CONTENTS
-
Organizing Chaos
-
The
New Propaganda
-
The
New Propagandists
-
The
Psychology of Public Relations
-
Business and The Public
-
Propaganda and Political Leadership
-
Women's Activities and Propaganda
-
Propaganda for Education
-
Propaganda in Social Service
-
Art
and Science
-
The
Mechanics of Propaganda
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 in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of
human beings must cooperate 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 cooperating 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 today 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 today, 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
-
AmericanIrish Historical Association
-
AntiCigarette League
-
AntiProfanity 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)
-
NarodPolski (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 PhotoEngravers' 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 PhotoEngravers' 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
-
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 16
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 WhiteCollar 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
Propaganda
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 easts, 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.
Back to Contents
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 reinforced this tendency, and at last even
the bourgeoisie stood in fear of the common people.
For the masses promised
to become king.
Today, 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 today, 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:
-
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.
-
Hence, any institution or scheme for
propagating a doctrine or system
-
Effort directed systematically toward
the gaining of public support for an opinion or a course of action
-
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
today 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"
"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 today" 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 pillowcase 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 cooperation 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, Agnes 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 lawmaking 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.
Back to Contents
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 nineteenths 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
cooperation 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 muckraking 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 cooperate 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.
Back to Contents
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 nationwide 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
cooperation, 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
nationwide 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.
Back to Contents
CHAPTER V
BUSINESS AND THE PUBLIC
THE relationship between business and the public has become closer in the
past few decades.
Business today 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 muckraking 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 today 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 cooperation.
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, today 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
dustproof 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 today 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 skyscraper 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 gelatin. 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, gelatin 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 gelatin 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 business
men 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 washcloth 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 washcloth
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 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 antitrust 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 nonvoting 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 semipublic 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 countrywide 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
nationwide scale.
Today, 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 cooperative 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 hardworking 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 nationwide hookup 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 hookup 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
sugarcoated 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
cutthroat 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 fete 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:
BEECHNUT HEAD HOME TOWN GUEST
Bartlett Arkell Signally Honored by
Communities of Mohawk Valley {Special to The Journal of Commerce)
CANAJOHARIE, N. Y., April 3
Today was 'BeechNut 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 BeechNut 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 BeechNut
Company.
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, today'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 BeechNut 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 freelance 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.
Back to Contents
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 willless 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 today.
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 today 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 today 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 reselling 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 today 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 coordinated 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,
-
coincide in every way with the broad
basic plans of the campaign and all its minor details
-
be adapted to the many groups of the
public at which it is to be aimed
-
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 today, 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 today are largely uninterested in politics and their interest in the
issues of the campaign must be secured by coordinating 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 cooperation
of educational institutions, the dramatic cooperation 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 today 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 Czechoslovakia.
Czechoslovakia 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 Czechoslovakia'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
108 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 today 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.
Back to Contents
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 today 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 cats-paw 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 today 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
today 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 peacetime
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 nonpolitical 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
cooperating 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 traveling 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.
Back to Contents
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 twofold 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
bimonthly 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 bookshop, 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. . . .
"Today, 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 today 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 zoological 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 over-advertise an
institution and to create in the public mind artificial values.
There can be
no absolute guarantee against its misuse.
Back to Contents
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. Today
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
cooperate 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 spotlighted 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.
Back to Contents
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 following clipping from the New York Times of February 16, 1925, tells
the story from an actual incident of this sort:
"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
Leon, 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 ferronnieres' 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 de sign 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 ArtinTrades
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
-
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.
Back to Contents
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 today 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.
Today 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. Today 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 today 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 SoandSo, 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 today. 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
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