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?
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Propaganda
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 per-
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Propaganda and Political Leadership
sonalities, by establishing contact with the group
leaders who control the opinions of their publics.
But campaigning is only an incident in political
life. The process of government is continuous. And
the expert use of propaganda is more useful and fundamental,
although less striking, as an aid to democratic
administration, than as an aid to vote getting.
Good government can be sold to a community just
as any other commodity can be sold. I often wonder
whether the politicians of the future, who are responsible
for maintaining the prestige and effectiveness
of their party, will not endeavor to train politicians
who are at the same time propagandists. I
talked recently with George Olvany. He said that a
certain number of Princeton men were joining Tammany
Hall. If I were in his place I should have
taken some of my brightest young men and set them
to work for Broadway theatrical productions or apprenticed
them as assistants to professional propagandists
before recruiting them to the service of the
party.
One reason, perhaps, why the politician to-day is
slow to take up methods which are a commonplace
in business life is that he has such ready entry to the
media of communication on which his power depends.
The newspaper man looks to him for news. And
by his power of giving or withholding information
the politician can often effectively censor political
news. But being dependent, every day of the year
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Propaganda
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 lowtariff
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
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Propaganda and Political Leadership
due to the tariff in force. He would see that these
exhibitions were ceremoniously inaugurated by prominent
men and women who were interested in a low
tariff apart from any interest in his personal political
fortunes. He would have groups, whose interests
were especially affected by the high cost of living,
institute an agitation for lower schedules. He would
dramatize the issue, perhaps by having prominent
men boycott woolen clothes, and go to important
functions in cotton suits, until the wool schedule was
reduced. He might get the opinion of social workers
as to whether the high cost of wool endangers the
health of the poor in winter.
In whatever ways he dramatized the issue, the attention
of the public would be attracted to the question
before he addressed them personally. Then,
when he spoke to his millions of listeners on the
radio, he would not be seeking to force an argument
down the throats of a public thinking of other things
and annoyed by another demand on its attention; on
the contrary, he would be answering the spontaneous
questions and expressing the emotional demands of
a public already keyed to a certain pitch of interest
in the subject.
The importance of taking the entire world public
into consideration before planning an important event
is shown by the wise action of Thomas Masaryk, then
Provisional President, now President of the Republic
of Czecho-Slovakia.
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Propaganda
Czecho-Slovakia officially became a free state on
Monday, October 28, 1918, instead of Sunday,
October 27, 1918, because Professor Masaryk realized
that the people of the world would receive more
information and would be more receptive to, the announcement
of the republic's freedom on a Monday
morning than on a Sunday, because the press would
have more space to devote to it on Monday morning.
Discussing the matter with me before he made the
announcement, Professor Masaryk said, "I would
be making history for the cables if I changed the
date of Czecho-Slovakia's birth as a free nation."
Cables make history and so the date was changed.
This incident illustrates the importance of technique
in the new propaganda.
It will be objected, of course, that propaganda will
tend to defeat itself as its mechanism becomes obvious
to the public. My opinion is that it will not.
The only propaganda which will ever tend to weaken
itself as the world becomes more sophisticated and
intelligent, is propaganda that is untrue or unsocial.
Again, the objection is raised that propaganda is
utilized to manufacture our leading political personalities.
It is asked whether, in fact, the leader makes
propaganda, or whether propaganda makes the
leader. There is a widespread impression that a
good press agent can puff up a nobody into a great
man.
The answer is the same as that made to the old
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Propaganda and Political Leadership
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
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Propaganda
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, sportloving,
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.
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Propaganda and Political Leadership
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.
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Propaganda
It is a method which has little justification. If a
politician is a real leader he will be able, by the skillful
use of propaganda, to lead the people, instead of
following the people by means of the clumsy instrument
of trial and error.
The propagandist's approach is the exact opposite
of that of the politician just described. The whole
basis of successful propaganda is to have an objective
and then to endeavor to arrive at it through an exact
knowledge of the public and modifying circumstances
to manipulate and sway that public.
"The function of a statesman," says George Bernard
Shaw, "is to express the will of the people in the
way of a scientist."
The political leader of to-day should be a leader
as finely versed in the technique of propaganda as
in political economy and civics. If he remains merely
the reflection of the average intelligence of his community,
he might as well go out of politics. If one
is dealing with a democracy in which the herd and the
group follow those whom they recognize as leaders,
why should not the young men training for leadership
be trained in its technique as well as in its
idealism?
"When the interval between the intellectual classes
and the practical classes is too great," says the historian
Buckle, "the former will possess no influence,
the latter will reap no benefits."
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Propaganda and Political Leadership
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
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Propaganda
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.
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CHAPTER VII
WOMEN'S ACTIVITIES AND PROPAGANDA
WOMEN in contemporary America have achieved a
legal equality with men. This does not mean that
their activities are identical with those of men.
Women in the mass still have special interests and
activities in addition to their economic pursuits and
vocational interests.
Women's most obvious influence is exerted when
they are organized and armed with the weapon of
propaganda. So organized and armed they have
made their influence felt on city councils, state legislatures,
and national congresses, upon executives, upon
political campaigns and upon public opinion generally,
both local and national.
In politics, the American women to-day occupy a
much more important position, from the standpoint
of their influence, in their organized groups than
from the standpoint of the leadership they have acquired
in actual political positions or in actual office
holding. The professional woman politician has had,
up to the present, not much influence, nor do women
generally regard her as being the most important element
in question. Ma Ferguson, after all, was
simply a woman in the home, a catspaw for a deposed
husband; Nellie Ross, the former Governor of Wyo-
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Propaganda
ming, is from all accounts hardly a leader of statesmanship
or public opinion.
If the suffrage campaign did nothing more, it
showed the possibilities of propaganda to achieve certain
ends. This propaganda to-day is being utilized
by women to achieve their programs in Washington
and in the states. In Washington they are organized
as the Legislative Committee of Fourteen Women's
Organizations, including the League of Women
Voters, the Young Women's Christian Association,
the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Federation
of Women's Clubs, etc. These organizations
map out a legislative program and then use the modern
technique of propaganda to make this legislative
program actually pass into the law of the land. Their
accomplishments in the field are various. They can
justifiably take the credit for much welfare legislation.
The eight-hour day for women is theirs.
Undoubtedly prohibition and its enforcement are
theirs, if they can be considered an accomplishment.
So is the Shepard-Towner Bill which stipulates support
by the central government of maternity welfare
in the state governments. This bill would not have
passed had it not been for the political prescience
and sagacity of women like Mrs. Vanderlip and Mrs.
Mitchell.
The Federal measures endorsed at the first convention
of the National League of Women Voters
typify social welfare activities of women's organiza-
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Women's Activities and Propaganda
tions. These covered such broad interests as child
welfare, education, the home and high prices, women
in gainful occupations, public health and morals, independent
citizenship for married women, and others.
To propagandize these principles, the National
League of Women Voters has published all types
of literature, such as bulletins, calendars, election information,
has held a correspondence course on government
and conducted demonstration classes and citizenship
schools.
Possibly the effectiveness of women's organizations
in American politics to-day is due to two things:
first, the training of a professional class of executive
secretaries or legislative secretaries during the suffrage
campaigns, where every device known to the
propagandist had to be used to regiment a recalcitrant
majority; secondly, the routing over into 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
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Propaganda
of minority ideas. It is perhaps curiously appropriate
that the latest recruits to the political arena should
recognize and make use of the newest weapons of
persuasion to offset any lack of experience with what
is somewhat euphemistically termed practical politics.
As an example of this new technique: Some
years ago, the Consumers' Committee of Women,
fighting the "American valuation" tariff, rented an
empty store on Fifty-seventh Street in New York and
set up an exhibit of merchandise tagging each item
with the current price and the price it would cost if
the tariff went through. Hundreds of visitors to
this shop rallied to the cause of the committee.
But there are also non-political fields in which
women can make and have made their influence felt
for social ends, and in which they have utilized the
principle of group leadership in attaining the desired
objectives.
In the General Federation of Women's Clubs,
there are 13,000 clubs. Broadly classified, they include
civic and city clubs, mothers' and homemakers'
clubs, cultural clubs devoted to art, music or literature,
business and professional women's clubs, and
general women's clubs, which may embrace either
civic or community phases, or combine some of the
other activities listed.
The woman's club is generally effective on behalf
of health education; in furthering appreciation of the
fine arts; in sponsoring legislation that affects the
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Women s Activities and Propaganda
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 cam-
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Propaganda
paign and marshal as varied resources as any political
battle.
An art club can be active in securing loan exhibitions
for its city. It can also arrange travelling exhibits
of the art work of its members or show the art
work of schools or universities.
A literary club may step out of its charmed circle
of lectures and literary lions and take a definite part
in the educational life of the community. It can
sponsor, for instance, a competition in the public
schools for the best essay on the history of the city,
or on the life of its most famous son.
Over and above the particular object for which the
woman's club may have been constituted, it commonly
stands ready to initiate or help any movement which
has for its object a distinct public good in the community.
More important, it constitutes an organized
channel through which women can make themselves
felt as a definite part of public opinion.
Just as women supplement men in private life, so
they will supplement men in public life by concentrating
their organized efforts on those objects which
men are likely to ignore. There is a tremendous field
for women as active protagonists of new ideas and
new methods of political and social housekeeping.
When organized and conscious of their power to influence
their surroundings, women can use their newly
acquired freedom in a great many ways to mold the
world into a better place to live in.
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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.
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Propaganda
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
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Propaganda for Education
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 un-
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satisfactory 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
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Propaganda for Education
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
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Propaganda
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 prop-
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Propaganda for Education
aganda 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
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Propaganda
California. A bi-monthly news letter is published,
bringing to members the news of their profession.
The Association endeavors to uphold the ethical
standards of the profession and aims to work in harmony
with the press.
The National Education Association and other
societies are carrying on a definite propaganda to promote
the larger purposes of educational endeavor.
One of the aims of such propaganda is of course improvement
in the prestige and material position of
the teachers themselves. An occasional McAndrew
case calls the attention of the public to the fact that
in some schools the teacher is far from enjoying full
academic freedom, while in certain communities the
choice of teachers is based upon political or sectarian
considerations rather than upon real ability. If such
issues were made, by means of propaganda, to become
a matter of public concern on a truly national scale,
there would doubtless be a general tendency to
improvement.
The concrete problems of colleges are more varied
and puzzling than one might suppose. The pharmaceutical
college of a university is concerned because
the drug store is no longer merely a drug store, but
primarily a soda fountain, a lunch counter, a 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
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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 flour-
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ished 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.
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Propaganda for Education
It violates the fundamental article in the creed of
the old academic societies. Cloistered seclusion used
to be considered the first essential of scholarship.
The college was anxious to preserve its aloofness
from the world. ...
"The colleges used to resent outside interest in
their affairs. They might, somewhat reluctantly and
contemptuously, admit reporters to their Commencement
Day exercises, but no further would they
go. . . .
"To-day, if a newspaper reporter wants to interview
a Harvard professor, he has merely to telephone
the Secretary for Information to the
University. Officially, Harvard still shies away
from the title 'Director of Publicity.' Informally,
however, the secretary with the long title is the publicity
man. He is an important official to-day at
Harvard."
It may be a new idea that the president of a
university will concern himself with the kind of
mental picture his institution produces on the public
mind. Yet it is part of the president's work to see
that his university takes its proper place in the community
and therefore also in the community mind,
and produces the results desired, both in a cultural
and in a financial sense.
If his institution does not produce the mental picture
which it should, one of two things may be
wrong: Either the media of communication with
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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.
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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
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Propaganda
may be abused. It may be used to overadvertise an
institution and to create in the public mind artificial
values. There can be no absolute guarantee against
its misuse.
134
CHAPTER IX
PROPAGANDA IN SOCIAL SERVICE
THE public relations counsel is necessary to social
work. And since social service, by its very nature,
can continue only by means of the voluntary support
of the wealthy, it is obliged to use propaganda continually.
The leaders in social service were among
the first consciously to utilize propaganda in its
modern sense.
The great enemy of any attempt to change men's
habits is inertia. Civilization is limited by inertia.
Our attitude toward social relations, toward economics,
toward national and international politics,
continues past attitudes and strengthens them under
the force of tradition. Comstock drops his mantle
of proselytizing morality on the willing shoulders of
a Sumner; Penrose drops his mantle on Butler; Carnegie
his on Schwab, and so ad infinitum. Opposing
this traditional acceptance of existing ideas is an active
public opinion that has been directed consciously into
movements against inertia. Public opinion was made
or changed formerly by tribal chiefs, by kings, by
religious leaders. To-day the privilege of attempting
to sway public opinion is every one's. It is one
of the manifestations of democracy that any one may
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Propaganda
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
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Propaganda in Social Service
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 spot-lighted here and
there. A national leader from Massachusetts agreed
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Propaganda
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 prob-
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Propaganda in Social Service
ably 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
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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.
140
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 com-
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Propaganda
mon 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
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Art and Science
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-
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Propaganda
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
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Art and Science
tea parties will not talk about pianos; but they may
talk about the new modernist piano.
When Secretary Hoover, three years ago, was
asked to appoint a commission to the Paris Exposition
of Decorative Arts, he did so. As Associate
Commissioner I assisted in the organizing of the
group of important business leaders in the industrial
art field who went to Paris as delegates to visit and
report on the Exposition. The propaganda carried
on for the aims and purposes of the Commission
undoubtedly had a widespread effect on the attitude
of Americans towards art in industry; it was only a
few years later that the modern art movement penetrated
all fields of industry.
Department stores took it up. R. H. Macy &
Company held an Art-in-Trades Exposition, in which
the Metropolitan Museum of Art collaborated as
adviser. Lord & Taylor sponsored a Modern Arts
Exposition, with foreign exhibitors. These stores,
coming closely in touch with the life of the people,
performed a propagandizing function in bringing to
the people the best in art as it related to these industries.
The Museum at the same time was alive
to the importance of making contact with the public
mind, by utilizing the department store to increase
art appreciation.
Of all art institutions the museum suffers most
from the lack of effective propaganda. Most present-
day museums have the reputation of being
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Propaganda
morgues or sanctuaries, whereas they should be
leaders and teachers in the esthetic life of the community.
They have little vital relation to life.
The treasures of beauty in a museum need to be
interpreted to the public, and this requires a propagandist.
The housewife in a Bronx apartment doubtless
feels little interest in an ancient Greek vase in the
Metropolitan Museum. Yet an artist working with
a pottery firm may adapt the design of this vase
to a set of china and this china, priced low through
quantity production, may find its way to that Bronx
apartment, developing unconsciously, through its fine
line and color, an appreciation of beauty.
Some American museums feel this responsibility.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York
rightly prides itself on its million and a quarter of
visitors in the year 1926; on its efforts to dramatize
and make visual the civilizations which its various departments
reveal; on its special lectures, its story
hours, its loan collections of prints and photographs
and lantern slides, its facilities offered to commercial
firms in the field of applied art, on the outside lecturers
who are invited to lecture in its auditorium
and on the lectures given by its staff to outside organizations}
and on the free chamber concerts given
in the museum under the direction of David Mannes,
which tend to dramatize the museum as a home of
beauty. Yet that is not the whole of the problem.
It is not merely a question of making people
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Art and Science
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 iself 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
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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
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Art and Science
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.
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CHAPTER XI
THE MECHANICS OF PROPAGANDA
THE media by which special pleaders transmit
their messages to the public through propaganda include
all the means by which people to-day transmit
their ideas to one another. There is no means of human
communication which may not also be a means
of deliberate propaganda, because propaganda is
simply the establishing of reciprocal understanding
between an individual and a group.
The important point to the propagandist is that
the relative value of the various instruments of
propaganda, and their relation to the masses, are
constantly changing. If he is to get full reach for
his message he must take advantage of these shifts
of value the instant they occur. Fifty years ago,
the public meeting was a propaganda instrument par
excellence. To-day it is difficult to get more than a
handful of people to attend a public meeting unless
extraordinary attractions are part of the program.
The automobile takes them away from home, the
radio keeps them in the home, the successive daily
editions of the newspaper bring information to them
in office or subway, and also they are sick of the
ballyhoo of the rally.
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The Mechanics of Propaganda
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
