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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78634 ***
+
+
+
+
+Propaganda
+
+
+
+
+_BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
+
+
+ CRYSTALLIZING PUBLIC OPINION
+ AN OUTLINE OF CAREERS
+ THE BROADWAY ANTHOLOGY (CO-AUTHOR)
+
+
+
+
+ PROPAGANDA
+
+ _By_
+ EDWARD L. BERNAYS
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+ _New York_
+ HORACE LIVERIGHT
+ 1928
+
+
+
+
+ _Copyright · 1928 · by_
+ HORACE LIVERIGHT · INC
+
+_Printed in the United States_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ _To My Wife_
+ DORIS E. FLEISCHMAN
+
+
+Some of the ideas and some of the material in this book have been used
+in articles written for _The Bookman_, _The Delineator_, _Advertising
+and Selling_, _The Independent_, _The American Journal of Sociology_,
+and other journals, to whom the author makes grateful acknowledgment.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+   I. ORGANIZING CHAOS                          9
+
+  II. THE NEW PROPAGANDA                       19
+
+ III. THE NEW PROPAGANDISTS                    32
+
+  IV. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PUBLIC RELATIONS       47
+
+   V. BUSINESS AND THE PUBLIC                  62
+
+  VI. PROPAGANDA AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIP      92
+
+ VII. WOMEN’S ACTIVITIES AND PROPAGANDA       115
+
+VIII. PROPAGANDA FOR EDUCATION                121
+
+  IX. PROPAGANDA IN SOCIAL SERVICE            135
+
+   X. ART AND SCIENCE                         141
+
+  XI. THE MECHANICS OF PROPAGANDA             150
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ORGANIZING CHAOS
+
+
+The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and
+opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
+Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an
+invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
+
+We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas
+suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical
+result of the way our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of
+human beings must coöperate in this manner if they are to live together
+as a smoothly functioning society.
+
+Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of
+their fellow members in the inner cabinet.
+
+They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability
+to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social
+structure. Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition,
+it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether
+in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our
+ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number
+of persons—a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million—who
+understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It
+is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness
+old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
+
+It is not usually realized how necessary these invisible governors
+are to the orderly functioning of our group life. In theory, every
+citizen may vote for whom he pleases. Our Constitution does not
+envisage political parties as part of the mechanism of government,
+and its framers seem not to have pictured to themselves the existence
+in our national politics of anything like the modern political
+machine. But the American voters soon found that without organization
+and direction their individual votes, cast, perhaps, for dozens or
+hundreds of candidates, would produce nothing but confusion. Invisible
+government, in the shape of rudimentary political parties, arose almost
+overnight. Ever since then we have agreed, for the sake of simplicity
+and practicality, that party machines should narrow down the field of
+choice to two candidates, or at most three or four.
+
+In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on public questions and
+matters of private conduct. In practice, if all men had to study
+for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data
+involved in every question, they would find it impossible to come
+to a conclusion about anything. We have voluntarily agreed to let an
+invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issues
+so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions.
+From our leaders and the media they use to reach the public, we
+accept the evidence and the demarcation of issues bearing upon public
+questions; from some ethical teacher, be it a minister, a favorite
+essayist, or merely prevailing opinion, we accept a standardized code
+of social conduct to which we conform most of the time.
+
+In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered
+him on the market. In practice, if every one went around pricing, and
+chemically testing before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics
+or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would become
+hopelessly jammed. To avoid such confusion, society consents to have
+its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to its attention
+through propaganda of all kinds. There is consequently a vast and
+continuous effort going on to capture our minds in the interest of some
+policy or commodity or idea.
+
+It might be better to have, instead of propaganda and special pleading,
+committees of wise men who would choose our rulers, dictate our
+conduct, private and public, and decide upon the best types of clothes
+for us to wear and the best kinds of food for us to eat. But we have
+chosen the opposite method, that of open competition. We must find a
+way to make free competition function with reasonable smoothness. To
+achieve this society has consented to permit free competition to be
+organized by leadership and propaganda.
+
+Some of the phenomena of this process are criticized—the manipulation
+of news, the inflation of personality, and the general ballyhoo by
+which politicians and commercial products and social ideas are brought
+to the consciousness of the masses. The instruments by which public
+opinion is organized and focused may be misused. But such organization
+and focusing are necessary to orderly life.
+
+As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible
+government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have
+been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.
+
+With the printing press and the newspaper, the railroad, the telephone,
+telegraph, radio and airplanes, ideas can be spread rapidly and even
+instantaneously over the whole of America.
+
+H. G. Wells senses the vast potentialities of these inventions when he
+writes in the New York _Times_:
+
+“Modern means of communication—the power afforded by print, telephone,
+wireless and so forth, of rapidly putting through directive strategic
+or technical conceptions to a great number of coöperating centers,
+of getting quick replies and effective discussion—have opened up a
+new world of political processes. Ideas and phrases can now be given
+an effectiveness greater than the effectiveness of any personality
+and stronger than any sectional interest. The common design can be
+documented and sustained against perversion and betrayal. It can be
+elaborated and developed steadily and widely without personal, local
+and sectional misunderstanding.”
+
+What Mr. Wells says of political processes is equally true of
+commercial and social processes and all manifestations of mass
+activity. The groupings and affiliations of society to-day are
+no longer subject to “local and sectional” limitations. When the
+Constitution was adopted, the unit of organization was the village
+community, which produced the greater part of its own necessary
+commodities and generated its group ideas and opinions by personal
+contact and discussion directly among its citizens. But to-day, because
+ideas can be instantaneously transmitted to any distance and to any
+number of people, this geographical integration has been supplemented
+by many other kinds of grouping, so that persons having the same ideas
+and interests may be associated and regimented for common action even
+though they live thousands of miles apart.
+
+It is extremely difficult to realize how many and diverse are these
+cleavages in our society. They may be social, political, economic,
+racial, religious or ethical, with hundreds of subdivisions of each.
+In the World Almanac, for example, the following groups are listed
+under the A’s:
+
+The League to Abolish Capital Punishment; Association to Abolish
+War; American Institute of Accountants; Actors’ Equity Association;
+Actuarial Association of America; International Advertising
+Association; National Aeronautic Association; Albany Institute of
+History and Art; Amen Corner; American Academy in Rome; American
+Antiquarian Society; League for American Citizenship; American
+Federation of Labor; Amorc (Rosicrucian Order); Andiron Club;
+American-Irish Historical Association; Anti-Cigarette League;
+Anti-Profanity League; Archeological Association of America; National
+Archery Association; Arion Singing Society; American Astronomical
+Association; Ayrshire Breeders’ Association; Aztec Club of 1847. There
+are many more under the “A” section of this very limited list.
+
+The American Newspaper Annual and Directory for 1928 lists 22,128
+periodical publications in America. I have selected at random the N’s
+published in Chicago. They are:
+
+Narod (Bohemian daily newspaper); Narod-Polski (Polish monthly);
+N.A.R.D. (pharmaceutical); National Corporation Reporter; National
+Culinary Progress (for hotel chefs); National Dog Journal; National
+Drug Clerk; National Engineer; National Grocer; National Hotel
+Reporter; National Income Tax Magazine; National Jeweler; National
+Journal of Chiropractic; National Live Stock Producer; National Miller;
+National Nut News; National Poultry, Butter and Egg Bulletin; National
+Provisioner (for meat packers); National Real Estate Journal; National
+Retail Clothier; National Retail Lumber Dealer; National Safety News;
+National Spiritualist; National Underwriter; The Nation’s Health;
+Naujienos (Lithuanian daily newspaper); New Comer (Republican weekly
+for Italians); Daily News; The New World (Catholic weekly); North
+American Banker; North American Veterinarian.
+
+The circulation of some of these publications is astonishing. The
+National Live Stock Producer has a sworn circulation of 155,978; The
+National Engineer, of 20,328; The New World, an estimated circulation
+of 67,000. The greater number of the periodicals listed—chosen at
+random from among 22,128—have a circulation in excess of 10,000.
+
+The diversity of these publications is evident at a glance. Yet they
+can only faintly suggest the multitude of cleavages which exist in
+our society, and along which flow information and opinion carrying
+authority to the individual groups.
+
+Here are the conventions scheduled for Cleveland, Ohio, recorded in
+a single recent issue of “World Convention Dates”—a fraction of the
+5,500 conventions and rallies scheduled.
+
+The Employing Photo-Engravers’ Association of America; The Outdoor
+Writers’ Association; the Knights of St. John; the Walther League;
+The National Knitted Outerwear Association; The Knights of St.
+Joseph; The Royal Order of Sphinx; The Mortgage Bankers’ Association;
+The International Association of Public Employment Officials; The
+Kiwanis Clubs of Ohio; The American Photo-Engravers’ Association; The
+Cleveland Auto Manufacturers Show; The American Society of Heating and
+Ventilating Engineers.
+
+Other conventions to be held in 1928 were those of:
+
+The Association of Limb Manufacturers’ Associations; The National
+Circus Fans’ Association of America; The American Naturopathic
+Association; The American Trap Shooting Association; The Texas Folklore
+Association; The Hotel Greeters; The Fox Breeders’ Association; The
+Insecticide and Disinfectant Association; The National Association of
+Egg Case and Egg Case Filler Manufacturers; The American Bottlers of
+Carbonated Beverages; and The National Pickle Packers’ Association, not
+to mention the Terrapin Derby—most of them with banquets and orations
+attached.
+
+If all these thousands of formal organizations and institutions
+could be listed (and no complete list has ever been made), they
+would still represent but a part of those existing less formally but
+leading vigorous lives. Ideas are sifted and opinions stereotyped in
+the neighborhood bridge club. Leaders assert their authority through
+community drives and amateur theatricals. Thousands of women may
+unconsciously belong to a sorority which follows the fashions set by a
+single society leader.
+
+“Life” satirically expresses this idea in the reply which it represents
+an American as giving to the Britisher who praises this country for
+having no upper and lower classes or castes:
+
+“Yeah, all we have is the Four Hundred, the White-Collar Men,
+Bootleggers, Wall Street Barons, Criminals, the D.A.R., the K.K.K.,
+the Colonial Dames, the Masons, Kiwanis and Rotarians, the K. of C.,
+the Elks, the Censors, the Cognoscenti, the Morons, Heroes like Lindy,
+the W.C.T.U., Politicians, Menckenites, the Booboisie, Immigrants,
+Broadcasters, and—the Rich and Poor.”
+
+Yet it must be remembered that these thousands of groups interlace.
+John Jones, besides being a Rotarian, is member of a church, of a
+fraternal order, of a political party, of a charitable organization, of
+a professional association, of a local chamber of commerce, of a league
+for or against prohibition or of a society for or against lowering
+the tariff, and of a golf club. The opinions which he receives as a
+Rotarian, he will tend to disseminate in the other groups in which he
+may have influence.
+
+This invisible, intertwining structure of groupings and associations
+is the mechanism by which democracy has organized its group mind and
+simplified its mass thinking. To deplore the existence of such a
+mechanism is to ask for a society such as never was and never will
+be. To admit that it exists, but expect that it shall not be used, is
+unreasonable.
+
+Emil Ludwig represents Napoleon as “ever on the watch for indications
+of public opinion; always listening to the voice of the people, a
+voice which defies calculation. ‘Do you know,’ he said in those days,
+‘what amazes me more than all else? The impotence of force to organize
+anything.’”
+
+It is the purpose of this book to explain the structure of the
+mechanism which controls the public mind, and to tell how it is
+manipulated by the special pleader who seeks to create public
+acceptance for a particular idea or commodity. It will attempt at the
+same time to find the due place in the modern democratic scheme for
+this new propaganda and to suggest its gradually evolving code of
+ethics and practice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE NEW PROPAGANDA
+
+
+In the days when kings were kings, Louis XIV made his modest remark,
+“L’Etat c’est moi.” He was nearly right.
+
+But times have changed. The steam engine, the multiple press, and the
+public school, that trio of the industrial revolution, have taken the
+power away from kings and given it to the people. The people actually
+gained power which the king lost. For economic power tends to draw
+after it political power; and the history of the industrial revolution
+shows how that power passed from the king and the aristocracy to the
+bourgeoisie. Universal suffrage and universal schooling reënforced this
+tendency, and at last even the bourgeoisie stood in fear of the common
+people. For the masses promised to become king.
+
+To-day, however, a reaction has set in. The minority has discovered a
+powerful help in influencing majorities. It has been found possible
+so to mold the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly
+gained strength in the desired direction. In the present structure of
+society, this practice is inevitable. Whatever of social importance is
+done to-day, whether in politics, finance, manufacture, agriculture,
+charity, education, or other fields, must be done with the help of
+propaganda. Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.
+
+Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control
+his environment. Once he could read and write he would have a mind
+fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind,
+universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked
+with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific
+data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of
+history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man’s rubber
+stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those
+millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical
+imprints. It may seem an exaggeration to say that the American public
+gets most of its ideas in this wholesale fashion. The mechanism by
+which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is propaganda, in the
+broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or
+doctrine.
+
+I am aware that the word “propaganda” carries to many minds an
+unpleasant connotation. Yet whether, in any instance, propaganda
+is good or bad depends upon the merit of the cause urged, and the
+correctness of the information published.
+
+In itself, the word “propaganda” has certain technical meanings
+which, like most things in this world, are “neither good nor bad but
+custom makes them so.” I find the word defined in Funk and Wagnalls’
+Dictionary in four ways:
+
+“1. A society of cardinals, the overseers of foreign missions; also the
+College of the Propaganda at Rome founded by Pope Urban VIII in 1627
+for the education of missionary priests; Sacred College _de Propaganda
+Fide_.
+
+“2. Hence, any institution or scheme for propagating a doctrine or
+system.
+
+“3. Effort directed systematically toward the gaining of public support
+for an opinion or a course of action.
+
+“4. The principles advanced by a propaganda.”
+
+The _Scientific American_, in a recent issue, pleads for the
+restoration to respectable usage of that “fine old word ‘propaganda.’”
+
+“There is no word in the English language,” it says, “whose meaning has
+been so sadly distorted as the word ‘propaganda.’ The change took place
+mainly during the late war when the term took on a decidedly sinister
+complexion.
+
+“If you turn to the Standard Dictionary, you will find that the word
+was applied to a congregation or society of cardinals for the care and
+oversight of foreign missions which was instituted at Rome in the year
+1627. It was applied also to the College of the Propaganda at Rome that
+was founded by Pope Urban VIII, for the education of the missionary
+priests. Hence, in later years the word came to be applied to any
+institution or scheme for propagating a doctrine or system.
+
+“Judged by this definition, we can see that in its true sense
+propaganda is a perfectly legitimate form of human activity. Any
+society, whether it be social, religious or political, which is
+possessed of certain beliefs, and sets out to make them known, either
+by the spoken or written words, is practicing propaganda.
+
+“Truth is mighty and must prevail, and if any body of men believe that
+they have discovered a valuable truth, it is not merely their privilege
+but their duty to disseminate that truth. If they realize, as they
+quickly must, that this spreading of the truth can be done upon a
+large scale and effectively only by organized effort, they will make
+use of the press and the platform as the best means to give it wide
+circulation. Propaganda becomes vicious and reprehensive only when its
+authors consciously and deliberately disseminate what they know to be
+lies, or when they aim at effects which they know to be prejudicial to
+the common good.
+
+“‘Propaganda’ in its proper meaning is a perfectly wholesome word,
+of honest parentage, and with an honorable history. The fact that it
+should to-day be carrying a sinister meaning merely shows how much of
+the child remains in the average adult. A group of citizens writes
+and talks in favor of a certain course of action in some debatable
+question, believing that it is promoting the best interest of the
+community. Propaganda? Not a bit of it. Just a plain forceful statement
+of truth. But let another group of citizens express opposing views, and
+they are promptly labeled with the sinister name of propaganda....
+
+“‘What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,’ says a wise
+old proverb. Let us make haste to put this fine old word back where
+it belongs, and restore its dignified significance for the use of our
+children and our children’s children.”
+
+The extent to which propaganda shapes the progress of affairs about
+us may surprise even well informed persons. Nevertheless, it is only
+necessary to look under the surface of the newspaper for a hint as
+to propaganda’s authority over public opinion. Page one of the New
+York _Times_ on the day these paragraphs are written contains eight
+important news stories. Four of them, or one-half, are propaganda. The
+casual reader accepts them as accounts of spontaneous happenings. But
+are they? Here are the headlines which announce them: “TWELVE NATIONS
+WARN CHINA REAL REFORM MUST COME BEFORE THEY GIVE RELIEF,” “PRITCHETT
+REPORTS ZIONISM WILL FAIL,” “REALTY MEN DEMAND A TRANSIT INQUIRY,” and
+“OUR LIVING STANDARD HIGHEST IN HISTORY, SAYS HOOVER REPORT.”
+
+Take them in order: the article on China explains the joint report
+of the Commission on Extraterritoriality in China, presenting an
+exposition of the Powers’ Stand in the Chinese muddle. What it says
+is less important than what it is. It was “made public by the State
+Department to-day” with the purpose of presenting to the American
+public a picture of the State Department’s position. Its source gives
+it authority, and the American public tends to accept and support the
+State Department view.
+
+The report of Dr. Pritchett, a trustee of the Carnegie Foundation for
+International Peace, is an attempt to find the facts about this Jewish
+colony in the midst of a restless Arab world. When Dr. Pritchett’s
+survey convinced him that in the long run Zionism would “bring more
+bitterness and more unhappiness both for the Jew and for the Arab,”
+this point of view was broadcast with all the authority of the Carnegie
+Foundation, so that the public would hear and believe. The statement
+by the president of the Real Estate Board of New York, and Secretary
+Hoover’s report, are similar attempts to influence the public toward an
+opinion.
+
+These examples are not given to create the impression that there
+is anything sinister about propaganda. They are set down rather to
+illustrate how conscious direction is given to events, and how the
+men behind these events influence public opinion. As such they are
+examples of modern propaganda. At this point we may attempt to define
+propaganda.
+
+Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape
+events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea
+or group.
+
+This practice of creating circumstances and of creating pictures
+in the minds of millions of persons is very common. Virtually no
+important undertaking is now carried on without it, whether that
+enterprise be building a cathedral, endowing a university, marketing a
+moving picture, floating a large bond issue, or electing a president.
+Sometimes the effect on the public is created by a professional
+propagandist, sometimes by an amateur deputed for the job. The
+important thing is that it is universal and continuous; and in its sum
+total it is regimenting the public mind every bit as much as an army
+regiments the bodies of its soldiers.
+
+So vast are the numbers of minds which can be regimented, and so
+tenacious are they when regimented, that a group at times offers an
+irresistible pressure before which legislators, editors, and teachers
+are helpless. The group will cling to its stereotype, as Walter
+Lippmann calls it, making of those supposedly powerful beings, the
+leaders of public opinion, mere bits of driftwood in the surf. When an
+Imperial Wizard, sensing what is perhaps hunger for an ideal, offers
+a picture of a nation all Nordic and nationalistic, the common man of
+the older American stock, feeling himself elbowed out of his rightful
+position and prosperity by the newer immigrant stocks, grasps the
+picture which fits in so neatly with his prejudices, and makes it his
+own. He buys the sheet and pillow-case costume, and bands with his
+fellows by the thousand into a huge group powerful enough to swing
+state elections and to throw a ponderous monkey wrench into a national
+convention.
+
+In our present social organization approval of the public is essential
+to any large undertaking. Hence a laudable movement may be lost unless
+it impresses itself on the public mind. Charity, as well as business,
+and politics and literature, for that matter, have had to adopt
+propaganda, for the public must be regimented into giving money just
+as it must be regimented into tuberculosis prophylaxis. The Near East
+Relief, the Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the
+Poor of New York, and all the rest, have to work on public opinion just
+as though they had tubes of tooth paste to sell. We are proud of our
+diminishing infant death rate—and that too is the work of propaganda.
+
+Propaganda does exist on all sides of us, and it does change our
+mental pictures of the world. Even if this be unduly pessimistic—and
+that remains to be proved—the opinion reflects a tendency that is
+undoubtedly real. In fact, its use is growing as its efficiency in
+gaining public support is recognized.
+
+This then, evidently indicates the fact that any one with sufficient
+influence can lead sections of the public at least for a time and for
+a given purpose. Formerly the rulers were the leaders. They laid out
+the course of history, by the simple process of doing what they wanted.
+And if nowadays the successors of the rulers, those whose position
+or ability gives them power, can no longer do what they want without
+the approval of the masses, they find in propaganda a tool which is
+increasingly powerful in gaining that approval. Therefore, propaganda
+is here to stay.
+
+It was, of course, the astounding success of propaganda during the
+war that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments
+of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind. The
+American government and numerous patriotic agencies developed a
+technique which, to most persons accustomed to bidding for public
+acceptance, was new. They not only appealed to the individual by
+means of every approach—visual, graphic, and auditory—to support
+the national endeavor, but they also secured the coöperation of the
+key men in every group—persons whose mere word carried authority to
+hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers. They thus
+automatically gained the support of fraternal, religious, commercial,
+patriotic, social and local groups whose members took their opinions
+from their accustomed leaders and spokesmen, or from the periodical
+publications which they were accustomed to read and believe. At the
+same time, the manipulators of patriotic opinion made use of the
+mental clichés and the emotional habits of the public to produce mass
+reactions against the alleged atrocities, the terror and the tyranny of
+the enemy. It was only natural, after the war ended, that intelligent
+persons should ask themselves whether it was not possible to apply a
+similar technique to the problems of peace.
+
+As a matter of fact, the practice of propaganda since the war has
+assumed very different forms from those prevalent twenty years ago.
+This new technique may fairly be called the new propaganda.
+
+It takes account not merely of the individual, nor even of the mass
+mind alone, but also and especially of the anatomy of society, with its
+interlocking group formations and loyalties. It sees the individual not
+only as a cell in the social organism but as a cell organized into the
+social unit. Touch a nerve at a sensitive spot and you get an automatic
+response from certain specific members of the organism.
+
+Business offers graphic examples of the effect that may be produced
+upon the public by interested groups, such as textile manufacturers
+losing their markets. This problem arose, not long ago, when the
+velvet manufacturers were facing ruin because their product had long
+been out of fashion. Analysis showed that it was impossible to revive
+a velvet fashion within America. Anatomical hunt for the vital spot!
+Paris! Obviously! But yes and no. Paris is the home of fashion.
+Lyons is the home of silk. The attack had to be made at the source.
+It was determined to substitute purpose for chance and to utilize the
+regular sources for fashion distribution and to influence the public
+from these sources. A velvet fashion service, openly supported by the
+manufacturers, was organized. Its first function was to establish
+contact with the Lyons manufactories and the Paris couturiers to
+discover what they were doing, to encourage them to act on behalf of
+velvet, and to help in the proper exploitation of their wares. An
+intelligent Parisian was enlisted in the work. He visited Lanvin and
+Worth, Agnès and Patou, and others and induced them to use velvet in
+their gowns and hats. It was he who arranged for the distinguished
+Countess This or Duchess That to wear the hat or the gown. And as for
+the presentation of the idea to the public, the American buyer or the
+American woman of fashion was simply shown the velvet creations in
+the atelier of the dressmaker or the milliner. She bought the velvet
+because she liked it and because it was in fashion.
+
+The editors of the American magazines and fashion reporters of the
+American newspapers, likewise subjected to the actual (although
+created) circumstance, reflected it in their news, which, in turn,
+subjected the buyer and the consumer here to the same influences. The
+result was that what was at first a trickle of velvet became a flood.
+A demand was slowly, but deliberately, created in Paris and America.
+A big department store, aiming to be a style leader, advertised velvet
+gowns and hats on the authority of the French couturiers, and quoted
+original cables received from them. The echo of the new style note was
+heard from hundreds of department stores throughout the country which
+wanted to be style leaders too. Bulletins followed despatches. The mail
+followed the cables. And the American woman traveler appeared before
+the ship news photographers in velvet gown and hat.
+
+The created circumstances had their effect. “Fickle fashion has veered
+to velvet,” was one newspaper comment. And the industry in the United
+States again kept thousands busy.
+
+The new propaganda, having regard to the constitution of society as a
+whole, not infrequently serves to focus and realize the desires of the
+masses. A desire for a specific reform, however widespread, cannot be
+translated into action until it is made articulate, and until it has
+exerted sufficient pressure upon the proper law-making bodies. Millions
+of housewives may feel that manufactured foods deleterious to health
+should be prohibited. But there is little chance that their individual
+desires will be translated into effective legal form unless their
+half-expressed demand can be organized, made vocal, and concentrated
+upon the state legislature or upon the Federal Congress in some mode
+which will produce the results they desire. Whether they realize it or
+not, they call upon propaganda to organize and effectuate their demand.
+
+But clearly it is the intelligent minorities which need to make use of
+propaganda continuously and systematically. In the active proselytizing
+minorities in whom selfish interests and public interests coincide lie
+the progress and development of America. Only through the active energy
+of the intelligent few can the public at large become aware of and act
+upon new ideas.
+
+Small groups of persons can, and do, make the rest of us think what
+they please about a given subject. But there are usually proponents
+and opponents of every propaganda, both of whom are equally eager to
+convince the majority.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE NEW PROPAGANDISTS
+
+
+Who are the men who, without our realizing it, give us our ideas,
+tell us whom to admire and whom to despise, what to believe about the
+ownership of public utilities, about the tariff, about the price of
+rubber, about the Dawes Plan, about immigration; who tell us how our
+houses should be designed, what furniture we should put into them,
+what menus we should serve on our table, what kind of shirts we must
+wear, what sports we should indulge in, what plays we should see, what
+charities we should support, what pictures we should admire, what slang
+we should affect, what jokes we should laugh at?
+
+If we set out to make a list of the men and women who, because of
+their position in public life, might fairly be called the molders of
+public opinion, we could quickly arrive at an extended list of persons
+mentioned in “Who’s Who.” It would obviously include, the President
+of the United States and the members of his Cabinet; the Senators
+and Representatives in Congress; the Governors of our forty-eight
+states; the presidents of the chambers of commerce in our hundred
+largest cities, the chairmen of the boards of directors of our hundred
+or more largest industrial corporations, the president of many of
+the labor unions affiliated in the American Federation of Labor, the
+national president of each of the national professional and fraternal
+organizations, the president of each of the racial or language
+societies in the country, the hundred leading newspaper and magazine
+editors, the fifty most popular authors, the presidents of the fifty
+leading charitable organizations, the twenty leading theatrical or
+cinema producers, the hundred recognized leaders of fashion, the most
+popular and influential clergymen in the hundred leading cities, the
+presidents of our colleges and universities and the foremost members of
+their faculties, the most powerful financiers in Wall Street, the most
+noted amateurs of sport, and so on.
+
+Such a list would comprise several thousand persons. But it is well
+known that many of these leaders are themselves led, sometimes by
+persons whose names are known to few. Many a congressman, in framing
+his platform, follows the suggestions of a district boss whom few
+persons outside the political machine have ever heard of. Eloquent
+divines may have great influence in their communities, but often take
+their doctrines from a higher ecclesiastical authority. The presidents
+of chambers of commerce mold the thought of local business men
+concerning public issues, but the opinions which they promulgate are
+usually derived from some national authority. A presidential candidate
+may be “drafted” in response to “overwhelming popular demand,” but it
+is well known that his name may be decided upon by half a dozen men
+sitting around a table in a hotel room.
+
+In some instances the power of invisible wire-pullers is flagrant. The
+power of the invisible cabinet which deliberated at the poker table
+in a certain little green house in Washington has become a national
+legend. There was a period in which the major policies of the national
+government were dictated by a single man, Mark Hanna. A Simmons may,
+for a few years, succeed in marshaling millions of men on a platform of
+intolerance and violence.
+
+Such persons typify in the public mind the type of ruler associated
+with the phrase invisible government. But we do not often stop to think
+that there are dictators in other fields whose influence is just as
+decisive as that of the politicians I have mentioned. An Irene Castle
+can establish the fashion of short hair which dominates nine-tenths of
+the women who make any pretense to being fashionable. Paris fashion
+leaders set the mode of the short skirt, for wearing which, twenty
+years ago, any woman would simply have been arrested and thrown into
+jail by the New York police, and the entire women’s clothing industry,
+capitalized at hundreds of millions of dollars, must be reorganized to
+conform to their dictum.
+
+There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is
+not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most
+influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind
+the scenes.
+
+Nor, what is still more important, the extent to which our thoughts and
+habits are modified by authorities.
+
+In some departments of our daily life, in which we imagine ourselves
+free agents, we are ruled by dictators exercising great power. A man
+buying a suit of clothes imagines that he is choosing, according to his
+taste and his personality, the kind of garment which he prefers. In
+reality, he may be obeying the orders of an anonymous gentleman tailor
+in London. This personage is the silent partner in a modest tailoring
+establishment, which is patronized by gentlemen of fashion and princes
+of the blood. He suggests to British noblemen and others a blue cloth
+instead of gray, two buttons instead of three, or sleeves a quarter of
+an inch narrower than last season. The distinguished customer approves
+of the idea.
+
+But how does this fact affect John Smith of Topeka?
+
+The gentleman tailor is under contract with a certain large American
+firm, which manufactures men’s suits, to send them instantly the
+designs of the suits chosen by the leaders of London fashion. Upon
+receiving the designs, with specifications as to color, weight and
+texture, the firm immediately places an order with the cloth makers
+for several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of cloth. The suits
+made up according to the specifications are then advertised as the
+latest fashion. The fashionable men in New York, Chicago, Boston
+and Philadelphia wear them. And the Topeka man, recognizing this
+leadership, does the same.
+
+Women are just as subject to the commands of invisible government as
+are men. A silk manufacturer, seeking a new market for its product,
+suggested to a large manufacturer of shoes that women’s shoes should
+be covered with silk to match their dresses. The idea was adopted and
+systematically propagandized. A popular actress was persuaded to wear
+the shoes. The fashion spread. The shoe firm was ready with the supply
+to meet the created demand. And the silk company was ready with the
+silk for more shoes.
+
+The man who injected this idea into the shoe industry was ruling women
+in one department of their social lives. Different men rule us in the
+various departments of our lives. There may be one power behind the
+throne in politics, another in the manipulation of the Federal discount
+rate, and still another in the dictation of next season’s dances.
+If there were a national invisible cabinet ruling our destinies (a
+thing which is not impossible to conceive of) it would work through
+certain group leaders on Tuesday for one purpose, and through an
+entirely different set on Wednesday for another. The idea of invisible
+government is relative. There may be a handful of men who control the
+educational methods of the great majority of our schools. Yet from
+another standpoint, every parent is a group leader with authority over
+his or her children.
+
+The invisible government tends to be concentrated in the hands of the
+few because of the expense of manipulating the social machinery which
+controls the opinions and habits of the masses. To advertise on a
+scale which will reach fifty million persons is expensive. To reach
+and persuade the group leaders who dictate the public’s thoughts and
+actions is likewise expensive.
+
+For this reason there is an increasing tendency to concentrate the
+functions of propaganda in the hands of the propaganda specialist. This
+specialist is more and more assuming a distinct place and function in
+our national life.
+
+New activities call for new nomenclature. The propagandist who
+specializes in interpreting enterprises and ideas to the public, and in
+interpreting the public to promulgators of new enterprises and ideas,
+has come to be known by the name of “public relations counsel.”
+
+The new profession of public relations has grown up because of the
+increasing complexity of modern life and the consequent necessity for
+making the actions of one part of the public understandable to other
+sectors of the public. It is due, too, to the increasing dependence
+of organized power of all sorts upon public opinion. Governments,
+whether they are monarchical, constitutional, democratic or communist,
+depend upon acquiescent public opinion for the success of their efforts
+and, in fact, government is only government by virtue of public
+acquiescence. Industries, public utilities, educational movements,
+indeed all groups representing any concept or product, whether they are
+majority or minority ideas, succeed only because of approving public
+opinion. Public opinion is the unacknowledged partner in all broad
+efforts.
+
+The public relations counsel, then, is the agent who, working with
+modern media of communication and the group formations of society,
+brings an idea to the consciousness of the public. But he is a great
+deal more than that. He is concerned with courses of action, doctrines,
+systems and opinions, and the securing of public support for them.
+He is also concerned with tangible things such as manufactured and
+raw products. He is concerned with public utilities, with large trade
+groups and associations representing entire industries.
+
+He functions primarily as an adviser to his client, very much as a
+lawyer does. A lawyer concentrates on the legal aspects of his client’s
+business. A counsel on public relations concentrates on the public
+contacts of his client’s business. Every phase of his client’s ideas,
+products or activities which may affect the public or in which the
+public may have an interest is part of his function.
+
+For instance, in the specific problems of the manufacturer he examines
+the product, the markets, the way in which the public reacts to the
+product, the attitude of the employees to the public and towards the
+product, and the coöperation of the distribution agencies.
+
+The counsel on public relations, after he has examined all these and
+other factors, endeavors to shape the actions of his client so that
+they will gain the interest, the approval and the acceptance of the
+public.
+
+The means by which the public is apprised of the actions of his client
+are as varied as the means of communication themselves, such as
+conversation, letters, the stage, the motion picture, the radio, the
+lecture platform, the magazine, the daily newspaper. The counsel on
+public relations is not an advertising man but he advocates advertising
+where that is indicated. Very often he is called in by an advertising
+agency to supplement its work on behalf of a client. His work and that
+of the advertising agency do not conflict with or duplicate each other.
+
+His first efforts are, naturally, devoted to analyzing his client’s
+problems and making sure that what he has to offer the public is
+something which the public accepts or can be brought to accept. It
+is futile to attempt to sell an idea or to prepare the ground for a
+product that is basically unsound.
+
+For example, an orphan asylum is worried by a falling off in
+contributions and a puzzling attitude of indifference or hostility on
+the part of the public. The counsel on public relations may discover
+upon analysis that the public, alive to modern sociological trends,
+subconsciously criticizes the institution because it is not organized
+on the new “cottage plan.” He will advise modification of the client in
+this respect. Or a railroad may be urged to put on a fast train for the
+sake of the prestige which it will lend to the road’s name, and hence
+to its stocks and bonds.
+
+If the corset makers, for instance, wished to bring their product
+into fashion again, he would unquestionably advise that the plan was
+impossible, since women have definitely emancipated themselves from
+the old-style corset. Yet his fashion advisers might report that women
+might be persuaded to adopt a certain type of girdle which eliminated
+the unhealthful features of the corset.
+
+His next effort is to analyze his public. He studies the groups which
+must be reached, and the leaders through whom he may approach these
+groups. Social groups, economic groups, geographical groups, age
+groups, doctrinal groups, language groups, cultural groups, all these
+represent the divisions through which, on behalf of his client, he may
+talk to the public.
+
+Only after this double analysis has been made and the results collated,
+has the time come for the next step, the formulation of policies
+governing the general practice, procedure and habits of the client
+in all those aspects in which he comes in contact with the public.
+And only when these policies have been agreed upon is it time for the
+fourth step.
+
+The first recognition of the distinct functions of the public relations
+counsel arose, perhaps, in the early years of the present century as
+a result of the insurance scandals coincident with the muck-raking of
+corporate finance in the popular magazines. The interests thus attacked
+suddenly realized that they were completely out of touch with the
+public they were professing to serve, and required expert advice to
+show them how they could understand the public and interpret themselves
+to it.
+
+The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, prompted by the most
+fundamental self-interest, initiated a conscious, directed effort
+to change the attitude of the public toward insurance companies in
+general, and toward itself in particular, to its profit and the
+public’s benefit.
+
+It tried to make a majority movement of itself by getting the public
+to buy its policies. It reached the public at every point of its
+corporate and separate existences. To communities it gave health
+surveys and expert counsel. To individuals it gave health creeds and
+advice. Even the building in which the corporation was located was
+made a picturesque landmark to see and remember, in other words to
+carry on the associative process. And so this company came to have a
+broad general acceptance. The number and amount of its policies grew
+constantly, as its broad contacts with society increased.
+
+Within a decade, many large corporations were employing public
+relations counsel under one title or another, for they had come to
+recognize that they depended upon public good will for their continued
+prosperity. It was no longer true that it was “none of the public’s
+business” how the affairs of a corporation were managed. They were
+obliged to convince the public that they were conforming to its demands
+as to honesty and fairness. Thus a corporation might discover that
+its labor policy was causing public resentment, and might introduce a
+more enlightened policy solely for the sake of general good will. Or
+a department store, hunting for the cause of diminishing sales, might
+discover that its clerks had a reputation for bad manners, and initiate
+formal instruction in courtesy and tact.
+
+The public relations expert may be known as public relations director
+or counsel. Often he is called secretary or vice-president or director.
+Sometimes he is known as cabinet officer or commissioner. By whatever
+title he may be called, his function is well defined and his advice
+has definite bearing on the conduct of the group or individual with
+whom he is working.
+
+Many persons still believe that the public relations counsel is a
+propagandist and nothing else. But, on the contrary, the stage at
+which many suppose he starts his activities may actually be the
+stage at which he ends them. After the public and the client are
+thoroughly analyzed and policies have been formulated, his work may
+be finished. In other cases the work of the public relations counsel
+must be continuous to be effective. For in many instances only by
+a careful system of constant, thorough and frank information will
+the public understand and appreciate the value of what a merchant,
+educator or statesman is doing. The counsel on public relations must
+maintain constant vigilance, because inadequate information, or
+false information from unknown sources, may have results of enormous
+importance. A single false rumor at a critical moment may drive down
+the price of a corporation’s stock, causing a loss of millions to
+stockholders. An air of secrecy or mystery about a corporation’s
+financial dealings may breed a general suspicion capable of acting as
+an invisible drag on the company’s whole dealings with the public. The
+counsel on public relations must be in a position to deal effectively
+with rumors and suspicions, attempting to stop them at their source,
+counteracting them promptly with correct or more complete information
+through channels which will be most effective, or best of all
+establishing such relations of confidence in the concern’s integrity
+that rumors and suspicions will have no opportunity to take root.
+
+His function may include the discovery of new markets, the existence of
+which had been unsuspected.
+
+If we accept public relations as a profession, we must also expect
+it to have both ideals and ethics. The ideal of the profession is a
+pragmatic one. It is to make the producer, whether that producer be a
+legislature making laws or a manufacturer making a commercial product,
+understand what the public wants and to make the public understand the
+objectives of the producer. In relation to industry, the ideal of the
+profession is to eliminate the waste and the friction that result when
+industry does things or makes things which its public does not want,
+or when the public does not understand what is being offered it. For
+example, the telephone companies maintain extensive public relations
+departments to explain what they are doing, so that energy may not be
+burned up in the friction of misunderstanding. A detailed description,
+for example, of the immense and scientific care which the company takes
+to choose clearly understandable and distinguishable exchange names,
+helps the public to appreciate the effort that is being made to give
+good service, and stimulates it to coöperate by enunciating clearly.
+It aims to bring about an understanding between educators and educated,
+between government and people, between charitable institutions and
+contributors, between nation and nation.
+
+The profession of public relations counsel is developing for itself
+an ethical code which compares favorably with that governing the
+legal and medical professions. In part, this code is forced upon the
+public relations counsel by the very conditions of his work. While
+recognizing, just as the lawyer does, that every one has the right to
+present his case in its best light, he nevertheless refuses a client
+whom he believes to be dishonest, a product which he believes to be
+fraudulent, or a cause which he believes to be antisocial. One reason
+for this is that, even though a special pleader, he is not dissociated
+from the client in the public’s mind. Another reason is that while
+he is pleading before the court—the court of public opinion—he is at
+the same time trying to affect that court’s judgments and actions. 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 may accede to his opinion and
+judgment.
+
+He does not accept a client whose interests conflict with those of
+another client. He does not accept a client whose case he believes to
+be hopeless or whose product he believes to be unmarketable.
+
+He should be candid in his dealings. It must be repeated that his
+business is not to fool or hoodwink the public. If he were to get such
+a reputation, his usefulness in his profession would be at an end. When
+he is sending out propaganda material, it is clearly labeled as to
+source. The editor knows from whom it comes and what its purpose is,
+and accepts or rejects it on its merits as news.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PUBLIC RELATIONS
+
+
+The systematic study of mass psychology revealed to students the
+potentialities of invisible government of society by manipulation of
+the motives which actuate man in the group. Trotter and Le Bon, who
+approached the subject in a scientific manner, and Graham Wallas,
+Walter Lippmann and others who continued with searching studies of
+the group mind, established that the group has mental characteristics
+distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses
+and emotions which cannot be explained on the basis of what we know
+of individual psychology. So the question naturally arose: If we
+understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not
+possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will
+without their knowing it?
+
+The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at
+least up to a certain point and within certain limits. Mass psychology
+is as yet far from being an exact science and the mysteries of human
+motivation are by no means all revealed. But at least theory and
+practice have combined with sufficient success to permit us to know
+that in certain cases we can effect some change in public opinion
+with a fair degree of accuracy by operating a certain mechanism, just
+as the motorist can regulate the speed of his car by manipulating
+the flow of gasoline. Propaganda is not a science in the laboratory
+sense, but it is no longer entirely the empirical affair that it was
+before the advent of the study of mass psychology. It is now scientific
+in the sense that it seeks to base its operations upon definite
+knowledge drawn from direct observation of the group mind, and upon the
+application of principles which have been demonstrated to be consistent
+and relatively constant.
+
+The modern propagandist studies systematically and objectively the
+material with which he is working in the spirit of the laboratory. If
+the matter in hand is a nation-wide sales campaign, he studies the
+field by means of a clipping service, or of a corps of scouts, or by
+personal study at a crucial spot. He determines, for example, which
+features of a product are losing their public appeal, and in what new
+direction the public taste is veering. He will not fail to investigate
+to what extent it is the wife who has the final word in the choice of
+her husband’s car, or of his suits and shirts.
+
+Scientific accuracy of results is not to be expected, because many of
+the elements of the situation must always be beyond his control. He may
+know with a fair degree of certainty that under favorable circumstances
+an international flight will produce a spirit of good will, making
+possible even the consummation of political programs. But he cannot
+be sure that some unexpected event will not overshadow this flight in
+the public interest, or that some other aviator may not do something
+more spectacular the day before. Even in his restricted field of public
+psychology there must always be a wide margin of error. Propaganda,
+like economics and sociology, can never be an exact science for the
+reason that its subject-matter, like theirs, deals with human beings.
+
+If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their
+conscious coöperation, you automatically influence the group which they
+sway. But men do not need to be actually gathered together in a public
+meeting or in a street riot, to be subject to the influences of mass
+psychology. Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be
+member of a herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains
+drawn. His mind retains the patterns which have been stamped on it by
+the group influences.
+
+A man sits in his office deciding what stocks to buy. He imagines, no
+doubt, that he is planning his purchases according to his own judgment.
+In actual fact his judgment is a mélange of impressions stamped on his
+mind by outside influences which unconsciously control his thought. He
+buys a certain railroad stock because it was in the headlines yesterday
+and hence is the one which comes most prominently to his mind;
+because he has a pleasant recollection of a good dinner on one of its
+fast trains; because it has a liberal labor policy, a reputation for
+honesty; because he has been told that J. P. Morgan owns some of its
+shares.
+
+Trotter and Le Bon concluded that the group mind does not _think_ in
+the strict sense of the word. In place of thoughts it has impulses,
+habits and emotions. In making up its mind its first impulse is
+usually to follow the example of a trusted leader. This is one of the
+most firmly established principles of mass psychology. It operates in
+establishing the rising or diminishing prestige of a summer resort, in
+causing a run on a bank, or a panic on the stock exchange, in creating
+a best seller, or a box-office success.
+
+But when the example of the leader is not at hand and the herd must
+think for itself, it does so by means of clichés, pat words or images
+which stand for a whole group of ideas or experiences. Not many years
+ago, it was only necessary to tag a political candidate with the word
+interests to stampede millions of people into voting against him,
+because anything associated with “the interests” seemed necessarily
+corrupt. Recently the word Bolshevik has performed a similar service
+for persons who wished to frighten the public away from a line of
+action.
+
+By playing upon an old cliché, or manipulating a new one, the
+propagandist can sometimes swing a whole mass of group emotions. In
+Great Britain, during the war, the evacuation hospitals came in for
+a considerable amount of criticism because of the summary way in
+which they handled their wounded. It was assumed by the public that a
+hospital gives prolonged and conscientious attention to its patients.
+When the name was changed to evacuation posts the critical reaction
+vanished. No one expected more than an adequate emergency treatment
+from an institution so named. The cliché hospital was indelibly
+associated in the public mind with a certain picture. To persuade the
+public to discriminate between one type of hospital and another, to
+dissociate the cliché from the picture it evoked, would have been an
+impossible task. Instead, a new cliché automatically conditioned the
+public emotion toward these hospitals.
+
+Men are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions.
+A man may believe that he buys a motor car because, after careful study
+of the technical features of all makes on the market, he has concluded
+that this is the best. He is almost certainly fooling himself. He
+bought it, perhaps, because a friend whose financial acumen he respects
+bought one last week; or because his neighbors believed he was not able
+to afford a car of that class; or because its colors are those of his
+college fraternity.
+
+It is chiefly the psychologists of the school of Freud who have
+pointed out that many of man’s thoughts and actions are compensatory
+substitutes for desires which he has been obliged to suppress. A thing
+may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because
+he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the
+desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself. A man buying a car
+may think he wants it for purposes of locomotion, whereas the fact may
+be that he would really prefer not to be burdened with it, and would
+rather walk for the sake of his health. He may really want it because
+it is a symbol of social position, an evidence of his success in
+business, or a means of pleasing his wife.
+
+This general principle, that men are very largely actuated by motives
+which they conceal from themselves, is as true of mass as of individual
+psychology. It is evident that the successful propagandist must
+understand the true motives and not be content to accept the reasons
+which men give for what they do.
+
+It is not sufficient to understand only the mechanical structure of
+society, the groupings and cleavages and loyalties. An engineer may
+know all about the cylinders and pistons of a locomotive, but unless
+he knows how steam behaves under pressure he cannot make his engine
+run. Human desires are the steam which makes the social machine work.
+Only by understanding them can the propagandist control that vast,
+loose-jointed mechanism which is modern society.
+
+The old propagandist based his work on the mechanistic reaction
+psychology then in vogue in our colleges. This assumed that the human
+mind was merely an individual machine, a system of nerves and nerve
+centers, reacting with mechanical regularity to stimuli, like a
+helpless, will-less automaton. It was the special pleader’s function
+to provide the stimulus which would cause the desired reaction in the
+individual purchaser.
+
+It was one of the doctrines of the reaction psychology that a certain
+stimulus often repeated would create a habit, or that the mere
+reiteration of an idea would create a conviction. Suppose the old type
+of salesmanship, acting for a meat packer, was seeking to increase
+the sale of bacon. It would reiterate innumerable times in full-page
+advertisements: “Eat more bacon. Eat bacon because it is cheap, because
+it is good, because it gives you reserve energy.”
+
+The newer salesmanship, understanding the group structure of society
+and the principles of mass psychology, would first ask: “Who is it that
+influences the eating habits of the public?” The answer, obviously,
+is: “The physicians.” The new salesman will then suggest to physicians
+to say publicly that it is wholesome to eat bacon. He knows as a
+mathematical certainty, that large numbers of persons will follow the
+advice of their doctors, because he understands the psychological
+relation of dependence of men upon their physicians.
+
+The old-fashioned propagandist, using almost exclusively the appeal
+of the printed word, tried to persuade the individual reader to buy a
+definite article, immediately. This approach is exemplified in a type
+of advertisement which used to be considered ideal from the point of
+view of directness and effectiveness:
+
+“YOU (perhaps with a finger pointing at the reader) _buy O’Leary’s
+rubber heels_—NOW.”
+
+The advertiser sought by means of reiteration and emphasis directed
+upon the individual, to break down or penetrate sales resistance.
+Although the appeal was aimed at fifty million persons, it was aimed at
+each as an individual.
+
+The new salesmanship has found it possible, by dealing with men in
+the mass through their group formations, to set up psychological and
+emotional currents which will work for him. Instead of assaulting
+sales resistance by direct attack, he is interested in removing sales
+resistance. He creates circumstances which will swing emotional
+currents so as to make for purchaser demand.
+
+If, for instance, I want to sell pianos, it is not sufficient to
+blanket the country with a direct appeal, such as:
+
+“YOU _buy a Mozart piano now. It is cheap. The best artists use it. It
+will last for years._”
+
+The claims may all be true, but they are in direct conflict with the
+claims of other piano manufacturers, and in indirect competition with
+the claims of a radio or a motor car, each competing for the consumer’s
+dollar.
+
+What are the true reasons why the purchaser is planning to spend his
+money on a new car instead of on a new piano? Because he has decided
+that he wants the commodity called locomotion more than he wants the
+commodity called music? Not altogether. He buys a car, because it is at
+the moment the group custom to buy cars.
+
+The modern propagandist therefore sets to work to create circumstances
+which will modify that custom. He appeals perhaps to the home instinct
+which is fundamental. He will endeavor to develop public acceptance of
+the idea of a music room in the home. This he may do, for example, by
+organizing an exhibition of period music rooms designed by well known
+decorators who themselves exert an influence on the buying groups. He
+enhances the effectiveness and prestige of these rooms by putting in
+them rare and valuable tapestries. Then, in order to create dramatic
+interest in the exhibit, he stages an event or ceremony. To this
+ceremony key people, persons known to influence the buying habits of
+the public, such as a famous violinist, a popular artist, and a society
+leader, are invited. These key persons affect other groups, lifting the
+idea of the music room to a place in the public consciousness which
+it did not have before. The juxtaposition of these leaders, and the
+idea which they are dramatizing, are then projected to the wider public
+through various publicity channels. Meanwhile, influential architects
+have been persuaded to make the music room an integral architectural
+part of their plans with perhaps a specially charming niche in one
+corner for the piano. Less influential architects will as a matter of
+course imitate what is done by the men whom they consider masters of
+their profession. They in turn will implant the idea of the music room
+in the mind of the general public.
+
+The music room will be accepted because it has been made the thing. And
+the man or woman who has a music room, or has arranged a corner of the
+parlor as a musical corner, will naturally think of buying a piano. It
+will come to him as his own idea.
+
+Under the old salesmanship the manufacturer said to the prospective
+purchaser, “Please buy a piano.” The new salesmanship has reversed
+the process and caused the prospective purchaser to say to the
+manufacturer, “Please sell me a piano.”
+
+The value of the associative processes in propaganda is shown in
+connection with a large real estate development. To emphasize that
+Jackson Heights was socially desirable every attempt was made to
+produce this associative process. A benefit performance of the Jitney
+Players was staged for the benefit of earthquake victims of Japan,
+under the auspices of Mrs. Astor and others. The social advantages of
+the place were projected—a golf course was laid out and a clubhouse
+planned. When the post office was opened, the public relations counsel
+attempted to use it as a focus for national interest and discovered
+that its opening fell coincident with a date important in the annals
+of the American Postal Service. This was then made the basis of the
+opening.
+
+When an attempt was made to show the public the beauty of the
+apartments, a competition was held among interior decorators for the
+best furnished apartment in Jackson Heights. An important committee
+of judges decided. This competition drew the approval of well known
+authorities, as well as the interest of millions, who were made
+cognizant of it through newspaper and magazine and other publicity,
+with the effect of building up definitely the prestige of the
+development.
+
+One of the most effective methods is the utilization of the group
+formation of modern society in order to spread ideas. An example of
+this is the nation-wide competitions for sculpture in Ivory soap,
+open to school children in certain age groups as well as professional
+sculptors. A sculptor of national reputation found Ivory soap an
+excellent medium for sculpture.
+
+The Procter and Gamble Company offered a series of prizes for the best
+sculpture in white soap. The contest was held under the auspices of the
+Art Center in New York City, an organization of high standing in the
+art world.
+
+School superintendents and teachers throughout the country were glad
+to encourage the movement as an educational aid for schools. Practice
+among school children as part of their art courses was stimulated.
+Contests were held between schools, between school districts and
+between cities.
+
+Ivory soap was adaptable for sculpturing in the homes because mothers
+saved the shavings and the imperfect efforts for laundry purposes. The
+work itself was clean.
+
+The best pieces are selected from the local competitions for entry in
+the national contest. This is held annually at an important art gallery
+in New York, whose prestige with that of the distinguished judges,
+establishes the contest as a serious art event.
+
+In the first of these national competitions about 500 pieces of
+sculpture were entered. In the third, 2,500. And in the fourth, more
+than 4,000. If the carefully selected pieces were so numerous, it is
+evident that a vast number were sculptured during the year, and that a
+much greater number must have been made for practice purposes. The good
+will was greatly enhanced by the fact that this soap had become not
+merely the concern of the housewife but also a matter of personal and
+intimate interest to her children.
+
+A number of familiar psychological motives were set in motion in the
+carrying out of this campaign. The esthetic, the competitive, the
+gregarious (much of the sculpturing was done in school groups), the
+snobbish (the impulse to follow the example of a recognized leader),
+the exhibitionist, and—last but by no means least—the maternal.
+
+All these motives and group habits were put in concerted motion by the
+simple machinery of group leadership and authority. As if actuated by
+the pressure of a button, people began working for the client for the
+sake of the gratification obtained in the sculpture work itself.
+
+This point is most important in successful propaganda work. The
+leaders who lend their authority to any propaganda campaign will do so
+only if it can be made to touch their own interests. There must be a
+disinterested aspect of the propagandist’s activities. In other words,
+it is one of the functions of the public relations counsel to discover
+at what points his client’s interests coincide with those of other
+individuals or groups.
+
+In the case of the soap sculpture competition, the distinguished
+artists and educators who sponsored the idea were glad to lend their
+services and their names because the competitions really promoted an
+interest which they had at heart—the cultivation of the esthetic
+impulse among the younger generation.
+
+Such coincidence and overlapping of interests is as infinite as the
+interlacing of group formations themselves. For example, a railway
+wishes to develop its business. The counsel on public relations makes
+a survey to discover at what points its interests coincide with those
+of its prospective customers. The company then establishes relations
+with chambers of commerce along its right of way and assists them
+in developing their communities. It helps them to secure new plants
+and industries for the town. It facilitates business through the
+dissemination of technical information. It is not merely a case of
+bestowing favors in the hope of receiving favors; these activities of
+the railroad, besides creating good will, actually promote growth on
+its right of way. The interests of the railroad and the communities
+through which it passes mutually interact and feed one another.
+
+In the same way, a bank institutes an investment service for the
+benefit of its customers in order that the latter may have more money
+to deposit with the bank. Or a jewelry concern develops an insurance
+department to insure the jewels it sells, in order to make the
+purchaser feel greater security in buying jewels. Or a baking company
+establishes an information service suggesting recipes for bread to
+encourage new uses for bread in the home.
+
+The ideas of the new propaganda are predicated on sound psychology
+based on enlightened self-interest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have tried, in these chapters, to explain the place of propaganda
+in modern American life and something of the methods by which it
+operates—to tell the why, the what, the who and the how of the
+invisible government which dictates our thoughts, directs our feelings
+and controls our actions. In the following chapters I shall try to show
+how propaganda functions in specific departments of group activity, to
+suggest some of the further ways in which it may operate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+BUSINESS AND THE PUBLIC
+
+
+The relationship between business and the public has become closer
+in the past few decades. Business to-day is taking the public into
+partnership. A number of causes, some economic, others due to the
+growing public understanding of business and the public interest in
+business, have produced this situation. Business realizes that its
+relationship to the public is not confined to the manufacture and sale
+of a given product, but includes at the same time the selling of itself
+and of all those things for which it stands in the public mind.
+
+Twenty or twenty-five years ago, business sought to run its own affairs
+regardless of the public. The reaction was the muck-raking period, in
+which a multitude of sins were, justly and unjustly, laid to the charge
+of the interests. In the face of an aroused public conscience the large
+corporations were obliged to renounce their contention that their
+affairs were nobody’s business. If to-day big business were to seek to
+throttle the public, a new reaction similar to that of twenty years
+ago would take place and the public would rise and try to throttle big
+business with restrictive laws. Business is conscious of the public’s
+conscience. This consciousness has led to a healthy coöperation.
+
+Another cause for the increasing relationship is undoubtedly to be
+found in the various phenomena growing out of mass production. Mass
+production is only profitable if its rhythm can be maintained—that
+is, if it can continue to sell its product in steady or increasing
+quantity. The result is that while, under the handicraft or small-unit
+system of production that was typical a century ago, demand created the
+supply, to-day supply must actively seek to create its corresponding
+demand. A single factory, potentially capable of supplying a whole
+continent with its particular product, cannot afford to wait until the
+public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through
+advertising and propaganda, with the vast public in order to assure
+itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant
+profitable. This entails a vastly more complex system of distribution
+than formerly. To make customers is the new problem. One must
+understand not only his own business—the manufacture of a particular
+product—but also the structure, the personality, the prejudices, of a
+potentially universal public.
+
+Still another reason is to be found in the improvements in the
+technique of advertising—as regards both the size of the public which
+can be reached by the printed word, and the methods of appeal. The
+growth of newspapers and magazines having a circulation of millions
+of copies, and the art of the modern advertising expert in making the
+printed message attractive and persuasive, have placed the business man
+in a personal relation with a vast and diversified public.
+
+Another modern phenomenon, which influences the general policy of
+big business, is the new competition between certain firms and the
+remainder of the industry, to which they belong. Another kind of
+competition is between whole industries, in their struggle for a share
+of the consumer’s dollar. When, for example, a soap manufacturer claims
+that his product will preserve youth, he is obviously attempting to
+change the public’s mode of thinking about soap in general—a thing of
+grave importance to the whole industry. Or when the metal furniture
+industry seeks to convince the public that it is more desirable to
+spend its money for metal furniture than for wood furniture, it is
+clearly seeking to alter the taste and standards of a whole generation.
+In either case, business is seeking to inject itself into the lives and
+customs of millions of persons.
+
+Even in a basic sense, business is becoming dependent on public
+opinion. With the increasing volume and wider diffusion of wealth in
+America, thousands of persons now invest in industrial stocks. New
+stock or bond flotations, upon which an expanding business must depend
+for its success, can be effected only if the concern has understood how
+to gain the confidence and good will of the general public. Business
+must express itself and its entire corporate existence so that the
+public will understand and accept it. It must dramatize its personality
+and interpret its objectives in every particular in which it comes into
+contact with the community (or the nation) of which it is a part.
+
+An oil corporation which truly understands its many-sided relation
+to the public, will offer that public not only good oil but a sound
+labor policy. A bank will seek to show not only that its management
+is sound and conservative, but also that its officers are honorable
+both in their public and in their private life. A store specializing
+in fashionable men’s clothing will express in its architecture the
+authenticity of the goods it offers. A bakery will seek to impress the
+public with the hygienic care observed in its manufacturing process,
+not only by wrapping its loaves in dust-proof paper and throwing its
+factory open to public inspection, but also by the cleanliness and
+attractiveness of its delivery wagons. A construction firm will take
+care that the public knows not only that its buildings are durable
+and safe, but also that its employees, when injured at work, are
+compensated. At whatever point a business enterprise impinges on the
+public consciousness, it must seek to give its public relations the
+particular character which will conform to the objectives which it is
+pursuing.
+
+Just as the production manager must be familiar with every element
+and detail concerning the materials with which he is working, so the
+man in charge of a firm’s public relations must be familiar with the
+structure, the prejudices, and the whims of the general public, and
+must handle his problems with the utmost care. The public has its own
+standards and demands and habits. You may modify them, but you dare
+not run counter to them. You cannot persuade a whole generation of
+women to wear long skirts, but you may, by working through leaders of
+fashion, persuade them to wear evening dresses which are long in back.
+The public is not an amorphous mass which can be molded at will, or
+dictated to. Both business and the public have their own personalities
+which must somehow be brought into friendly agreement. Conflict and
+suspicion are injurious to both. Modern business must study on what
+terms the partnership can be made amicable and mutually beneficial. It
+must explain itself, its aims, its objectives, to the public in terms
+which the public can understand and is willing to accept.
+
+Business does not willingly accept dictation from the public. It should
+not expect that it can dictate to the public. While the public should
+appreciate the great economic benefits which business offers, thanks
+to mass production and scientific marketing, business should also
+appreciate that the public is becoming increasingly discriminative in
+its standards and should seek to understand its demands and meet them.
+The relationship between business and the public can be healthy only if
+it is the relationship of give and take.
+
+It is this condition and necessity which has created the need for a
+specialized field of public relations. Business now calls in the public
+relations counsel to advise it, to interpret its purpose to the public,
+and to suggest those modifications which may make it conform to the
+public demand.
+
+The modifications then recommended to make the business conform to
+its objectives and to the public demand, may concern the broadest
+matters of policy or the apparently most trivial details of execution.
+It might in one case be necessary to transform entirely the lines of
+goods sold to conform to changing public demands. In another case the
+trouble may be found to lie in such small matters as the dress of the
+clerks. A jewelry store may complain that its patronage is shrinking
+upwards because of its reputation for carrying high-priced goods; in
+this case the public relations counsel might suggest the featuring
+of medium-priced goods, even at a loss, not because the firm desires
+a large medium-price trade as such, but because out of a hundred
+medium-price customers acquired to-day a certain percentage will be
+well-to-do ten years from now. A department store which is seeking to
+gather in the high-class trade may be urged to employ college graduates
+as clerks or to engage well known modern artists to design show-windows
+or special exhibits. A bank may be urged to open a Fifth Avenue
+branch, not because the actual business done on Fifth Avenue warrants
+the expense, but because a beautiful Fifth Avenue office correctly
+expresses the kind of appeal which it wishes to make to future
+depositors; and, viewed in this way, it may be as important that the
+doorman be polite, or that the floors be kept clean, as that the branch
+manager be an able financier. Yet the beneficial effect of this branch
+may be canceled, if the wife of the president is involved in a scandal.
+
+Big business studies every move which may express its true personality.
+It seeks to tell the public, in all appropriate ways,—by the direct
+advertising message and by the subtlest esthetic suggestion—the quality
+of the goods or services which it has to offer. A store which seeks a
+large sales volume in cheap goods will preach prices day in and day
+out, concentrating its whole appeal on the ways in which it can save
+money for its clients. But a store seeking a high margin of profit on
+individual sales would try to associate itself with the distinguished
+and the elegant, whether by an exhibition of old masters or through the
+social activities of the owner’s wife.
+
+The public relations activities of a business cannot be a protective
+coloring to hide its real aims. It is bad business as well as bad
+morals to feature exclusively a few high-class articles, when the main
+stock is of medium grade or cheap, for the general impression given
+is a false one. A sound public relations policy will not attempt to
+stampede the public with exaggerated claims and false pretenses, but
+to interpret the individual business vividly and truly through every
+avenue that leads to public opinion. The New York Central Railroad has
+for decades sought to appeal to the public not only on the basis of the
+speed and safety of its trains, but also on the basis of their elegance
+and comfort. It is appropriate that the corporation should have been
+personified to the general public in the person of so suave and
+ingratiating a gentleman as Chauncey M. Depew—an ideal window dressing
+for such an enterprise.
+
+While the concrete recommendations of the public relations counsel may
+vary infinitely according to individual circumstances, his general plan
+of work may be reduced to two types, which I might term continuous
+interpretation and dramatization by high-spotting. The two may be
+alternative or may be pursued concurrently.
+
+Continuous interpretation is achieved by trying to control every
+approach to the public mind in such a manner that the public receives
+the desired impression, often without being conscious of it.
+High-spotting, on the other hand, vividly seizes the attention of the
+public and fixes it upon some detail or aspect which is typical of the
+entire enterprise. When a real estate corporation which is erecting
+a tall office building makes it ten feet taller than the highest
+sky-scraper in existence, that is dramatization.
+
+Which method is indicated, or whether both be indicated concurrently,
+can be determined only after a full study of objectives and specific
+possibilities.
+
+Another interesting case of focusing public attention on the virtues
+of a product was shown in the case of gelatine. Its advantages in
+increasing the digestibility and nutritional value of milk were proven
+in the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research. The suggestion was
+made and carried out that to further this knowledge, gelatine be used
+by certain hospitals and school systems, to be tested out there. The
+favorable results of such tests were then projected to other leaders in
+the field with the result that they followed that group leadership and
+utilized gelatine for the scientific purposes which had been proven to
+be sound at the research institution. The idea carried momentum.
+
+The tendency of big business is to get bigger. Through mergers and
+monopolies it is constantly increasing the number of persons with whom
+it is in direct contact. All this has intensified and multiplied the
+public relationships of business.
+
+The responsibilities are of many kinds. There is a responsibility
+to the stockholders—numbering perhaps five persons or five hundred
+thousand—who have entrusted their money to the concern and have the
+right to know how the money is being used. A concern which is fully
+aware of its responsibility toward its stockholders, will furnish them
+with frequent letters urging them to use the product in which their
+money is invested, and use their influence to promote its sale. It has
+a responsibility toward the dealer which it may express by inviting
+him, at its expense, to visit the home factory. It has a responsibility
+toward the industry as a whole which should restrain it from making
+exaggerated and unfair selling claims. It has a responsibility toward
+the retailer, and will see to it that its salesmen express the quality
+of the product which they have to sell. There is a responsibility
+toward the consumer, who is impressed by a clean and well managed
+factory, open to his inspection. And the general public, apart from its
+function as potential consumer, is influenced in its attitude toward
+the concern by what it knows of that concern’s financial dealings,
+its labor policy, even by the livableness of the houses in which its
+employees dwell. There is no detail too trivial to influence the public
+in a favorable or unfavorable sense. The personality of the president
+may be a matter of importance, for he perhaps dramatizes the whole
+concern to the public mind. It may be very important to what charities
+he contributes, in what civic societies he holds office. If he is a
+leader in his industry, the public may demand that he be a leader in
+his community.
+
+The business man has become a responsible member of the social group.
+It is not a question of ballyhoo, of creating a picturesque fiction for
+public consumption. It is merely a question of finding the appropriate
+modes of expressing the personality that is to be dramatized. Some
+businessmen can be their own best public relations counsel. But in the
+majority of cases knowledge of the public mind and of the ways in which
+it will react to an appeal, is a specialized function which must be
+undertaken by the professional expert.
+
+Big business, I believe, is realizing this more and more. It is
+increasingly availing itself of the services of the specialist in
+public relations (whatever may be the title accorded him). And it is
+my conviction that as big business becomes bigger the need for expert
+manipulation of its innumerable contacts with the public will become
+greater.
+
+One reason why the public relations of a business are frequently
+placed in the hands of an outside expert, instead of being confided
+to an officer of the company, is the fact that the correct approach
+to a problem may be indirect. For example, when the luggage industry
+attempted to solve some of its problems by a public relations policy,
+it was realized that the attitude of railroads, of steamship companies,
+and of foreign government-owned railroads was an important factor in
+the handling of luggage.
+
+If a railroad and a baggage man, for their own interest, can be
+educated to handle baggage with more facility and promptness, with
+less damage to the baggage, and less inconvenience to the passenger; if
+the steamship company lets down, in its own interests, its restrictions
+on luggage; if the foreign government eases up on its baggage costs and
+transportation in order to further tourist travel; then the luggage
+manufacturers will profit.
+
+The problem then, to increase the sale of their luggage, was to have
+these and other forces come over to their point of view. Hence the
+public relations campaign was directed not to the public, who were the
+ultimate consumers, but to these other elements.
+
+Also, if the luggage manufacturer can educate the general public on
+what to wear on trips and when to wear it, he may be increasing the
+sale of men’s and women’s clothing, but he will, at the same time, be
+increasing the sale of his luggage.
+
+Propaganda, since it goes to basic causes, can very often be most
+effective through the manner of its introduction. A campaign against
+unhealthy cosmetics might be waged by fighting for a return to the
+wash-cloth and soap—a fight that very logically might be taken up by
+health officials all over the country, who would urge the return to the
+salutary and helpful wash-cloth and soap, instead of cosmetics.
+
+The development of public opinion for a cause or line of socially
+constructive action may very often be the result of a desire on the
+part of the propagandist to meet successfully his own problem which
+the socially constructive cause would further. And by doing so he is
+actually fulfilling a social purpose in the broadest sense.
+
+The soundness of a public relations policy was likewise shown in the
+case of a shoe manufacturer who made service shoes for patrolmen,
+firemen, letter carriers, and men in similar occupations. He realized
+that if he could make acceptable the idea that men in such work ought
+to be well-shod, he would sell more shoes and at the same time further
+the efficiency of the men.
+
+He organized, as part of his business, a foot protection bureau. This
+bureau disseminated scientifically accurate information on the proper
+care of the feet, principles which the manufacturer had incorporated in
+the construction of the shoes. The result was that civic bodies, police
+chiefs, fire chiefs, and others interested in the welfare and comfort
+of their men, furthered the ideas his product stood for and the product
+itself, with the consequent effect that more of his shoes were sold
+more easily.
+
+The application of this principle of a common denominator of interest
+between the object that is sold and the public good will can be carried
+to infinite degrees.
+
+“It matters not how much capital you may have, how fair the rates may
+be, how favorable the conditions of service, if you haven’t behind
+you a sympathetic public opinion, you are bound to fail.” This is
+the opinion of Samuel Insull, one of the foremost traction magnates
+of the country. And the late Judge Gary, of the United States Steel
+Corporation, expressed the same idea when he said: “Once you have
+the good will of the general public, you can go ahead in the work of
+constructive expansion. Too often many try to discount this vague and
+intangible element. That way lies destruction.”
+
+Public opinion is no longer inclined to be unfavorable to the large
+business merger. It resents the censorship of business by the Federal
+Trade Commission. It has broken down the anti-trust laws where it
+thinks they hinder economic development. It backs great trusts and
+mergers which it excoriated a decade ago. The government now permits
+large aggregations of producing and distributing units, as evidenced
+by mergers among railroads and other public utilities, because
+representative government reflects public opinion. Public opinion
+itself fosters the growth of mammoth industrial enterprises. In the
+opinion of millions of small investors, mergers and trusts are friendly
+giants and not ogres, because of the economies, mainly due to quantity
+production, which they have effected, and can pass on to the consumer.
+
+This result has been, to a great extent, obtained by a deliberate use
+of propaganda in its broadest sense. It was obtained not only by
+modifying the opinion of the public, as the governments modified and
+marshaled the opinion of their publics during the war, but often by
+modifying the business concern itself. A cement company may work with
+road commissions gratuitously to maintain testing laboratories in order
+to insure the best-quality roads to the public. A gas company maintains
+a free school of cookery.
+
+But it would be rash and unreasonable to take it for granted that
+because public opinion has come over to the side of big business, it
+will always remain there. Only recently, Prof. W. Z. Ripley of Harvard
+University, one of the foremost national authorities on business
+organization and practice, exposed certain aspects of big business
+which tended to undermine public confidence in large corporations.
+He pointed out that the stockholders’ supposed voting power is often
+illusory; that annual financial statements are sometimes so brief and
+summary that to the man in the street they are downright misleading;
+that the extension of the system of non-voting shares often places the
+effective control of corporations and their finances in the hands of
+a small clique of stockholders; and that some corporations refuse to
+give out sufficient information to permit the public to know the true
+condition of the concern.
+
+Furthermore, no matter how favorably disposed the public may be toward
+big business in general, the utilities are always fair game for public
+discontent and need to maintain good will with the greatest care and
+watchfulness. These and other corporations of a semi-public character
+will always have to face a demand for government or municipal ownership
+if such attacks as those of Professor Ripley are continued and are, in
+the public’s opinion, justified, unless conditions are changed and care
+is taken to maintain the contact with the public at all points of their
+corporate existence.
+
+The public relations counsel should anticipate such trends of public
+opinion and advise on how to avert them, either by convincing the
+public that its fears or prejudices are unjustified, or in certain
+cases by modifying the action of the client to the extent necessary
+to remove the cause of complaint. In such a case public opinion might
+be surveyed and the points of irreducible opposition discovered. The
+aspects of the situation which are susceptible of logical explanation;
+to what extent the criticism or prejudice is a habitual emotional
+reaction and what factors are dominated by accepted clichés, might be
+disclosed. In each instance he would advise some action or modification
+of policy calculated to make the readjustment.
+
+While government ownership is in most instances only varyingly a remote
+possibility, public ownership of big business through the increasing
+popular investment in stocks and bonds, is becoming more and more a
+fact. The importance of public relations from this standpoint is to be
+judged by the fact that practically all prosperous corporations expect
+at some time to enlarge operations, and will need to float new stock or
+bond issues. The success of such issues depends upon the general record
+of the concern in the business world, and also upon the good will which
+it has been able to create in the general public. When the Victor
+Talking Machine Company was recently offered to the public, millions of
+dollars’ worth of stock were sold overnight. On the other hand, there
+are certain companies which, although they are financially sound and
+commercially prosperous, would be unable to float a large stock issue,
+because public opinion is not conscious of them, or has some unanalyzed
+prejudice against them.
+
+To such an extent is the successful floating of stocks and bonds
+dependent upon the public favor that the success of a new merger
+may stand or fall upon the public acceptance which is created for
+it. A merger may bring into existence huge new resources, and these
+resources, perhaps amounting to millions of dollars in a single
+operation, can often fairly be said to have been created by the expert
+manipulation of public opinion. It must be repeated that I am not
+speaking of artificial value given to a stock by dishonest propaganda
+or stock manipulation, but of the real economic values which are
+created when genuine public acceptance is gained for an industrial
+enterprise and becomes a real partner in it.
+
+The growth of big business is so rapid that in some lines ownership is
+more international than national. It is necessary to reach ever larger
+groups of people if modern industry and commerce are to be financed.
+Americans have purchased billions of dollars of foreign industrial
+securities since the war, and Europeans own, it is estimated, between
+one and two billion dollars’ worth of ours. In each case public
+acceptance must be obtained for the issue and the enterprise behind it.
+
+Public loans, state or municipal, to foreign countries depend upon the
+good will which those countries have been able to create for themselves
+here. An attempted issue by an east European country is now faring
+badly largely because of unfavorable public reaction to the behavior of
+members of its ruling family. But other countries have no difficulty
+in placing any issue because the public is already convinced of the
+prosperity of these nations and the stability of their governments.
+
+The new technique of public relations counsel is serving a very useful
+purpose in business by acting as a complement to legitimate advertisers
+and advertising in helping to break down unfair competitive exaggerated
+and overemphatic advertising by reaching the public with the truth
+through other channels than advertising. Where two competitors in a
+field are fighting each other with this type of advertising, they are
+undermining that particular industry to a point where the public may
+lose confidence in the whole industry. The only way to combat such
+unethical methods, is for ethical members of the industry to use the
+weapon of propaganda in order to bring out the basic truths of the
+situation.
+
+Take the case of tooth paste, for instance. Here is a highly
+competitive field in which the preponderance of public acceptance of
+one product over another can very legitimately rest in inherent values.
+However, what has happened in this field?
+
+One or two of the large manufacturers have asserted advantages for
+their tooth pastes which no single tooth paste discovered up to the
+present time can possibly have. The competing manufacturer is put in
+the position either of overemphasizing an already exaggerated emphasis
+or of letting the overemphasis of his competitor take away his markets.
+He turns to the weapon of propaganda which can effectively, through
+various channels of approach to the public—the dental clinics, the
+schools, the women’s clubs, the medical colleges, the dental press and
+even the daily press—bring to the public the truth of what a tooth
+paste can do. This will, of course, have its effect in making the
+honestly advertised tooth paste get to its real public.
+
+Propaganda is potent in meeting unethical or unfair advertising.
+Effective advertising has become more costly than ever before.
+Years ago, when the country was smaller and there was no tremendous
+advertising machinery, it was comparatively easy to get country-wide
+recognition for a product. A corps of traveling salesmen might persuade
+the retailers, with a few cigars and a repertory of funny stories, to
+display and recommend their article on a nation-wide scale. To-day, a
+small industry is swamped unless it can find appropriate and relatively
+inexpensive means of making known the special virtues of its product,
+while larger industries have sought to overcome the difficulty by
+coöperative advertising, in which associations of industries compete
+with other associations.
+
+Mass advertising has produced new kinds of competition. Competition
+between rival products in the same line is, of course, as old as
+economic life itself. In recent years much has been said of the new
+competition, we have discussed it in a previous chapter, between
+one group of products and another. Stone competes against wood for
+building; linoleum against carpets; oranges against apples; tin against
+asbestos for roofing.
+
+This type of competition has been humorously illustrated by Mr.
+O. H. Cheney, Vice-President of the American Exchange and Irving
+Trust Company of New York, in a speech before the Chicago Business
+Secretaries Forum.
+
+“Do you represent the millinery trades?” said Mr. Cheney. “The man at
+your side may serve the fur industry, and by promoting the style of big
+fur collars on women’s coats he is ruining the hat business by forcing
+women to wear small and inexpensive hats. You may be interested in
+the ankles of the fair sex—I mean, you may represent the silk hosiery
+industry. You have two brave rivals who are ready to fight to the
+death—to spend millions in the fight—for the glory of those ankles—the
+leather industry, which has suffered from the low-shoe vogue, and the
+fabrics manufacturers, who yearn for the good old days when skirts were
+skirts.
+
+“If you represent the plumbing and heating business, you are the mortal
+enemy of the textile industry, because warmer homes mean lighter
+clothes. If you represent the printers, how can you shake hands with
+the radio equipment man?...
+
+“These are really only obvious forms of what I have called the new
+competition. The old competition was that between the members of
+each trade organization. One phase of the new competition is that
+between the trade associations themselves—between you gentlemen who
+represent those industries. Inter-commodity competition is the new
+competition between products used alternatively for the same purpose.
+Inter-industrial competition is the new competition between apparently
+unrelated industries which affect each other or between such industries
+as compete for the consumer’s dollar—and that means practically all
+industries....
+
+“Inter-commodity competition is, of course, the most spectacular of
+all. It is the one which seems most of all to have caught the business
+imagination of the country. More and more business men are beginning
+to appreciate what inter-commodity competition means to them. More
+and more they are calling upon their trade associations to help
+them—because inter-commodity competition cannot be fought single-handed.
+
+“Take the great war on the dining-room table, for instance. Three times
+a day practically every dining-room table in the country is the scene
+of a fierce battle in the new competition. Shall we have prunes for
+breakfast? No, cry the embattled orange-growers and the massed legions
+of pineapple canners. Shall we eat sauerkraut? Why not eat green
+olives? is the answer of the Spaniards. Eat macaroni as a change from
+potatoes, says one advertiser—and will the potato growers take this
+challenge lying down?
+
+“The doctors and dietitians tell us that a normal hard-working man
+needs only about two or three thousand calories of food a day. A
+banker, I suppose, needs a little less. But what am I to do? The fruit
+growers, the wheat raisers, the meat packers, the milk producers, the
+fishermen—all want me to eat more of their products—and are spending
+millions of dollars a year to convince me. Am I to eat to the point
+of exhaustion, or am I to obey the doctor and let the farmer and the
+food packer and the retailer go broke! Am I to balance my diet in
+proportion to the advertising appropriations of the various producers?
+Or am I to balance my diet scientifically and let those who overproduce
+go bankrupt? The new competition is probably keenest in the food
+industries because there we have a very real limitation on what we can
+consume—in spite of higher incomes and higher living standards, we
+cannot eat more than we can eat.”
+
+I believe that competition in the future will not be only an
+advertising competition between individual products or between big
+associations, but that it will in addition be a competition of
+propaganda. The business man and advertising man is realizing that he
+must not discard entirely the methods of Barnum in reaching the public.
+An example in the annals of George Harrison Phelps, of the successful
+utilization of this type of appeal was the nation-wide hook-up which
+announced the launching of the Dodge Victory Six car.
+
+Millions of people, it is estimated, listened in to this program
+broadcast over 47 stations. The expense was more than $60,000. The
+arrangements involved an additional telephonic hook-up of 20,000 miles
+of wire, and included transmission from Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit,
+New Orleans, and New York. Al Jolson did his bit from New Orleans, Will
+Rogers from Beverly Hills, Fred and Dorothy Stone from Chicago, and
+Paul Whiteman from New York, at an aggregate artists’ fee of $25,000.
+And there was included a four-minute address by the president of Dodge
+Brothers announcing the new car, which gave him access in four minutes
+to an estimated audience of thirty million Americans, the largest
+number, unquestionably, ever to concentrate their attention on a given
+commercial product at a given moment. It was a sugar-coated sales
+message.
+
+Modern sales technicians will object: “What you say of this method of
+appeal is true. But it increases the cost of getting the manufacturer’s
+message across. The modern tendency has been to reduce this cost (for
+example, the elimination of premiums) and concentrate on getting full
+efficiency from the advertising expenditure. If you hire a Galli-Curci
+to sing for bacon you increase the cost of the bacon by the amount of
+her very large fee. Her voice adds nothing to the product but it adds
+to its cost.”
+
+Undoubtedly. But all modes of sales appeal require the spending of
+money to make the appeal attractive. The advertiser in print adds
+to the cost of his message by the use of pictures or by the cost of
+getting distinguished endorsements.
+
+There is another kind of difficulty, created in the process of big
+business getting bigger, which calls for new modes of establishing
+contact with the public. Quantity production offers a standardized
+product the cost of which tends to diminish with the quantity sold.
+If low price is the only basis of competition with rival products,
+similarly produced, there ensues a cut-throat competition which can
+end only by taking all the profit and incentive out of the industry.
+
+The logical way out of this dilemma is for the manufacturer to develop
+some sales appeal other than mere cheapness, to give the product, in
+the public mind, some other attraction, some idea that will modify the
+product slightly, some element of originality that will distinguish it
+from products in the same line. Thus, a manufacturer of typewriters
+paints his machines in cheerful hues. These special types of appeal can
+be popularized by the manipulation of the principles familiar to the
+propagandist—the principles of gregariousness, obedience to authority,
+emulation, and the like. A minor element can be made to assume economic
+importance by being established in the public mind as a matter of
+style. Mass production can be split up. Big business will still leave
+room for small business. Next to a huge department store there may be
+located a tiny specialty shop which makes a very good living.
+
+The problem of bringing large hats back into fashion was undertaken
+by a propagandist. The millinery industry two years ago was menaced
+by the prevalence of the simple felt hat which was crowding out the
+manufacture of all other kinds of hats and hat ornaments. It was found
+that hats could roughly be classified in six types. It was found too
+that four groups might help to change hat fashions: the society leader,
+the style expert, the fashion editor and writer, the artist who might
+give artistic approval to the styles, and beautiful mannequins. The
+problem, then, was to bring these groups together before an audience of
+hat buyers.
+
+A committee of prominent artists was organized to choose the most
+beautiful girls in New York to wear, in a series of tableaux, the most
+beautiful hats in the style classifications, at a fashion fête at a
+leading hotel.
+
+A committee was formed of distinguished American women who, on the
+basis of their interest in the development of an American industry,
+were willing to add the authority of their names to the idea. A
+style committee was formed of editors of fashion magazines and other
+prominent fashion authorities who were willing to support the idea. The
+girls in their lovely hats and costumes paraded on the running-board
+before an audience of the entire trade.
+
+The news of the event affected the buying habits not only of the
+onlookers, but also of the women throughout the country. The story
+of the event was flashed to the consumer by her newspaper as well as
+by the advertisements of her favorite store. Broadsides went to the
+millinery buyer from the manufacturer. One manufacturer stated that
+whereas before the show he had not sold any large trimmed hats, after
+it he had sold thousands.
+
+Often the public relations counsel is called in to handle an emergency
+situation. A false rumor, for instance, may occasion an enormous loss
+in prestige and money if not handled promptly and effectively.
+
+An incident such as the one described in the New York _American_ of
+Friday, May 21, 1926, shows what the lack of proper technical handling
+of public relations might result in.
+
+ $1,000,000 LOST BY FALSE RUMOR ON HUDSON STOCK
+
+ Hudson Motor Company stock fluctuated widely around noon yesterday and
+ losses estimated at $500,000 to $1,000,000 were suffered as a result
+ of the widespread flotation of false news regarding dividend action.
+
+ The directors met in Detroit at 12:30, New York time, to act on a
+ dividend. Almost immediately a false report that only the regular
+ dividend had been declared was circulated.
+
+ At 12:46 the Dow, Jones & Co. ticker service received the report from
+ the Stock Exchange firm and its publication resulted in further drop
+ in the stock.
+
+ Shortly after 1 o’clock the ticker services received official
+ news that the dividend had been increased and a 20 per cent stock
+ distribution authorized. They rushed the correct news out on their
+ tickers and Hudson stock immediately jumped more than 6 points.
+
+A clipping from the _Journal of Commerce_ of April 4, 1925, is
+reproduced here as an interesting example of a method to counteract a
+false rumor:
+
+ BEECH-NUT HEAD HOME TOWN GUEST
+
+ Bartlett Arkell Signally Honored by Communities of Mohawk Valley
+
+ (_Special to The Journal of Commerce_)
+
+ CANAJOHARIE, N. Y., April 3.—To-day was ‘Beech-Nut Day’ in this town;
+ in fact, for the whole Mohawk Valley. Business men and practically the
+ whole community of this region joined in a personal testimonial to
+ Bartlett Arkell of New York City, president of the Beech-Nut Packing
+ Company of this city, in honor of his firm refusal to consider selling
+ his company to other financial interests to move elsewhere.
+
+ When Mr. Arkell publicly denied recent rumors that he was to sell his
+ company to the Postum Cereal Company for $17,000,000, which would
+ have resulted in taking the industry from its birthplace, he did so
+ in terms conspicuously loyal to his boyhood home, which he has built
+ up into a prosperous industrial community through thirty years’
+ management of his Beech-Nut Company.
+
+ He absolutely controls the business and flatly stated that he would
+ never sell it during his lifetime ‘to any one at any price,’ since it
+ would be disloyal to his friends and fellow workers. And the whole
+ Mohawk Valley spontaneously decided that such spirit deserved public
+ recognition. Hence, to-day’s festivities.
+
+ More than 3,000 people participated, headed by a committee comprising
+ W. J. Roser, chairman; B. F. Spraker, H. V. Bush, B. F. Diefendorf and
+ J. H. Cook. They were backed by the Canajoharie and the Mohawk Valley
+ Chambers of Business Men’s Associations.
+
+Of course, every one realized after this that there was no truth in the
+rumor that the Beech-Nut Company was in the market. A denial would not
+have carried as much conviction.
+
+Amusement, too, is a business—one of the largest in America. It was
+the amusement business—first the circus and the medicine show, then
+the theater—which taught the rudiments of advertising to industry and
+commerce. The latter adopted the ballyhoo of the show business. But
+under the stress of practical experience it adapted and refined these
+crude advertising methods to the precise ends it sought to obtain. The
+theater has, in its turn, learned from business, and has refined its
+publicity methods to the point where the old stentorian methods are in
+the discard.
+
+The modern publicity director of a theater syndicate or a motion
+picture trust is a business man, responsible for the security of tens
+or hundreds of millions of dollars of invested capital. He cannot
+afford to be a stunt artist or a free-lance adventurer in publicity.
+He must know his public accurately and modify its thoughts and actions
+by means of the methods which the amusement world has learned from its
+old pupil, big business. As public knowledge increases and public taste
+improves, business must be ready to meet them halfway.
+
+Modern business must have its finger continuously on the public pulse.
+It must understand the changes in the public mind and be prepared to
+interpret itself fairly and eloquently to changing opinion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+PROPAGANDA AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIP
+
+
+The great political problem in our modern democracy is how to induce
+our leaders to lead. The dogma that the voice of the people is the
+voice of God tends to make elected persons the will-less servants of
+their constituents. This is undoubtedly part cause of the political
+sterility of which certain American critics constantly complain.
+
+No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people
+expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of
+the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up
+for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons
+who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed
+of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichés and verbal formulas
+supplied to them by the leaders.
+
+Fortunately, the sincere and gifted politician is able, by the
+instrument of propaganda, to mold and form the will of the people.
+
+Disraeli cynically expressed the dilemma, when he said: “I _must_
+follow the people. Am I not their leader?” He might have added: “I
+_must_ lead the people. Am I not their servant?”
+
+Unfortunately, the methods of our contemporary politicians, in dealing
+with the public, are as archaic and ineffective as the advertising
+methods of business in 1900 would be to-day. While politics was the
+first important department of American life to use propaganda on a
+large scale, it has been the slowest in modifying its propaganda
+methods to meet the changed conditions of the public mind. American
+business first learned from politics the methods of appealing to the
+broad public. But it continually improved those methods in the course
+of its competitive struggle, while politics clung to the old formulas.
+
+The political apathy of the average voter, of which we hear so much,
+is undoubtedly due to the fact that the politician does not know how
+to meet the conditions of the public mind. He cannot dramatize himself
+and his platform in terms which have real meaning to the public. Acting
+on the fallacy that the leader must slavishly follow, he deprives his
+campaign of all dramatic interest. An automaton cannot arouse the
+public interest. A leader, a fighter, a dictator, can. But, given our
+present political conditions under which every office seeker must cater
+to the vote of the masses, the only means by which the born leader can
+lead is the expert use of propaganda.
+
+Whether in the problem of getting elected to office or in the problem
+of interpreting and popularizing new issues, or in the problem of
+making the day-to-day administration of public affairs a vital part of
+the community life, the use of propaganda, carefully adjusted to the
+mentality of the masses, is an essential adjunct of political life.
+
+The successful business man to-day apes the politician. He has adopted
+the glitter and the ballyhoo of the campaign. He has set up all the
+side shows. He has annual dinners that are a compendium of speeches,
+flags, bombast, stateliness, pseudo-democracy slightly tinged with
+paternalism. On occasion he doles out honors to employees, much as the
+republic of classic times rewarded its worthy citizens.
+
+But these are merely the side shows, the drums, of big business, by
+which it builds up an image of public service, and of honorary service.
+This is but one of the methods by which business stimulates loyal
+enthusiasms on the part of directors, the workers, the stockholders and
+the consumer public. It is one of the methods by which big business
+performs its function of making and selling products to the public. The
+real work and campaign of business consists of intensive study of the
+public, the manufacture of products based on this study, and exhaustive
+use of every means of reaching the public.
+
+Political campaigns to-day are all side shows, all honors, all bombast,
+glitter, and speeches. These are for the most part unrelated to the
+main business of studying the public scientifically, of supplying the
+public with party, candidate, platform, and performance, and selling
+the public these ideas and products.
+
+Politics was the first big business in America. Therefore there is a
+good deal of irony in the fact that business has learned everything
+that politics has had to teach, but that politics has failed to learn
+very much from business methods of mass distribution of ideas and
+products.
+
+Emily Newell Blair has recounted in the _Independent_ a typical
+instance of the waste of effort and money in a political campaign, a
+week’s speaking tour in which she herself took part. She estimates that
+on a five-day trip covering nearly a thousand miles she and the United
+States Senator with whom she was making political speeches addressed
+no more than 1,105 persons whose votes might conceivably have been
+changed as a result of their efforts. The cost of this appeal to these
+voters she estimates (calculating the value of the time spent on a very
+moderate basis) as $15.27 for each vote which might have been changed
+as a result of the campaign.
+
+This, she says, was a “drive for votes, just as an Ivory Soap
+advertising campaign is a drive for sales.” But, she asks, “what would
+a company executive say to a sales manager who sent a high-priced
+speaker to describe his product to less than 1,200 people at a cost of
+$15.27 for each possible buyer?” She finds it “amazing that the very
+men who make their millions out of cleverly devised drives for soap
+and bonds and cars will turn around and give large contributions to
+be expended for vote-getting in an utterly inefficient and antiquated
+fashion.”
+
+It is, indeed, incomprehensible that politicians do not make use of
+the elaborate business methods that industry has built up. Because a
+politician knows political strategy, can develop campaign issues, can
+devise strong planks for platforms and envisage broad policies, it does
+not follow that he can be given the responsibility of selling ideas to
+a public as large as that of the United States.
+
+The politician understands the public. He knows what the public wants
+and what the public will accept. But the politician is not necessarily
+a general sales manager, a public relations counsel, or a man who knows
+how to secure mass distribution of ideas.
+
+Obviously, an occasional political leader may be capable of combining
+every feature of leadership, just as in business there are certain
+brilliant industrial leaders who are financiers, factory directors,
+engineers, sales managers and public relations counsel all rolled into
+one.
+
+Big business is conducted on the principle that it must prepare its
+policies carefully, and that in selling an idea to the large buying
+public of America, it must proceed according to broad plans. The
+political strategist must do likewise. The entire campaign should be
+worked out according to broad basic plans. Platforms, planks, pledges,
+budgets, activities, personalities, must be as carefully studied,
+apportioned and used as they are when big business desires to get what
+it wants from the public.
+
+The first step in a political campaign is to determine on the
+objectives, and to express them exceedingly well in the current
+form—that is, as a platform. In devising the platform the leader should
+be sure that it is an honest platform. Campaign pledges and promises
+should not be lightly considered by the public, and they ought to carry
+something of the guarantee principle and money-back policy that an
+honorable business institution carries with the sale of its goods. The
+public has lost faith in campaign promotion work. It does not say that
+politicians are dishonorable, but it does say that campaign pledges are
+written on the sand. Here then is one fact of public opinion of which
+the party that wishes to be successful might well take cognizance.
+
+To aid in the preparation of the platform there should be made as
+nearly scientific an analysis as possible of the public and of the
+needs of the public. A survey of public desires and demands would
+come to the aid of the political strategist whose business it is to
+make a proposed plan of the activities of the parties and its elected
+officials during the coming terms of office.
+
+A big business that wants to sell a product to the public surveys and
+analyzes its market before it takes a single step either to make or
+to sell the product. If one section of the community is absolutely
+sold to the idea of this product, no money is wasted in re-selling
+it to it. If, on the other hand, another section of the public is
+irrevocably committed to another product, no money is wasted on a
+lost cause. Very often the analysis is the cause of basic changes and
+improvements in the product itself, as well as an index of how it is
+to be presented. So carefully is this analysis of markets and sales
+made that when a company makes out its sales budget for the year, it
+subdivides the circulations of the various magazines and newspapers it
+uses in advertising and calculates with a fair degree of accuracy how
+many times a section of that population is subjected to the appeal of
+the company. It knows approximately to what extent a national campaign
+duplicates and repeats the emphasis of a local campaign of selling.
+
+As in the business field, the expenses of the political campaign should
+be budgeted. A large business to-day knows exactly how much money it
+is going to spend on propaganda during the next year or years. It
+knows that a certain percentage of its gross receipts will be given
+over to advertising—newspaper, magazine, outdoor and poster; a certain
+percentage to circularization and sales promotion—such as house organs
+and dealer aids; and a certain percentage must go to the supervising
+salesmen who travel around the country to infuse extra stimulus in the
+local sales campaign.
+
+A political campaign should be similarly budgeted. The first question
+which should be decided is the amount of money that should be raised
+for the campaign. This decision can be reached by a careful analysis
+of campaign costs. There is enough precedent in business procedure to
+enable experts to work this out accurately. Then the second question of
+importance is the manner in which money should be raised.
+
+It is obvious that politics would gain much in prestige if the
+money-raising campaign were conducted candidly and publicly, like the
+campaigns for the war funds. Charity drives might be made excellent
+models for political funds drives. The elimination of the little black
+bag element in politics would raise the entire prestige of politics in
+America, and the public interest would be infinitely greater if the
+actual participation occurred earlier and more constructively in the
+campaign.
+
+Again, as in the business field, there should be a clear decision as
+to how the money is to be spent. This should be done according to the
+most careful and exact budgeting, wherein every step in the campaign is
+given its proportionate importance, and the funds allotted accordingly.
+Advertising in newspapers and periodicals, posters and street banners,
+the exploitation of personalities in motion pictures, in speeches and
+lectures and meetings, spectacular events and all forms of propaganda
+should be considered proportionately according to the budget, and
+should always be coördinated with the whole plan. Certain expenditures
+may be warranted if they represent a small proportion of the budget and
+may be totally unwarranted if they make up a large proportion of the
+budget.
+
+In the same way the emotions by which the public is appealed to may be
+made part of the broad plan of the campaign. Unrelated emotions become
+maudlin and sentimental too easily, are often costly, and too often
+waste effort because the idea is not part of the conscious and coherent
+whole.
+
+Big business has realized that it must use as many of the basic
+emotions as possible. The politician, however, has used the emotions
+aroused by words almost exclusively.
+
+To appeal to the emotions of the public in a political campaign is
+sound—in fact it is an indispensable part of the campaign. But the
+emotional content must—
+
+(a) coincide in every way with the broad basic plans of the campaign
+and all its minor details;
+
+(b) be adapted to the many groups of the public at which it is to be
+aimed; and
+
+(c) conform to the media of the distribution of ideas.
+
+The emotions of oratory have been worn down through long years of
+overuse. Parades, mass meetings, and the like are successful when the
+public has a frenzied emotional interest in the event. The candidate
+who takes babies on his lap, and has his photograph taken, is doing a
+wise thing emotionally, if this act epitomizes a definite plank in his
+platform. Kissing babies, if it is worth anything, must be used as a
+symbol for a baby policy and it must be synchronized with a plank in
+the platform. But the haphazard staging of emotional events without
+regard to their value as part of the whole campaign, is a waste of
+effort, just as it would be a waste of effort for the manufacturer of
+hockey skates to advertise a picture of a church surrounded by spring
+foliage. It is true that the church appeals to our religious impulses
+and that everybody loves the spring, but these impulses do not help to
+sell the idea that hockey skates are amusing, helpful, or increase the
+general enjoyment of life for the buyer.
+
+Present-day politics places emphasis on personality. An entire party,
+a platform, an international policy is sold to the public, or is
+not sold, on the basis of the intangible element of personality. A
+charming candidate is the alchemist’s secret that can transmute a
+prosaic platform into the gold of votes. Helpful as is a candidate who
+for some reason has caught the imagination of the country, the party
+and its aims are certainly more important than the personality of the
+candidate. Not personality, but the ability of the candidate to carry
+out the party’s program adequately, and the program itself should
+be emphasized in a sound campaign plan. Even Henry Ford, the most
+picturesque personality in business in America to-day, has become known
+through his product, and not his product through him.
+
+It is essential for the campaign manager to educate the emotions
+in terms of groups. The public is not made up merely of Democrats
+and Republicans. People to-day are largely uninterested in politics
+and their interest in the issues of the campaign must be secured by
+coördinating it with their personal interests. The public is made up of
+interlocking groups—economic, social, religious, educational, cultural,
+racial, collegiate, local, sports, and hundreds of others.
+
+When President Coolidge invited actors for breakfast, he did so because
+he realized not only that actors were a group, but that audiences, the
+large group of people who like amusements, who like people who amuse
+them, and who like people who can be amused, ought to be aligned with
+him.
+
+The Shepard-Towner Maternity Bill was passed because the people who
+fought to secure its passage realized that mothers made up a group,
+that educators made up a group, that physicians made up a group, that
+all these groups in turn influence other groups, and that taken all
+together these groups were sufficiently strong and numerous to impress
+Congress with the fact that the people at large wanted this bill to be
+made part of the national law.
+
+The political campaign having defined its broad objects and its
+basic plans, having defined the group appeal which it must use, must
+carefully allocate to each of the media at hand the work which it can
+do with maximum efficiency.
+
+The media through which a political campaign may be brought home to the
+public are numerous and fairly well defined. Events and activities must
+be created in order to put ideas into circulation, in these channels,
+which are as varied as the means of human communication. Every object
+which presents pictures or words that the public can see, everything
+that presents intelligible sounds, can be utilized in one way or
+another.
+
+At present, the political campaigner uses for the greatest part the
+radio, the press, the banquet hall, the mass meeting, the lecture
+platform, and the stump generally as a means for furthering his ideas.
+But this is only a small part of what may be done. Actually there
+are infinitely more varied events that can be created to dramatize
+the campaign, and to make people talk of it. Exhibitions, contests,
+institutes of politics, the coöperation of educational institutions,
+the dramatic coöperation of groups which hitherto have not been drawn
+into active politics, and many others may be made the vehicle for the
+presentation of ideas to the public.
+
+But whatever is done must be synchronized accurately with all other
+forms of appeal to the public. News reaches the public through the
+printed word—books, magazines, letters, posters, circulars and
+banners, newspapers; through pictures—photographs and motion pictures;
+through the ear—lectures, speeches, band music, radio, campaign songs.
+All these must be employed by the political party if it is to succeed.
+One method of appeal is merely one method of appeal and in this age
+wherein a thousand movements and ideas are competing for public
+attention, one dare not put all one’s eggs into one basket.
+
+It is understood that the methods of propaganda can be effective only
+with the voter who makes up his own mind on the basis of his group
+prejudices and desires. Where specific allegiances and loyalties exist,
+as in the case of boss leadership, these loyalties will operate to
+nullify the free will of the voter. In this close relation between the
+boss and his constituents lies, of course, the strength of his position
+in politics.
+
+It is not necessary for the politician to be the slave of the public’s
+group prejudices, if he can learn how to mold the mind of the voters
+in conformity with his own ideas of public welfare and public service.
+The important thing for the statesman of our age is not so much to
+know how to please the public, but to know how to sway the public. In
+theory, this education might be done by means of learned pamphlets
+explaining the intricacies of public questions. In actual fact, it
+can be done only by meeting the conditions of the public mind, by
+creating circumstances which set up trains of thought, by dramatizing
+personalities, by establishing contact with the group leaders who
+control the opinions of their publics.
+
+But campaigning is only an incident in political life. The process of
+government is continuous. And the expert use of propaganda is more
+useful and fundamental, although less striking, as an aid to democratic
+administration, than as an aid to vote getting.
+
+Good government can be sold to a community just as any other commodity
+can be sold. I often wonder whether the politicians of the future, who
+are responsible for maintaining the prestige and effectiveness of their
+party, will not endeavor to train politicians who are at the same time
+propagandists. I talked recently with George Olvany. He said that a
+certain number of Princeton men were joining Tammany Hall. If I were in
+his place I should have taken some of my brightest young men and set
+them to work for Broadway theatrical productions or apprenticed them as
+assistants to professional propagandists before recruiting them to the
+service of the party.
+
+One reason, perhaps, why the politician to-day is slow to take up
+methods which are a commonplace in business life is that he has such
+ready entry to the media of communication on which his power depends.
+
+The newspaper man looks to him for news. And by his power of giving or
+withholding information the politician can often effectively censor
+political news. But being dependent, every day of the year and for
+year after year, upon certain politicians for news, the newspaper
+reporters are obliged to work in harmony with their news sources.
+
+The political leader must be a creator of circumstances, not only a
+creature of mechanical processes of stereotyping and rubber stamping.
+
+Let us suppose that he is campaigning on a low-tariff platform. He may
+use the modern mechanism of the radio to spread his views, but he will
+almost certainly use the psychological method of approach which was old
+in Andrew Jackson’s day, and which business has largely discarded. He
+will say over the radio: “Vote for me and low tariff, because the high
+tariff increases the cost of the things you buy.” He may, it is true,
+have the great advantage of being able to speak by radio directly to
+fifty million listeners. But he is making an old-fashioned approach. He
+is arguing with them. He is assaulting, single-handed, the resistance
+of inertia.
+
+If he were a propagandist, on the other hand, although he would still
+use the radio, he would use it as one instrument of a well-planned
+strategy. Since he is campaigning on the issue of a low tariff, he not
+merely would tell people that the high tariff increases the cost of
+the things they buy, but would create circumstances which would make
+his contention dramatic and self-evident. He would perhaps stage a
+low-tariff exhibition simultaneously in twenty cities, with exhibits
+illustrating the additional cost due to the tariff in force. He would
+see that these exhibitions were ceremoniously inaugurated by prominent
+men and women who were interested in a low tariff apart from any
+interest in his personal political fortunes. He would have groups,
+whose interests were especially affected by the high cost of living,
+institute an agitation for lower schedules. He would dramatize the
+issue, perhaps by having prominent men boycott woolen clothes, and go
+to important functions in cotton suits, until the wool schedule was
+reduced. He might get the opinion of social workers as to whether the
+high cost of wool endangers the health of the poor in winter.
+
+In whatever ways he dramatized the issue, the attention of the
+public would be attracted to the question before he addressed them
+personally. Then, when he spoke to his millions of listeners on the
+radio, he would not be seeking to force an argument down the throats
+of a public thinking of other things and annoyed by another demand on
+its attention; on the contrary, he would be answering the spontaneous
+questions and expressing the emotional demands of a public already
+keyed to a certain pitch of interest in the subject.
+
+The importance of taking the entire world public into consideration
+before planning an important event is shown by the wise action of
+Thomas Masaryk, then Provisional President, now President of the
+Republic of Czecho-Slovakia.
+
+Czecho-Slovakia officially became a free state on Monday, October 28,
+1918, instead of Sunday, October 27, 1918, because Professor Masaryk
+realized that the people of the world would receive more information
+and would be more receptive to the announcement of the republic’s
+freedom on a Monday morning than on a Sunday, because the press would
+have more space to devote to it on Monday morning.
+
+Discussing the matter with me before he made the announcement,
+Professor Masaryk said, “I would be making history for the cables if I
+changed the date of Czecho-Slovakia’s birth as a free nation.” Cables
+make history and so the date was changed.
+
+This incident illustrates the importance of technique in the new
+propaganda.
+
+It will be objected, of course, that propaganda will tend to defeat
+itself as its mechanism becomes obvious to the public. My opinion is
+that it will not. The only propaganda which will ever tend to weaken
+itself as the world becomes more sophisticated and intelligent, is
+propaganda that is untrue or unsocial.
+
+Again, the objection is raised that propaganda is utilized to
+manufacture our leading political personalities. It is asked whether,
+in fact, the leader makes propaganda, or whether propaganda makes the
+leader. There is a widespread impression that a good press agent can
+puff up a nobody into a great man.
+
+The answer is the same as that made to the old query as to whether
+the newspaper makes public opinion or whether public opinion makes the
+newspaper. There has to be fertile ground for the leader and the idea
+to fall on. But the leader also has to have some vital seed to sow. To
+use another figure, a mutual need has to exist before either can become
+positively effective. Propaganda is of no use to the politician unless
+he has something to say which the public, consciously or unconsciously,
+wants to hear.
+
+But even supposing that a certain propaganda is untrue or dishonest,
+we cannot on that account reject the methods of propaganda as such.
+For propaganda in some form will always be used where leaders need to
+appeal to their constituencies.
+
+The criticism is often made that propaganda tends to make the President
+of the United States so important that he becomes not the President but
+the embodiment of the idea of hero worship, not to say deity worship. I
+quite agree that this is so, but how are you going to stop a condition
+which very accurately reflects the desires of a certain part of the
+public? The American people rightly senses the enormous importance of
+the executive’s office. If the public tends to make of the President a
+heroic symbol of that power, that is not the fault of propaganda but
+lies in the very nature of the office and its relation to the people.
+
+This condition, despite its somewhat irrational puffing up of the man
+to fit the office, is perhaps still more sound than a condition in
+which the man utilizes no propaganda, or a propaganda not adapted to
+its proper end. Note the example of the Prince of Wales. This young
+man reaped bales of clippings and little additional glory from his
+American visit, merely because he was poorly advised. To the American
+public he became a well dressed, charming, sport-loving, dancing,
+perhaps frivolous youth. Nothing was done to add dignity and prestige
+to this impression until towards the end of his stay he made a trip
+in the subway of New York. This sole venture into democracy and the
+serious business of living as evidenced in the daily habits of workers,
+aroused new interest in the Prince. Had he been properly advised he
+would have augmented this somewhat by such serious studies of American
+life as were made by another prince, Gustave of Sweden. As a result of
+the lack of well directed propaganda, the Prince of Wales became in the
+eyes of the American people, not the thing which he constitutionally
+is, a symbol of the unity of the British Empire, but part and parcel
+of sporting Long Island and dancing beauties of the ballroom. Great
+Britain lost an invaluable opportunity to increase the good will and
+understanding between the two countries when it failed to understand
+the importance of correct public relations counsel for His Royal
+Highness.
+
+The public actions of America’s chief executive are, if one chooses to
+put it that way, stage-managed. But they are chosen to represent and
+dramatize the man in his function as representative of the people. A
+political practice which has its roots in the tendency of the popular
+leader to follow oftener than he leads is the technique of the trial
+balloon which he uses in order to maintain, as he believes, his contact
+with the public. The politician, of course, has his ear to the ground.
+It might be called the clinical ear. It touches the ground and hears
+the disturbances of the political universe.
+
+But he often does not know what the disturbances mean, whether they
+are superficial, or fundamental. So he sends up his balloon. He may
+send out an anonymous interview through the press. He then waits
+for reverberations to come from the public—a public which expresses
+itself in mass meetings, or resolutions, or telegrams, or even such
+obvious manifestations as editorials in the partisan or nonpartisan
+press. On the basis of these repercussions he then publicly adopts his
+original tentative policy, or rejects it, or modifies it to conform
+to the sum of public opinion which has reached him. This method is
+modeled on the peace feelers which were used during the war to sound
+out the disposition of the enemy to make peace or to test any one of
+a dozen other popular tendencies. It is the method commonly used by a
+politician before committing himself to legislation of any kind, and by
+a government before committing itself on foreign or domestic policies.
+
+It is a method which has little justification. If a politician is a
+real leader he will be able, by the skillful use of propaganda, to lead
+the people, instead of following the people by means of the clumsy
+instrument of trial and error.
+
+The propagandist’s approach is the exact opposite of that of the
+politician just described. The whole basis of successful propaganda is
+to have an objective and then to endeavor to arrive at it through an
+exact knowledge of the public and modifying circumstances to manipulate
+and sway that public.
+
+“The function of a statesman,” says George Bernard Shaw, “is to express
+the will of the people in the way of a scientist.”
+
+The political leader of to-day should be a leader as finely versed
+in the technique of propaganda as in political economy and civics.
+If he remains merely the reflection of the average intelligence of
+his community, he might as well go out of politics. If one is dealing
+with a democracy in which the herd and the group follow those whom
+they recognize as leaders, why should not the young men training for
+leadership be trained in its technique as well as in its idealism?
+
+“When the interval between the intellectual classes and the practical
+classes is too great,” says the historian Buckle, “the former will
+possess no influence, the latter will reap no benefits.”
+
+Propaganda bridges this interval in our modern complex civilization.
+
+Only through the wise use of propaganda will our government, considered
+as the continuous administrative organ of the people, be able to
+maintain that intimate relationship with the public which is necessary
+in a democracy.
+
+As David Lawrence pointed out in a recent speech, there is need for an
+intelligent interpretative bureau for our government in Washington.
+There is, it is true, a Division of Current Information in the
+Department of State, which at first was headed by a trained newspaper
+man. But later this position began to be filled by men from the
+diplomatic service, men who had very little knowledge of the public.
+While some of these diplomats have done very well, Mr. Lawrence
+asserted that in the long run the country would be benefited if the
+functions of this office were in the hands of a different type of
+person.
+
+There should, I believe, be an Assistant Secretary of State who is
+familiar with the problem of dispensing information to the press—some
+one upon whom the Secretary of State can call for consultation and who
+has sufficient authority to persuade the Secretary of State to make
+public that which, for insufficient reason, is suppressed.
+
+The function of the propagandist is much broader in scope than that
+of a mere dispenser of information to the press. The United States
+Government should create a Secretary of Public Relations as member
+of the President’s Cabinet. The function of this official should be
+correctly to interpret America’s aims and ideals throughout the world,
+and to keep the citizens of this country in touch with governmental
+activities and the reasons which prompt them. He would, in short,
+interpret the people to the government and the government to the people.
+
+Such an official would be neither a propagandist nor a press agent,
+in the ordinary understanding of those terms. He would be, rather, a
+trained technician who would be helpful in analyzing public thought
+and public trends, in order to keep the government informed about
+the public, and the people informed about the government. America’s
+relations with South America and with Europe would be greatly improved
+under such circumstances. Ours must be a leadership democracy
+administered by the intelligent minority who know how to regiment and
+guide the masses.
+
+Is this government by propaganda? Call it, if you prefer, government
+by education. But education, in the academic sense of the word, is
+not sufficient. It must be enlightened expert propaganda through the
+creation of circumstances, through the high-spotting of significant
+events, and the dramatization of important issues. The statesman of the
+future will thus be enabled to focus the public mind on crucial points
+of policy, and regiment a vast, heterogeneous mass of voters to clear
+understanding and intelligent action.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+WOMEN’S ACTIVITIES AND PROPAGANDA
+
+
+Women in contemporary America have achieved a legal equality with men.
+This does not mean that their activities are identical with those of
+men. Women in the mass still have special interests and activities in
+addition to their economic pursuits and vocational interests.
+
+Women’s most obvious influence is exerted when they are organized and
+armed with the weapon of propaganda. So organized and armed they have
+made their influence felt on city councils, state legislatures, and
+national congresses, upon executives, upon political campaigns and upon
+public opinion generally, both local and national.
+
+In politics, the American women to-day occupy a much more important
+position, from the standpoint of their influence, in their organized
+groups than from the standpoint of the leadership they have acquired
+in actual political positions or in actual office holding. The
+professional woman politician has had, up to the present, not much
+influence, nor do women generally regard her as being the most
+important element in question. Ma Ferguson, after all, was simply a
+woman in the home, a catspaw for a deposed husband; Nellie Ross, the
+former Governor of Wyoming, is from all accounts hardly a leader of
+statesmanship or public opinion.
+
+If the suffrage campaign did nothing more, it showed the possibilities
+of propaganda to achieve certain ends. This propaganda to-day is
+being utilized by women to achieve their programs in Washington and
+in the states. In Washington they are organized as the Legislative
+Committee of Fourteen Women’s Organizations, including the League of
+Women Voters, the Young Women’s Christian Association, the Woman’s
+Christian Temperance Union, the Federation of Women’s Clubs, etc. These
+organizations map out a legislative program and then use the modern
+technique of propaganda to make this legislative program actually
+pass into the law of the land. Their accomplishments in the field
+are various. They can justifiably take the credit for much welfare
+legislation. The eight-hour day for women is theirs. Undoubtedly
+prohibition and its enforcement are theirs, if they can be considered
+an accomplishment. So is the Shepard-Towner Bill which stipulates
+support by the central government of maternity welfare in the state
+governments. This bill would not have passed had it not been for the
+political prescience and sagacity of women like Mrs. Vanderlip and Mrs.
+Mitchell.
+
+The Federal measures endorsed at the first convention of the National
+League of Women Voters typify social welfare activities of women’s
+organizations. These covered such broad interests as child welfare,
+education, the home and high prices, women in gainful occupations,
+public health and morals, independent citizenship for married women,
+and others.
+
+To propagandize these principles, the National League of Women Voters
+has published all types of literature, such as bulletins, calendars,
+election information, has held a correspondence course on government
+and conducted demonstration classes and citizenship schools.
+
+Possibly the effectiveness of women’s organizations in American
+politics to-day is due to two things: first, the training of a
+professional class of executive secretaries or legislative secretaries
+during the suffrage campaigns, where every device known to the
+propagandist had to be used to regiment a recalcitrant majority;
+secondly, the routing over into peace-time activities of the many
+prominent women who were in the suffrage campaigns and who also devoted
+themselves to the important drives and mass influence movements during
+the war. Such women as Mrs. Frank Vanderlip, Alice Ames Winter, Mrs.
+Henry Moskowitz, Mrs. Florence Kelley, Mrs. John Blair, Mrs. O. H. P.
+Belmont, Doris Stevens, Alice Paul come to mind.
+
+If I have seemed to concentrate on the accomplishments of women in
+politics, it is because they afford a particularly striking example
+of intelligent use of the new propaganda to secure attention and
+acceptance of minority ideas. It is perhaps curiously appropriate
+that the latest recruits to the political arena should recognize and
+make use of the newest weapons of persuasion to offset any lack of
+experience with what is somewhat euphemistically termed practical
+politics. As an example of this new technique: Some years ago, the
+Consumers’ Committee of Women, fighting the “American valuation”
+tariff, rented an empty store on Fifty-seventh Street in New York and
+set up an exhibit of merchandise tagging each item with the current
+price and the price it would cost if the tariff went through. Hundreds
+of visitors to this shop rallied to the cause of the committee.
+
+But there are also non-political fields in which women can make and
+have made their influence felt for social ends, and in which they have
+utilized the principle of group leadership in attaining the desired
+objectives.
+
+In the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, there are 13,000 clubs.
+Broadly classified, they include civic and city clubs, mothers’ and
+homemakers’ clubs, cultural clubs devoted to art, music or literature,
+business and professional women’s clubs, and general women’s clubs,
+which may embrace either civic or community phases, or combine some of
+the other activities listed.
+
+The woman’s club is generally effective on behalf of health education;
+in furthering appreciation of the fine arts; in sponsoring legislation
+that affects the welfare of women and children; in playground
+development and park improvement; in raising standards of social or
+political morality; in homemaking and home economics, education and the
+like. In these fields, the woman’s club concerns itself with efforts
+that are not ordinarily covered by existing agencies, and often both
+initiates and helps to further movements for the good of the community.
+
+A club interested principally in homemaking and the practical arts can
+sponsor a cooking school for young brides and others. An example of the
+keen interest of women in this field of education is the cooking school
+recently conducted by the New York _Herald Tribune_, which held its
+classes in Carnegie Hall, seating almost 3,000 persons. For the several
+days of the cooking school, the hall was filled to capacity, rivaling
+the drawing power of a McCormack or a Paderewski, and refuting most
+dramatically the idea that women in large cities are not interested in
+housewifery.
+
+A movement for the serving of milk in public schools, or the
+establishment of a baby health station at the department of health will
+be an effort close to the heart of a club devoted to the interest of
+mothers and child welfare.
+
+A music club can broaden its sphere and be of service to the community
+by coöperating with the local radio station in arranging better musical
+programs. Fighting bad music can be as militant a campaign and marshal
+as varied resources as any political battle.
+
+An art club can be active in securing loan exhibitions for its city. It
+can also arrange travelling exhibits of the art work of its members or
+show the art work of schools or universities.
+
+A literary club may step out of its charmed circle of lectures and
+literary lions and take a definite part in the educational life of the
+community. It can sponsor, for instance, a competition in the public
+schools for the best essay on the history of the city, or on the life
+of its most famous son.
+
+Over and above the particular object for which the woman’s club may
+have been constituted, it commonly stands ready to initiate or help
+any movement which has for its object a distinct public good in the
+community. More important, it constitutes an organized channel through
+which women can make themselves felt as a definite part of public
+opinion.
+
+Just as women supplement men in private life, so they will supplement
+men in public life by concentrating their organized efforts on those
+objects which men are likely to ignore. There is a tremendous field for
+women as active protagonists of new ideas and new methods of political
+and social housekeeping. When organized and conscious of their power
+to influence their surroundings, women can use their newly acquired
+freedom in a great many ways to mold the world into a better place to
+live in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+PROPAGANDA FOR EDUCATION
+
+
+Education is not securing its proper share of public interest. The
+public school system, materially and financially, is being adequately
+supported. There is marked eagerness for a college education, and a
+vague aspiration for culture, expressed in innumerable courses and
+lectures. The public is not cognizant of the real value of education,
+and does not realize that education as a social force is not receiving
+the kind of attention it has the right to expect in a democracy.
+
+It is felt, for example, that education is entitled to more space in
+the newspapers; that well informed discussion of education hardly
+exists; that unless such an issue as the Gary School system is created,
+or outside of an occasional discussion, such as that aroused over
+Harvard’s decision to establish a school of business, education does
+not attract the active interest of the public.
+
+There are a number of reasons for this condition. First of all, there
+is the fact that the educator has been trained to stimulate to thought
+the individual students in his classroom, but has not been trained as
+an educator at large of the public.
+
+In a democracy an educator should, in addition to his academic duties,
+bear a definite and wholesome relation to the general public. This
+public does not come within the immediate scope of his academic
+duties. But in a sense he depends upon it for his living, for the
+moral support, and the general cultural tone upon which his work must
+be based. In the field of education, we find what we have found in
+politics and other fields—that the evolution of the practitioner of
+the profession has not kept pace with the social evolution around
+him, and is out of gear with the instruments for the dissemination of
+ideas which modern society has developed. If this be true, then the
+training of the educators in this respect should begin in the normal
+schools, with the addition to their curricula of whatever is necessary
+to broaden their viewpoint. The public cannot understand unless the
+teacher understands the relationship between the general public and the
+academic idea.
+
+The normal school should provide for the training of the educator to
+make him realize that his is a two-fold job: education as a teacher and
+education as a propagandist.
+
+A second reason for the present remoteness of education from the
+thoughts and interests of the public is to be found in the mental
+attitude of the pedagogue—whether primary school teacher or college
+professor—toward the world outside the school. This is a difficult
+psychological problem. The teacher finds himself in a world in which
+the emphasis is put on those objective goals and those objective
+attainments which are prized by our American society. He himself is
+but moderately or poorly paid. Judging himself by the standards in
+common acceptance, he cannot but feel a sense of inferiority because
+he finds himself continually being compared, in the minds of his own
+pupils, with the successful business man and the successful leader in
+the outside world. Thus the educator becomes repressed and suppressed
+in our civilization. As things stand, this condition cannot be changed
+from the outside unless the general public alters its standards of
+achievement, which it is not likely to do soon.
+
+Yet it can be changed by the teaching profession itself, if it becomes
+conscious not only of its individualistic relation to the pupil,
+but also of its social relation to the general public. The teaching
+profession, as such, has the right to carry on a very definite
+propaganda with a view to enlightening the public and asserting its
+intimate relation to the society which it serves. In addition to
+conducting a propaganda on behalf of its individual members, education
+must also raise the general appreciation of the teaching profession.
+Unless the profession can raise itself by its own bootstraps, it will
+fast lose the power of recruiting outstanding talent for itself.
+
+Propaganda cannot change all that is at present unsatisfactory in the
+educational situation. There are factors, such as low pay and the lack
+of adequate provision for superannuated teachers, which definitely
+affect the status of the profession. It is possible, by means of an
+intelligent appeal predicated upon the actual present composition of
+the public mind, to modify the general attitude toward the teaching
+profession. Such a changed attitude will begin by expressing itself in
+an insistence on the idea of more adequate salaries for the profession.
+
+There are various ways in which academic organizations in America
+handle their financial problems. One type of college or university
+depends, for its monetary support, upon grants from the state
+legislatures. Another depends upon private endowment. There are other
+types of educational institutions, such as the sectarian, but the two
+chief types include by far the greater number of our institutions of
+higher learning.
+
+The state university is supported by grants from the people of the
+state, voted by the state legislature. In theory, the degree of
+support which the university receives is dependent upon the degree of
+acceptance accorded it by the voters. The state university prospers
+according to the extent to which it can sell itself to the people of
+the state.
+
+The state university is therefore in an unfortunate position unless its
+president happens to be a man of outstanding merit as a propagandist
+and a dramatizer of educational issues. Yet if this is the case—if
+the university shapes its whole policy toward gaining the support of
+the state legislature—its educational function may suffer. It may be
+tempted to base its whole appeal to the public on its public service,
+real or supposed, and permit the education of its individual students
+to take care of itself. It may attempt to educate the people of the
+state at the expense of its own pupils. This may generate a number of
+evils, to the extent of making the university a political instrument, a
+mere tool of the political group in power. If the president dominates
+both the public and the professional politician, this may lead to a
+situation in which the personality of the president outweighs the true
+function of the institution.
+
+The endowed college or university has a problem quite as perplexing.
+The endowed college is dependent upon the support, usually, of key
+men in industry whose social and economic objectives are concrete
+and limited, and therefore often at variance with the pursuit of
+abstract knowledge. The successful business man criticizes the
+great universities for being too academic, but seldom for being
+too practical. One might imagine that the key men who support our
+universities would like them to specialize in schools of applied
+science, of practical salesmanship or of industrial efficiency. And it
+may well be, in many instances, that the demands which the potential
+endowers of our universities make upon these institutions are flatly
+in contradiction to the interests of scholarship and general culture.
+
+We have, therefore, the anomalous situation of the college seeking
+to carry on a propaganda in favor of scholarship among people who
+are quite out of sympathy with the aims to which they are asked to
+subscribe their money. Men who, by the commonly accepted standards,
+are failures or very moderate successes in our American world (the
+pedagogues) seek to convince the outstanding successes (the business
+men) that they should give their money to ideals which they do not
+pursue. Men who, through a sense of inferiority, despise money, seek to
+win the good will of men who love money.
+
+It seems possible that the future status of the endowed college will
+depend upon a balancing of these forces, both the academic and the
+endowed elements obtaining in effect due consideration.
+
+The college must win public support. If the potential donor is
+apathetic, enthusiastic public approval must be obtained to convince
+him. If he seeks unduly to influence the educational policy of the
+institution, public opinion must support the college in the continuance
+of its proper functions. If either factor dominates unduly, we are
+likely to find a demagoguery or a snobbishness aiming to please one
+group or the other.
+
+There is still another potential solution of the problem. It is
+possible that through an educational propaganda aiming to develop
+greater social consciousness on the part of the people of the country,
+there may be awakened in the minds of men of affairs, as a class,
+social consciousness which will produce more minds of the type of
+Julius Rosenwald, V. Everitt Macy, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the late
+Willard Straight.
+
+Many colleges have already developed intelligent propaganda in order
+to bring them into active and continuous relation with the general
+public. A definite technique has been developed in their relation to
+the community in the form of college news bureaus. These bureaus have
+formed an intercollegiate association whose members meet once a year
+to discuss their problems. These problems include the education of
+the alumnus and his effect upon the general public and upon specific
+groups, the education of the future student to the choice of the
+particular college, the maintenance of an _esprit de corps_ so that
+the athletic prowess of the college will not be placed first, the
+development of some familiarity with the research work done in the
+college in order to attract the attention of those who may be able to
+lend aid, the development of an understanding of the aims and the work
+of the institution in order to attract special endowments for specified
+purposes.
+
+Some seventy-five of these bureaus are now affiliated with the
+American Association of College News Bureaus, including those of Yale,
+Wellesley, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Western Reserve, Tufts and
+California. A bi-monthly news letter is published, bringing to members
+the news of their profession. The Association endeavors to uphold the
+ethical standards of the profession and aims to work in harmony with
+the press.
+
+The National Education Association and other societies are carrying on
+a definite propaganda to promote the larger purposes of educational
+endeavor. One of the aims of such propaganda is of course improvement
+in the prestige and material position of the teachers themselves. An
+occasional McAndrew case calls the attention of the public to the fact
+that in some schools the teacher is far from enjoying full academic
+freedom, while in certain communities the choice of teachers is based
+upon political or sectarian considerations rather than upon real
+ability. If such issues were made, by means of propaganda, to become
+a matter of public concern on a truly national scale, there would
+doubtless be a general tendency to improvement.
+
+The concrete problems of colleges are more varied and puzzling than one
+might suppose. The pharmaceutical college of a university is concerned
+because the drug store is no longer merely a drug store, but primarily
+a soda fountain, a lunch counter, a book-shop, a retailer of all
+sorts of general merchandise from society stationery to spare radio
+parts. The college realizes the economic utility of the lunch counter
+feature to the practicing druggist, yet it feels that the ancient and
+honorable art of compounding specifics is being degraded.
+
+Cornell University discovers that endowments are rare. Why? Because the
+people think that the University is a state institution and therefore
+publicly supported.
+
+Many of our leading universities rightly feel that the results of their
+scholarly researches should not only be presented to libraries and
+learned publications, but should also, where practicable and useful,
+be given to the public in the dramatic form which the public can
+understand. Harvard is but one example.
+
+“Not long ago,” says Charles A. Merrill in _Personality_, “a certain
+Harvard professor vaulted into the newspaper headlines. There were
+several days when one could hardly pick up a paper in any of the larger
+cities without finding his name bracketed with his achievement.
+
+“The professor, who was back from a trip to Yucatan in the interests of
+science, had solved the mystery of the Venus calendar of the ancient
+Mayas. He had discovered the key to the puzzle of how the Mayas kept
+tab on the flight of time. Checking the Mayan record of celestial
+events against the known astronomical facts, he had found a perfect
+correlation between the time count of these Central American Indians
+and the true positions of the planet Venus in the sixth century B.C. A
+civilization which flourished in the Western Hemisphere twenty-five
+centuries ago was demonstrated to have attained heights hitherto
+unappreciated by the modern world.
+
+“How the professor’s discovery happened to be chronicled in the popular
+press is, also, in retrospect, a matter of interest.... If left to his
+own devices, he might never have appeared in print, except perhaps in
+some technical publication, and his remarks there would have been no
+more intelligible to the average man or woman than if they had been
+inscribed in Mayan hieroglyphics.
+
+“Popularization of this message from antiquity was due to the
+initiative of a young man named James W. D. Seymour....
+
+“It may surprise and shock some people,” Mr. Merrill adds, “to be told
+that the oldest and most dignified seats of learning in America now
+hire press agents, just as railroad companies, fraternal organizations,
+moving picture producers and political parties retain them. It is
+nevertheless a fact....
+
+“... there is hardly a college or university in the country which does
+not, with the approval of the governing body and the faculty, maintain
+a publicity office, with a director and a staff of assistants, for the
+purpose of establishing friendly relations with the newspapers, and
+through the newspapers, with the public....
+
+“This enterprise breaks sharply with tradition. In the older seats
+of learning it is a recent innovation. It violates the fundamental
+article in the creed of the old academic societies. Cloistered
+seclusion used to be considered the first essential of scholarship. The
+college was anxious to preserve its aloofness from the world....
+
+“The colleges used to resent outside interest in their affairs. They
+might, somewhat reluctantly and contemptuously, admit reporters to
+their Commencement Day exercises, but no further would they go....
+
+“To-day, if a newspaper reporter wants to interview a Harvard
+professor, he has merely to telephone the Secretary for Information to
+the University. Officially, Harvard still shies away from the title
+‘Director of Publicity.’ Informally, however, the secretary with the
+long title is the publicity man. He is an important official to-day at
+Harvard.”
+
+It may be a new idea that the president of a university will concern
+himself with the kind of mental picture his institution produces on
+the public mind. Yet it is part of the president’s work to see that
+his university takes its proper place in the community and therefore
+also in the community mind, and produces the results desired, both in a
+cultural and in a financial sense.
+
+If his institution does not produce the mental picture which it should,
+one of two things may be wrong: Either the media of communication with
+the public may be wrong or unbalanced; or his institution may be at
+fault. The public is getting an oblique impression of the university,
+in which case the impression should be modified; or it may be that the
+public is getting a _correct_ impression, in which case, very possibly,
+the work of the university itself should be modified. For both
+possibilities lie within the province of the public relations counsel.
+
+Columbia University recently instituted a _Casa Italiana_, which was
+solemnly inaugurated in the presence of representatives of the Italian
+government, to emphasize its high standing in Latin studies and the
+Romance languages. Years ago Harvard founded the Germanic Museum, which
+was ceremoniously opened by Prince Henry of Prussia.
+
+Many colleges maintain extension courses which bring their work to the
+knowledge of a broad public. It is of course proper that such courses
+should be made known to the general public. But, to take another
+example, if they have been badly planned, from the point of view of
+public relations, if they are unduly scholastic and detached, their
+effect may be the opposite of favorable. In such a case, it is not the
+work of the public relations counsel to urge that the courses be made
+better known, but to urge that they first be modified to conform to the
+impression which the college wishes to create, where that is compatible
+with the university’s scholastic ideals.
+
+Again, it may be the general opinion that the work of a certain
+institution is 80 per cent postgraduate research, an opinion which
+may tend to alienate public interest. This opinion may be true or it
+may be false. If it is false, it should be corrected by high-spotting
+undergraduate activities.
+
+If, on the other hand, it is true that 80 per cent of the work is
+postgraduate research, the most should be made of that fact. It should
+be the concern of the president to make known the discoveries which
+are of possible public interest. A university expedition into Biblical
+lands may be uninteresting as a purely scholastic undertaking, but if
+it contributes light on some Biblical assertion it will immediately
+arouse the interest of large masses of the population. The zoölogical
+department may be hunting for some strange bacillus which has no known
+relation to any human disease, but the fact that it is chasing bacilli
+is in itself capable of dramatic presentation to the public.
+
+Many universities now gladly lend members of their faculties to assist
+in investigations of public interest. Thus Cornell lent Professor
+Wilcox to aid the government in the preparation of the national census.
+Professor Irving Fisher of Yale has been called in to advise on
+currency matters.
+
+In the ethical sense, propaganda bears the same relation to education
+as to business or politics. It may be abused. It may be used to
+overadvertise an institution and to create in the public mind
+artificial values. There can be no absolute guarantee against its
+misuse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+PROPAGANDA IN SOCIAL SERVICE
+
+
+The public relations counsel is necessary to social work. And since
+social service, by its very nature, can continue only by means of the
+voluntary support of the wealthy, it is obliged to use propaganda
+continually. The leaders in social service were among the first
+consciously to utilize propaganda in its modern sense.
+
+The great enemy of any attempt to change men’s habits is inertia.
+Civilization is limited by inertia.
+
+Our attitude toward social relations, toward economics, toward
+national and international politics, continues past attitudes and
+strengthens them under the force of tradition. Comstock drops his
+mantle of proselytizing morality on the willing shoulders of a Sumner;
+Penrose drops his mantle on Butler; Carnegie his on Schwab, and so _ad
+infinitum_. Opposing this traditional acceptance of existing ideas
+is an active public opinion that has been directed consciously into
+movements against inertia. Public opinion was made or changed formerly
+by tribal chiefs, by kings, by religious leaders. To-day the privilege
+of attempting to sway public opinion is every one’s. It is one of the
+manifestations of democracy that any one may try to convince others
+and to assume leadership on behalf of his own thesis.
+
+New ideas, new precedents, are continually striving for a place in the
+scheme of things.
+
+The social settlement, the organized campaigns against tuberculosis
+and cancer, the various research activities aiming directly at
+the elimination of social diseases and maladjustments—a multitude
+of altruistic activities which could be catalogued only in a book
+of many pages—have need of knowledge of the public mind and mass
+psychology if they are to achieve their aims. The literature on social
+service publicity is so extensive, and the underlying principles so
+fundamental, that only one example is necessary here to illustrate the
+technique of social service propaganda.
+
+A social service organization undertook to fight lynching, Jim Crowism
+and the civil discriminations against the Negro below the Mason and
+Dixon line.
+
+The National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People had
+the fight in hand. As a matter of technique they decided to dramatize
+the year’s campaign in an annual convention which would concentrate
+attention on the problem.
+
+Should it be held in the North, South, West or East? Since the purpose
+was to affect the entire country, the association was advised to
+hold it in the South. For, said the propagandist, a point of view on
+a southern question, emanating from a southern center, would have
+greater authority than the same point of view issuing from any other
+locality, particularly when that point of View was at odds with the
+traditional southern point of view. Atlanta was chosen.
+
+The third step was to surround the conference with people who were
+stereotypes for ideas that carried weight all over the country. The
+support of leaders of diversified groups was sought. Telegrams and
+letters were dispatched to leaders of religious, political, social
+and educational groups, asking for their point of view on the purpose
+of the conference. But in addition to these group leaders of national
+standing it was particularly important from the technical standpoint to
+secure the opinions of group leaders of the South, even from Atlanta
+itself, to emphasize the purposes of the conference to the entire
+public. There was one group in Atlanta which could be approached. A
+group of ministers had been bold enough to come out for a greater
+interracial amity. This group was approached and agreed to coöperate in
+the conference.
+
+The event ran off as scheduled. The program itself followed the general
+scheme. Negroes and white men from the South, on the same platform,
+expressed the same point of view.
+
+A dramatic element was spot-lighted here and there. A national leader
+from Massachusetts agreed in principle and in practice with a Baptist
+preacher from the South.
+
+If the radio had been in effect, the whole country might have heard and
+been moved by the speeches and the principles expressed.
+
+But the public read the words and the ideas in the press of the
+country. For the event had been created of such important component
+parts as to awaken interest throughout the country and to gain support
+for its ideas even in the South.
+
+The editorials in the southern press, reflecting the public opinion of
+their communities, showed that the subject had become one of interest
+to the editors because of the participation by southern leaders.
+
+The event naturally gave the Association itself substantial weapons
+with which to appeal to an increasingly wider circle. Further publicity
+was attained by mailing reports, letters, and other propaganda to
+selected groups of the public.
+
+As for the practical results, the immediate one was a change in the
+minds of many southern editors who realized that the question at issue
+was not only an emotional one, but also a discussable one; and this
+point of view was immediately reflected to their readers. Further
+results are hard to measure with a slide-rule. The conference had its
+definite effect in building up the racial consciousness and solidarity
+of the Negroes. The decline in lynching is very probably a result of
+this and other efforts of the Association.
+
+Many churches have made paid advertising and organized propaganda part
+of their regular activities. They have developed church advertising
+committees, which make use of the newspaper and the billboard, as well
+as of the pamphlet. Many denominations maintain their own periodicals.
+The Methodist Board of Publication and Information systematically gives
+announcements and releases to the press and the magazines.
+
+But in a broader sense the very activities of social service are
+propaganda activities. A campaign for the preservation of the teeth
+seeks to alter people’s habits in the direction of more frequent
+brushing of teeth. A campaign for better parks seeks to alter people’s
+opinion in regard to the desirability of taxing themselves for the
+purchase of park facilities. A campaign against tuberculosis is an
+attempt to convince everybody that tuberculosis can be cured, that
+persons with certain symptoms should immediately go to the doctor, and
+the like. A campaign to lower the infant mortality rate is an effort to
+alter the habits of mothers in regard to feeding, bathing and caring
+for their babies. Social service, in fact, is identical with propaganda
+in many cases.
+
+Even those aspects of social service which are governmental and
+administrative, rather than charitable and spontaneous, depend on wise
+propaganda for their effectiveness. Professor Harry Elmer Barnes, in
+his book, “The Evolution of Modern Penology in Pennsylvania,” states
+that improvements in penological administration in that state are
+hampered by political influences. The legislature must be persuaded to
+permit the utilization of the best methods of scientific penology, and
+for this there is necessary the development of an enlightened public
+opinion. “Until such a situation has been brought about,” Mr. Barnes
+states, “progress in penology is doomed to be sporadic, local, and
+generally ineffective. The solution of prison problems, then, seems to
+be fundamentally a problem of conscientious and scientific publicity.”
+
+Social progress is simply the progressive education and enlightenment
+of the public mind in regard to its immediate and distant social
+problems.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+ART AND SCIENCE
+
+
+In the education of the American public toward greater art
+appreciation, propaganda plays an important part. When art galleries
+seek to launch the canvases of an artist they should create public
+acceptance for his works. To increase public appreciation a deliberate
+propagandizing effort must be made.
+
+In art as in politics the minority rules, but it can rule only by going
+out to meet the public on its own ground, by understanding the anatomy
+of public opinion and utilizing it.
+
+In applied and commercial art, propaganda makes greater opportunities
+for the artist than ever before. This arises from the fact that mass
+production reaches an impasse when it competes on a price basis
+only. It must, therefore, in a large number of fields create a field
+of competition based on esthetic values. Business of many types
+capitalizes the esthetic sense to increase markets and profits. Which
+is only another way of saying that the artist has the opportunity of
+collaborating with industry in such a way as to improve the public
+taste, injecting beautiful instead of ugly motifs into the articles
+of common use, and, furthermore, securing recognition and money for
+himself.
+
+Propaganda can play a part in pointing out what is and what is not
+beautiful, and business can definitely help in this way to raise the
+level of American culture. In this process propaganda will naturally
+make use of the authority of group leaders whose taste and opinion are
+recognized.
+
+The public must be interested by means of associational values and
+dramatic incidents. New inspiration, which to the artist may be a very
+technical and abstract kind of beauty, must be made vital to the public
+by association with values which it recognizes and responds to.
+
+For instance, in the manufacture of American silk, markets are
+developed by going to Paris for inspiration. Paris can give American
+silk a stamp of authority which will aid it to achieve definite
+position in the United States. The French Minister of Fine Arts may be
+induced to lend his authority to the process.
+
+The following clipping from the New York _Times_ of February 16, 1925,
+tells the story:
+
+ “Copyright, 1925, by THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY—Special Cable to THE
+ NEW YORK TIMES.
+
+ “PARIS, Feb. 15.—For the first time in history, American art materials
+ are to be exhibited in the Decorative Arts Section of the Louvre
+ Museum.
+
+ “The exposition opening on May 26th with the Minister of Fine Arts,
+ Paul Léon, acting as patron, will include silks from Cheney Brothers,
+ South Manchester and New York, the designs of which were based on the
+ inspiration of Edgar Brandt, famous French iron worker, the modern
+ Bellini, who makes wonderful art works from iron.
+
+ “M. Brandt designed and made the monumental iron doors of the Verdun
+ war memorial. He has been asked to assist and participate in this
+ exposition, which will show France the accomplishments of American
+ industrial art.
+
+ “Thirty designs inspired by Edgar Brandt’s work are embodied in 2,500
+ yards of printed silks, tinsels and cut velvets in a hundred colors....
+
+ “These ‘prints ferronnières’ are the first textiles to show the
+ influence of the modern master, M. Brandt. The silken fabrics possess
+ a striking composition, showing characteristic Brandt motifs which
+ were embodied in the tracery of large designs by the Cheney artists
+ who succeeded in translating the iron into silk, a task which might
+ appear almost impossible. The strength and brilliancy of the original
+ design is enhanced by the beauty and warmth of color.”
+
+The result of this ceremony was that prominent department stores in
+New York, Chicago and other cities asked to have this exhibition.
+They tried to mold the public taste in conformity with the idea which
+had the approval of Paris. The silks of Cheney Brothers—a commercial
+product produced in quantity—gained a place in public esteem by being
+associated with the work of a recognized artist and with a great art
+museum.
+
+The same can be said of almost any commercial product susceptible
+of beautiful design. There are few products in daily use, whether
+furniture, clothes, lamps, posters, commercial labels, book jackets,
+pocketbooks or bathtubs which are not subject to the laws of good taste.
+
+In America, whole departments of production are being changed through
+propaganda to fill an economic as well as an esthetic need. Manufacture
+is being modified to conform to the economic need to satisfy the public
+demand for more beauty. A piano manufacturer recently engaged artists
+to design modernist pianos. This was not done because there existed
+a widespread demand for modernist pianos. Indeed, the manufacturer
+probably expected to sell few. But in order to draw attention to pianos
+one must have something more than a piano. People at tea parties will
+not talk about pianos; but they may talk about the new modernist piano.
+
+When Secretary Hoover, three years ago, was asked to appoint a
+commission to the Paris Exposition of Decorative Arts, he did so.
+As Associate Commissioner I assisted in the organizing of the group
+of important business leaders in the industrial art field who went
+to Paris as delegates to visit and report on the Exposition. The
+propaganda carried on for the aims and purposes of the Commission
+undoubtedly had a widespread effect on the attitude of Americans
+towards art in industry; it was only a few years later that the modern
+art movement penetrated all fields of industry.
+
+Department stores took it up. R. H. Macy & Company held an
+Art-in-Trades Exposition, in which the Metropolitan Museum of Art
+collaborated as adviser. Lord & Taylor sponsored a Modern Arts
+Exposition, with foreign exhibitors. These stores, coming closely in
+touch with the life of the people, performed a propagandizing function
+in bringing to the people the best in art as it related to these
+industries. The Museum at the same time was alive to the importance of
+making contact with the public mind, by utilizing the department store
+to increase art appreciation.
+
+Of all art institutions the museum suffers most from the lack of
+effective propaganda. Most present-day museums have the reputation
+of being morgues or sanctuaries, whereas they should be leaders and
+teachers in the esthetic life of the community. They have little vital
+relation to life.
+
+The treasures of beauty in a museum need to be interpreted to the
+public, and this requires a propagandist. The housewife in a Bronx
+apartment doubtless feels little interest in an ancient Greek vase in
+the Metropolitan Museum. Yet an artist working with a pottery firm
+may adapt the design of this vase to a set of china and this china,
+priced low through quantity production, may find its way to that Bronx
+apartment, developing unconsciously, through its fine line and color,
+an appreciation of beauty.
+
+Some American museums feel this responsibility. The Metropolitan Museum
+of Art of New York rightly prides itself on its million and a quarter
+of Visitors in the year 1926; on its efforts to dramatize and make
+visual the civilizations which its various departments reveal; on its
+special lectures, its story hours, its loan collections of prints and
+photographs and lantern slides, its facilities offered to commercial
+firms in the field of applied art, on the outside lecturers who are
+invited to lecture in its auditorium and on the lectures given by
+its staff to outside organizations; and on the free chamber concerts
+given in the museum under the direction of David Mannes, which tend to
+dramatize the museum as a home of beauty. Yet that is not the whole of
+the problem.
+
+It is not merely a question of making people come to the museum. It is
+also a question of making the museum, and the beauty which it houses,
+go to the people.
+
+The museum’s accomplishments should not be evaluated merely in terms of
+the number of visitors. Its function is not merely to receive visitors,
+but to project itself and what it stands for in the community which it
+serves.
+
+The museum can stand in its community for a definite esthetic standard
+which can, by the help of intelligent propaganda, permeate the daily
+lives of all its neighbors. Why should not a museum establish a
+museum council of art, to establish standards in home decoration, in
+architecture, and in commercial production? or a research board for
+applied arts? Why should not the museum, instead of merely preserving
+the art treasures which it possesses, quicken their meaning in terms
+which the general public understands?
+
+A recent annual report of an art museum in one of the large cities of
+the United States, says:
+
+“An underlying characteristic of an Art Museum like ours must be its
+attitude of conservatism, for after all its first duty is to treasure
+the great achievements of men in the arts and sciences.”
+
+Is that true? Is not another important duty to interpret the models of
+beauty which it possesses?
+
+If the duty of the museum is to be active it must study how best to
+make its message intelligible to the community which it serves. It
+must boldly assume esthetic leadership.
+
+As in art, so in science, both pure and applied. Pure science was once
+guarded and fostered by learned societies and scientific associations.
+Now pure science finds support and encouragement also in industry. Many
+of the laboratories in which abstract research is being pursued are now
+connected with some large corporation, which is quite willing to devote
+hundreds of thousands of dollars to scientific study, for the sake of
+one golden invention or discovery which may emerge from it.
+
+Big business of course gains heavily when the invention emerges.
+But at that very moment it assumes the responsibility of placing
+the new invention at the service of the public. It assumes also the
+responsibility of interpreting its meaning to the public.
+
+The industrial interests can furnish to the schools, the colleges and
+the postgraduate university courses the exact truth concerning the
+scientific progress of our age. They not only can do so; they are
+under obligation to do so. Propaganda as an instrument of commercial
+competition has opened opportunities to the inventor and given great
+stimulus to the research scientist. In the last five or ten years, the
+successes of some of the larger corporations have been so outstanding
+that the whole field of science has received a tremendous impetus.
+The American Telephone and Telegraph Company, the Western Electric
+Company, the General Electric Company, the Westinghouse Electric
+Company and others have realized the importance of scientific research.
+They have also understood that their ideas must be made intelligible
+to the public to be fully successful. Television, broadcasting, loud
+speakers are utilized as propaganda aids.
+
+Propaganda assists in marketing new inventions. Propaganda, by
+repeatedly interpreting new scientific ideas and inventions to the
+public, has made the public more receptive. Propaganda is accustoming
+the public to change and progress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE MECHANICS OF PROPAGANDA
+
+
+The media by which special pleaders transmit their messages to the
+public through propaganda include all the means by which people
+to-day transmit their ideas to one another. There is no means of
+human communication which may not also be a means of deliberate
+propaganda, because propaganda is simply the establishing of reciprocal
+understanding between an individual and a group.
+
+The important point to the propagandist is that the relative value
+of the various instruments of propaganda, and their relation to the
+masses, are constantly changing. If he is to get full reach for his
+message he must take advantage of these shifts of value the instant
+they occur. Fifty years ago, the public meeting was a propaganda
+instrument par excellence. To-day it is difficult to get more than
+a handful of people to attend a public meeting unless extraordinary
+attractions are part of the program. The automobile takes them away
+from home, the radio keeps them in the home, the successive daily
+editions of the newspaper bring information to them in office or
+subway, and also they are sick of the ballyhoo of the rally.
+
+Instead there are numerous other media of communication, some new,
+others old but so transformed that they have become virtually new.
+The newspaper, of course, remains always a primary medium for the
+transmission of opinions and ideas—in other words, for propaganda.
+
+It was not many years ago that newspaper editors resented what they
+called “the use of the news columns for propaganda purposes.” Some
+editors would even kill a good story if they imagined its publication
+might benefit any one. This point of view is now largely abandoned.
+To-day the leading editorial offices take the view that the real
+criterion governing the publication or non-publication of matter which
+comes to the desk is its news value. The newspaper cannot assume, nor
+is it its function to assume, the responsibility of guaranteeing that
+what it publishes will not work out to somebody’s interest. There is
+hardly a single item in any daily paper, the publication of which does
+not, or might not, profit or injure somebody. That is the nature of
+news. What the newspaper does strive for is that the news which it
+publishes shall be accurate, and (since it must select from the mass of
+news material available) that it shall be of interest and importance to
+large groups of its readers.
+
+In its editorial columns the newspaper is a personality, commenting
+upon things and events from its individual point of view. But in
+its news columns the typical modern American newspaper attempts to
+reproduce, with due regard to news interest, the outstanding events and
+opinions of the day.
+
+It does not ask whether a given item is propaganda or not. What is
+important is that it be news. And in the selection of news the editor
+is usually entirely independent. In the New York _Times_—to take an
+outstanding example—news is printed because of its news value and
+for no other reason. The _Times_ editors determine with complete
+independence what is and what is not news. They brook no censorship.
+They are not influenced by any external pressure nor swayed by any
+values of expediency or opportunism. The conscientious editor on every
+newspaper realizes that his obligation to the public is news. The fact
+of its accomplishment makes it news.
+
+If the public relations counsel can breathe the breath of life into an
+idea and make it take its place among other ideas and events, it will
+receive the public attention it merits. There can be no question of
+his “contaminating news at its source.” He creates some of the day’s
+events, which must compete in the editorial office with other events.
+Often the events which he creates may be specially acceptable to a
+newspaper’s public and he may create them with that public in mind.
+
+If important things of life to-day consist of transatlantic radiophone
+talks arranged by commercial telephone companies; if they consist of
+inventions that will be commercially advantageous to the men who
+market them; if they consist of Henry Fords with epoch-making cars—then
+all this is news. The so-called flow of propaganda into the newspaper
+offices of the country may, simply at the editor’s discretion, find its
+way to the waste basket.
+
+The source of the news offered to the editor should always be clearly
+stated and the facts accurately presented.
+
+The situation of the magazines at the present moment, from the
+propagandist’s point of view, is different from that of the daily
+newspapers. The average magazine assumes no obligation, as the
+newspaper does, to reflect the current news. It selects its material
+deliberately, in accordance with a continuous policy. It is not,
+like the newspaper, an organ of public opinion, but tends rather to
+become a propagandist organ, propagandizing for a particular idea,
+whether it be good housekeeping, or smart apparel, or beauty in home
+decoration, or debunking public opinion, or general enlightenment or
+liberalism or amusement. One magazine may aim to sell health; another,
+English gardens; another, fashionable men’s wear; another, Nietzschean
+philosophy.
+
+In all departments in which the various magazines specialize, the
+public relations counsel may play an important part. For he may,
+because of his client’s interest, assist them to create the events
+which further their propaganda. A bank, in order to emphasize the
+importance of its women’s department, may arrange to supply a leading
+women’s magazine with a series of articles and advice on investments
+written by the woman expert in charge of this department. The women’s
+magazine in turn will utilize this new feature as a means of building
+additional prestige and circulation.
+
+The lecture, once a powerful means of influencing public opinion, has
+changed its value. The lecture itself may be only a symbol, a ceremony;
+its importance, for propaganda purposes, lies in the fact that it was
+delivered. Professor So-and-So, expounding an epoch-making invention,
+may speak to five hundred persons, or only fifty. His lecture, if it
+is important, will be broadcast; reports of it will appear in the
+newspapers; discussion will be stimulated. The real value of the
+lecture, from the propaganda point of view, is in its repercussion to
+the general public.
+
+The radio is at present one of the most important tools of the
+propagandist. Its future development is uncertain.
+
+It may compete with the newspaper as an advertising medium. Its
+ability to reach millions of persons simultaneously naturally appeals
+to the advertiser. And since the average advertiser has a limited
+appropriation for advertising, money spent on the radio will tend to
+be withdrawn from the newspaper.
+
+To what extent is the publisher alive to this new phenomenon? It is
+bound to come close to American journalism and publishing. Newspapers
+have recognized the advertising potentialities of the companies that
+manufacture radio apparatus, and of radio stores, large and small;
+and newspapers have accorded to the radio in their news and feature
+columns an importance relative to the increasing attention given by
+the public to radio. At the same time, certain newspapers have bought
+radio stations and linked them up with their news and entertainment
+distribution facilities, supplying these two features over the air to
+the public.
+
+It is possible that newspaper chains will sell schedules of advertising
+space on the air and on paper. Newspaper chains will possibly contract
+with advertisers for circulation on paper and over the air. There are,
+at present, publishers who sell space in the air and in their columns,
+but they regard the two as separate ventures.
+
+Large groups, political, racial, sectarian, economic or professional,
+are tending to control stations to propagandize their points of view.
+Or is it conceivable that America may adopt the English licensing
+system under which the listener, instead of the advertiser, pays?
+
+Whether the present system is changed, the advertiser—and
+propagandist—must necessarily adapt himself to it. Whether, in the
+future, air space will be sold openly as such, or whether the message
+will reach the public in the form of straight entertainment and news,
+or as special programs for particular groups, the propagandist must be
+prepared to meet the conditions and utilize them.
+
+The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of
+propaganda in the world to-day. It is a great distributor for ideas and
+opinions.
+
+The motion picture can standardize the ideas and habits of a nation.
+Because pictures are made to meet market demands, they reflect,
+emphasize and even exaggerate broad popular tendencies, rather than
+stimulate new ideas and opinions. The motion picture avails itself only
+of ideas and facts which are in vogue. As the newspaper seeks to purvey
+news, it seeks to purvey entertainment.
+
+Another instrument of propaganda is the personality. Has the device
+of the exploited personality been pushed too far? President Coolidge
+photographed on his vacation in full Indian regalia in company with
+full-blooded chiefs, was the climax of a greatly over-reported
+vacation. Obviously a public personality can be made absurd by misuse
+of the very mechanism which helped create it.
+
+Yet the vivid dramatization of personality will always remain one of
+the functions of the public relations counsel. The public instinctively
+demands a personality to typify a conspicuous corporation or
+enterprise.
+
+There is a story that a great financier discharged a partner because he
+had divorced his wife.
+
+“But what,” asked the partner, “have my private affairs to do with the
+banking business?”
+
+“If you are not capable of managing your own wife,” was the reply, “the
+people will certainly believe that you are not capable of managing
+their money.”
+
+The propagandist must treat personality as he would treat any other
+objective fact within his province.
+
+A personality may create circumstances, as Lindbergh created good will
+between the United States and Mexico. Events may create a personality,
+as the Cuban War created the political figure of Roosevelt. It is
+often difficult to say which creates the other. Once a public figure
+has decided what ends he wishes to achieve, he must regard himself
+objectively and present an outward picture of himself which is
+consistent with his real character and his aims.
+
+There are a multitude of other avenues of approach to the public mind,
+some old, some new as television. No attempt will be made to discuss
+each one separately. The school may disseminate information concerning
+scientific facts. The fact that a commercial concern may eventually
+profit from a widespread understanding of its activities because of
+this does not condemn the dissemination of such information, provided
+that the subject merits study on the part of the students. If a baking
+corporation contributes pictures and charts to a school to show how
+bread is made, these propaganda activities, if they are accurate and
+candid, are in no way reprehensible, provided the school authorities
+accept or reject such offers carefully on their educational merits.
+
+It may be that a new product will be announced to the public by means
+of a motion picture of a parade taking place a thousand miles away. Or
+the manufacturer of a new jitney airplane may personally appear and
+speak in a million homes through radio and television. The man who
+would most effectively transmit his message to the public must be alert
+to make use of all the means of propaganda.
+
+Undoubtedly the public is becoming aware of the methods which are
+being used to mold its opinions and habits. If the public is better
+informed about the processes of its own life, it will be so much the
+more receptive to reasonable appeals to its own interests. No matter
+how sophisticated, how cynical the public may become about publicity
+methods, it must respond to the basic appeals, because it will always
+need food, crave amusement, long for beauty, respond to leadership.
+
+If the public becomes more intelligent in its commercial demands,
+commercial firms will meet the new standards. If it becomes weary
+of the old methods used to persuade it to accept a given idea or
+commodity, its leaders will present their appeals more intelligently.
+
+Propaganda will never die out. Intelligent men must realize that
+propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for
+productive ends and help to bring order out of chaos.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Notes:
+
+
+Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
+
+Perceived typographical errors have been changed.
+
+New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
+public domain.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78634 ***