Propaganda quotes

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.

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.

Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way our democratic society is organized.

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

This is a logical result of the way our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must coöperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

… 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.

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.

If all these thousands of formal organizations and institutions could be listed (and no complete list has ever been made), they would still represent but a part of those existing less formally but leading vigorous lives.

Ideas are sifted and opinions stereotyped in the neighborhood bridge club.

Leaders assert their authority through community drives and amateur theatricals. Thousands of women may unconsciously belong to a sorority which follows the fashions set by a single society leader.

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.

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.

The minority has discovered a powerful help in influencing majorities. It has been found possible so to mold the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction. In the present structure of society, this practice is inevitable.

Whatever of social importance is done to-day, whether in politics, finance, manufacture, agriculture, charity, education, or other fields, must be done with the help of propaganda.

Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.

In the present structure of society, this practice is inevitable. Whatever of social importance is done to-day, whether in politics, finance, manufacture, agriculture, charity, education, or other fields, must be done with the help of propaganda.

Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.

Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine.

In the present structure of society, this practice is inevitable. Whatever of social importance is done to-day, whether in politics, finance, manufacture, agriculture, charity, education, or other fields, must be done with the help of propaganda. Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.

Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment.

Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine.

But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought.

Each man’s rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical imprints.

It may seem an exaggeration to say that the American public gets most of its ideas in this wholesale fashion.

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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.

If they realize, as they quickly must, that this spreading of the truth can be done upon a large scale and effectively only by organized effort, they will make use of the press and the platform as the best means to give it wide circulation.

Propaganda becomes vicious and reprehensive only when its authors consciously and deliberately disseminate what they know to be lies, or when they aim at effects which they know to be prejudicial to the common good.

“‘Propaganda’ in its proper meaning is a perfectly wholesome word, of honest parentage, and with an honorable history. The fact that it should to-day be carrying a sinister meaning merely shows how much of the child remains in the average adult.

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.

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, …

He buys the sheet and pillow-case costume, and bands with his fellows by the thousand into a huge group powerful enough to swing state elections and to throw a ponderous monkey wrench into a national convention.

In our present social organization approval of the public is essential to any large undertaking.

Hence a laudable movement may be lost unless it impresses itself on the public mind.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

… 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Even in his restricted field of public psychology there must always be a wide margin of error.

Propaganda, like economics and sociology, can never be an exact science for the reason that its subject-matter, like theirs, deals with human beings.

If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious coöperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway.

But men do not need to be actually gathered together in a public meeting or in a street riot, to be subject to the influences of mass psychology.

Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of a herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn.

His mind retains the patterns which have been stamped on it by the group influences.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

… 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

High-spotting, on the other hand, vividly seizes the attention of the public and fixes it upon some detail or aspect which is typical of the entire enterprise.

When a real estate corporation which is erecting a tall office building makes it ten feet taller than the highest sky-scraper in existence, that is dramatization.

Which method is indicated, or whether both be indicated concurrently, can be determined only after a full study of objectives and specific possibilities.

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.

Of course, every one realized after this that there was no truth in the rumor that the Beech-Nut Company was in the market. A denial would not have carried as much conviction.

Amusement, too, is a business—one of the largest in America.

It was the amusement business—first the circus and the medicine show, then the theater—which taught the rudiments of advertising to industry and commerce. The latter adopted the ballyhoo of the show business.

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.

The great political problem in our modern democracy is how to induce our leaders to lead.

The dogma that the voice of the people is the voice of God tends to make elected persons the will-less servants of their constituents. This is undoubtedly part cause of the political sterility of which certain American critics constantly complain.

The great political problem in our modern democracy is how to induce our leaders to lead.

The dogma that the voice of the people is the voice of God tends to make elected persons the will-less servants of their constituents.

This is undoubtedly part cause of the political sterility of which certain American critics constantly complain.

The dogma that the voice of the people is the voice of God tends to make elected persons the will-less servants of their constituents. This is undoubtedly part cause of the political sterility of which certain American critics constantly complain.

No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea.

The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion.

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?”

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.

… problem of interpreting and popularizing new issues, or in the problem of making the day-to-day administration of public affairs a vital part of the community life, the use of propaganda, carefully adjusted to the mentality of the masses, is an essential adjunct of political life.

The successful business man to-day apes the politician.

He has adopted the glitter and the ballyhoo of the campaign. He has set up all the side shows. He has annual dinners that are a compendium of speeches, flags, bombast, stateliness, pseudo-democracy slightly tinged with paternalism.

The real work and campaign of business consists of intensive study of the public, the manufacture of products based on this study, and exhaustive use of every means of reaching the public.

Political campaigns to-day are all side shows, all honors, all bombast, glitter, and speeches.

These are for the most part unrelated to the main business of studying the public scientifically, of supplying the public with party, candidate, platform, and performance, and selling the public these ideas and products.

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.

(c) conform to the media of the distribution of ideas.

The emotions of oratory have been worn down through long years of overuse.

Parades, mass meetings, and the like are successful when the public has a frenzied emotional interest in the event.

The candidate who takes babies on his lap, and has his photograph taken, is doing a wise thing emotionally, if this act epitomizes a definite plank in his platform.

Kissing babies, if it is worth anything, must be used as a symbol for a baby policy and it must be synchronized with a plank in the platform.

But the haphazard staging of emotional events without regard to their value as part of the whole campaign, is a waste of effort, just as it would be a waste of effort for the manufacturer of hockey skates to advertise a picture of a church …

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Again, the objection is raised that propaganda is utilized to manufacture our leading political personalities. It is asked whether, in fact, the leader makes propaganda, or whether propaganda makes the leader.

There is a widespread impression that a good press agent can puff up a nobody into a great man.

The answer is the same as that made to the old query as to whether the newspaper makes public opinion or whether public opinion makes the newspaper. There has to be fertile ground for the leader and the idea to fall on.

The answer is the same as that made to the old query as to whether the newspaper makes public opinion or whether public opinion makes the newspaper.

There has to be fertile ground for the leader and the idea to fall on. But the leader also has to have some vital seed to sow.

To use another figure, a mutual need has to exist before either can become positively effective. Propaganda is of no use to the politician unless he has something to say which the public, consciously or unconsciously, wants to hear.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A music club can broaden its sphere and be of service to the community by coöperating with the local radio station in arranging better musical programs.

Fighting bad music can be as militant a campaign and marshal as varied resources as any political battle.

An art club can be active in securing loan exhibitions for its city. It can also arrange travelling exhibits of the art work of its members or show the art work of schools or universities.

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.

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.

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.

“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....

And since social service, by its very nature, can continue only by means of the voluntary support of the wealthy, it is obliged to use propaganda continually. The leaders in social service were among the first consciously to utilize propaganda in its modern sense.

The great enemy of any attempt to change men’s habits is inertia. Civilization is limited by inertia.

Our attitude toward social relations, toward economics, toward national and international politics, continues past attitudes and strengthens them under the force of tradition. Comstock drops his mantle of proselytizing morality on the willing shoulders of a Sumner; Penrose drops his mantle on Butler;

Carnegie his on Schwab, and so ad infinitum. Opposing this traditional acceptance of existing ideas is an active public opinion that has been directed consciously into movements against inertia. Public opinion was made or changed formerly by tribal chiefs, by kings, by religious leaders.

To-day the privilege of attempting to sway public opinion is every one’s.

It is one of the manifestations of democracy that any one may try to convince others and to assume leadership on behalf of his own thesis.

Public opinion was made or changed formerly by tribal chiefs, by kings, by religious leaders. To-day the privilege of attempting to sway public opinion is every one’s.

It is one of the manifestations of democracy that any one may try to convince others and to assume leadership on behalf of his own thesis.

New ideas, new precedents, are continually striving for a place in the scheme of things.

To-day the privilege of attempting to sway public opinion is every one’s. It is one of the manifestations of democracy that any one may try to convince others and to assume leadership on behalf of his own thesis.

New ideas, new precedents, are continually striving for a place in the scheme of things.

The social settlement, the organized campaigns against tuberculosis and cancer, the various research activities aiming directly at the elimination of social diseases and maladjustments—a multitude of altruistic activities which could be catalogued only in a book of many pages—have need of knowledge of the public …

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

and on the free chamber concerts given in the museum under the direction of David Mannes, which tend to dramatize the museum as a home of beauty. Yet that is not the whole of the problem.

It is not merely a question of making people come to the museum. It is also a question of making the museum, and the beauty which it houses, go to the people.

The museum’s accomplishments should not be evaluated merely in terms of the number of visitors. Its function is not merely to receive visitors, but to project itself and what it stands for in the community which it serves.

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.

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.

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.

… the future, air space will be sold openly as such, or whether the message will reach the public in the form of straight entertainment and news, or as special programs for particular groups, the propagandist must be prepared to meet the conditions and utilize them.

The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world to-day.

It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions.

The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world to-day. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions.

The motion picture can standardize the ideas and habits of a nation.

Because pictures are made to meet market demands, they reflect, emphasize and even exaggerate broad popular tendencies, rather than stimulate new ideas and opinions. The motion picture avails itself only of ideas and facts which are in vogue.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.