to supersede them; and
events since then have shown that it was Roosevelt
and not his party who succeeded. The
Farmer-Labor Party, the Socialist Party despite
years of campaigning have failed to become even
strongly recognizable opponents to the established
groups. The disunity of forces which seek to
overthrow dominant groups is illustrated every
day in every phase of our lives—political, moral
and economic. A new point of view, although
faced by the difficulty of unifying a group to
concerted will or action, can seldom establish new
mediums by which to approach those people to
whom it wishes to appeal.</p>
<p>It is possible for advertising and pamphletizing
to blanket the country at a cost. To establish
a new lecture service in order to reach the public<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">134</span>
would be expensive, and effective only to a
limited extent. To establish an independent
radio station to broadcast an idea would be difficult
and probably disproportionately expensive.
To create a new motion picture and a distributing
agency would be slow, and very difficult
and costly, if possible at all.</p>
<p>The difficulty of establishing and building new
channels of approach to the public is shown best
by an examination of the principal mediums
which are available to the public relations counsel
who desires to direct public thought to the problems
of the group he represents.</p>
<p>It is only necessary to picture the newspaper
and magazine situation in the United States to-day
to realize the difficulty of establishing a new
medium for the representation of a point of view.
Americans are accustomed to first-rate service
from their press. They demand a high standard
not only in the physical appearance of their newspapers
but in the news service as well. Their
daily paper must provide them with items of local,
state and international interest and importance.
In the complex activities of modern life, the
newspaper must find and select the subjects
which interest its readers. It must also give to
its readers the news fresh from the making.
Whatever vagueness there may be about the definition<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">135</span>
of news itself, one admitted constant is that
it must be fresh.</p>
<p>The cost of establishing a paper with a wide
appeal, which will have the facilities of gathering
news, of printing and distributing it, is such
that groups can no longer depend upon their own
organs of expression. The Christian Science
church does not depend upon its admirable publication,
the <cite>Christian Science Monitor</cite> in order
to reach its own and new publics. Even where
the issue demands a partisan or class origin of
a newspaper, as in the case of a political party,
the results achieved by so expensive and laborious
a step seldom justify it.</p>
<p>Mr. Given in his book “Making a Newspaper,”
points out the great expense that is attached to
the publication of a large metropolitan daily. In
proportion to their field of appeal and potential
income, the smaller dailies undoubtedly face the
same economic problems. Mr. Given says:<a id="FNanchor_26" href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">26</a>
“Few persons not having intimate knowledge of
a newspaper have any idea of the great amount
of money required to start one, or to keep one
running which is already established. The mechanical
equipment and delivery service alone
may demand an investment of several hundred
thousand dollars—there is one New York paper<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">136</span>
whose mechanical equipment cost $1,000,000—supplies
are in constant demand, and the salary
list is a long and heavy one. For a new paper
the salary list of the editorial department is especially
formidable, as editors and reporters who
have employment with well-established publications
are always reluctant to change to a venture
that at best is in for a rough voyage, and can be
attracted only by high pay.</p>
<p>“A good many of the newspapers that are
started soon become memories, and fewer than
are generally supposed are paying their own way.
The sum of $3,000,000 would hardly suffice at
the present time to equip a first-class newspaper
establishment in New York City, issue a morning
and an evening edition paper, build up a circulation
of 75,000 for each, and place the establishment
on a money-making basis. Run on the lines
of those already established and possessing no
extraordinary features to recommend them to the
public, the two papers might continue to lose
money for twenty years. When one learns that
there are in New York business managers who
are compelled to reckon with an average weekly
expense account of nearly $50,000, he can understand
the possibility of heavy losses. And it
might be added, in contrast, that there are in
New York newspapers which could not be bought
for $10,000,000.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">137</span>
Discussing substantially the same point, Mr.
Oswald Garrison Villard observes the narrowing
down of the number of newspapers in our
large cities and points out the imminent danger
of a news monopoly in the United States. He
says:<a id="FNanchor_27" href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">27</a> “It is the danger that newspaper conditions,
because of the enormously increased costs
and this tendency to monopoly, may prevent people
who are actuated by passion and sentiment
from founding newspapers, which is causing
many students of the situation much concern.
What is to be the hope for the advocates of new-born
and unpopular reforms if they cannot have
a press of their own, as the Abolitionists and the
founders of the Republican party set up theirs
in a remarkably short time, usually with poverty-stricken
bank accounts?”</p>
<p>The public relations counsel must always sub-divide
the appeal of his subject and present it
through the widest possible variety of avenues
to the public. That these avenues must be existing
avenues is both a limitation and an opportunity.</p>
<p>People accept the facts which come to them
through existing channels. They like to hear
new things in accustomed ways. They have
neither the time nor the inclination to search for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">138</span>
facts that are not readily available to them. The
expert, therefore, must advise first upon the form
of action desirable for his client and secondly
must utilize the established mediums of communication,
in order to present to the public a point
of view. This is true whether it is that of a
majority or minority, old or new personality, institution
or group which desires to change by
modification or intensification the store of knowledge
and the opinion of the public.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">139</span></p>
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="CHAPTER_III_II" class="vspace">CHAPTER II<br />
<span class="subhead">THE INTERLAPPING GROUP FORMATIONS OF SOCIETY,
THE CONTINUOUS SHIFTING OF GROUPS,
CHANGING CONDITIONS AND THE FLEXIBILITY
OF HUMAN NATURE ARE ALL
AIDS TO THE COUNSEL ON PUBLIC
RELATIONS</span></h2>
</div>
<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">The</span> public relations counsel works with public
opinion. Public opinion is the product
of individual minds. Individual minds make up
the group mind. And the established order of
things is maintained by the inertia of the group.
Three factors make it possible for the public
relations counsel to overcome even this inertia.
These are, first, the interlapping group formation
of society; second, the continuous shifting
of groups; third, the changed physical conditions
to which groups respond. All of these are
brought about by the natural inherent flexibility
of individual human nature.</p>
<p>Society is not divided into two groups, although
it seems so to many. Some see modern society
divided into capital and labor. The feminist sees
the world divided into men and women. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">140</span>
hungry man sees the rich and the poor. The
missionary sees the heathen and the faithful. If
society were divided into two groups, and no
more, then change could come about only through
violent upheaval.</p>
<p>Let us assume, for example, a society divided
into capital and labor. It is apparent on slight
inspection that capital is not a homogeneous
group. There is a difference in point of view
and in interests between Elbert H. Gary or John
D. Rockefeller, Jr., on the one hand, and the
small shopkeeper on the other.</p>
<p>Occasions arise, too, upon which even in one
group sharp differences and competitive alignments
take place.</p>
<p>In the capital group, on the tariff question, for
example, the retailer with a net income of ten
thousand dollars a year is apt to take a radically
different position from the manufacturer with a
similar income. In some respects the capitalist
is a consumer. In other respects he is a worker.
Many persons are at the same time workers and
capitalists. The highly paid worker who also
draws income from Liberty Bonds or from shares
of stock in industrial corporations is an example
of this.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the so-called workers do
not consist of a homogeneous group with complete
identity of interests. There may be no difference<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">141</span>
in economic situation between manual
labor and mental labor; yet there is a traditional
difference in point of view which keeps these two
groups far apart. Again, the narrower field of
manual labor, the group represented by the American
Federation of Labor, is frequently opposed
in sympathies and interests to the group of Industrial
Workers of the World. Even in the
American Federation of Labor there are component
units. The locomotive engineer, who belongs
to one of the great brotherhoods, has different
interests from the miner, who belongs to
the United Mine Workers of America.</p>
<p>The farmer is in a class by himself. Yet he
in turn may be a tenant farmer or the owner
of an estate or of a small patch of tillable
soil.</p>
<p>That group so vaguely called “the public” consists
of all sorts and conditions of men, the particular
kind or condition depending upon the point
of view of the individual who is making the observation
or classification. This is true likewise
of great and small subdivisions of the public.</p>
<p>The public relations counsel must take into account
that many groups exist, and that there is
a very definite interlapping of groups. Because
of this he is enabled to utilize many types of
appeal in reaching any one group, which he sub-divides
for his purposes.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">142</span>
The Federation for the Support of Jewish
Charities recently instituted a campaign to raise
millions of dollars for what it called its United
Building Fund. The directors of that campaign
might have subdivided society for their purpose
into two groups, the Jewish and the non-Jewish
group, or they might have decided that there were
rich people who could give and poor people who
could not give. But they realized the interlapping
nature of the groups they wanted to reach. They
analyzed these component groups closely and divided
them into groups which had common business
interests. For instance, they organized a
group of dentists, a group of bankers, a group
of real estate operators, a group of cloak-and-suit-house
operators, a group of motion picture
and theatrical owners and others.</p>
<p>Through an approach to each group on the
strongest appeal to which the members of the
group as a group would respond, the charity received
the support of the individuals who made
it up. The social aspirations of the group, the
ambitions for leadership of the group, the competitive
desires and philanthropic tendencies of
the individuals who made up these groups were
capitalized.</p>
<p>The interlapping nature of these groups made
it possible, too, for the public relations counsel to
reach all the individuals by appeals that were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">143</span>
directed not merely to the individual as a member
of the business group with which he was aligned,
but also as a member of a different group. For
instance, as a humanitarian, as a public-spirited
citizen, or as a devoted Jew. Because of this
interlapping characteristic of groups, the organization
was able to accomplish its purpose more
successfully.</p>
<p>Society is made up of an almost infinite number
of groups, whose various interests and desires
overlap and interweave inextricably. The same
man may be at the same time the member of a
minority religious sect, supporter of the dominant
political party, a worker in the sense that he
earns his living primarily by his labor, and a capitalist
in the sense that he has rents from real
estate investments or interest from financial investments.
In an issue which involves his religious
sect he will align himself with one group.
In an issue which involves the choice of a President
of the United States he aligns himself with
another group. In an industrial issue between
capital and labor it might be very nearly impossible
to estimate in advance how he would align
himself. It is from the constant interplay of
these groups and of their conflicting interests
upon each other that progress results, and it is
this fact that the public relations counsel takes
into account in pleading his cause. A movement<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">144</span>
called “The Go-Getters,” instituted by a magazine,
as much to keep itself before the public eye
as to stimulate commercial activity, found rapid
acceptance throughout the country because it appealed
to trades of every description, because
each group had among its members men who belonged
also to a large group, the group of salesmen.</p>
<p>Let us examine for a moment the personnel
of the Horseshoe at the Metropolitan Opera
House. It is composed of people who are rich,
but this economic classification is only one, for
the men and women who assemble there are presumably
music lovers. But we may again break
up this classification of music lovers and discover
that this group contains art lovers as well. It
contains sportsmen. It contains merchants and
bankers. There are philosophers in it. There
are motorists and amateur farmers. When the
Russian Ballet came to America the essential
parts of this group attended the performances,
but in going after his public, the public relations
counsel based his actions upon the interlapping of
groups, and appealed to his entire possible audience
through their various interlapping group interests.
The art lover had been stimulated by
hearing of the Ballet through his art group or
the art publications and by seeing pictures of the
costumes and the settings. The music lover,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">145</span>
who might have had his interest stimulated
through seeing a photograph, also had his interest
stimulated by reading about the music.</p>
<p>Every individual heard of the Russian Ballet
in terms of one or more different appeals and responded
to the Ballet because of these appeals.
It is naturally difficult to say which one of them
had its strongest effect upon the individual’s mind.
There was no doubt, however, that the interlapping
group formation of society made it possible
for more to be reached and to be moved than
would have been the case if the Ballet had been
projected on the world at large only as a well-balanced
artistic performance.</p>
<p>The utilization of this characteristic of society
was shown recently in the activities of a silk firm
which desired to intensify the interest of the
public in silks. It realized that fundamentally
women were its potential buying public, but it
understood, too, that the women who made up
this public were members of other groups as well.
Thus, to the members of women’s clubs, silk was
projected as the embodiment of fashion. To
those women who visited museums, silk was displayed
there as art. To the schools in the same
town, perhaps, silk became a lesson in the natural
history of the silkworm. To art clubs, silk became
color and design. To newspapers, the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">146</span>
events that transpired in the silk mills became
news matters of importance.</p>
<p>Each group of women was appealed to on the
basis of its greatest interest. The school teacher
was appealed to in the schoolroom as an educator,
and after school hours as a member of
a women’s club. She read the advertisements
about silk as a woman reader of the newspapers,
and as a member of the women’s group which
visited the museums, saw the silk there. The
woman who stayed at home was brought into
contact with the silk through her child. All these
groups made up the potential market for silk,
reached in this way in terms of many appeals
to each individual. These are the implications
present for the public relations counsel, who must
take into account the interchange and interplay
of groups in pleading his cause.</p>
<p>For society, the interesting outcome of this situation
is that progress seldom occurs through the
abrupt expulsion by a group of its old ideas in
favor of new ideas, but rather through the rearrangement
of the thought of the individuals
in these groups with respect to each other and
with respect to the entire membership of society.</p>
<p>It is precisely this interlapping of groups—the
variety, the inconsistency of the average man’s
mental, social and psychological commitments
which makes possible the gradual change from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">147</span>
one state of affairs or from one state of mind to
another. Few people are life members of one
group and of one group only. The ordinary person
is a very temporary member of a great number
of groups. This is one of the most powerful
forces making for progress in society because it
makes for receptivity and open-mindedness. The
modification which results from the inconstancy
of individual commitments may be accelerated
and directed by conscious effort. These changes
which come about so stealthily that they remain
unobserved in society until long after they have
taken place, can be made to yield results in chosen
directions.</p>
<p>Changed external conditions must be taken into
account by the public relations counsel in his
work.</p>
<p>Such changes carry with them modifications
in the interests and points of view of those they
affect. They make it possible to modify group
and individual reaction. The public relations
counsel, too, can modify the results of the
changed external condition by calling attention
to it or interpreting it in terms of the interest
of those affected.</p>
<p>The radio might be taken as an example. In
considering the radio from the standpoint of his
work, the public relations counsel has a new
medium which can readily reach huge sections of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">148</span>
the public with his message. The public relations
counsel must be ready to estimate, too, what difference
in viewpoint the radio will produce or has
produced in any given section of the public it
reaches. He will have to consider, for instance,
that due to it the average farmer is much more
closely in contact with the world’s events than
formerly.</p>
<p>In the case of the radio, too, if his clients be,
for instance, large manufacturers of radio supplies
and demand acceleration of this changed
external condition in order to increase their business,
he may enlarge the radio’s field, activity
and effectiveness. Or, he may stress to the public
the importance of this new instrument and
strengthen its prestige, so that it may better fulfill
its mission as a modifier of conditions.</p>
<p>Changed conditions can make possible modifications
in the public point of view, as can be
instanced by a campaign carried on by savings
banks to encourage thrift. This campaign was
successful at that time because inflation made it
easy for the public to see the wisdom of the doctrines
preached and to act upon them.</p>
<p>Another example of this modification in the
public point of view due to a changed condition
was the demand made by the Executive Committee
of the Central Trades and Labor Council
of New York for the government to take over<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">149</span>
the railways of the country. Public ownership
had been a pet subject for school debate for more
than two decades, but it had seldom passed into
the field of serious consideration by the general
public. Yet the conditions of hardship created
by the last strike of the railroad shopmen caused
a much greater receptivity in the public mind to
this idea.</p>
<p>The airplane slowly emerges as an important
factor in the daily life of the people. What it
will mean in the psychology of the nation when
commuters can settle within a radius of a hundred
or more miles of cities is only to be guessed
at. Cities may cease to exist except as industrial
centers. There will be greater groups and
broader interests. There will be fewer geographic
divisions.</p>
<p>When the automobile was first used motoring
was a dangerous and thrilling sport. To-day it is
found that the automobile has altered the fundamental
conception of daily life held by thousands
of people, both in the urban and the rural population.
The automobile has removed much of the
isolation of country districts. It has increased
the possibility of education in them. It has
caused millions of miles of excellent roads to
be laid.</p>
<p>Changed conditions can be national or local in
their import and significance. They can be as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">150</span>
national in scope as the revolutionary introduction
over night of a national prohibition law or
as local as a police captain’s edict in Coney Island
against stockingless feminine bathers. But they
must be taken into consideration by the public relations
counsel in his work if they concern in the
slightest degree his particular public.</p>
<p>The basic elements of human nature are fixed
as to desires and instincts and innate tendencies.
The directions, however, in which these basic elements
may be turned by skillful handling are infinite.
Human nature is readily subject to modification.
Many psychologists have attempted to
define the component parts of human nature, and
while their terminology is not the same, they do
follow more or less the same general outlines.</p>
<p>Among the universal instincts are—self-preservation,
which includes the desire for shelter,
sex hunger and food hunger. It is only necessary
to look through the pages of any magazine
to see the way in which modern business avails
itself of these three fundamentals to exert a coercive
force upon the public it is trying to reach.
The American Radiator advertisement with its
cozy home, the family gathered around the radiator,
the storm raging outside, definitely makes its
appeal to the universal desire for shelter.</p>
<p>The Gulden Mustard advertisements with their
graphic delineation of cold cuts and an inviting<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">151</span>
glass of what is presumably near-beer definitely
appeal to our gustatory sense.</p>
<p>As for the sex appeal, the soap advertisements
run a veritable race with these ends in view.
Woodbury’s “the skin you love to touch” is a
graphic illustration.</p>
<p>The instinct of self-preservation, one of the
most basic of human instincts, is most flexible.
The dispensers of raisins, upon the advice of an
expert on public opinion, adopted a slogan to appeal
to this instinct: “Have you had your iron
to-day?”—iron presumably strengthening a man
and increasing his powers of resistance. The
same man appealed to here will respond to the
sales talk which persuades him that insurance
may save him at a time of need.</p>
<p>An important hair-net manufacturer wanted
to increase the sales of his product. The public
relations counsel, therefore, appealed to the instinct
of self-preservation of large groups of the
public. He talked of self-preservation with respect
to hygiene for food dispensers. He talked
of self-preservation with respect to safety for
women who work near exposed machinery.</p>
<p>The same instinct of preservation which may
cause a worker to give up necessary food so that
he may save a little money will cause him to
contribute money to a common fund if he can
be shown that this too is a safety measure.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">152</span>
The public relations counsel extracts from his
clients’ causes ideas which will capitalize certain
fundamental instincts in the people he is trying
to reach, and then sets about to project these
ideas to his public.</p>
<p>William MacDougall, the psychologist, classifies
seven primary instincts with their attendant
emotions. They are flight-fear, repulsion-disgust,
curiosity-wonder, pugnacity-anger, self-display-elation,
self-abasement-subjection, parental-love-tenderness.
These instincts are utilized
by the public relations counsel in developing ideas
and emotions which will modify the opinions and
actions of his public.</p>
<p>The action of public health officials in stressing
the possibility of a plague or epidemic is effective
because it appeals to the emotion of fear, and
presents the possibility of preventing the spread
of the epidemic or plague. Of course, the element
of flight in this particular situation is not
one of movement, but of a desire to get away
from the danger.</p>
<p>The instinct of repulsion with its attendant
emotion of disgust is not often called upon by
the public relations counsel in his work.</p>
<p>On the other hand, curiosity and wonder are
continually employed. In Governmental work,
particularly, the statesman who has an announcement
to make is continually exhausting every<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">153</span>
effort to arouse public interest in advance of the
actual announcement. Feelers are often sent out
to the public to help create curiosity.</p>
<p>It is interesting to note, too, that even book
publishers rely upon the element of wonder,
termed suspense in drama, to increase their public
and their sales. Our now famous “What is
wrong with this picture?” advertisements, and
those used for the O. Henry books illustrate this
point.</p>
<p>Pugnacity with its attendant emotion of anger
is a human constant. The public relations counsel
uses this continually in constructing all kinds of
events that will call it into play. Because of it,
too, he is often forced to enact combats and create
issues. He stages battles against evils in
which the antagonist is personified for the public.
New York City, when it wants to reduce the death
rate from tuberculosis, aligns its citizens yearly
in a fight against the disease and continues the
idea of combat by announcing the number of
victims from year to year. It uses the terminology
of warfare in these bulletins. Such phrases
in this or other health campaigns as “kill the
germs,” “swat the fly,” illustrate this point.
The public responds to a battle in a way that
it might not respond to a plea to take care of
itself or to do its civic duty.</p>
<p>Under pugnacity would come that technique<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">154</span>
of the public relations counsel which is continually
devising tests and contests. Mr. Martin,
in his experience as director of the Cooper
Union Forum, noticed that the sort of interest
which will most easily bring an assemblage of
people together is most commonly an issue of
some kind.</p>
<p>On the one hand, says Mr. Martin:<a id="FNanchor_28" href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">28</a> “I have
seen efforts made in New York to hold mass
meetings to discuss affairs of the very greatest
importance, and I have noted the fact that such
efforts usually fail to get out more than a handful
of specially interested persons, no matter how
well advertised, if the subject to be considered
happens not to be of a controversial nature. On
the other hand, if the matter to be considered
is one about which there is keen partisan feeling
and popular resentment—if it lends itself to the
spectacular personal achievement of one whose
name is known, especially in the face of opposition
or difficulties—or if the occasion permits of
resolutions of protest, of the airing of wrongs,
of denouncing a business of some kind, or of casting
statements of external principles in the teeth
of ‘enemies of humanity,’ then, however trivial
the occasion, we may count on it that our meeting
will be well attended.</p>
<p>“It is this element of conflict, directly or indirectly,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">155</span>
which plays an overwhelming part in the
psychology of every crowd. It is the element of
contest which makes baseball so popular. A debate
will draw a larger crowd than a lecture.
One of the secrets of the large attendance of
the forum is the fact that discussion—‘talking
back’—is permitted and encouraged. The Evangelist
Sunday undoubtedly owes the great attendance
at his meetings in no small degree to the
fact that he is regularly expected to abuse some
one.</p>
<p>“Nothing so easily catches general attention
and creates a crowd as a contest of any kind.
The crowd unconsciously identifies its members
with one or the other competitor. Success enables
the winning crowd to ‘crow’ over the losers.
Such an occasion becomes symbolic and is utilized
by the ego to enhance its feeling of importance.”</p>
<p>The public relations counsel finds in the instinct
of pugnacity a powerful weapon for enlisting public
support for or public opposition to a point of
view in which he is interested. On this principle,
he will, whenever possible, state his case in the
form of an issue and enlist, in support of his
side, such forces as are available.</p>
<p>The dangers of the method must be recognized
and borne in mind. Pugnacity can be enlisted
on the side of decency and progress. He who
looks at it from that point of view will agree<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">156</span>
with Mr. Pulitzer, the great publisher, that it
seems neither extraordinary nor culpable that
“people and press should be more interested in the
polemical than in the platitudinous; in blame than
in painting the lily; in attack than in sending laudatory
coals to Newcastle.” On the other hand,
the instinct of pugnacity can be utilized to suppress
and to oppress. From the point of view
of the public relations counsel, who is interested
from day to day in accomplishing definite results
on specific issues, the dangers of the method are
only the ordinary dangers of every weapon, physical
or psychological, which has been devised.</p>
<p>It is interesting in this connection to note that
a newspaper uses the same methods to encourage
interest in itself as do others. The <cite>New York
Times</cite> promoted public interest in heavier-than-air-machines
by creating sporting issues of contests
between aviators on altitude records, continuous
stays in the air, distance flying and so
forth.</p>
<p>Mr. Lippmann comments on this same characteristic:</p>
<p>“But where pugnacity is not enlisted, those of
us who are not directly involved find it hard to
keep up our interest. For those who are involved
the absorption may be real enough to hold them
even when no issue is involved. They may be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">157</span>
exercised by sheer joy in activity or by subtle
rivalry or invention. But for those to whom the
whole problem is external and distant, these other
faculties do not easily come into play. In order
that the faint image of the affair shall mean
something to them, they must be allowed to exercise
the love of struggle, suspense, and victory.”<a id="FNanchor_29" href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">29</a></p>
<p>We have to take sides. We have to be able to
take sides. In the recesses of our being we must
step out of the audience onto the stage and
wrestle as the hero for the victory of good over
evil. We must breathe into the allegory the
breath of our life.</p>
<p>Recently a philanthropic group was advised to
hold a prize fight for charity. This recognition
of the importance of the principle of pugnacity
was correct. It is a question whether the
application was not somewhat ill advised and
in bad taste. The Consumer’s Committee of
Women opposed to American Valuation was
avowedly aligned to fight against a section of the
tariff presented by Chairman Fordney. The
Lucy Stone League, a group who wish to make
it easy for married women to maintain their
maiden names, dramatized the fight that they
are making against tradition by staging a debate
at their annual banquet.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">158</span>
Very often the public relations counsel utilizes
the self-display-elation motive and draws public
attention to particular people in groups, in order
to give them a greater interest in the work they
are espousing. It is often found to be true that
when a man’s adherence or allegiance to a movement
is lukewarm and he is publicly praised for
his adherence to it, he will become a forceful
factor in it. That is why the intelligent hospital
boards name rooms or beds after their
donors. It is one of the reasons for the elaborate
letterheads so many of our philanthropic
organizations have.</p>
<p>Self-abasement and subjection, its attendant
emotion, are seldom called upon. On the other
hand, parental love and tenderness are continually
employed, viz., the effort of the baby-kissing
candidate for public office or the attempt to popularize
a brand of silk by having a child present
a silk flag to a war veteran at a public ceremony.
The whole flood of post-war charity-drives was
keyed to this pitch. The starving Belgian orphan
personified in every picture, the starving Armenian,
and then the hungry Austrian and German
orphans appeared, and the campaigns all
succeeded on this issue. Even issues where the
child was not the predominant factor used this
appeal.</p>
<p>Four other instincts are listed in this classification—gregariousness,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">159</span>
individualism, acquisition
and construction. We have already dealt
with the first at length.</p>
<p>The gregarious instinct in man gives the public
relations counsel the opportunity for his most
potent work. The group and herd show everywhere
the leader, who because of certain qualifications,
certain points that are judged by the
herd to be important to its life, stands out and
is followed more or less implicitly by it.</p>
<p>A group leader gains such power with his
group or herd that even on matters which have
had nothing to do with the establishment or gaining
of that leadership he is considered a leader
and is followed by his group.</p>
<p>It is this attribute of men and women that
again gives the public relations counsel free play.</p>
<p>A group leader of any given cause will bring
to a new cause all those who have looked to his
leadership. For instance, if the adherence of
a prominent Republican is secured for the League
of Nations, his adherence will probably bring
to the League of Nations many other prominent
Republicans.</p>
<p>The group leadership with which the public
relations counsel may work is limited only by the
character of the groups he desires to reach.
After an analysis of his problem the subdivisions
must be made. His action depends upon his selective<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">160</span>
capacity, and the possibility of approach to
the leaders. These leaders may represent therefore
a wide variety of interests—society leaders
or leaders of political groups, leaders of women
or leaders of sportsmen, leaders of divisions by
geography, or divisions by age, divisions by language
or by education. These subdivisions are
so numerous that there are large companies in
the United States whose business it is to supply
lists of groups and group leaders in different
fields.</p>
<p>This same mechanism is carried out in many
other cases. In looking for group leaders, the
public relations counsel must realize that some
leaders have more varied and more intensified
authority than others. One leader may represent
the ideals and ideas of several or numerous
groups. His coöperation on one basis may bring
into alignment and may carry with it the other
groups who are interested in him primarily for
other reasons.</p>
<p>The public relations counsel, let us say, enlists
the support of a man, president of two associations;
(a) an economic association, (b) a welfare
association. The issue is an economic one, purely.
But because of his leadership, the membership
of association (b), that is, the welfare group,
joins him in the movement as interestedly as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">161</span>
association (a) does, which has the more logical,
direct reason for entering the field.</p>
<p>I have given this in general terms rather than
as a specific instance. The principle which governs
the interlapping and continually shifting
group formation of society also governs the gregariousness.</p>
<p>Individualism, another instinct, is a concomitant
of gregariousness, and naturally follows it.
The desire for individual expression is always
a trait of the individuals who go to make up the
group. The appeal to individualism goes closely
in hand with other instincts, such as self-display.</p>
<p>The instincts of acquisition and construction
are minor instincts as far as the ordinary work
of the public relations counsel is concerned. Examples
of this type of appeal come readily to
mind in the “Own your own home” and “Build
your own home” campaigns.</p>
<p>The innate tendencies are susceptibility to suggestion,
imitation, habit and play. Susceptibility
to suggestion and imitation might well be classified
under gregariousness, which we have already
discussed.</p>
<p>Under habit would come one very important
human trait of which the public relations counsel
avails himself continually. The mechanism
which habit produces and which makes it possible<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">162</span>
for the public relations counsel to use habit
is the stereotype we have already touched upon.</p>
<p>Mental habits create stereotypes just as physical
habits create certain definite reflex actions.
These stereotypes or reflex images are a great aid
to the public relations counsel in his work.</p>
<p>These short-cuts to reactions make it possible
for the average mind to possess a much larger
number of impressions than would be possible
without them. At the same time these stereotypes
or <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">clichés</i> are not necessarily truthful pictures
of what they are supposed to portray.
They are determined by the outward stimuli to
which the individual has been subject as well as
by the content of his mind.</p>
<p>To most of us, for example, the stereotype
of the general is a stern, upright gentleman in
uniform and with gold braid, preferably on a
horse. The stereotype of a farmer is a slouching,
overall-clad man with straw sticking out of
his mouth and a straw hat on his head. He is
supposed to be very shrewd when it comes to
matters of his own farm and very ignorant when
it comes to matters of culture. He despises “city
fellers.” All this is the connotation brought up
by the one word “farmer.”</p>
<p>The public relations counsel sometimes uses the
current stereotypes, sometimes combats them and
sometimes creates new ones. In using them he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">163</span>
very often brings to the public he is reaching a
stereotype they already know, to which he adds
his new ideas, thus he fortifies his own and gives
a greater carrying power. For instance, the public
relations counsel might well advise Austria,
which in the public mind might still represent
a belligerent country, to bring forward other
Austrian stereotypes, namely the Danube waltz
stereotype and the Danube blue stereotype. An
appeal for help would then come from the country
of the well-liked Danube waltz and Danube
blue—the country of gayety and charm. The
new idea would be carried to those who accepted
the stereotypes they were familiar with.</p>
<p>The combating of the stereotype is seen in the
battle waged against the American Valuation
Plan by the public relations counsel. The formulators
of the plan dubbed it “American Valuation”
in order to capitalize on the stereotype of
“American.” In fighting the plan, its opponents
put the word “American” in quotation marks
whenever reference was made to the subject in
order to question the authenticity of the use of
this stereotype. Thus patriotism was definitely
removed from what was evidently an economical
and political issue.</p>
<p>The public relations counsel creates new stereotypes.
Roosevelt, his own best adviser, was an
apt creator of such stereotypes—“square deal,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">164</span>
de-lighted, molly-coddle, big stick,” created new
concepts for general acceptance.</p>
<p>Stereotypes sometimes become shop-worn and
lose their power with the public that has previously
accepted them. “Hundred per cent
American” died from over use.</p>
<p>Visible objects as stereotypes are often used
by the public relations counsel with great effectiveness
to produce the desired impression. A
national flag on the orator’s platform is a most
common device. A scientist must of necessity
be in juxtaposition with his instruments. A
chemist is not a chemist to the public unless test
tubes and retorts are near him. A doctor must
have his kit, or, formerly, a Van Dyke beard.
In photographs of food factory buildings white
is a good stereotype for cleanliness and purity.
In fact, all emblems and trade-marks are stereotypes.</p>
<p>There is one danger in the use of stereotypes
by the public relations counsel. That is, by the
substitution of words for acts, demagogues in
every field of social relationship can take advantage
of the public.</p>
<p>Play as an innate tendency is utilized by the
public relations counsel whenever conditions
merit such an appeal. When a charity committee
is advised to institute a street fair to gather<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">165</span>
money, the committee is recognizing this tendency.
When a city government arranges fireworks
for its citizens, when a metropolitan news-daily
stages marble contests or horseshoe pitching
events, the play tendency of human society
finds an outlet and the initiators of the event find
friends.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">166</span></p>
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="CHAPTER_III_III" class="vspace">CHAPTER III<br />
<span class="subhead">AN OUTLINE OF METHODS PRACTICABLE IN MODIFYING
THE POINT OF VIEW OF A GROUP</span></h2>
</div>
<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">On</span> the question of specific devices upon which
the public relations counsel relies to accomplish
his ends, volumes could probably be written
without exhausting the subject. The detailed
presentation is potentially endless. Pages could
be filled with instances of the stimuli to which
men and women respond, the circumstances under
which they will respond favorably or unfavorably,
and the particular application of each
of these stimuli to concrete conditions. Such an
outline, however, would have less value than an
outline of fundamentals, since circumstances are
never the same.</p>
<p>These principles, by and large, consist of fundamentals
already defined, to which the public relations
counsel has recourse in common with the
statesman, the journalist, the preacher, the lecturer
and all others engaged in attempting to
modify public opinion or public conduct.</p>
<p>How does the public relations counsel approach
any particular problem? First he must analyze<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">167</span>
his client’s problem and his client’s objective.
Then he must analyze the public he is trying to
reach. He must devise a plan of action for the
client to follow and determine the methods and
the organs of distribution available for reaching
his public. Finally he must try to estimate the
interaction between the public he seeks to reach
and his client. How will his client’s case strike
the public mind? And by public mind here is
meant that section or those sections of the public
which must be reached.</p>
<p>Let us take the example of a public relations
counsel who is confronted with the specific problem
of modifying or influencing the attitude of
the public toward a given tariff bill. A tariff bill,
of course, is primarily the application of theoretical
economics to a concrete industrial situation.
The public relations counsel in analyzing must see
himself simultaneously as a member of a large
number of publics. He must visualize himself
as a manufacturer, a retailer, an importer, an
employer, a worker, a financier, a politician.</p>
<p>Within these groups he must see himself again
as a member of the various subdivisions of each
of these groups. He must see himself, for example,
as a member of a group of manufacturers
who obtain the bulk of their raw material within
the United States, and at the same time as a
member of a group of manufacturers who obtain<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">168</span>
large portions of their raw material from abroad
and whose importations of raw material may be
adversely affected by the pending tariff bill. He
must see himself not only as a farm laborer but
also as a mechanic in a large industrial center.
He must see himself as the owner of the department
store and as a member of the buying public.
He must be able to generalize, as far as
possible, from these points of view in order to
strike upon the appeal or group of appeals which
will be influential with as many sections of society
as possible.<a id="FNanchor_30" href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">30</a></p>
<p>Let us assume that our problem is the intensification
in the public mind of the prestige of a
hotel. The problem for the public relations counsel
is to create in the public mind the close relationship
between the hotel and a number of ideas
that represent the things the hotel desires to
stand for in the public mind.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">169</span>
The counsel therefore advises the hotel to make
a celebration of its thirtieth anniversary which
happens to fall at this particular time and suggests
to the president the organization of an
anniversary committee of a body of business men
who represent the cream of the city’s merchants.
This committee is to include men who represent
a number of stereotypes that will help to produce
the inevitable result in the public mind.
There are to be also a leading banker, a society
woman, a prominent lawyer, an influential
preacher, and so forth until a cross section of
the city’s most telling activities is mirrored in
the committee. The stereotype has its effect, and
what may have been an indefinite impression beforehand
has been reënforced and concretized.
The hotel remains preëminent in the public mind.
The stereotypes have proved its preëminence.
The cause has been strongly presented to the
public by identification with different group stereotypes.</p>
<p>Here is another example. A packing company
desires to establish in the public mind the fact
that the name of its product is synonymous with
bacon. Its public relations counsel advises a contest
on “Bring home the Beech-Nut,” the contest
to be open to salesmen and to be based on the
best sale made by salesmen throughout the country
during the month of August. But here again<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">170</span>
it is necessary to use a stereotype to help the
possible contestant identify the cause. A committee
of nationally known sales-managers is
chosen to act as judges for the contest and immediately
success is assured. Thousands of
salesmen compete for the prize. The stereotype
has bespoken the value of the contest.</p>
<p>The public relations counsel can try to bring
about this identification by utilizing the appeals
to desires and instincts discussed in the preceding
chapter, and by making use of the characteristics
of the group formation of society. His utilization
of these basic principles will be a continual
and efficient aid to him.</p>
<p>He must make it easy for the public to pick
his issue out of the great mass of material. He
must be able to overcome what has been called
“the tendency on the part of public attention to
‘flicker’ and ‘relax.’” He must do for the public
mind what the newspaper, with its headlines,
accomplishes for its readers.</p>
<p>Abstract discussions and heavy facts are the
groundwork of his involved theory, or analysis,
but they cannot be given to the public until they
are simplified and dramatized. The refinements
of reason and the shadings of emotion cannot
reach a considerable public.</p>
<p>When an appeal to the instincts can be made<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">171</span>
so powerful as to secure acceptance in the medium
of dissemination in spite of competitive interests,
it can be aptly termed news.</p>
<p>The public relations counsel, therefore, is a
creator of news for whatever medium he chooses
to transmit his ideas. It is his duty to create
news no matter what the medium which broadcasts
this news. It is news interest which gives
him an opportunity to make his idea travel and
get the favorable reaction from the instincts
to which he happens to appeal. News in itself
we shall define later on when we discuss “relations
with the press.” But the word news is sufficiently
understood for me to talk of it here.</p>
<p>In order to appeal to the instincts and fundamental
emotions of the public, discussed in previous
chapters, the public relations counsel must
create news around his ideas. News will, by its
superior inherent interest, receive attention in the
competitive markets for news, which are themselves
continually trying to claim the public attention.
The public relations counsel must lift
startling facts from his whole subject and present
them as news. He must isolate ideas and develop
them into events so that they can be more readily
understood and so that they may claim attention
as news.</p>
<p>The headline and the cartoon bear the same<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">172</span>
relation to the newspaper that the public relations
counsel’s analysis of a problem bears to the
problem itself.</p>
<p>The headline is a compact, vivid simplification
of complicated issues. The cartoon provides a
visual image which takes the place of abstract
thought. So, too, the analyses the public relations
counsel makes, lift out the important, the
interesting, and the easily understandable points
in order to create interest.</p>
<p>“Yet human qualities are themselves,” says
Mr. Lippmann,<a id="FNanchor_31" href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">31</a> “vague and fluctuating. They
are best remembered by a physical sign. And
therefore the human qualities we tend to ascribe
to the names of our impressions, themselves tend
to be visualized in physical metaphors. The people
of England, the history of England, condense
into England, and England becomes John Bull,
who is jovial and fat, not too clever, but well
able to take care of himself. The migration of
a people may appear to some as a meandering of
a river, and to others like a devastating flood.
The courage people display may be objectified as
a rock, their purpose as a road, their doubts as
forks of the road, their difficulties as ruts and
rocks, their progress as a fertile valley. If they
mobilize their dreadnaughts they unsheath a
sword. If their army surrenders they are thrown<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">173</span>
to earth. If they are oppressed they are on the
rack or under the harrow.”</p>
<p>Perhaps the chief contribution of the public
relations counsel to the public and to his client
is his ability to understand and analyze obscure
tendencies of the public mind. It is true that he
first analyzes his client’s problem—he then analyzes
the public mind; he utilizes the mediums of
communication between the two, but before he
does this he must use his personal experience and
knowledge to bring two factors into alignment.
It is his capacity for crystallizing the obscure
tendencies of the public mind before they have
reached definite expression, which makes him so
valuable.</p>
<p>His ability to create those symbols to which
the public is ready to respond; his ability to know
and to analyze those reactions which the public
is ready to give; his ability to find those stereotypes,
individual and community, which will bring
favorable responses; his ability to speak in the
language of his audience and to receive from it
a favorable reception are his contributions.</p>
<p>The appeal to the instincts and the universal
desires is the basic method through which he
produces his results.</p>
<hr />
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="PART_IV">PART IV<br />
<span class="subhead"><span class="smcap">Ethical Relations</span></span></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">177</span></p>
<h2 id="CHAPTER_IV_I" class="vspace">CHAPTER I<br />
<span class="subhead">A CONSIDERATION OF THE PRESS AND OTHER MEDIUMS
OF COMMUNICATION IN THEIR
RELATION TO THE PUBLIC RELATIONS
COUNSEL</span></h2>
<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">When</span> the question of preparing and publishing
this volume was first considered,
the publishers wrote letters to several hundred
prominent men asking their opinions, individually,
as to the probable public interest in a work
dealing with public relations. Newspaper editors
and publishers, heads of large industries and
public service corporations, philanthropists, university
presidents and heads of schools of journalism,
as well as other prominent men made up
the number. Their replies are exceedingly interesting
in as much as they show, almost uniformly,
the increasing emphasis placed upon public
relations by leaders in every important phase
of American life. These replies show also a
growing understanding of the need for specialized
service in this field of specialized problems.</p>
<p>Particularly interesting were the comments of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">178</span>
newspaper publishers and editors in response to
Mr. Liveright’s inquiry, for nothing could better
indicate the light in which the public relations
counsel is held by those very individuals who
are supposed popularly to disparage his value in
the social and economic scheme of things.</p>
<p>What are the relations of the public relations
counsel to the various mediums he can employ
to carry his message to the public? There is,
of course, first and perhaps most important, the
press. There is the moving picture; the lecture
platform; there is advertising; there is the direct-by-mail
effort; there is the stage—drama and
music; there is word of mouth; there is the pulpit,
the schoolroom, the legislative chamber—to
all of these the public relations counsel has distinct
relationship.</p>
<p>The journalist of to-day, while still watching
the machinations of the so-called “press agent”
with one half-amused eye, appreciates the value
of the service the public relations counsel is able
to give him.</p>
<p>To the newspaper the public relations counsel
serves as a purveyor of news.</p>
<p>As disseminator of news the newspaper holds
an important position in American life. This has
not always been the case, for the emphasis upon
the news side is a development of recent years.
Originally, the name newspaper was scarcely an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">179</span>
accurate or appropriate designation for the units
of the American press. So-called newspapers
were, in fact, vehicles for the expression of opinion
of their editors. They contained little or
no news, as that word is understood to-day—largely
because difficulties of communication made
it impossible to obtain any but the most local
items of interest. The public was accustomed to
look to its press for the opinion of its favorite
editor upon subjects of current interest rather
than for the recital of mere facts.</p>
<p>To-day, on the other hand, the expression of
editorial opinion is only secondarily the function
of a newspaper; and thousands of persons read
newspapers with whose editorial policy they do
not in the slightest agree. Such a situation would
have been nearly impossible in the days of Horace
Greeley.</p>
<p>The need which the American press is to-day
engaged in satisfying is the need for news. “A
paper,” says Mr. Given,<a id="FNanchor_32" href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">32</a> “may succeed without
printing editorials worth reading and without
having any aim other than the making of money,
but it cannot possibly thrive unless it gets the
news and prints it in a pleasing and attractive
form.”</p>
<p>Writing from a long experience with the profession
of journalism, Will Irwin reaches the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">180</span>
conclusion that<a id="FNanchor_33" href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">33</a> “news is the main thing, the
vital consideration of the American newspaper;
it is both an intellectual craving and a commercial
need to the modern world. In popular psychology
it has come to be a crying primal want of the
mind, like hunger of the body. Tramp windjammers,
taking on the pilot after a long cruise,
ask for the papers before they ask, as formerly,
for fresh fruit and vegetables. Whenever, in our
later Western advance, we Americans set up a
new mining camp, an editor, his type slung on
burro-back, comes in with the missionaries, evangel
himself of civilization. Most dramatically the
San Francisco disaster illuminated this point.
On the morning of April 20, 1906, the city’s population
huddled in parks and squares, their houses
gone, death of famine or thirst a rumor and a
possibility. The editors of the three morning
newspapers, expressing the true soldier spirit
which inspires this most devoted profession, had
moved their staffs to the suburb of Oakland, and
there, on the presses of the <cite>Tribune</cite>, they had
issued a combined <cite>Call-Chronicle-Examiner</cite>.
When, at dawn, the paper was printed, an editor
and a reporter loaded the edition into an automobile
and drove it through the parks of the disordered
city, giving copies away. They were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">181</span>
fairly mobbed, they had to drive at top speed,
casting out the sheets as they went, to make any
progress at all. No bread wagon, no supply of
blankets, caused half so much stir as did the
arrival of the news.</p>
<p>“We need it, we crave it; this nerve of the
modern world transmits thought and impulse
from the brain of humanity to its muscles; the
complex organism of modern society could no
more move without it than a man could move
without filaments and ganglia. On the commercial
and practical side, the man of even small
affairs must read news in the newspapers every
day to keep informed on the thousand and one
activities in the social structure which affect his
business. On the intellectual and spiritual side,
it is—save for the Church alone—our principal
outlook on the higher intelligence. The thought
of legislature, university, study, and pulpit comes
to the common man first—and usually last—in
the form of news. The tedious business of teaching
reading in public schools has become chiefly
a training to consume newspapers. We must go
far up in the scale of culture before we find an
intellectual equipment more a debtor to the formal
education of school and college than to the haphazard
education of news.”</p>
<p>The extent to which the editorial aspect of
the newspaper has given way to an increased importance<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">182</span>
of the news columns is vividly illustrated
in the anecdote about the <cite>Philadelphia North
American</cite>, which Mr. Irwin relates. “The <cite>North
American</cite>,” says Mr. Irwin, “had declared for
local option. A committee of brewers waited on
the editor; they represented one of the biggest
groups in their business. ‘This is an ultimatum,’
they said. ‘You must change your policy or lose
our advertising. We’ll be easy on you. We don’t
ask you to alter your editorial policy, <em>but you must
stop printing news of local-option victories</em>.’<a id="FNanchor_34" href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">34</a> So
the deepest and shrewdest enemies of the body
politic give practical testimony to the ‘power of
the press’ in its modern form.”</p>
<p>In the case of the brewers of Philadelphia it
is my own opinion that if they had been well
advised, instead of attempting to interfere with
the policy of the <cite>North American</cite>, they would
have made it a point to bring to the attention
of the <cite>North American</cite> every instance of the defeat
of local option. The newspaper would undoubtedly
have published both sides of the story,
as far as both sides consisted of news.</p>
<p>It is because he acts as the purveyor of truthful,
accurate and verifiable news to the press
that the conscientious and successful counsel on
public relations is looked upon with favor by
the journalist. And in the Code of Ethics recently<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">183</span>
adopted in Washington by a national editors’
conference, his function is given acknowledgment.
Just as in the case of the other mediums
for the dissemination of information,
mediums which range from the lecture platform
to the radio, the press, too, looks to the public
relations counsel for information about the causes
he represents.</p>
<p>Since news is the newspaper’s backbone, it is
obvious that an understanding of what news actually
is must be an integral part of the equipment
of the public relations counsel. For the public
relations counsel must not only supply news—he
must create news. This function as the creator
of news is even more important than his others.</p>
<p>It has always been interesting to me that a concise,
comprehensive definition of news has never
been written. What news is, every newspaper
man instinctively knows, particularly as it concerns
the needs of his own paper. But it is almost
as difficult to define news as it is to describe a
circular staircase without making corkscrew gestures
with one’s hand, or as to define some of the
abstruse concepts of the metaphysician, like space
or time or reality.</p>
<p>What is news for one newspaper may have no
interest whatever, or very little interest, for another
newspaper. There are almost as many definitions
of news as there are journalists who take<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">184</span>
the trouble to define it. Certain of the characteristics
of news, of course, can be readily seized
upon; and definitions of news generally consist
of particular emphasis upon one or another of
these characteristics. Mr. Given remarks that<a id="FNanchor_35" href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">35</a>
“news was once defined as ‘Fresh information of
something that has lately taken place.’...”
The author of this definition puts the chief emphasis
upon the element of timeliness. Undoubtedly
in most news that element must be present.
It would not be true, however, to say that it must
always be present, nor would it be true to say that
everything which is timely is news. Obviously,
the well-nigh infinite number of occurrences
which take place in daily life throughout the
world are timely enough, so far as each of them
in its respective environment is concerned; but
few of them ever become news.</p>
<p>Mr. Irwin defines news as “a departure from
the established order.” Thus, according to Mr.
Irwin, a criminal act is news because it is a departure
from the established order, and at the
same time, an exceptional display of fidelity,
courage or honesty is also news for the same
reason.</p>
<p>“With our education in established order, we
get the knowledge,” he says,<a id="FNanchor_36" href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">36</a> “that mankind in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">185</span>
bulk obeys its ideals of that order only imperfectly.
When something brings to our attention
an exceptional adhesion to religion, virtue, and
truth, that becomes in itself a departure from
regularity, and therefore news. The knowledge
that most servants do their work conscientiously
and many stay long in the same employ is not
news. But when a committee of housewives presents
a medal to a servant who has worked faithfully
in one employ for fifty years, that becomes
news, because it calls our attention to a case of
exceptional fidelity to the ideals of established
order. The fact that mankind will consume an
undue amount of news about crime and disorder
is only a proof that the average human being is
optimistic, that he believes the world to be true,
sound and working upward. Crimes and scandals
interest him most because they most disturb his
picture of the established order.</p>
<p>“That, then, is the basis of news. The mysterious
news sense which is necessary to all good
reporters rests on no other foundation than acquired
or instinctive perception of this principle,
together with a feeling for what the greatest
number of people will regard as a departure from
the established order. In Jesse Lynch William’s
newspaper play, ‘The Stolen Story,’ occurs this
passage:</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">186</span></p>
<blockquote>
<p>“(<i>Enter Very Young Reporter; comes down
to city desk with air of excitement.</i>)</p>
<p>“<span class="smcap">Very Young Reporter</span> (<i>considerably impressed</i>):
‘Big story. Three dagoes killed by that
boiler explosion!’</p>
<p>“<span class="smcap">The City Editor</span> (<i>reading copy. Doesn’t
look up</i>): ‘Ten lines.’ (<i>Continues reading copy.</i>)</p>
<p>“<span class="smcap">Very Young Reporter</span> (<i>looks surprised and
hurt. Crosses over to reporter’s table. Then
turns back to city desk. Casual conversational
tone</i>): ‘By the way. Funny thing. There was
a baby carriage within fifty feet of the explosion,
but it wasn’t upset.’</p>
<p>“<span class="smcap">The City Editor</span> (<i>looks up with professional
interest</i>): ‘That’s worth a dozen dead dagoes.
Write a half column.’</p>
<p>“(<i>Very Young Reporter looks still more surprised,
perplexed. Suddenly the idea dawns upon
him. He crosses over to table, sits down, writes.</i>)</p></blockquote>
<p>“Both saw news; but the editor went further
than the reporter. For cases of Italians killed
by a boiler explosion are so common as to approach
the commonplace; but a freak of explosive
chemistry which annihilates a strong man
and does not disturb a baby departs from it
widely.”</p>
<p>Here again it is clear that Mr. Irwin has<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">187</span>
merely emphasized one of the features generally
to be found in what we call news, without, however,
offering us a complete or exclusive definition
of news.</p>
<p>Analyzing further within his general rule that
news is a departure from the established order,
Mr. Irwin goes on to point out certain outstanding
factors which enhance or create news value.
I cite them here because all of them are unquestionably
sound. On the other hand, analysis
shows that some of them are directly contradictory
to his main principle that only the departure
from the established order is news. In Mr. Irwin’s
opinion, the four outstanding factors making
for the creation or enhancement of news value
are the following:<a id="FNanchor_37" href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">37</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>1. “<i>We prefer to read about the things we
like.</i>” The result, he says, has been the rule:
“Power for the men, affections for the women.”</p>
<p>2. “<i>Our interest in news increases in direct
ratio to our familiarity with its subject, its setting,
and its dramatis personæ.</i>”</p>
<p>3. “<i>Our interest in news is in direct ratio to
its effect on our personal concerns.</i>”</p>
<p>4. “<i>Our interest in news increases in direct<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">188</span>
ratio to the general importance of the persons or
activities which it affects.</i>” This is so obvious
that it scarcely needs comment.</p></blockquote>
<p>Some notion of the diversity of news arising
in a city may be obtained if one studies the points
which are watched as news sources, either continuously
or closely by metropolitan dailies. Mr.
Given<a id="FNanchor_38" href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">38</a> lists the places in New York which are
watched constantly:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Police Headquarters.</p>
<p>Police Courts.</p>
<p>Coroner’s Office.</p>
<p>Supreme Courts, New York County.</p>
<p>New York Stock Exchange.</p>
<p>City Hall, including the Mayor’s Office, Aldermanic
Chamber, City Clerk’s Office, and Office of
the President of Manhattan Borough.</p>
<p>County Clerk’s office.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Those places, says Mr. Given, which the newspapers
watch carefully, but not continually, are:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“City Courts (Minor civil cases).</p>
<p>Court of General Sessions (Criminal cases).</p>
<p>Court of Special Sessions (Minor criminal
cases).</p>
<p>District Attorney’s Office.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">189</span>
Doors of Grand Jury rooms when the Grand
Jury is in session (For indictments and presentments).</p>
<p>Federal Courts.</p>
<p>Post Office.</p>
<p>United States Commissioner’s Offices, and
Offices of the United States Secret Service officers.</p>
<p>United States Marshal’s Office.</p>
<p>United States District Attorney’s Office.</p>
<p>Ship News, where incoming and outgoing vessels
are reported.</p>
<p>Barge Office, where immigrants land.</p>
<p>Surrogate’s Office, where wills are filed and
testimony concerning wills in litigation is heard.</p>
<p>Political Headquarters during campaigns.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Finally, “the following are visited by the reporters
several times, or only once a day:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Police Stations.</p>
<p>Municipal Courts.</p>
<p>Board of Health Headquarters.</p>
<p>Fire Department Headquarters.</p>
<p>Park Department Headquarters.</p>
<p>Building Department Headquarters.</p>
<p>Tombs Prison.</p>
<p>County Jail.</p>
<p>United States Sub-treasury.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">190</span>
Office of Collector of the Port.</p>
<p>United States Appraiser’s Office.</p>
<p>Public Hospitals.</p>
<p>Leading Hotels.</p>
<p>The Morgue.</p>
<p>County Sheriff’s Office.</p>
<p>City Comptroller’s Office.</p>
<p>City Treasurer’s Office.</p>
<p>Offices of the Tax Collector and Tax Assessors.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Mr. Given’s example of the broker, John
Smith, illustrates aptly the point I am making.
“For ten years,” said Mr. Given,<a id="FNanchor_39" href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">39</a> “he pursues
the even tenor of his way and except for his customers
and his friends no one gives him a thought.
To the newspapers he is as if he were not. But
in the eleventh year he suffers heavy losses and,
at last, his resources all gone, summons his lawyer
and arranges for the making of an assignment.
The lawyer posts off to the County Clerk’s office,
and a clerk there makes the necessary entries in
the office docket. Here in step the newspapers.
While the clerk is writing Smith’s business obituary,
a reporter glances over his shoulder, and a
few minutes later the newspapers know Smith’s
troubles and are as well informed concerning his
business status as they would be had they kept<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">191</span>
a reporter at his door every day for over ten
years. Had Smith dropped dead instead of
merely making an assignment his name would
have reached the newspapers by way of the Coroner’s
office instead of the County Clerk’s office,
and in fact, while Smith did not know it, the
newspapers were prepared and ready for him no
matter what he did. They even had representatives
waiting for him at the Morgue. He was
safe only when he walked the straight and narrow
path and kept quiet.”</p>
<p>An overt act is often necessary before an event
can be regarded as news.</p>
<p>Commenting on this aspect of the situation,
Mr. Lippmann discusses this very example of the
broker, John Smith, and his hypothetical bankruptcy.
“That overt act,” says Mr. Lippmann,<a id="FNanchor_40" href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">40</a>
“‘uncovers’ the news about Smith. Whether the
news will be followed up or not is another matter.
The point is that before a series of events
become news they have usually to make themselves
noticeable in some more or less overt act.
Generally, too, in a crudely overt act. Smith’s
friends may have known for years that he was
taking risks, rumors may even have reached the
financial editor if Smith’s friends were talkative.
But apart from the fact that none of this could
be published because it would be libel, there is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">192</span>
in these rumors nothing definite on which to
peg a story. Something definite must occur
that has unmistakable form. It may be the act
of going into bankruptcy, it may be a fire, a
collision, an assault, a riot, an arrest, a denunciation,
the introduction of a bill, a speech, a vote,
a meeting, the expressed opinion of a well-known
citizen, an editorial in a newspaper, a sale, a
wage-schedule, a price change, the proposal to
build a bridge.... There must be a manifestation.
The course of events must assume a certain
definable shape, and until it is in a phase
where some aspect is an accomplished fact, news
does not separate itself from the ocean of possible
truth.”</p>
<p>From the point of view of the practical journalist,
Mr. Irwin has applied this observation to
the making of the news of the day. He says:<a id="FNanchor_41" href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">41</a>
“I state a platitude when I say that government
by the people is the essence of democracy. In
theory, the people watch and know; when, in the
process of social and industrial evolution, they
see a new evil becoming important, they found
institutions to regulate it or laws to repress it.
They cannot watch without light, know without
teachers. The newspaper, or some force like it,
must daily inform them of things which are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">193</span>
shocking and unpleasant in order that democracy,
in its slow, wobbling motion upward, may perceive
and correct. It is good for us to know that
John Smith, made crazy by drink, came home and
killed his wife. Startled and shocked, but interested,
we may follow the case of John Smith, see
that justice in his case is not delayed by his pull
with Tammany. Perhaps, when there are enough
cases of John Smith, we shall look into the first
causes and restrain the groggeries that made him
momentarily mad or the industrial oppression
that made him permanently an undernourished,
overnerved defective. It is good to know that
John Jones, a clerk, forged a check and went to
jail. For not only shall we watch justice in his
case, but some day we shall watch also the fraudulent
race-track gambling that tempted him to
theft. If every day we read of those crimes
which grow from the misery of New York’s East
Side and Chicago’s Levee, some day democracy
may get at the ultimate causes for overwork, underfeeding,
tenement crowding.</p>
<p>“No other method is so forcible with the public
as driving home the instance which points the
moral. General description of bad conditions
fails, somehow, to impress the average mind.
One might have shouted to Shreveport day after
day that low dives make dangerous negroes, and
created no sentiment against saloons. But when<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">194</span>
a negro, drunk on bad gin which he got at such
a dive, assaulted and killed Margaret Lear, a
schoolgirl, Shreveport voted out the saloon.”</p>
<p>For the great mass of activities there is no
machinery of record whatever. How these are
to be recorded when they are important is the
real problem for the press.</p>
<p>In this field the public relations counsel plays
a considerable part. His is the business of calling
to the public attention, through the press and
through every other available medium, the point
of view, the movement or the issue which he represents.
Mr. Lippmann has observed that it is
for this reason that what he calls the “press
agent” has become an important factor in modern
life.</p>
<p>Mr. Lippmann’s observation on this point deserves
comment. He says:<a id="FNanchor_42" href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">42</a> “This is the underlying
reason for the existence of the press agent.
The enormous discretion as to what facts and
what impressions shall be reported is steadily
convincing every organized group of people that
whether it wishes to secure publicity or to avoid
it, the exercise of discretion cannot be left to the
reporter. It is safer to hire a press agent who
stands between the group and the newspapers.”</p>
<p>The really important function of the public relations
counsel, in relation to the press as well<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">195</span>
as to his client, lies even beyond these considerations.
He is not merely the purveyor of news;
he is more logically the <em>creator</em> of news.</p>
<p>An amateur can bring a good story to the average
newspaper office and receive consideration,
although the amateur is only too likely to miss
precisely those features of his story which give
it news value, and to overlook precisely that
element of the story which will make it interesting
to the particular newspaper he is approaching.</p>
<p>The New York hotel proprietors were enforcing
the prohibition law in relation to their own
establishments, but saw that certain restaurants
were violating the law with impunity. Realizing
the injustice to them of this situation, they built
a definite news event by going over the heads of
the local law enforcement offices and wired an
appeal direct to President Harding, asking for
enforcement. This naturally became news of the
first order.</p>
<p>The opening of a shop by prominent women in
which were shown graphic examples of the effect
of the tariff on women’s wear was an event created
to intensify interest in this subject.</p>
<p>The launching of battleships with ceremony;
the laying of corner stones; the presentation of
memorials; demonstration meetings, parties and
banquets are all events created with a view to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">196</span>
their carrying capacity in the various mediums
that reach the public.</p>
<p>The departments of a modern newspaper will
show the great variety of possible approaches on
any subject from the standpoint of the press.
When this is correlated to the possible approaches
on any subject from the standpoint of human
psychology, we see the diversification of methods
to which the public relations counsel can have
recourse to construct events.</p>
<p>In the metropolitan press, for instance, there
are the news departments, the editorial departments,
the letter-to-the-editor department, the
women’s department, the society department, the
current events department, the sport department,
the real estate department, the business department,
the financial department, the shipping department,
the investment department, the educational
department, the photographic department
and the other special feature writers and sections,
different in different journals.</p>
<p>In a valuable study on the “Newspaper Reading
Habits of Business Executives and Professional
Men in New York” compiled by Professor
George Burton Hotchkiss, Head of the Department
of Advertising and Marketing, and Richard
B. Franken, Lecturer in Advertising at
New York University, there are several tables
setting forth the features of morning and evening<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">197</span>
newspapers preferred as a whole by the
group to whom the questionnaires were sent, and
by various smaller groups within the main group.</p>
<p>The counsel on public relations not only knows
what news value is, but knowing it, he is in a
position to <em>make news happen</em>. He is a creator
of events.</p>
<p>An organization held a banquet for a building
fund to which the invitations were despatched
on large bricks. The news element in this story
was the fact that bricks were despatched.</p>
<p>In this capacity, as purveyor and creator of
news for the press as well as for all other mediums
of idea dissemination, it must be clear
immediately that the public relations counsel
could not possibly succeed unless he complied with
the highest moral and technical requirements of
those with whom he is working.</p>
<p>Writing on the profession of the public relations
counsel, the author of an article in the <cite>New
York Times</cite><a id="FNanchor_43" href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">43</a> says “newspaper editors are the
most suspicious and cynical of mortals, but they
are as quick to discern the truth as to detect
the falsehood.” He goes on to discuss the particular
public relations counsel whom he has in
mind and whom he designates by the fictitious
name Swift, and remarks that: “Irrespective of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">198</span>
their position on ethics, Swift & Co. won’t deal
in spurious goods. They know that one such
error would be fatal. The public might forget,
but the editor never. Besides, they don’t have
to.”</p>
<p>Truthful and accurate must be the material
which the public relations counsel furnishes to the
press and other mediums. In addition, it must
have the elements of timeliness and interest which
are required of all news—and it must not only
have these elements in general, but it must suit
the particular needs of each particular newspaper
and, even more than that, it must suit the needs
of the particular editor in whose department it
is hoped that it will be published.</p>
<p>Finally, the literary quality of the material
must be up to the best standards of the profession
of journalism. The writing must be good,
in the particular sense in which each newspaper
considers a story well written.</p>
<p>In brief, the material must come to the editorial
desk as carefully prepared and as accurately verified
as if the editor himself had assigned a special
reporter to secure and write the facts. Only
by presenting his news in such form and in such
a manner can the counsel on public relations hope
to retain, in the case of the newspaper, the most
valuable thing he possesses—the editor’s faith
and trust. But it must be clearly borne in mind<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">199</span>
that only in certain cases is the public relations
counsel the intermediary between the news and
the press. The event he has counseled upon, the
action he has created finds its own level of expression
in mediums which reach the public.</p>
<p>The radio stations offer an avenue of approach
to the public. They are controlled by private organizations,
large electrical supply companies, department
stores, newspapers, telegraph companies
and in some cases by the government. Their programs
broadcast information and entertainment
to those within their radius. These programs
vary in different localities.</p>
<p>To the public relations counsel there is a wide
opportunity to utilize the means of distribution
the radio program affords. In partisan matters,
the controllers of the radio insist upon the presentation
of all points of view in order to have
the onus of propaganda removed from their
shoulders. The public relations counsel is therefore
in a position to suggest to the broadcasting
managers a symposium treatment of the subject
in which he happens to be interested. Or in
the case of information, which has not this partisan
character, he is in a position to assure treatment
of his subject by embodying his thesis in
the form of a speech delivered by some individual
of standing and reputation.</p>
<p>In the case of events which the public relations<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">200</span>
counsel may be instrumental in creating,
such as large public meetings, the radio to-day
becomes a natural form of distribution, just as
news treatment in a newspaper does, and the
broadcasting to thousands and thousands of people
of the speeches becomes a corollary of the
event itself. The broadcasting of Lord Robert
Cecil’s speech on the League of Nations, delivered
at a banquet in New York, is a case in point.</p>
<p>Many magazines, for instance, are availing
themselves of the radio stations to supply
speeches on the particular topics they are most
interested in. So the housekeeping magazines
supply the radio stations with information about
that phase of women’s activities. The fashion
magazines do likewise in their fields. And they
thereby heighten their own prestige and authority
in the minds of their hearers.</p>
<p>The use of the wireless telegraph in war time
was an important factor in broadcasting information
of war aims and war accomplishments to
enemy countries. It was used successfully by
both Allied and Central powers. It was utilized
even by the Soviet Government in the announcement
of its communications. This form
of propagation differs slightly from the radio,
referred to previously, since it depends for its
efficacy not upon reaching great numbers of
hearers, but upon reaching newspapers and other<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">201</span>
mediums that give currency to the material
broadcasted. The wireless telegraph of course
was and is a valuable asset to the public relations
counsel.</p>
<p>The lecture platform is another well-established
means of idea communication.</p>
<p>The spoken word has to a certain extent lost
its efficacy when the lecture platform alone is
considered.</p>
<p>The appeal of the lecture platform is limited
by the actual number of those who hear the message.
It is possible to reach vaster numbers
through the printed word or the motion picture
or even the radioed word. Both the weakness
of the human voice and the physical characteristics
of the place of assemblage bring about this
limitation.</p>
<p>The lecture platform, however, still retains its
importance for the public relations counsel because
it affords him the opportunity to speak
before group audiences which in themselves have
a news value, or because it presents the opportunity
to stage dramatic events that bring intensification
of interest and action on the part
of larger audiences than those actually addressed.</p>
<p>The lecture field open to the public relations
counsel for the propagation of information or
ideas may be divided into several classifications.
First there are the lecture managers and bureaus,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">202</span>
which act as agents in booking lecturers
to different kinds of group audiences throughout
the country. The public relations counsel can,
for instance, suggest to his client to secure a
prominent person, who because of interest in
a cause will be glad to undertake a lecture tour.
Then a bureau may manage the tour. The tours
of important proponents on such issues as the
League of Nations fall in this class as well as the
tours of prominent authors, arranged by publishers
in their behalf.</p>
<p>Then there is the lecture tour managed by the
client himself and arranged through the booking
of engagements with such local groups as might
be interested in assuming sponsorship for what
is said. A soap company might engage a lecturer
on cleanliness to speak in the schools of leading
communities. Or a woolen firm arrange for a
home economics authority to lecture to women’s
clubs on dress. These speeches of course, locally,
gain a wider audience than the speaker would
who addressed a single meeting because they give
opportunity for treatment in newspapers, advertising,
circularizing, and other mediums.</p>
<p>The lecture field offers another means of communication
in as much as it gives the public relations
counsel a range of group leaders to whom
he can furnish the facts and ideas he is trying to
propagate. The lecturers of Boards of Education<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">203</span>
in cities throughout the country, the lecturers
before schools and other institutions of learning,
the lecturers of one sort or another who address
varied audiences can be reached directly and can
become the carriers of the information the public
relations counsel desires to give forth.</p>
<p>The meeting or public demonstration, at which
prominent speakers voice their views upon the
particular problem or problems at issue, would
fall quite naturally under this same classification.
Its main purpose, of course, is not so much
to reach the audience being addressed as to make
a focal point of interest for those thousands and
millions who do not attend, but who get the
reverberations of the speaker’s voice through
other mediums than their own auditory sensation.</p>
<p>Advertising is a medium open to the public relations
counsel. In the sense in which the word
is used here, the term applies to every form of
paid space available for the carrying of a message.
From the newspaper advertisement to the
billboard, its forms are so varied that it has
developed its own literature and its own principles
and practice. In considering his objectives and
the mediums through which his potential public
can be reached the public relations counsel always
considers advertising space as among his most important
adjuncts. The wise public relations counsel<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">204</span>
calls into conference on the particular kinds of
advertising to be used in a given problem the
advertising agent who has made this study his
lifework. The public relations counsel and the
advertising agent then work out the problem in
their respective fields.</p>
<p>Advertising up to the present time has laid
its greatest stress upon the creation of demands
and markets for specific goods. It is also applied
with effectiveness to the propagation of ideas as
well. It is peculiarly effective when used in combination
with other methods of appeal.</p>
<p>Advertising controls the amount of physical
space it occupies before the public eye. Advertising’s
dimensional qualities give it a facile flexibility
that can be extended or limited at will.
In a sense, too, this quality gives the special
leader the opportunity to select his audience and
to give them his message directly.</p>
<p>The field of coöperative advertising by combinations
of advertisers in the same business or
profession, by governments or their subdivisions,
for one reason or another, is open to future possibilities.</p>
<p>The stage offers an avenue of approach to the
public which must be regarded both from the
standpoint of the numbers of individuals it
reaches as well as from the circles of influence it
creates by word of mouth and otherwise. To<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">205</span>
the public relations counsel therefore it offers a
wide field.</p>
<p>Through coöperation with playwrights or managers,
ideas can be given currency on the stage.
When they can be translated to the action that
takes place upon a stage, they are given emphasis
by the visual and auditory presentation.</p>
<p>The motion picture falls into two fields for the
purposes of the public relations counsel. There
is the field of the feature film. Here any direct
utilization of the public relations counsel’s ideas
must come indirectly and be taken by the producer
of the film from some of the other organs of
thought communication. The producer may
adopt for the subject of a film some idea which
the public relations counsel has agitated. The
film, for instance, dealing with the drug traffic
came very definitely as a result of the work carried
on to help relieve the drug evil.</p>
<p>The second field is one the public relations
counsel can employ more directly. Educational
films are made to order to-day to illustrate specific
points for public consumption, from showing
how a product is made to showing the necessity
for subway relief in a big city. These films are
usually shown before a special group audience
arranged for by the public relations counsel or
before some other group interested in the idea
the particular film stands for. Thus a Chamber<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">206</span>
of Commerce can further a film having to do
with the need for better port facilities.</p>
<p>One phase of this kind of film is the news reel
which, controlled by a private organization, films
events and occasions which may have been created
by the public relations counsel, but which
carries because of its value in the competitive
market of events.</p>
<p>Word of mouth is an important medium to be
considered. Ideas and facts can be given currency
by word of mouth. Here group leaders
are strong factors in giving currency to ideas.
The public relations counsel often communicates
the ideas he wishes to promulgate to group leaders
whose espousal of the idea he wishes to obtain.</p>
<p>The direct-by-mail campaign and the printed
word afford the public relations counsel channels
of approach to such individuals as he may desire
to reach. Large companies have available for
such purposes lists of individuals arranged according
to innumerable criteria. There are geographical
divisions, professional divisions, business
divisions, and divisions of religion. There
are classifications by economic position, classifications
by all manner of preferences. This classification
of his public into the right groups for
the proper appeals is one of the most important
functions of the public relations counsel, as we
have pointed out. The direct-by-mail method of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">207</span>
approach offers wide opportunities for capitalizing
his training and experience along these
lines. Telegraphic and wireless communications
would of course come under this heading.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">208</span></p>
<div class="chapter">
<h2 id="CHAPTER_IV_II" class="vspace">CHAPTER II<br />
<span class="subhead">HIS OBLIGATIONS TO THE PUBLIC AS A SPECIAL
PLEADER</span></h2>
</div>
<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">It</span> has been the history of new professions—and
every profession has been at some time a
new profession—that they are accepted by the
public and become firmly established only after
two significant handicaps are overcome. The
first of these, oddly enough, lies in public opinion
itself; it consists of the public’s reluctance to
acknowledge a dependence, however slight, upon
the ministrations of any one group of persons.
Medicine, even to-day, is still fighting this reluctance.
The law is fighting it. Yet these are established
professions.</p>
<p>The second handicap is that any new profession
must become established, not through the efforts
and activities of others, who might be considered
impartial, but through its own energy.</p>
<p>These handicaps are particularly potent in a
profession of advocacy, because it is engaged in
the partisan representation of one point of view.
The legal profession is perhaps the most familiar
example of this fact, and in this light at least a
trenchant comparison may be drawn between the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">209</span>
bar and the new profession of the public relations
counsel.</p>
<p>Both these professions offer to the public substantially
the same services—expert training, a
highly sensitized understanding of the background
from which results must be obtained, a
keenly developed capacity for the analysis of
problems into their constituent elements. Both
professions are in constant danger of arousing
crowd antagonism, because they often stand in
frank and open opposition to the fixed point of
view of one or another of the many groups which
compose society. Indeed it is this aspect of the
work of the public relations counsel which is undoubtedly
the foundation of a good deal of popular
disapproval of his profession.</p>
<p>Even Mr. Martin, who on several occasions in
his volume talks with severe condemnation of
what he calls propaganda, sees and admits the
fundamental psychological factors which make
the adherents to one point of view impute degraded
or immoral motives to believers in other
points of view. He says:<a id="FNanchor_44" href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">44</a></p>
<p>“The crowd-man can, when his fiction is
challenged, save himself from spiritual bankruptcy,
preserve his defenses, keep his crowd
from going to pieces, only by a demur. Any one
who challenges the crowd’s fictions must be ruled<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">210</span>
out of court. He must not be permitted to speak.
As a witness to contrary values, his testimony
must be discounted. The worth of his evidence
must be discredited by belittling the disturbing
witness. ‘He is a bad man; the crowd must not
listen to him.’ His motives must be evil; he is
‘bought up’; he is an immoral character; he tells
lies; he is insincere or he ‘has not the courage
to take a stand’ or ‘there is nothing new in what
he says.’</p>
<p>“Ibsen’s ‘Enemy of the People,’ illustrates this
point very well. The crowd votes that Doctor
Stockman may not speak about the baths, the
real point at issue. Indeed, the mayor takes
the floor and officially announces that the doctor’s
statement that the water is bad is ‘unreliable and
exaggerated.’ Then the president of the Householders’
Association makes an address accusing
the doctor of secretly ‘aiming at revolution.’
When finally Doctor Stockman speaks and tells
his fellow citizens the real meaning of their conduct,
and utters a few plain truths about ‘the
compact majority,’ the crowd saves its face, not
by proving the doctor false, but by howling him
down, voting him an ‘enemy of the people,’ and
throwing stones through the window.”</p>
<p>If we analyze a specific example of the public
relations counsel’s work, we see the workings of
the crowd-mind, which have made it so difficult<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">211</span>
for his profession to gain popular approval. Let
us take, for example, the tariff situation again.
It is manifestly impossible for either side in the
dispute to obtain a totally unbiased point of view
as to the other side. The importer calls the manufacturer
unreasonable; he imputes selfish motives
to him. For his own part he identifies the
establishment of the conditions upon which he
insists with such things as social welfare, national
safety, Americanism, lower prices to the
consumer, and whatever other fundamentals he
can seize upon. Every newspaper report carrying
the flavor of adverse suggestion, whether on
account of its facts or on account of the manner
of its writing, is immediately branded as untrue,
unfortunate, ill-advised. It must, the importer
concludes, it must have been inspired by insidious
machinations from the manufacturers’ interests.</p>
<p>But is the manufacturer any more reasonable?
If the newspapers publish stories unfavorable to
his interests, then the newspapers have been
“bought up,” “influenced”; they are “partisan”
and many other unreasonable things. The manufacturer,
just like the importer, identifies his side
of the struggle with such fundamental standards
as he can seize upon—a living wage, reduced
prices to the consumer, the American standard
of employment, fair play, justice. To each the
contentions of the other are untenable.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">212</span>
Now, carry this situation one step further to
the point at which the public relations counsel is
retained, on behalf of one side or the other. Observe
how sincerely each side and its adherents
call even the verifiable facts and figures of the
other by that dread name “propaganda.” Should
the importers submit figures showing that wages
could be raised and the price to the consumer reduced,
their adherents would be gratified that
such important educational work should be done
among the public and that the newspapers should
be so fair-minded as to publish it. The manufacturers,
on the other hand, will call such material
“propaganda” and blame either the newspaper
which publishes those figures or the economist
who compiled them, or the public relations
counsel who advised collating the material.</p>
<p>The only difference between “propaganda” and
“education,” really, is in the point of view.
The advocacy of what we believe in is education.
The advocacy of what we don’t believe in is
propaganda. Each of these nouns carries with it
social and moral implications. Education is valuable,
commendable, enlightening, instructive.
Propaganda is insidious, dishonest, underhand,
misleading. It is only to-day that the viewpoint
on this question is undergoing a slight change,
as the following editorial would indicate:</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">213</span>
“The relativity of truth,”<a id="FNanchor_45" href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">45</a> says Mr. Elmer
Davis, “is a commonplace to any newspaper man,
even to one who has never studied epistemology;
and, if the phrase is permissible, truth is rather
more relative in Washington than anywhere else.
Now and then it is possible to make a downright
statement; such and such a bill has passed in one
of the houses of Congress, or failed to pass; the
administration has issued this or that statement;
the President has approved, or vetoed, a certain
bill. But most of the news that comes out of
Washington is necessarily rather vague, for it
depends on the assertions of statesmen who are
reluctant to be quoted by name, or even by description.
This more than anything else is responsible
for the sort of fog, the haze of miasmatic
exhalations, which hangs over news with
a Washington date line. News coming out of
Washington is apt to represent not what is so
but what might be so under certain contingencies,
what may turn out to be so, what some eminent
personage says is so, or even what he wants the
public to believe is so when it is not.”</p>
<p>Most subjects on which there is a so-called definite
public opinion are much more vague and indefinite,
much more complex in their facts and
in their ramifications than the news from Washington<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">214</span>
which the historian of the <cite>New York
Times</cite> describes. Consider, for example, what
complicated issues are casually disposed of by the
average citizen. An uninformed lay public may
condemn a new medical theory on slight consideration.
Its judgment is hit or miss, as medical
history proves.</p>
<p>Political, economic and moral judgments, as we
have seen, are more often expressions of crowd
psychology and herd reaction than the result of
the calm exercise of judgment. It is difficult to
believe that this is not inevitable. Public opinion
in a society consisting of millions of persons, all
of whom must somehow or other reach a working
basis with most of the others, is bound to
find a level of uniformity founded on the intelligence
of the average member of society as a whole
or of the particular group to which one may belong.
There is a different set of facts on every
subject for each man. Society cannot wait to find
absolute truth. It cannot weigh every issue carefully
before making a judgment. The result is
that the so-called truths by which society lives are
born of compromise among conflicting desires
and of interpretation by many minds. They are
accepted and intolerantly maintained once they
have been determined. In the struggle among
ideas, the only test is the one which Justice<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">215</span>
Holmes of the Supreme Court pointed out—the
power of thought to get itself accepted in the
open competition of the market.</p>
<p>The only way for new ideas to gain currency
is through the acceptance of them by groups.
Merely individual advocacy will leave the truth
outside the general fund of knowledge and beliefs.
The urge toward suppression of minority
or dissentient points of view is counteracted in
part by the work of the public relations counsel.</p>
<p>The standards of the public relations counsel
are his own standards and he will not accept a
client whose standards do not come up to them.
While he is not called upon to judge the merits
of his case any more than a lawyer is called upon
to judge his client’s case, nevertheless he must
judge the results which his work would accomplish
from an ethical point of view.</p>
<p>In law, the judge and jury hold the deciding
balance of power. In public opinion, the public
relations counsel is judge and jury because
through his pleading of a case the public is likely
to accede to his opinion and judgment. Therefore,
the public relations counsel must maintain
an intense scrutiny of his actions, avoiding the
propagation of unsocial or otherwise harmful
movements or ideas.</p>
<p>Every public relations counsel has been confronted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">216</span>
with the necessity of refusing to accept
clients whose cases in a law court would be valid,
but whose cases in the higher court of public
opinion are questionable.</p>
<p>The social value of the public relations counsel
lies in the fact that he brings to the public facts
and ideas of social utility which would not so
readily gain acceptance otherwise. While he, of
course, may represent men and individuals who
have already gained great acceptance in the public
mind, he may represent new ideas of value
which have not yet reached their point of largest
acceptance or greatest saturation. That in itself
renders him important.</p>
<p>As for the relations between the public relations
counsel and his client, little can be said
which would not be merely a repetition of that
code of decency by which men and women make
moral judgments and live reputable lives. The
public relations counsel owes his client conscientious,
effective service, of course. He owes to his
client all the duties which the professions assume
in relation to those they serve. Much more
important than any positive duty, however, which
the public relations counsel owes to his client is
the negative duty—that he must never accept a
retainer or assume a position which puts his duty
to the groups he represents above his duty to his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">217</span>
own standards of integrity—to the larger society
within which he lives and works.</p>
<p>Europe has given us the most recent important
study of public opinion and its social and historical
effects. It is interesting because it indicates
the sweep of the development of an international
realization of what a momentous factor
in the world’s life public opinion is becoming.
I feel that this paragraph from a recent work
of Professor Von Ferdinand Tonnies is of particular
significance to all who would feel that the
conscious moulding of public opinion is a task embodying
high ideals.</p>
<p>“The future of public opinion,” says Professor
Tonnies, “is the future of civilization. It is certain
that the power of public opinion is constantly
increasing and will keep on increasing. It is
equally certain that it is more and more being influenced,
changed, stirred by impulses from below.
The danger which this development contains
for a progressive ennobling of human society
and a progressive heightening of human
culture is apparent. The duty of the higher
strata of society—the cultivated, the learned, the
expert, the intellectual—is therefore clear. They
must inject moral and spiritual motives into public
opinion. Public opinion must become public
conscience.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">218</span>
It is in the creation of a public conscience that
the counsel on public relations is destined, I believe,
to fulfill his highest usefulness to the society
in which he lives.</p>
<p class="p4 center wspace">THE END</p>
<div class="chapter"><div class="footnotes">
<h2 id="FOOTNOTES" class="nobreak p1">FOOTNOTES</h2>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="fnanchor">1</a> Cardozo, “The Nature of the Judicial Process” (page 9).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="fnanchor">2</a> Walter Lippmann, “Public Opinion” (page 248).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="fnanchor">3</a> “Public Opinion” (page 342). Mr. Lippmann goes on to say
that “having hired him, the temptation to exploit his strategic
position is very great.” As to that aspect of the situation, see
later chapters.</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="fnanchor">4</a> William Trotter, “Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War”
(page 36).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="fnanchor">5</a> “Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War,” William Trotter
(pages 36–37).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="fnanchor">6</a> Page 45.</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="fnanchor">7</a> “Public Opinion” (page 350).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="fnanchor">8</a> <cite>Atlantic Monthly</cite>, March, 1914.</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="fnanchor">9</a> <cite>Atlantic Monthly</cite>, June, 1914.</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="fnanchor">10</a> Francis E. Leupp, “The Waning Power of the Press,” <cite>Atlantic
Monthly</cite>, July, 1910.</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="fnanchor">11</a> Rollo Ogden, “Some Aspects of Journalism,” <cite>Atlantic
Monthly</cite>, July, 1906.</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="fnanchor">12</a> “Publicity at Paris,” <cite>New York Times</cite>, April 2, 1922.</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="fnanchor">13</a> H. L. Mencken on Journalism, <cite>The Nation</cite>, April 26, 1922.</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="fnanchor">14</a> “The Behavior of Crowds” (page 193).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="fnanchor">15</a> W. Trotter, “Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War.”</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="fnanchor">16</a> It should be explained at the very outset that Mr. Trotter
does not use the term “herd” in any derogatory sense. He approaches
the entire subject from the point of view of the biologist
and compares the gregarious instinct in man to the same
instinct in lower forms of life.</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="fnanchor">17</a> “Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War” (page 32).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="fnanchor">18</a> <cite xml:lang="la" lang="la">Ibid.</cite></p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="fnanchor">19</a> “Public Opinion” (page 81).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="fnanchor">20</a> “Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War” (page 38).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="fnanchor">21</a> <cite xml:lang="la" lang="la">Ibid.</cite> (page 112 <i>et seq.</i>). Italics mine.</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="fnanchor">22</a> Bleyer, “The Profession of Journalism” (page 269).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23" class="fnanchor">23</a> “Public Opinion” (page 354).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_24" href="#FNanchor_24" class="fnanchor">24</a> “Public Opinion” (page 292).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_25" href="#FNanchor_25" class="fnanchor">25</a> “Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War” (page 62).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_26" href="#FNanchor_26" class="fnanchor">26</a> Given, “Making a Newspaper” (pages 306–307).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_27" href="#FNanchor_27" class="fnanchor">27</a> “Press Tendencies and Dangers,” <cite>Atlantic Monthly</cite>, January,
1918.</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_28" href="#FNanchor_28" class="fnanchor">28</a> “The Behavior of Crowds” (pages 23–24).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_29" href="#FNanchor_29" class="fnanchor">29</a> Walter Lippmann, “Public Opinion.”</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_30" href="#FNanchor_30" class="fnanchor">30</a> Mr. Given’s definition of the qualifications of a good reporter
applies very largely to the qualifications of a good public
relations counsel. “There is undoubtedly a good deal of truth,”
says Mr. Given, “in the saying that good reporters are born and
not made. A man may learn how to gather some kinds of news,
and he may learn how to write it correctly, but if he cannot see
the picturesque or vital point of an incident and express what
he sees so that others will see as through his eyes, his productions,
even if no particular fault can be found with them,
will not bear the mark of true excellence; and there is, if one
stops to think, a great difference between something that is devoid
of faults and something that is full of good points. The
quality which makes a good newspaper man must, in the opinion
of many editors, exist in the beginning. But when it does exist,
it can usually be developed, no matter how many obstacles are
in the way.”</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_31" href="#FNanchor_31" class="fnanchor">31</a> “Public Opinion” (page 160).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_32" href="#FNanchor_32" class="fnanchor">32</a> Given, “Making a Newspaper.”</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_33" href="#FNanchor_33" class="fnanchor">33</a> “What Is News?” by Will Irwin, <cite>Collier’s</cite>, March 18, 1911
(page 16).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_34" href="#FNanchor_34" class="fnanchor">34</a> Italics mine.</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_35" href="#FNanchor_35" class="fnanchor">35</a> “Making a Newspaper” (page 168).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_36" href="#FNanchor_36" class="fnanchor">36</a> “What is News?” Will Irwin, <cite>Collier’s</cite>, March 18, 1911 (page
16).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_37" href="#FNanchor_37" class="fnanchor">37</a> “What is News?” by Will Irwin, <cite>Collier’s</cite>, March 18, 1911
(pages 17–18). Italics mine.</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_38" href="#FNanchor_38" class="fnanchor">38</a> “Making a Newspaper,” by Given (pages 59–62).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_39" href="#FNanchor_39" class="fnanchor">39</a> Given, “Making a Newspaper” (page 57).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_40" href="#FNanchor_40" class="fnanchor">40</a> “Public Opinion” (pages 339–340).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_41" href="#FNanchor_41" class="fnanchor">41</a> “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” <cite>Collier’s</cite>, May 6, 1911
(page 18).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_42" href="#FNanchor_42" class="fnanchor">42</a> “Public Opinion” (page 344).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_43" href="#FNanchor_43" class="fnanchor">43</a> <cite>Times Book Review and Magazine</cite>, January 1, 1922. “Men
Who Wield the Spotlight,” by Charles J. Rosebault.</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_44" href="#FNanchor_44" class="fnanchor">44</a> “The Behavior of Crowds” (pages 128–129).</p></div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_45" href="#FNanchor_45" class="fnanchor">45</a> “History of the <cite>New York Times</cite>” (pages 379–380).</p></div>
</div></div>
<div class="chapter"><div class="transnote">
<h2 id="Transcribers_Notes" class="nobreak p1">Transcriber’s Note</h2>
<p>Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made
consistent when a predominant preference was found
in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.</p>
</div></div>
<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 61364 ***</div>
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